Coraggio Consulting
Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting, Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Date: Wednesday, February 21, 2024
Place: Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 9h 23m (video)
Official meeting video (Granicus): https://albemarle.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=920
Official agenda: https://albemarle.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=920

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-18. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] Good afternoon. I'm pleased to call to order this regular meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on this 21st of February at 1 p.m. in Lane Auditorium. I'd like to note at the dais we have Supervisor Ann Malick of the Whitehall District, Supervisor Ned Galloway of the Rio District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jewett District, Supervisor B. Lapisto-Kirtley of the Ravana District, Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, and myself, Jim Andrews, representing the Samuel Miller District.

[00:00:29] A quorum is present. We're also joined here by our county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our county attorney, Mr. Steve Rosenberg, and our clerk, Ms. Claudette Borgerson, and our senior deputy clerk, Mr. Travis Morris. Also at this time, let me please welcome Albemarle County Police Officers present, Master Police Officer Dana Reeves and Officer Raven Lilly.

[00:00:49] We thank you for your service. Appreciate you being here today and for the work that your colleagues do every day for our safety and security. If all present, could now stand as you are able to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you.

[00:01:22] And now I ask that you join us in a moment of silence.

[00:01:37] Thank you, board. Thank you, all present. I believe our next item is the motion to adopt the final agenda.

[00:01:57] Do we have any amendments to the final agenda? Do we not? Is there a motion to accept to approve the final agenda? So moved. Second. Motion by Supervisor McKeel. Second by Supervisor Lapisto-Kirtley.

[00:02:13] Without objection, if the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lopisto-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Anders? Yes. Thank you. Board, at this time, it's for brief announcements by board members.

[00:02:33] Our order today starts with Supervisor McKeel. Yes, sir. Thank you. Just one item, as we all know today, our county executive, Jeff Richardson is presenting his 24-25 recommended budget.

[00:02:50] And I just wanted to remind everyone that Superintendent Matt Haas tomorrow evening is presenting the 24-25 funding request from the school system to the school board. And that would start in this room, Lane Auditorium, at 630.

[00:03:09] So I'm hoping to make it, and I would love to have company. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Galloway. I have no announcements today. Thank you. Supervisor Malik. Thank you. Just a couple. USDA began designated Virginia counties as primary natural disaster areas in October of 2023. Before June of 2024 is the time for producers to apply. Should they need coverage, producers should contact their county's FSA service center in Louisa. That is the closest agency to us and to ask Mayor Scott Fisher for help getting your

[00:03:48] applications done. Also announced at the CCAC last week is the upcoming Citizen Police Academy. I was hoping that, I didn't want to get in front of Ms. McKeel, but I will go ahead and do it here. The March 3rd, March 16th, and March 23rd, sorry, March 9th, 16th, and 23rd are the three dates and the police department is pleased to offer again the Citizens Police Academy. It comes very well recommended to all by residents in the Whitehall District who have participated over the years.

[00:04:20] The purpose is to give members of the community insight into daily operations of the police department and better understand the role law enforcement plays in developing our safe communities. Lots of wonderful activities planned. Registration is available.

[00:04:35] I'm sure the details will also be on the county website, but please apply by contacting Master Police Officer Joe George at georgej.onwell.org. The next and last, actually, is the Alliance to Advance Climate Smart Agriculture.

[00:04:51] This is a funding pilot from the federal USDA through Virginia Tech. Amarillo County is one of the counties whose farmers can participate in this, and learning all about how to sign up for participating in the program.

[00:05:07] Many different conservation practices and climate practices are involved in the list, and there are stipends for participation. Alliance for CSA at vt.edu is the way to get more, and thank you very much. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. Yes, just one thing. I'm going to hit on the same thing as last session, which is early voting for the presidential primary is still ongoing. You can vote in person at the Fifth Street Station, County Office Building, or the Fifth Street, sorry,

[00:05:39] County Office Building. It's easy. I did it in all of three minutes yesterday, so I encourage folks to go out and vote. Early voting closes on Saturday, March the 2nd. That is the end of in-person early voting. And then we will have the actual day of election on Super Tuesday, which is going to be the 5th of March. So it's always easier to vote ahead of time, but frankly, you will have an easy time regardless. And I encourage our citizens to get out there and vote. That's all I have. Thank you. Supervisor Lupisto Kirtley.

[00:06:12] Yes. Thank you very much. I just wanted to piggyback on what Supervisor McKeel said regarding the police academy if you cannot go in March my understanding from Police Chief Sean Reeves is that there will be other academies offered in the future and so just keep that in mind the other thing I wanted to mention is at our at our Places 29 North CAC we had a nice presentation regarding native plants and pollinators gardens and the suggestion was the CAC like the

[00:06:47] suggestion of having developers where they can put in pollinator gardens in small areas. So in other words, we're not going to take over a tot park. We're going to put maybe pollinator gardens near the sidewalks or in other areas where people wouldn't be walking through, which is helpful.

[00:07:10] They said any amount of native plants and pollinator plants, that that really does help the environment, insects, birds, et cetera. So that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. And that was a perfect segue to just wanting to mention since obviously spring is coming. Piedmont Master Gardeners has their once again offering grants for youth education related to horticulture and gardening. Any public or private K-12 educator or schoolyard garden coordinator in Charlottesville or Albano County can apply for these grants, but applications are due on the 26th of February. So

[00:07:45] you got to keep going if you haven't done so already. All of this can be found at Piedmont MasterGardiners.org. And yeah, spring's on its way, I hope. Anything further? Yes. Yes, I'm sorry. I forgot to mention at our SWAC meeting that there is a program, we're trying to implement a program through SWAC whereby the recycling of pickleballs, because evidently pickleballs break and then they're put in the landfill. This is not good. And so we're, we already have one 55 gallon drum

[00:08:22] at Darden Tau. We're looking at getting another 55 gallon drum at Ivy convenience center. And then our, and so that, therefore there will be someone from North Carolina who comes up twice a year and picks up the pickleballs for recycling, the broken pickleballs for recycling. So this is just a little bit, you know, forward thinking and how we can help protect the environment and have things not go into the landfill. Thank you. Thank you. There's nothing further. Next item is proclamations

[00:08:57] and recognitions we have none today, which brings us to item seven, matters from the public, matters on the agenda, but not listed for public hearing or matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board. And I believe we have some signups. Supervisor McKeel will read the rules. We do. We have two sign-ups today, and we have no one online.

[00:09:18] So with that, I will read the instructions. During the time set aside for matters on the agenda but not listed for public hearing, individuals may address the Board of Supervisors concerning matters previously considered by the Board or matters that are pending before the Board other than items listed on the agenda for public hearing. Individuals allowed one opportunity of up to three minutes to speak at each board meeting during matters from the public. A sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office. Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and light system at the podium. The green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time.

[00:09:54] The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking. The red light indicates your time has expired and you will be asked to end your comments. To give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the board requests that the speakers adhere to the following guidelines. When addressing the board, state your name and if you live in Elmorrow County, your magisterial district.

[00:10:14] Address comments directly to the board as a whole. Any written statements or other supporting material may be given to the clerk. If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in recognition. Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker. Back and forth debate is not permitted. Do not speak from your seat or out of turn. And all comments are live-streamed, recorded, and published on the Elmar County website. And our first speaker for today is Marta Keane. Welcome. And I will point out that we have

[00:10:53] a new podium. Yeah, a little higher up. Please adjust the microphone as needed. My rollator fits underneath it. It's perfect. That's great. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Marta Keane, CEO of Java. I also am a resident of the Rio District. I want to thank you for your time today and just share with you the handout that you have in front of you with some stories that give you an idea of what we've been doing. I would point you to the last three, the eight, nine, and ten are particularly, I think, impactful, and they help the numbers that you'll see come

[00:11:31] alive when you see what this all means. I'm not going to read them to you because I know you all can read just fine, but it does give you a sense of what our aging service coordinators can do to make a difference and the one story about the insurance counseling a quick update since that's always so much fun our part d counseling went for eight weeks we saw almost 2400 people at fashion square mall and half of them left with peace of mind nothing needed to change the other half we

[00:12:03] saved them 1.9 million dollars by switching um plans so that's huge um so aside from that what I wanted to share was that we're going to be starting a new program through a grant with TJPDC.

[00:12:18] They have the program mobility manager and they've subcontracted with us. So there's no cost. It's all under the grant and we'll be the mobility specialist, the hotline that they'll call, which is a perfect adjunct to our senior helpline. And we'll be able to help direct them to transportation options, check their satisfaction, and then be able to measure and track the gaps in service that exist today. We all know there are gaps, but it's pretty anecdotal. When I'm asked how seniors are doing with transportation, I have to say not great, but that's not really very useful for a grant

[00:12:55] application, so we'll finally get our arms around where we could do more. The only other thing I really wanted to share, which you may have begun to see, is is that Weldon Cooper has the new census data out. And once again, we're in a region that continues to grow.

[00:13:15] We're now up to 24% of the population is over the age of 60. That's significant. Basically, let's round it to a quarter of the population. And so that's a sign of how much people like to age in place but also move here.

[00:13:34] And I would just point out one of the things we learned during COVID, isolation is a huge problem, and it's a problem every day for seniors, not just with isolation. It leads to a decrease in cognitive, physical, and emotional health, and we saw that in so many people.

[00:13:51] So the services we provide at Java help to address all of that by helping people stay in the community successfully. And I just want to thank you for all of your support and for the time to share the good stories with you. thank you the next speaker is laurie schweller good afternoon supervisor andrews and members of the board i'm laurie schweller attorney with williams mullen and i'm here to make just a few

[00:14:25] brief comments about the proposed affordable housing program so we have been following the program for quite a long time and are excited about the program but as you all know moving from 80 percent AMI to 60 percent AMI and from 10 to 30 years in particular these factor changes will have a significant financial impact on projects that are brought by developers

[00:15:02] maybe more so even than the percentage of units and so we're somewhat concerned that the program as as proposed we understand is not intended to make developers whole but we're concerned it may not have the effect that we want it to have you might recall in our in our rezoning matter for willow glenn park phase two we talked about some numbers at that time for that particular developer And at that time, which was over a year ago, they explained to us that they could do the 60%.

[00:15:42] They were already offering 20% of the units, but they could do the 60% AMI if they had a one-third tax abatement. And we were talking about the real estate taxes for the project, not an increment real estate.

[00:15:57] So you can see that's quite different from what we're looking at today. And we have not had any developer roundtables or opportunities for feedback since the program was put in writing.

[00:16:12] And so I'd like to ask you, let's have at least one opportunity for feedback to talk about the actual program as proposed. We need some clarity on three fundamental aspects in particular. What is the increment?

[00:16:28] What's the baseline and what is that final figure, the difference of which is what we're calculating the 10% on? How is that determined? Number two, timing. How can a developer move forward with a land use application when the affordable housing commitment of 20% at 60% AMI for 30 years, it's uncertain whether the grant will be approved.

[00:16:51] It is a discretionary grant. What's the timing for that and how does that work? And number three, what is the cash-in-lieu option? I heard at the Planning Commission work session that there's actually a cash-in-lieu option for special use permits and rezonings for rentals.

[00:17:07] I was completely unaware of that, and it would be nice to have more information about that in the Affordable Housing Program. So, in summary, I just hope we can have a little bit more discussion before action. Thank you. If you have any additional comments that you didn't get to, please, we provide them in writing to the clerk.

[00:17:26] Thank you. board. That brings us to the consent agenda. Does anyone have anything to pull from the consent agenda? Comments? I guess I would just like to remind the public that when we have a resolution of intent relating to county code, it does not change the code. It simply is the first step for if a code change is warranted, it would require further notice and a public hearing prior to any official action.

[00:17:57] Yes, are you? Pay no mind. Okay. Then do we have a motion to accept the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Motion from Supervisor McKeel. Second from Supervisor Malek. Without objection, the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Galloway?

[00:18:13] Yes. Ms. LaFiesto-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malek? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Thank you. And, Board, that brings us to an exciting moment. the county executive's fiscal year 2024-2025 recommended budget kicked off by our county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson. Welcome. Thank you, Chair Andrews, and thank you, members of the board.

[00:18:46] As always, board, this is a true honor to be here today to represent our organization and our work, present the county executive's recommended budget for fiscal year 25. This slide is an overview of what I'll be covering today. Section one is how we approach budget development with an eye on our

[00:19:21] strategic plan. Section two are trends and drivers that we see in our local economy. Section three is where we'll spend the most part of our time today, and that is looking at recommended budget for fiscal year 25, recognizing board that today is high-level overview and that before we wrap up today, I'll look to our staff to tie this up with what we have after today. Where will we be spending

[00:19:52] our time, our budget work sessions, as we work toward budget adoption, okay? So before I begin, I'd like to introduce two folks that are with me today. Jacob Sumner, our chief finance officer, Ryan Davidson, who's our deputy chief of budget. Both of these folks are at the podium today to assist me before we wrap up in case there are questions from the board today that I might not be able to answer or they may be able to answer more fully. So with that, thank you both for being here

[00:20:30] and let's begin. So board, think just for a second back to August of 2022. That's where we were at the North Fork Research Park and we were talking about our fiscal year 24 to 28 strategic plan.

[00:20:49] This board, along with our staff, worked diligently to identify six goals moving over the next five years where we saw our biggest opportunities, and also we saw areas where we had concerns and where there were problems, where we need to consider capacity investment.

[00:21:09] So today, we are moving into year two of that fiscal year 24 to 28 adopted budget. I want to talk for a second about our balancing considerations.

[00:21:25] Today's budget recommendation is built upon the discussion and guidance received by the board, starting with the strategic plan development process and working through five-year financial planning, as well as other topics throughout the fall, the winter, and getting us to where we are today.

[00:21:45] Not every strategic plan goal will move forward at the same pace or with the same financial resources. the fiscal year uh the current year that we're in fiscal year 24 we we sought to put new revenues where it counted most where the needs were the greatest and where process improvements alone cannot drive different outcomes this slide is representative of examples from this current

[00:22:19] year so board what we're doing and what we've tried to call out with clarity is how we use the the strategic plan where we devote new revenues to advance the strategic plan areas with the greatest need and the greatest opportunity. The examples up here are not all inclusive, but just are representative of the work that we have done throughout this year.

[00:22:48] Board, I'm proud to say that this recommended budget that's before you today is balanced on the same tax rates as the current year, and that's shown in front of you on this slide. Board, it took more work this year to balance this budget than in past years.

[00:23:06] I'd like to take a second, and I'd like to ask our budget and finance team who are in the auditorium today, would you please stand? These folks here.

[00:23:23] Now I'd like to ask our department leadership that is in the auditorium, the people who, from the department side, had a significant role in helping us to balance the budget. please stand. This is just a part of our team board that had been working through the winter to today to get the budget balanced. I cannot express my thanks enough to our team of employees at the department level, across all departments, back to budget and finance, as well as our

[00:23:59] wonderful team in the county executive's office. It took a lot of folks to get us to where we are today. Board, I want to take a second before I move on to also recognize several key partner agencies. First, I'm going to start with the city of Charlottesville and Sam Sanders and his team.

[00:24:17] This board knows that we devoted about a half a day in mid-December with key city staff to work to prepare for this year's coming budget. There's a lot of overlap between city and county government with the things that we work on together and that day gave us clarity on some things we needed to prepare for operationally as well as capital and that was under the board's guidance and leadership so thank you very much. I'd also like to take a moment to thank Dr. Matt Haas and his team because

[00:24:50] we work closely throughout the year with our Albemarle County public school system. Dr. Haas and his team devote a significant amount of time with our finance team led by Jacob Sumner as well as other key staff to work through the year with an eye on our budget as well as other related topics that we need to work together on to be the best that we can be. We have a number of key partner agencies that I cannot thank because we don't have time, but I did want to call those out because we have worked very, very closely in recent months to get to where we are today.

[00:25:28] And so thank you very much. This budget is grounded in the revenues that are available. So I want to spend some time walking through the financial drivers that lead us into fiscal year 25. Board, you'll remember that in the fall, we get a visit from Virginia Tech University.

[00:25:50] Dr. Cheryl Bailey has been coming to see us to talk about economic indicators looking at about 12 months out. This past fall, this slide represents a snapshot of that work that we do. Dr. Bailey and her team, working with our finance team, said we are seeing indicators of economic cooling, and we should take steps to prepare for that.

[00:26:17] Furthermore, as you are well aware, here are two drivers, interest rates, as well as inflation. And on the left is current interest rates. They are higher than they have been in recent history. And that affects our borrowing capacity, as well as looking at U.S. inflation.

[00:26:38] It is stabilized from where we were a year to two years ago, but it is still higher than it was pre-COVID. Okay. Now I'll take a second. And this is a familiar slide. The next two slides will be bored because we want to ground ourselves locally in looking at the economic data where we can compare year over year to see where we are.

[00:27:01] These stats represent some of the largest industry sectors. Health care costs are continuing to go up as demands continue to go up. Military intelligence spending is up. The development market, that mid-block with the 37.5% increase, the development market is stronger than it was a year ago, which is a positive sign.

[00:27:24] Fourth quarter activity was really strong, but I'd caveat that by saying that some of this is driven by new apartment units that are coming online. across the county a shift maybe to some degree from prior years from single-family homes elements of our tourism sector the last two pieces of the slide with passenger boardings that show up 17 percent from a year ago as they edge closer to where they were pre-pandemic in 2019 you see a vibrancy at our local airport that suggests a strong regional economy and then finally tourism

[00:28:00] revenues. They're up 17.5% year over year, which suggests that our community continues to be a weekend, seven-day-a-week destination community. Now we'll take a look at a few more economic indicators, and the red number represents the change from the prior year. I've talked about inflation, unemployment rate. Unemployment is about two and a half. Our population growth is pretty consistent and stable with where it's been. But when you go across to the right side of the

[00:28:34] slide, this is where we see a slowing of our economy to some degree for this region. It's still strong. Real estate assessments, for example, are up 4.1%, but that's over a record year of over 13% a year ago. Consumer-driven revenues, they're strong at 4.7%, but again, they've cooled from a record year last year. And then finally, the same with business-driven revenue, which is gross receipts from businesses. This is another way of indicating the record assessment years that we had

[00:29:11] in 22 and 23. Again, 2024 assessments, real estate assessments went up 4.1 percent. But when you look pre-2022, that's really solid growth. It's just that we had the two years in 22 and 23 where we saw the spike. The preview for fiscal year 25 is really to continue to build on the momentum with what we began with year one of your five-year strategic plan. So board, it is building momentum.

[00:29:50] Year two of this five-year strategic plan, if you look inside this budget, you will see a lot of things that we are doing, a lot of things that we're going to finish this year, a lot of things that we're going to open this year and this is momentum as we go into year two. We approach the annual budgeting in the context of the five-year plan and as well as connecting to the outlook of the economy. I hope you will hear a couple of themes as we go through fiscal year 2025, okay?

[00:30:24] First, I want you to listen for organizational adaptability. That is our looking to do service delivery different because the problems are different than they used to be in some of the areas that we serve. I want you to listen for the cross-departmental work. You've heard that for several years and we are continuing to emphasize cross-departmental work in our organization because our problems in our community are more complex and they require multi-department help and assistance. I want you to listen for our key agency partnerships. They are alive and well.

[00:31:03] We reach to our key agencies to help us do things that we cannot do by ourselves. And board, finally, I want you to think about this because this is a journey. And for several of you, you've been on this journey with us for a while. I want you to think about all of what we're talking about today being grounded in data-driven analytics. I got up today, I came to work, and on my desk, and timing is always an interesting thing, but this month's Public Management Magazine for City and County

[00:31:39] Management says, using data to drive success. Board, that's where we are. This board encouraged us to begin to invest in big organizational cross-departmental systems that drive IT-related analytics that will help inform not just how we're doing, but where we need to continue to invest for the future. And we're beginning to see a return on that investment. We'll talk about a couple of those today. But it's not just about our IT department. It's about all of our departments.

[00:32:16] And they've embraced this, and it's been alive and well, and we're really beginning to see the fruits of our labor. Board, I like this slide.

[00:32:35] I like this slide because it shows discipline and it shows responsibility. This is the fiscal year 25 recommended budget, but we must do multi-year budgeting. We budget annually, but the decisions from one year affect what happens the next year.

[00:32:55] Decisions from last year are part of the budget story for this year, and the decisions that the board makes in this coming recommended budget could affect us in years to come. In fiscal year 24, the board directed nearly $5 million in ongoing revenues be placed in the capital fund.

[00:33:19] You did that because you were paying attention to the economic cooling that was being suggested by Virginia Tech University. Board, I want to say it again. We took $5 million of operational growth last year, and we pulled that back. And you can see down in the bottom of FY24, the $4.9 million one-time transfer to capital.

[00:33:42] This year, we pulled that out, and that helped to jumpstart our budget process for both local government and schools moving into the budget process because our team was looking ahead into fiscal year 25, fiscal year 26, and also paying attention to economic drivers and anticipating an economic cooling.

[00:34:04] Because, board, we have to balance. I have to bring you a balanced budget. So in FY25, we're beginning to pick up some costs that previous policy and funding decisions require. The new courts were a capital expense but now require revenue for staffing and operating the new building and the expanded square footage.

[00:34:25] Grant-funded initiatives are scheduled in FY25 to require some additional local funding. We knew that several years ago when we pulled those federal dollars down. And we will keep an eye on FY26 as we begin to plan for expenses, our obligations, that will require local funding beyond next year.

[00:34:48] Board, I take one second to talk about federal ARPA money. It feels like that was a long time ago. Federal relief funds have been a significant part of county budgets since fiscal year 21. funding through CARES and ARPA were designed to support people and communities during incredibly challenging times brought on by COVID-19. We use these funds to do exactly what we thought we could do. One-time money that we quickly spun into programs that would make meaningful impact in

[00:35:21] our community. Without supplies, we gave grants for business adaptation to support outside service, support rent, utility payments for household that we're experiencing income loss. I'm proud of the fact that we have spent this money judiciously. We've spent it according to the federal guidelines that were sent to us when we received this money and now these funds are almost exhausted. We did what we intended to do. Now we're back to local funding driving local programs and services. It's important for this board to know we spent this one-time money on one-time programs that we could

[00:35:58] back out of and scale down if we chose to do so. There's a number of examples of how our past decisions drive future budgets. We launched a number of pilots over the past several years. Pilots are a good word in local government board. They give us an opportunity to try something, and we're choreographing to the community we serve that we're going to try this with no obligation to continue it, and that's what we've done. Some pilots are over and done with. Others gain momentum. We want to keep them moving forward. Examples include active threat field

[00:36:34] training exercises and also the emergency assistance, emergency financial assistance program. Also, if you look in the middle part of the slide, we talk about new facilities. We focus on first the capital improvement plan, the cost of borrowing, the cost of debt service.

[00:36:52] We have two facilities that will have operational impacts in 25 as they open and they will require staff to function. One is the courts, the new modern court system, which will open in late 2025, and then also our Public Safety Operations Center at JCPenney.

[00:37:09] Finally, we also accept grants. We acknowledge that if we want to keep the program or service going as the grant funding goes away, we need to pick up the ongoing expense. We've been very successful in receiving FEMA SAFER grants to support hiring of firefighters and now the grants are beginning to expire and we have planned ahead and are moving to local funding. Finally we will also be slowly coming off of federal and state funding for transit services both with CAT and micro CAT and we're planning to make local

[00:37:45] investment to continue those services. Our total budget board for this for fiscal year 25 is 629 million dollars. It's an increase from our current year of 74.3 million dollars. This board understands that some of that is due to annual fluctuation in the capital program. We have a five-year capital program and that there is timing on capital outlay, timing of debt issuance, and timing of the build

[00:38:19] out before it is open. In addition to that, we have local growth in tax revenue and that's also reflected in the growth of the budget. So as I mentioned, all funds budget at 629.

[00:38:38] We tend to focus more board on general fund during our budget season because we know that's where all tax revenue is received. It's the primary funding source for both our local schools, capital, and debt, as well as local government services, and it's where this board has the maximum amount of policy discretion. And as you see on the slide, the general fund revenues for fiscal year 25 are estimated at $432.2 million. I'll take a second and talk about the formula and the split

[00:39:16] with Albemarle County Schools. This is a formula that the Board of Supervisors adopted a number of years ago, and this is the allocation of shared revenues between local government, our joint debt and capital and county government operations. And as you see from that donut, 54% goes to schools, 10% comes off the top for our joint debt and capital, and finally, 36% goes to county schools operations, county government operations. Switching back to general fund expenditures just for a

[00:39:52] moment, the recommended expenditures are balanced, as you see, with the same number, $432.2 million. And I'll point to, again, our largest and most noted partner, and that is public schools, with the overall transfer to public schools out of the general fund budget at 44%.

[00:40:15] I like this slide board because it's straightforward. This is the new revenue, the new growth that's coming in the FY25 budget. You may say, bottom line, where is it going?

[00:40:31] $10.1 million new dollars going to public schools. Operating funds, and this is by formula, $9.3 million in workforce and customer service investments. That includes compensation, health care, a consideration of a mid-year increase for FY25, as well as investments in software system, community development system delivery.

[00:41:04] In the middle row, you're talking about a 2.2 increase in partner agencies. To the right, a 2.1 additional investment in microCAT and CAT, public transportation services. And then the bottom line is 2.8 million in obligations, as well as the bottom right, just over $1 million increase in safety and well-being.

[00:41:31] and that is plowing additional operating dollars into the opening of the general district court, increased funding for our costs for the additional firefighters that we've added over the last three budgets, as well as some other related investments.

[00:41:49] Let's switch to capital just for a minute, and first let's look at schools' capital. For this next year, we're looking at a total capital for schools of $206.8 million. Board again, I like this slide. It's clean. It gives you a snapshot of where the investments are going. I'd highlight that High School Center 2 and Elementary 1, which is the Southern Feeder Pattern School, both have check marks for fiscal year 25. I believe that the schools has indicated

[00:42:25] that they are also struggling with increased construction costs. I want to think that that's about $11 million of additional cost for both of those schools together. And I'm pleased to say that in the FY25 recommended budget, we have those costs that are included through the work of our finance and budget team, working closely with the school staff. You can look below those two schools at the alignment to the capital budget for the other items that are noted.

[00:43:01] So this slide is local government, $128.9 million. It's the same concept. What I would point to the board for your consideration is look at the broad array of projects and investments that this organization is involved in.

[00:43:22] And this is tied back to your strategic plan. I'll talk a little later about transportation leveraging, parks and fields. We're planning to open Biscuit Run in fiscal year 2025. Board, it's been a while, but I remember being in Lane Auditorium when the governor came and signed the documents, turning the 1,200 acres over to Albemarle County government.

[00:43:45] And again, I'm proud to say, fiscal year 25 is when we will open Biscuit Run Park. We have plans for a northern convenience center. We have county office renovations, investments, as I've spoke about, with our courts opening in fiscal year 25, and on down the list.

[00:44:02] Board, I want to take a minute to highlight in each of the six strategic goals investment moving into 2025 with with the FY25 recommended budget please goal number one is safety and well-being and board you're so familiar with with the design of these slides because each each month you give me the opportunity to come under the county executives report to talk about our

[00:44:39] advancement in our strategic plan with alignment with our people our partnerships our programs the things that we're working on every day to move the needle forward. Here's a good example. Our Human Services Alternative Response Team. Remember, I asked you earlier to keep in mind adaptability. So here we are with a group of people from Human Services, Police, and Fire.

[00:45:05] In the first six months that this team has been together, they've provided support for 149 9-1-1 calls in our community. They go to the field on these calls and they connect individuals with resources and following up to try to prevent additional moments of crises. So over the time that they have been online running these almost 150 calls, we see our time by our police department cut in half over this time frame with calls for service in the field for mental health

[00:45:45] related calls. So they're making an immediate impact in the field with their expertise and their ability to take these calls and to get the person who is in crisis and in need of services to get that done while in the field. And it's having an effect of freeing up capacity for our other 911 call responses by our emergency responders. Also in the first goal of safety and well-being, I want to talk about emergency management. Several years ago, this board approved

[00:46:20] a local emergency management position that would allow us to provide a more focused effort on the county during an event. The function provided substantial support during its startup and during the pandemic. This past year, emergency management led active threat field training exercises which brought our police, our fire, our regional public safety partners and leadership within county government as well as our public schools together to do learning, training, simulations, and finally a full-skill exercise at one of our schools this past summer. This effort highlights our strengths

[00:46:58] and identified areas of improvement, and now the departments are working through the list on how we can improve and be better. This effort is a pilot, and now it's deemed essential, so we will look to conduct another exercise focusing on a cross-jurisdictional event in FY25. That's coming in this coming year. We're also, board, planning for the safety and security of this fall's presidential election. As you know, every four years we have a presidential election. This board has talked about our need to focus on public safety, and we're doing just that with our key

[00:47:32] partners. Also in safety and well-being, I'd like to highlight continuous improvement. Our police department is focusing hard on how technology can continue to enhance how our officers work.

[00:47:49] This budget supports Photospeed Camera Pilot on Hydraulic Road. It's going to be installed this summer, before the start of the fall semester for our public schools. Beside Lambs Lane Campus, a drone program to support critical incidents in search and rescue efforts, and continued work on Cyber Crimes Lab to continue to leverage technology to aid in investigations.

[00:48:13] In DSS, our child welfare team has experienced high turnover. They're fully staffed. They are stable. And with this stability, it allows them to focus more on standards, but beyond that, the full child and enhancing their well-being.

[00:48:34] Our fire department participated in a five-year plan work session with the board this fall, shared their system challenges. There is a decline nationally in volunteer availability. There is an increase in calls for service, particularly in the development area. There is a 24-month lead time in deploying a newly recruited firefighter.

[00:48:54] This means long-term planning is critical for the sustainability and success of our fire system across the board. Over the past three budgets board, we have hired 50 professional paid firefighters in Albemarle County. We've done that using federal grant money, and we've planned ahead as this grant money is retired to be able to take this obligation on locally.

[00:49:20] We're prepared to do that. All of our departments are focusing more on data collection and analytics to identify trends and focus areas for improvement. Goal number two, resiliency, equitable and engaged community.

[00:49:38] Physical year 25 will see advancements in our climate action program. This team that you see before you, and that's a happy group. That group right there enjoys their work. There's absolutely no question about it. This team has steadily built momentum since the 2020 adoption of the Climate Action Plan.

[00:49:55] This plan drives how we operate our buildings and how we support our community in reducing carbon impacts in two large areas, and that is buildings and transportation. This year, Albemarle County cut our own greenhouse gas emissions by more than 10%.

[00:50:11] The work ahead is focused on resilience and how we prepare for and navigate through the challenges such as drought, severe weather, and other related items. This team will develop a countywide greenhouse gas inventory dashboard, develop a climate resilience plan, and work with the community-based organizations to advance resiliency.

[00:50:31] Projects and programs in the community, two of our key partners, the University of Virginia and the City of Charlottesville. Our third goal, infrastructure and placemaking, universal broadband.

[00:50:47] Board, we will achieve universal broadband in 2025. At the moment, we are 84% complete. Of the 38,000 total passings required to fully serve Albemarle County, we need to complete 6,100. That's what's remaining in Albemarle County.

[00:51:05] How have we done that? We've done that with great staff. We've done that with a tremendous effort. We have also done that with success with federal money pulldown as well as public-private partnerships. We never could have imagined going into COVID-19 how important this is, and now we really know, and we appreciate the leadership in this area.

[00:51:27] Board, in December, we celebrated the acquisition of 462 acres of land adjacent to Ravana Station, which is the home to three defense intelligence agencies on 29 North.

[00:51:46] The station is currently wrapping up a nearly $100 million expansion. That project will build out, basically, the land holdings of the Army at Ravana Station. This was a project identified in a 2017 study of the station's future planning.

[00:52:05] The study also envisioned an expansion of the mission there. Getting the land acquired, site control, was the biggest obstacle to bringing this full plan to reality. Albemarle County, with the support of this board, you did just that. Now we're working on launching phase two, and that's site readiness.

[00:52:23] We'll be working in fiscal year 25 to do master planning, rezoning, to bring durable partners to the table to support the funding of the site's future. And board, let me take a second to remind our community that Ravanna Station in its current state today supports 3,000 employees in our community.

[00:52:44] So when you bought that property, that was a defensive move right out of the gate because you were sending a message to the Department of Defense that we value that work in our community and that we want those jobs to stay in our community. And I believe they will.

[00:52:59] And then we pivot to the offensive side of the equation, which is how do we grow the footprint over time in order to fully maximize the opportunity we've got two hours away from Washington, D.C. Number four is quality of life, and I want to focus on transportation.

[00:53:21] And I've got a lot of information on this slide board. Transportation is an area that our Board of Supervisors hears a lot about. You hear a lot about that in this community. This budget provides $5.1 million to transportation funding that supports state-funded and federally-funded road and bike-ped projects.

[00:53:45] That's our transportation leveraging money. This budget provides $1.85 million for public birth service through CAT. Mr. Williams over at the city has done a really good job through COVID using federal money to hold down the cost of CAT services.

[00:54:04] As that money is retired, we expected our costs to go up. We have $500,000 allocated in the recommended fiscal year 25 budget to support CAT. Board, this budget, provides $1.74 million funding for micro cap.

[00:54:22] That's our pilot on-demand transit service, which in year one was primarily state funded. And in fiscal year 25, it will be primarily local funded. Since its launch at the end of October, more than 8,500 rides have been requested through this service.

[00:54:42] Since October, in Pantops and in Rio 29, 8,500 requests for service. Board, in fiscal year 25, you will see construction in our community through our partnership with VDOT.

[00:55:03] That transportation investment in 2025 will be about $65 million in our community. As we get into our budget work sessions, we'll talk more specifically about what those projects include.

[00:55:26] Board, goal number four, quality of life. Affordable housing continues to be top of mind as we are continuing to focus on implementing Housing Albemarle. The board's adopted affordable housing policy. Later today, this board will consider action on developer incentives, which would then activate the new requirements for projects to provide more units at a deeper level of affordability for a longer period of time.

[00:55:53] This budget that I've recommended to you today supports an additional $2 million to be added to the housing fund, which is the one tool we use to move the needle on affordable housing by supporting worthy projects that leverage other public and private sector funds to help meet our housing needs.

[00:56:12] Again, in quality of life, biscuit run. Board, we are planning to open biscuit run in fiscal year 25. Approximately 4.5 miles of sign trails await the completion of the public access needed to open the park. We are very excited that this is about to happen.

[00:56:40] Also in quality of life, roadway litter pickup. Board, remember last year when you approved a plastic bag tax that placed a five cent fee per disposable plastic bag at grocery stores, pharmacies, and other retailers to reduce the reliance on disposable plastic bags, which we oftentimes find in our waterways?

[00:57:07] With the first year now complete, our ability to forecast revenues is improving, and we're shifting to develop a long-term strategy for the use of those funds. It's required by state law that that funding be used for environmental-related programs. In fiscal year 25, we will direct those funds, estimated at maybe as much as $100,000, to contract services for Keep Albemarle Beautiful, Roadway, Litter, Cleanup, and Campaign.

[00:57:35] I think, and this is because staff told me, I think that we can clean more than 60 roadway miles on a regular basis beginning next year with the money that we're receiving off the plastic bag tax. And board, I don't need to remind you that this is February, and February is where you see the most complaints from citizens on trash and litter.

[00:57:59] Goal five is education and learning. Our school staff and board will be coming to our board of supervisors with one of our dedicated budget work sessions to talk about their operational and capital needs. They will get a dedicated amount of time. We support our exceptional educational opportunities. The single largest expenditure in our budget every year is the transfer to our school system. As I said earlier, this recommended budget adds $10.1 million

[00:58:34] to the school's budget, and that is an increase of 5.6 percent from our current year. I'd also add that we are tracking the state's budget process very closely. I'm sure our board is as well, and I'll mention that there are budget amendments that have been introduced for the two items that you see in front of you. That's the loss of over $3 million in grocery tax and the loss of $4.4 million in the standards of quality sales tax and the re-benchmarking. And so we're closely

[00:59:12] watching our state budget, and our hope is that the state budget will help to replenish some of this funding that has been lost. Board, I'm wrapping up, and as I do, I want to talk about workforce and customer service. First, our customer service enhancements. For several years, we've spoken with the board about the need not to just update software in our organization, but to substantially overhaul them. We call this our core systems modernization program. There's been a lot of work to prepare for two major systems that will go live in 2025. Let me take a moment to talk about

[00:59:51] both of them. The financial system upgrade, which has been developed and configured as we move into fiscal year 25, will put near real-time information at staff's fingertips on budget, procurement, and purchasing. It will substantially streamline our audit process, which now currently requires a significant amount of staff time over an extended period of time. In community development, we have a system that will launch in fiscal year 25 after months of process mapping and re-engineering to ensure that we're leveraging the new system's capabilities. This builds on the success of the

[01:00:26] digital application system that was launched last year. It will allow application tracking in real time and on demand for applicants. We expect this to reduce our calls to the permit office, emails to the front desk and create a smoother handoff as plans are reviewed by external partners.

[01:00:45] These two systems are about providing customer service with modern interfaces, more transparency and better status of where items are, streamlined processes, but it's also about having data that we can use to drive system processes, decision making, and resource management. Board, you took a pretty big leap of faith when you allowed Albemarle County government to undertake a county-wide classification and compensation study. That final report was delivered to Albemarle County

[01:01:22] on April 27th of last year. Board, shortly before that, what led to that? We were seeing in 2022, the organization go system-wide over 11 percent with vacancy rates. For every nine people, there was an empty chair. From that point until today, we have added 138 people to the organization.

[01:01:49] That's capacity. That's resource capacity. We can be more effective, more proactive than we were two years ago because of our ability to more quickly fill vacant positions. We did that by working through a number of areas. First, with your support, we fully implemented the classification and pay study. You implemented almost all of it last July and then this board considered this past fall doing the rest of it and you did it effective January the 1st. We are prepared for full year cost implications and next year to fully pay for that in a full year. Thank you for doing that.

[01:02:29] Every position in county general government is now at market rate, midpoint or above. We are being more successful with our recruitment, we're building stronger applicant pools, and we're hiring people faster than we did two years ago. In addition to that, we looked at revenues last fall, we looked at our market, and we identified a stronger than expected performance of our local economy. So in addition to allowing us to finish this study within nine months of receiving the report, we got the final piece of that implemented, and we also were able this past January 1,

[01:03:08] to do 2% across the board for all county government. We will take that into fiscal year 25, recognizing that we are at market across the board. I've set aside money in late 2025, the fall of 2025, to look at mid-year consideration next year. We'll be coming to the board in the fall in order to be able to do that. We'll come back to you. We'll have market information. We'll have local economic information. We'll also have some performance on how we're

[01:03:41] doing in our budget. The budget we have today is built. The momentum that we see has a lot to do with our vacancy rate being much lower than it was two years ago and our turnaround time and the work we have to do to fill vacancies much stronger than it was one to two years ago. Board, thank you for that. I've talked a little bit about this, but I just want to say that as we get positions filled more quickly, as we are able to hire people, build applicant pools, bring people on,

[01:04:18] we see a reduction in overtime and holdovers. We see more advancement in training and development. It stands to reason, Board, that when we offer training and development and we're more fully staffed across our departments, people are able to free up and come to the training and development that they need in order to grow their skills.

[01:04:38] Board, we're able to do what we call more Q2 work, and that is expanded outreach, communications. We're able to form strategic partnerships. We're able to have meetings to talk about how we can get better because we're not just holding the finger in the dike trying to manage day-to-day operations.

[01:04:55] And finally, Board, better strategic planning, better re-engineering, and better long-range visioning. So, Board, I'm wrapping up, and we are in year two of the five-year strategic plan. In FY23, ahead of the new plan, and in FY24, the first year, we were engaging in visioning, scoping, and planning work necessary to build the foundation for what I think is a very ambitious strategic plan. When I look at fiscal year 25, I see evidence all through our departments that we're building momentum where it counts. We are transforming

[01:05:30] how we deliver our programs and services as the community we serve grows and changes. We're looking at problems that we face, we're developing more refined, more targeted ways to solve these problems, leverage expertise, work more hard with our key partner agencies, take advantage of technology as well as our durable partnerships. So board, I've talked so much about the connection to the strategic plan with our capacity. This final slide I have though, it reminds all of us with this snapshot that we still are required to keep on our shoulders day-to-day operations

[01:06:07] in our county government. And look at how these numbers connect to the community that we serve every single day. Social services, $216 million to support benefits and services for families in our county. 17,000 swimmers in our lakes. 1,000 fire alarms installed. 2 million visitors to our County Parks. We swept 419 miles of roads and collected 170 tons of debris and on and on and

[01:06:43] on. I'm so proud of our staff. I've recognized the staff that were here today. We have a lot of our leaders that are in their office that are doing double time. They're working and they're listening and then we have our staff in the field. Tomorrow we'll have our town hall. We will talk about what's in the recommended budget. We typically have about 200 people on these calls and we'll take a minute to thank our people for the work that they do every day for Albemarle County.

[01:07:08] I'm very happy about our workforce. I'm going to turn it over to Jacob Sumner, and Jacob and Ryan will walk us through the remaining steps as we go through the budget. Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

[01:07:24] Before the board today, you have hard copies of the recommended budget. And for the public to be able to review the recommended budget, That document will be available online later this afternoon. So we'll be posting the recommended 25 budget online very shortly.

[01:07:40] This slide that you see before you is the remainder of the FY25 budget calendar. Today is the first step in that process with the recommended budget. We will come back next week to have a public hearing on the recommended budget, and then we'll transition into March where we'll have a series of work sessions to really dive deep into the details of the recommended budget.

[01:08:01] Some of those already have topics where we'll start with the operating fund, the general fund, where we look at revenues and start looking at the different departments. And then on March 11th, we'll have a joint work session with the school board. We'll talk with the schools and we'll also review our capital improvement plan.

[01:08:17] You'll see we'll transition into April, where we have the public hearing on the budget on April 17th, and we'll come back on April 24th to set the tax rate. all looking to May 1st, where we have the adoption of the approval of the budget, the appropriation of the funding, and that's when the board will set the tax rate for the calendar year. Chair Andrews, I'll be happy to answer questions that the board has today. I know you're on a tight time frame. I want to be respectful of that, but we do have a number of staff. If you have questions today, we'll do our best. Thank you. We have a little bit

[01:08:55] of time, so I'm going to turn to Supervisor McKeel to start off. Jeff, I don't really have any questions it's early in the process and we're going to have lots of opportunities and lots of work sessions to formulate our questions and get the answers and a big book to review I really do appreciate though your presentation and what you've highlighted which is really important I fear if I pick out certain things to chat about it diminishes the others so I'm going to

[01:09:30] try and refrain from that, only to say thank you very much. Our staff has worked so hard. This presentation really shows the importance of the work plan and staff having the time to work the work plan and what we can get done in a limited amount of time, to be perfectly honest with you. I'm just really impressed. So, I'm going to wait until I have a chance to really you review all this in more detail. But thank you. Yes, ma'am. Supervisor Galloway. Thank you,

[01:10:07] Mr. Richardson. I think this is a good budget relative to what we were expecting last year when we knew that the revenues would probably not keep pace with what we've seen the last couple of years. So I appreciate the planning and the effort by you and your team to be mindful of that and continue to be mindful of that moving forward. Well, Supervisor McKeel didn't jump in, so maybe I should not do my list of things that I did single out.

[01:10:34] I just figured we had time for that. Well, we have time for it, but, you know, it's any time we can get the questions out there of what's coming and what we can expect. I'm not looking for answers today, of course, but these would be some things that I would just, I had reactions to while listening to the budget.

[01:10:50] It occurs to me that having served on the school board, the school board does a needs-based budget. And when Supervisor McKeel and I were on the board, at least when we had our shared time together, there were a lot of years where there were some pretty big gaps there. And I don't need to go any further, it's just the way that the budgeting process works.

[01:11:10] But as I look at this budget, you know, Jeff, you bring forward a balanced budget, which you're required to do. And there's a lot in this budget that we're doing and continuing to do. But there are some things that we're not doing because of the revenue dip. And those are things that I'm not going to start bringing up right now or today, but I think it's important for our community to know because they are used to seeing a school budget, a school presentation come forward that says it's needs based.

[01:11:37] Well, if we did a needs based budget, what would our gap be on the things that we couldn't or don't do based on our strategic planning? I'm interested in having that conversation this year, particularly because there are some priorities there that I think are important that while we're continuing to work on, maybe we're not able to do it as robustly as we would if the revenue situation was a little different.

[01:12:00] So I'm not going to highlight any of the areas because I'm already aware of them or some of them. So as we go through, then we can talk about it. I will say like one is the housing fund is a good example. We're not able to put the money into it this year that we have been putting into it the last couple of years.

[01:12:18] So that's an example of what I'm talking about. And I don't think that's a negative conversation. I don't think that's in any way anything but positive. It just shows that while you have to make choices, the budget is probably the biggest thing that we do year in and year out that reflects our choices.

[01:12:37] And I think it's important for the public to see us have that conversation. And again, I'm not looking for answers today. I was thrilled to hear that in the CIP that some of the cost increases for the elementary schools in particular were being covered.

[01:12:53] I guess my question there is covered after the school board did some slicing and dicing or before? Because I do not want to see capacity going down just like we did in past issues. I'm going to be kind of on that this year, not wanting to revisit some things in the past.

[01:13:11] I'm thinking of Greer, of course. So that's just a question that I had out there. The microCAT piece, I'm assuming that we'll hear, well, I'm not, I should, no, scratch that. Does microCAT and the analysis of the pilot going to give us information on whether or not all the fixed routes that are currently in place are still needed?

[01:13:32] Or if microCAT could replace some of those because there's potential cost savings. If you have a fixed route along Ryo Road that microCAT could serve and you don't need the fixed route any longer, that could be a way to finagle some dollars around.

[01:13:50] When the microcat folks were here and gave us their presentation, they had stated that a lot of times when you put this sort of program in place, it tells you which routes are strong, where you might need new routes. So it might not mean that just because we get rid of one, we don't need one somewhere else.

[01:14:06] I'm just assuming that some of that information will be included whenever we talk about transit that now that you're starting to program dollars to microCAT. I'm thrilled to hear 8,000 some. The feedback I've been hearing on this has been phenomenal. So I'm real excited that that's in there.

[01:14:29] I think some of these others, I will make comments or send to staff ahead of time before because a lot of these will fall into categories that I know we will deal with in work sessions. But those are some big ones that I would say I'd be interested in that are whole kind of just stood out today.

[01:14:45] But otherwise, well done. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Thank you. And thank you very much. This effort that the staff has already done and now the board will do is the homework that keeps us in good stead with our AAAA.

[01:15:00] And that makes all sorts of other things possible that we could never achieve if we haven't done the hard work first. And I will agree that the list of what we're not doing will be very helpful for our public to know so that they have a chance, without having to completely understand, go through the 400 pages, to know where their attention could be especially helpful.

[01:15:26] Because I remember 30 years ago coming in to advocate for things that didn't quite make it in the first draft, and that's an important role for our staff, our public, to be able to do. And I look forward to more work sessions and advocating for those different elements that we've mentioned going forward.

[01:15:45] Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. Thank you so much. I want to just begin by saying that this is an excellent budget, and I'm incredibly impressed by what you and staff have put together here. As you pointed out, this is a year of really constricting financial capacity, and at the same time we have just in that presentation stacked what it's like a movie trailer right in any other moment these would be stand up and sheer kind of uh things like biscuit run opening

[01:16:15] 2025 yeah oh god i forgot some of the ones i was going to hit on but uh uh uh ending uh uh eliminating uh rural broadband gaps in the county by 2025 these are all stand up and cheer moments that we're achieving even with reduced capacity. So I realized that did not happen overnight or magically. That was through a lot of hard work. So I want to begin by just really applauding the work that went into this budget. Like my peers, I am very interested. My ears perked up when you

[01:16:50] mentioned that you had already accounted for some increase in construction costs in the capital outplays for the schools. I'm curious if that is pre or post hoc of when the schools started identifying what they expect to be capital shortfalls. I know I have experienced, I'm sure some of my peers on the board, some words in passing, some conversations in passing with my colleagues on the school board anticipating an additional request on that line. So I'm curious if that is already baked into their request or if that is going to cut into some of what they're

[01:17:26] planning to ask for. I also do just want to, you know, kind of the thousand-foot statement here, you know, we, this budget is extraordinary. It's following through on a lot of our commitments, and it is building a lot of internal capacity. I actually see that as maybe the main thing it's doing. It's building our ability to work well as government. We're keeping pay competitive.

[01:17:53] We are investing in internal systems. We're making it so that members of our government can do their jobs better and is titled building momentum right which implies that there is continued acceleration and in fact perhaps even greater acceleration what we're already doing and I think that lines up when we're looking at AC44 and also when we go out to our communities I certainly experience significantly like increased community expectations of government and I think That is a trend that is uninterrupted.

[01:18:25] I have, as I'm sure everyone else here on the dais has received significant communications about something we're going to be considering today. And one of the most dominant talking points is the lack of investment into pieces of infrastructure in that community.

[01:18:43] And we, of course, have to build 500 new affordable homes in Albemarle every year to keep abreast of the minimum goal that we are tasked with meeting. are all very very significant goals and while i think we have built the capacity to start tackling that i do not believe at this rate and especially with the forecasted additional obligations that we will be able to hit that ramp in the coming years and i just want to say that out loud to the community and also to my colleagues on the board that we are going to have to maintain that

[01:19:23] momentum and that is going to be a much harder conversation uh than what we're having this year there's there's going to be significant additional commitments that we're going to make to be able to fully execute on what we are telling our community uh we plan to execute on which is going to be hard as we also saw you know a thousand of the homes that are in extremely low-income households are owner-occupied so we're going to have to be very innovative with how we deal with this in coming years but that's that's all i had chair thank you supervisor

[01:20:02] lupisto currently thank you i love the budget presentation i could actually uh listen to it again uh that's how much i loved it um i i agree with the others uh regarding what's not included to let the public know um i'm also focused on i know we're building uh three new schools two elementary one high school I am concerned about the school and the northern feeder pattern that that seems to be getting pushed back and I don't know if if the date that we have is firm or if

[01:20:37] that is something that will could be pushed back in the future depending on cost supply chain and and things like that because I'm I'm getting calls of people being very anxious about the overcrowding but I know the school board is also working on that and redistricting in an effort to help solve that problem in the meantime. I will say I'm very impressed with the IT modernization because I think that will definitely has helped us and will continue to help us serve the public in a better

[01:21:12] way because everything is more modernized and everything is as the applications will be easier and such, it's more efficient. And anything we can do regarding efficiency, that also helps budget-wise. Also interested in the parks, I want to make sure that that is a real big interest of the people that live in Albemarle County, parks, nature, that we make sure that we hold to those commitments. Once again, I think that was an impressive budget. Thank you very much. That's all.

[01:21:48] Thank you. And I share my colleague's enthusiasm for diving into this. I'm impressed with the work and looking forward to going through it in great detail. I agree what we're not doing is important to understand and how that impacts many aspects of the budget, including the school CIP.

[01:22:09] You mentioned early on that we should look for organizational adaptability, key partner agencies, and that it was grounded in data-driven analytics. I love that. I'm going to be looking for that as we go through it, and it would also be nice to see as we look at things that we're doing where the savings have been realized, where we have perhaps less overtime, where we have better outcomes, timing and response, process implications for the public that we serve. I know these are all coming, and we have a lot of time to spend on

[01:22:45] this board i will remind you though that we are ahead of schedule so if you have questions now we can insert a few i did just have one question and this is a really uh simple one but normally there's a point person that we send all of our questions to because we're going to start having them probably tomorrow and i'm assuming it's jacob but i don't want to make that assumption yes ma'am you can go ahead and send your questions to me and we'll um you pull those questions together and respond like we have in the past uh typically collecting those and getting the answers and we'll be posting those on the website as we get the answers periodically. Yeah, that's great. I was, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Yeah. Thank you. Supervisor Collin. Yeah,

[01:23:25] a similar type of process question. Who do we direct or who will be doing the point on organizing the public meetings that we typically do during budget season? Town halls. Town halls. There you go. I would add to that the CACs because we lots of times have presentations to our CACs as well.

[01:23:43] Yes, sir. We talked about that this week. Emily Kilroy will be communicating probably in the next few days to the entire board about a predicted time frame for budget-related town halls. We'll also have the opportunity to consider other adjacent topics.

[01:24:02] A good example would be transportation or other related operational issues to where it would be driven by budget, but it could also be driven by topics of the day from that particular district. And so Emily's going to be with the board shortly in email and we'll begin to schedule those with the appropriate staff. I believe that is scheduled for later in March. Thank you. Board, any other questions at this time? Thank you for the presentation.

[01:24:35] Yes, sir. Thank you. Excellent. I look forward to continued discussion. Board, that brings us to our first action item of the afternoon, Housing Albemarle Developer Incentives, presented by Dr. Stacey Pethia, Assistant Director of Housing. Welcome, Dr. Pethia. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, board. Can you guys hear me? Not well. All right. I'm going to try to get closer somehow.

[01:25:07] I am Stacey Pethia, Assistant Director of Housing for Albemarle County. I can't, what I need. Apologize for that. I lost the mouse. I'm Stacey Peth, the Assistant Director of Housing, and I am joined today by Jacob Sumner, Chief Financial Officer, and I don't know where he went.

[01:25:47] There you are. He will be joining me in the presentation this afternoon, and we are here to talk about the proposed affordable rental housing incentive program. We will start the presentation today with a little bit of background on affordable housing needs, and then move into the proposed program itself. I will start the conversation off and then when it comes to discussion about the actual form and amount of the proposed incentive, Jacob Subner will join the conversation. After that, we will give a brief overview of next steps, not specifically with this

[01:26:23] program, but with housing activities in general, and then open it up to the board for questions. And so everyone is familiar with the spectrum of housing need that is in front of you. This is just to show that for approximately the last 20 years, the county has been looking at affordable housing at the 80% AMI mark, and that was for both affordable rental housing and affordable home ownership opportunities. In 2019, the Thomas Jefferson Planning District and the Regional Housing Partnership commissioned a study, the Comprehensive Regional Housing Study and Needs

[01:27:01] assessment that really looked at housing needs affordability-wise across the county between 2018 and projected out what those needs would be to 2040. What the table in front of you shows is that in 2018, a little more than 7,700 current residents who live in housing are paying too much for their housing costs, and that housing cost burden households are expected to increase by approximately 2300 additional households by 2040. It's important to note the difference there.

[01:27:37] So that 10,070 unit mark number that we always talk about is not necessarily that we need to build 10,000 affordable housing units. We would need 2300 additional housing units to satisfy affordable housing needs by 2040. The rest of the housing need that exists today to address affordability really could be done some through new construction, but a lot of it is really addressing energy efficiency upgrades with homes that will help bring down. If you're living in a

[01:28:12] rental unit that costs $900 a month, but your building is really old, your windows are drafting, you have an old furnace, you could be paying an additional $200 to rent a tiny apartment. So that right there could potentially knock your housing costs to an unaffordable level.

[01:28:32] So really working to address the affordability issue, not just with new housing, but with our existing units that are here, is really what we're looking for. Because the numbers in the housing study were from 2018 and 2019, staff went and did an estimate of current affordable housing needs based on current census data and data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The table that you are looking at now shows that as of 2021, those are the most recent data numbers available, 10,331 households with incomes at or

[01:29:10] below 80% of area median income were paying too much for their housing. So that's a slight increase from what we were seeing before. And these are very estimate numbers, to be honest. So estimating the number of households with incomes at 60 percent AMI or below you can see that the majority of the cost burden households um in 2021 are really have incomes that are at or below 60 percent AMI so we are looking at that what we currently do our current practice of building housing affordable housing at 80 percent AMI mark we pretty much have that covered with what is in

[01:29:50] the affordable housing construction pipeline now. Looking ahead of households, the estimate of households with incomes between more than 60% of area median income or at an up to 80% AMI, there's about 1,165 households that fall into that category in 2021. And in the construction pipeline, we have about 1,185 units that are proffered as affordable housing at 80% AMI. So We really have that need filled, which is why when staff worked on Housing Albemarle,

[01:30:27] we changed the recommendation for rental housing to adjust 60% AMI households. Those housing units marketed at 60% AMI can really fill a gap that we are currently missing. And that brings us to the affordable rental housing incentive program that staff has proposed.

[01:30:49] This incentive program is really designed to help developers fill the gap that has been created between the current accepted proffers of 15% affordable housing and taking that up to 20% of the total units as being affordable at 60% AMI as opposed to 80% AMI.

[01:31:10] It really only focuses on rental housing as that is what we are enabled to do through state code. And so the proposed program really satisfies four overarching goals. First is to support the creation of affordable rental housing, but also to support the preservation of existing units of affordable rental housing through rehabilitation of those units.

[01:31:33] Also looking to leverage market activities to advance the goals of Housing Albemarle and to provide transparent and accountable stewardship of public investments. To be eligible for this program, the project would be new construction.

[01:31:52] It could be the expansion of existing properties. So you could have a small 20-unit apartment building, and the property owner wants to add an additional 10 units to that. It could be the conversion of an existing property that could be office space to residential rental properties, or the substantial rehabilitation of existing rental units.

[01:32:15] The projects, sorry, the incentive would apply to projects with 11 or more units. They should be primarily located within the development area to ensure that we have the infrastructure available to support the new construction or rehabilitation for, that's there now.

[01:32:34] The applicant, if it's new construction, should have control of the project site. Also, there should be an approved rezoning, if that is applicable. If it's a substantial rehab, obviously you will not be rezoning the site. And really looking at the order of the way that we would like to have this work is that the developer would ask for the incentive first.

[01:32:58] That board would approve that incentive. Then we would go through the rezoning process. But no incentive payments would be released until the rezoning was approved. And the project must provide a minimum of 20% affordable housing. I am now going to pass it over to Jacob Sumner.

[01:33:16] Thank you, Stacey. Appreciate it. Jacob Sumner, Chief Financial Officer for the county. The program requirements for this incentive program would be that there have to be a demonstrated financial need with the project. The number of units that would be reserved for households at, there'd be, excuse me, the requirements also include the number of units reserved for households at or below that 60% of AMI, and that the maximum affordable gross rents would be set by housing album. Another requirement is that the affordable units will be dispersed throughout the building, throughout the development

[01:33:54] complex, and that the affordable units should be comparable in size to those that are at market rate. The affordability period under this program would be for 30 years. Back on December 4th, the county hosted a joint work session on developer incentives between the board, the planning commission, and the development community. And listening to the discussion, we took note of items to discuss in drafting the affordable rental housing incentive program.

[01:34:23] And these are the considerations that we heard in that discussion. First, we heard that there should be consistency in the application of the incentive. Second, we heard that there should be clarity and eased calculation of the incentive amount. We also heard that the incentive should be tied to real estate taxes.

[01:34:41] And finally, there should be consideration on the impact of the market rate rental revenue by changing the number of affordable units from the 15% requirement to 20% requirement. So let's dive a little bit deeper into the incentive.

[01:34:57] I'm going to spend a little bit of time on this slide, so I'm going to keep this slide up as I go through my next set of comments. So today, staff is recommending that projects that qualify for this program and maintain adherence to the program requirements will receive an incentive equal to 15% of the development's real estate tax bill.

[01:35:18] The maximum term would be for 30 years, which will coincide with the term of affordability. And it would call for continual adherence throughout the affordability period to the program requirements. And it also required a board-approved performance agreement with the developer.

[01:35:33] The incentive payment will be made after all real estate taxes are paid on an annual basis. Please note that this incentive program is a template. This is a starting point. And this is intended to start the conversation with developers including affordable housing in their projects.

[01:35:55] And this template is a minimum. So, for instance, if a project provides affordable housing outside of these base requirements, such as a deeper discount in the rents or additional units beyond the 20%, we will handle those on a case-by-case basis. I do want to take a moment to address the 15% number.

[01:36:14] I do have that highlighted on the screen. In the packet that you received, that was listed at 10%. After the planning commission meeting and up through the agenda preparation, staff continued to refine the model that was used to develop this policy or to develop this incentive program the final results led us to this 15 percent recommendation today so the the recommendation from staff would be the 15 that we have on the screen as opposed to the 10 that was included in your packet should the board desire to move forward with the 15 incentive amount the motion for approval would need to include a corresponding

[01:36:51] amendment to that amount i also want to take a second to uh to draw the board's attention to the note that i have at the bottom of the slide we recommend staff recommends that the incentive amounts including the incentive amounts in the adjustments uh in adjustments that we make before we do our shared revenue calculation so we mr richardson mentioned in one of his slides on the budget presentation the allocation of our shared revenues between joint capital and debt school operations and county operations before we actually do that split of shared revenues we take off the

[01:37:29] top certain things that that would not qualify for that currently on one of those examples of performance agreements that are ran through the eda we staff recommend that we would include these incentives these program incentives off the top as well so it would be rebated or incentivized back to the developers before those revenues were split between capital and debt school operations and county government operations. I'll hand it back over to Stacy to finish up the rest of the

[01:38:04] presentation. So staff met with the Planning Commission in January to present the developer incentive package for their feedback. As you know, they were at the joint work session with the developers in December, so we took the program to them to get their feedback. They had really six concerns or considerations that they put forward. First was structuring the program as an incentive, as in a loan, instead of a grant.

[01:38:36] That has not been considered at this time. We can do that in the future. A few of their other comments were utilizing the program to incentivize rental housing outside of the development areas, providing incremental increases in the incentive amount for a higher percent of affordable units that may be provided, using the program for projects with fewer than 11 units and offering a renewal option at the end of each compliance period.

[01:39:05] Really, for the second, third, and fourth items that they highlighted, that was covered in the clause within the program description itself that really any projects that fall outside of the parameters of that program will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

[01:39:21] That leaves the flexibility for other types of projects to come forward. Offering a renewal option at the end of each compliance period, That is always open for discussion. That would be, again, falling outside of the parameters of the program and considered case-by-case. And ensuring, finally, ensuring incentivized projects are consistent with the comprehensive plan.

[01:39:42] As, hopefully, these incentive requests come prior to any rezoning and would be dependent upon a rezoning being approved for that project, Through that process, that would ensure that these projects that are funded for new construction are in line with the comprehensive plan.

[01:40:04] Finally, we just wanted to provide some next steps about the housing program overall. Community Development Department is working on an affordable housing facilitated review pilot that would be working with specific projects that come forward and have a team that facilitates communication and cooperation throughout the entire approval process. In 2022, the board adopted a resolution of intent for an affordable dwelling unit program ordinance. Staff has drafted such an ordinance. We're bringing that back to the board later this

[01:40:39] year. And there was also under review some county-owned properties to see which may be appropriate for affordable housing. So that is going on at the moment. And now we will open it up to the board for questions. Thank you. We'll go through our order. Supervisor McHugh.

[01:40:58] Yeah. Thank you, Stacey and Jacob. I appreciate it a lot. This really represents a lot of work, and we thank you. We've been talking about this now for a long time, and I think we are getting to a good place. I just have a couple of questions or comments.

[01:41:19] We heard some concerns, email, and from someone, a speaker this morning. Could you just address, in a way, their concerns? Because you were here, and you heard those concerns, and you've seen them.

[01:41:36] If you think we're getting at helping them with those concerns, what are your thoughts? I believe every project is different, so it will be difficult to set on one particular number. I know the speaker this afternoon had mentioned one particular developer saying that they needed 33% of a rebate in order to meet this.

[01:41:58] That may not, another project may need 9%. So picking a number that we can start with and set that as the baseline I think is really appropriate. Try this out for a while. Staff will track progress and success through this and see how it works.

[01:42:14] It can always be amended. It was always going to be difficult to create a program that was perfect for everyone. And so staff feels pretty strongly, and with the help of Jacob and his team, that we've hit on a number that, one, provides an incentive.

[01:42:31] It doesn't make the developer whole, but provides something to support their work, but also make sure that the county doesn't place its operations at risk in the future. Sure. Thank you. And I think that's great. But I think it is important for folks to realize that, like our capital improvement program, this is not written into stone.

[01:42:52] And we can always go back and revisit it, which is what we do often with programs. And if we find they're not really working or we need to make an adjustment, we could do that. I think that's what I hear you saying. Correct. Yeah. I just have a comment around when we talk about affordable housing, and it might be that I see it because I see it a lot in my district, but when we talk about the numbers of people needing housing, I don't hear it often mentioned that right now we have apartments and homes where too many people

[01:43:29] are living. That creates another need, to be honest with you. We have apartments where so many people are jammed adults and children are jammed into one apartment because they couldn't find in what they could afford and it's creating situations that are not healthy that are not safe um often for children but um any thoughts about just to speak to that stacy because i see it happening a lot in my district right so the the slides at the beginning of the presentation that really laid out the numbers particularly those that came from the housing study right um those

[01:44:08] are based on U.S. Department of Urban and Housing and Urban Development numbers. And we really specifically tracked those households that are housing cost burdened, so that are paying more than 30% of their income or more than 50% of their income for housing. But those households also generally fall into a category that have one of three additional housing problems. And those could be a lack of complete plumbing facilities or complete kitchen facilities, but also households that are overcrowded. And so really focusing on income and affordable housing based on income is

[01:44:45] one of the fastest ways to address the overcrowding issues as well. Great. That's helpful. I appreciate it. I see it as I am in my community, but I also hear it reported to me often from teachers or principals or school folks, so I really appreciate that and helping me understand that better.

[01:45:10] I guess for right now, I'm okay. I really appreciate this document and thank you for the clarity about the 15%. Yeah, we needed to get the agenda materials into you as finance continued to to run their numbers so oh i do have one more question and i'm sorry but just let me ask one more question um and again probably because my district experiences a lot we have a

[01:45:44] lot of very old apartment complexes that are privately privately owned under property management companies and when I look at preservation of affordable rental housing units not just the creation of new ones but the preservation of old ones I don't think I have in the last six weeks I've had at least four complaints from different units apartment complexes and I don't want to take

[01:46:23] us down into a different swirl here but do you have any thoughts about that at all as to I mean it is a huge problem with quality of life and yet it seems like I think because of state law perhaps we don't have an ability to much ability to to help those in that situation. I don't know much about our inspections so that that's really a question for community development but I would say this program itself would be able to assist to provide help provide funding to renovate those

[01:46:59] units and bring them back up to code so i've been told that by the health the health department and they can only inspect one particular unit if it's someone who has um qualified for um what we used to think about as the old section eight or that right and only can they can't look at the entire building they can only go to one unit and a unit that has been has had a complaint register and i guess i at some point i'd love to come back to this with the board and to have a more for a

[01:47:35] broader discussion about it because it's a real concern go ahead i didn't mean to interrupt you no no that's fine i'm sorry i thought you were finished yeah well um so you're correct if if a person has a housing choice voucher we if they call us and complain um then the county is only able to inspect that unit when they call for that complaint. With the Housing Choice Voucher Program, we inspect all units that are in our program on a regular basis just to make sure that they meet housing quality standards. I do believe that through the county itself, those types of

[01:48:13] inspections are complaint driven. So the tenant in the unit would need to reach out to Community Development Department, express concerns, and then they would be able to send an inspector out. And that's what I've been recommending. At the same time, I think that a broader discussion may be needed, but that's outside of this right now. I just really appreciate your comments and help with that. Thank you very much, and I'm okay for now. Thank you. Supervisor Galloway. Thank you.

[01:48:41] So I do have a lot, so I'll try to go through them quickly. So let's start with compliance. So there's a lot of things in here about adhering to the program, adhering to the guidelines. They must stay within that. And in other areas of the county, we have compliance where compliance creates staff for additional costs or issues and time frame.

[01:49:02] So can you just give us a good overview of what compliance is going to look like to keep anybody that gets the incentive in the incentive program? Yes. Excuse me. It will follow a very similar structure to the way we monitor compliance with performance agreements for housing now. I'm looking specifically at one that we have for a low-income housing tax credit property. Twice a year, they will send us the record of the rents for all units that are covered under the performance agreement. That shows us that over the year, the 12-month period, that

[01:49:41] the units have remained affordable, they're being rented and affordable rent, and that the tenants are qualified to live in them. So there is some income associated with those rent rolls. That allows us to track year over year and every six-month period to make sure that all of the units are affordable, that they say will be affordable, and we will be able to do the same thing. So it will be making sure that as we receive those rent rolls twice a year, that 20% of the units are affordable. There will be some fluctuation. They might not always meet the 20%

[01:50:17] mark because people move in and out. So there may be one reporting period where they have 15% of the units is affordable. They have some vacant ones, but they are filled by the next six month period that comes along. So that's how it will go. So it doesn't create a whole lot of extra work in addition to what we're already doing with some current compliance. So you mentioned the performance agreements. Now, you know, we've had some practice at this. Southwood has a performance agreement. That's a pretty complex one. The performance agreements for these, can you speak a little bit to the complexity of them? Are we going to have some simple performance agreements

[01:50:53] in place that we're all going to be like, all right, to back up what you just said, the compliance effort was, the performance agreement should speak to that kind of simple compliance check, if that makes sense. Correct. Staff is working on creating a template for those agreements.

[01:51:09] very similar again to the one we have now for the low-income housing tax credit project it is i think three pages tops um not the the book that we have for southwood i mean southwood is obviously a very different project um it was going to be a more complicated performance agreement anyway just due to the nature of the work and and everything that's gone into that these performance agreements will really be very simple it will have a template so that as these projects are approved for an incentive this can just we you know fill in the information and move on I one of the things that I'm liking and it's been reinforced every time I've asked a question is the flexibility of the

[01:51:49] program that nothing in here is locked in but I do get concerned sometimes when I see the word must on some of the sentences so I hope that just as I mean clearly developers right now don't understand the program you know we're learning the program I'm not that's not a that's not an dispersion to them. But as we work with them to understand it, I want to make sure we're emphasizing that, look, if we come through somewhere where must is a problem for us in achieving what we need to do, that we have the flexibility that must is not must. We just need that flexibility. Maybe down the road it turns into a must, but I don't think

[01:52:27] we know enough to be able to define some of those things. And I'm not going to go through each one of them. That's just a general comment that I've got your word that the flexibility exists because the flexibility must exist. We will work flexibility in, yes. So order of process, this came up in the speaking amount. I think, you know, I don't agree. I think we're ready to go. I think we're go time. We're going to make a decision. We're going to, it's time to test drive, test drive this. And I've still got a lot of things to comment on. But I think when we hear the developers say, can we still have another iteration, another round of conversations? I

[01:53:03] think after we get this going, that it would make sense that we have some workshops or work sessions with developers to go, here's, you know, here's some sit downs to do it more than what they're seeing in a packet. Like even the 10% to the 15% got them, you know, the order of do the incentives come first or the rezoning. I think all of that needs to be put out there. Now that would create some additional staff time, but if they have projects that are in the works, those would be the good examples to come forward and go, well, let's start discussing how this works for your project. And I think that could alleviate some concerns or some anxiety that exists out there

[01:53:40] relative to whether or not this incentive package will actually help us achieve what we want it to achieve. So the order of process, just to restate it so it's clear, we have a conversation about the incentives. The developer gets approval for the incentives or the performance agreement ahead of rezoning then they come forward and get the rezoning they have to be separate no way shape or form does the agreement of a performance incentive or a performance agreement for incentives does not guarantee that they get the rezoning approval because the rezoning is still tied into impacts and everything else but if they do go through it they can count on it i don't know i

[01:54:18] it obviously exists out there that they're thinking they need to go through the rezoning process first, then get incentives, which I'd understand the concern about that, because the money that's tied up into getting the rezoning, and then if you don't get the incentive package, your project can't move forward. So that's, I'm just saying all that again to restate what we know, but to emphasize that that is the proper order of how it should play out. Okay, the amount. Let me say for the 15th, let me just say the formula and have you fact check that I say it right, of what we're

[01:54:51] attempting to do. So our current policy is 15 percent at 80 percent AMI. That has a certain cost involvement, but the bonus density that they get to get to the 15 percent helps offset those costs. We're trying to move the needle to 20 percent at 60 percent AMI at a minimum. So how you arrive at the 15 percent, the dollars are to go to hopefully fill as much of that gap in that movement as possible. So to figure out the amount, you took the rental income at 15% at 80% AMI.

[01:55:26] There's a certain rental income collected. Then when you move to 20% at 60, that rental income drops. So now a new gap, that gap is what this incentive is targeted to fill. Some of it is the actual rebate of the taxes collected, but then some of it is also the decline in the value because now you've changed those apartment values or apartment rents.

[01:55:53] So there's already a reduced tax being collected because of that change, and then the rest of the 15% was like, all right, well, this is trying to fill those dollars that the developers would see shortfall in because they've dropped the rents on the units. That was clunky, but did I get the formula right?

[01:56:11] Yes, sir. The logic right of it? Yes, sir, that's correct. The target and the goal was to address the change in going from the 15% number of units and the 80% AMI to the 60% AMI at 20% of the units. So that is the target that we were trying to reach.

[01:56:30] And you are absolutely correct. When the rental revenues on those properties are decreased, because these are commercial properties, they are assessed on a different basis, that they are based on an income approach. And so they that would impact those real estate assessments.

[01:56:47] And by reducing those revenues that they'd receive and that reduces their assessed value, which in turn marginally reduces their their tax. Thank you. Now, the fact that it doesn't completely close the gap and that we're not talking about other incentives explicitly in here.

[01:57:07] But I think, Stacey, you've even mentioned it in your presentation. So let's say there are still some costs somewhere that is becoming difficult for the project to move forward at the 20% at 60% AMI. What other things, or maybe you should reinforce that there would be other things that could still be taken into account for a particular project that could help offset costs?

[01:57:33] Yes, and that's a great thing to point out. We do have the housing fund that is always available to not only nonprofits, but for-profit developers. So if it came to a situation which we've seen happen a lot recently, particularly with affordable rental housing projects, that construction costs have escalated and they're having difficulty filling those final gaps.

[01:57:56] That's why we came to the board earlier this month and asked for an additional $700,000 to be given to Virginia Supportive Housing. They had a $1.4 million gap left that they had trouble filling, so that is always an option.

[01:58:13] Depending on the number or percentage of affordable units in the project or the surrounding neighborhood that an infrastructure project could touch on, there is always the opportunity to use community development block grant funding that is perfect for infrastructure projects.

[01:58:29] It has to serve 51% of the household served must be low or moderate income, so have incomes at or below 80% AMI, but that could be a surrounding neighborhood, so it could be an apartment building being built in an older neighborhood where uh moderate income families live around that the infrastructure would be able to serve more than one more than just that apartment building so there there are other options available we just need to understand what they need and figure out how we can help and even internal like parking requirements materials things like that can be

[01:59:05] still be discussed i mean there were some other incentives the the tax rebate was kind of the big one that got everybody kind of endorsed along with predictability at the December conversation. But these other items that were out there could be really critical to one particular project.

[01:59:21] And just because it's not named here, it's going to be important that we communicate out to folks that these are still on the table, much in the way that an economic development project is. You don't take any of the tools off. You don't lock yourself out of any option. It would be in similar fashion of how I see these play out like well can we change the parking requirement that might help offset a cost in addition to the incentive now we get the project moving forward. Correct. So I'm just getting that endorsed by the by the team that that that exists in this program as it as it moves

[01:59:52] forward. I guess I'll make the comment because it was mentioned that Willow Glen was talking about the 33 percent but that is was kind of a unique project because of some of the per unit proffers that were in place, but then that road project went away.

[02:00:13] That was a huge cost that came out. I can't remember if that was still with the road costs in there that they needed the 33% or not, but it just reinforces the idea that there could be things within the site that you can forego because affordable housing is more important than, like, in that instance, connectivity.

[02:00:32] So we have to make those decisions as a board, but it could help in addition to the incentive to get the projects to go through. And I'm sorry, some of these are not exactly in a perfect order of subject, but the cash-in-lieu, somebody mentioned that, I think, in the public comment.

[02:00:49] Can you just speak a little bit more to the cash-in-lieu program? Certainly. I mean, the cash-in-lieu option is always available with rezonings, and so they would either proffer the affordable units or proffer a cash-in-lieu payment. That has not gone away. It's not called out specifically in here because it's really part of the proffer system and not necessarily an incentive program.

[02:01:12] But we can actually certainly add that comment, a statement to that effect in here. I think that would be a good idea. Now, anytime there's a new step, and I don't, I really don't mean this to sound snarky, But, I mean, the time it takes to get an application and a project through the whole process is not incredibly expeditious.

[02:01:39] So this may be better for Mr. Richardson or for someone else to speak to. I know we are doing things that we're working on to get that process more efficient, to streamline that process. But expedited review was thrown out there in the incentive conversation as well.

[02:01:56] But now we're saying that we're adding a step in where we're going to have a conversation around whether or not an incentive can be approved and then what that performance agreement is. These performance agreements hopefully are just simple enough that we have to just plug in the names and the numbers and we move on. I don't want folks to hear extra steps equating to a lot of extra time.

[02:02:18] So between the review process improvements that we're doing and the time frame that we're thinking it takes to get the incentive approval done, can we speak to that some so that developers have an idea? I'm thinking of their word or their interest of predictability from the December conversation that we might as well start getting that out there, what we think timeline takes place to get the incentive program done.

[02:02:42] And then maybe we could follow up with the application improvements that are going through. So there will be an application packet that needs to be completed. It provides information about the project and things that we can use to determine whether or not this is something we want to provide an incentive to because the board needs that information to make that decision.

[02:03:05] Once that's in, we will have one staff person at least that will review these pretty quickly. So I'm training one of our staff in housing to be able to review these types of applications. They are working on reviewing site plans and rezoning applications now, so they have that background.

[02:03:24] And so they should move fairly quickly from those proposals coming in to us writing up the performance agreement and getting them to the board. And then getting to the board, I think I haven't actually even had this conversation, so I apologize.

[02:03:41] I'm saying this out loud for the first time, but the board is going to have to probably work to make these things expeditious, getting to us, and I don't know how that's going to play out. I don't know if that's closed meetings we talk about, performance agreements.

[02:03:57] I don't know if that's just a public meeting in this case, because it's pretty simple information, but that's something that I think would be worthwhile that this board needs to take on the responsibility to say, if a performance agreement's in there, we got one, you know, It shouldn't take two to three months to get to the board to make a decision.

[02:04:17] But that's more in the board's hands than staff's hands. So we just have to be thinking out loud on that one, throwing it out there. I'm sorry, Mr. Richardson, you were going to speak to the application improvements that we're doing in CDD, I believe. And briefly, it doesn't have to be.

[02:04:35] I think that, yes, sir, I think that in our community development department, the affordable housing facilitated review pilot would be basically the creation of a project team of staff experts that would work with the applicant representatives.

[02:04:57] It would be county staff in community development that you would see subject matter expertise in all of the fields that are necessary to give that one-stop-shop feel when that applicant comes in. The project team would meet regularly, and they would be working hard to make decisions, identifying the obstacles, and speedy resolutions to the problems.

[02:05:21] So this would be something that Ms. Philardo and her team would want to pilot. I think what your question is is that, plus you're also looking at your overall departmental improvements, the reengineering work that's going on as the core system modernization work happens with the replacement of the software program.

[02:05:44] That's happening department-wide for county-wide work. This would be more of a pinpoint scalpel approach with this pilot program that would align with what Dr. Pethia talked about. that they would, that Jody and her team would get up and going with the help of the county executive's office, particularly Ann Walsh, she's supportive of trying to help and run this in alignment with this, sir, to where we hopefully would be able to, I'm hesitant to put a timeframe on it, honestly, sir, because so many times the holdup is with the quality

[02:06:22] of work that we get in the door rather than us trying to figure out what the problems are. And so what we hope for is that having all the people at the table at the right time in the room at the same time, we can identify those obstacles and more quickly move through those.

[02:06:38] That's kind of the... That's great. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Projects that have already received rezoning that we've done in the past under the 15 and the 80, I've never asked this question before.

[02:06:59] I presume they can come back and say we're interested in this. They've already got the rezoning done. Maybe they want to take it further. especially if it's a project where they they're located in a spot that could make a significant you know it's a good spot to provide affordable housing because of the services or the infrastructure that's already existing so we've done a lot of rezonings in the past since we've been talking about this whether it's them reaching out or us even maybe encouraging them to reach out I mean is that has that been thought about or is that possible not not specifically but yes as long as

[02:07:33] they came forward with a change in their project that would meet these program parameters, at least give us 20% of the units as affordable at 60% AMI. Absolutely, we could talk about this incentive. Since the rezoning was already approved, we don't have to worry about that, keeping those two things separate. Completely agree that the revenue being delayed should be off the top. So you've got my endorsement on that. I think that that's smart. I think it's wise.

[02:08:06] And I think that this is going to impact everybody in the community. So it's in similar ways that other things that come off the top, it falls for me in the same category or rationale for why it would be handled that way. So definitely agree with that.

[02:08:23] I don't, I mean, I don't, sometimes we'll do questions and then some, some comments, but I'll just, you know, I'll make some comments real quick. The, you know, I think it's time to say, I think we're ready to take action on this and get this out and put on the road and test drive it.

[02:08:40] And then if, you know, things, lights start going off or we can always, because the flex, and that's why the flexibility must be there, because then it can come back, the board can be involved in the conversation, staff, the developers, and then we, because at the end of the day, we're just trying to figure out how to get the units online.

[02:08:59] And I don't want anything that is, whether it's language or people thinking that 15% is like caked or cooked in, that it can't change. to prevent that from happening so whatever we need to do to help put that message out because you know the developers might be anxious about this well i think the board's pretty anxious about this we don't want to put a program in place that doesn't achieve what we're hoping for it to achieve but it's going to take some folks coming forward and go i'm interested let's talk through it to work out the wrinkles and see if we can make this happen i think it's also important to note that just like economic development when those projects come in where tax tax incentives

[02:09:38] are included. It's not just an endless, you can't just do every one. If you do six, the seventh one might not be able to be completed. And it's going to be similar in this regard, depending on how many applications come in, whether or not we can do them or not. The community needs to hear that.

[02:09:57] This isn't just an automatic, oh, they all can be done. We have to look at the project. We have to look and see if we get 10 of these, what that means, delaying the revenue coming in down the road. But we have practice at this. We're good at this, and we're getting even better in the economic development project.

[02:10:15] So to me, this is the same type of process and conversation as it exists there. And I want the community to realize that since we do have expertise in that area, we can apply it here. And hopefully, between the flexibility and what we've learned through economic development projects, we can make this happen to get the affordable units online.

[02:10:36] I'm sure when I go back through and see all my check marks that I probably missed something, but I've taken up a lot of time, so thank you, Board, for giving me that time. Thank you for the work and the effort. Oh, the re-up period that the Planning Commission, after the 30 years, agree with that. That's something that I think makes sense, and I think, like you said, it falls into your statement about outsider program parameters can be considered by a case-by-case basis, but I thought that was a good one that the Planning Commission discussed.

[02:11:04] But thank you so much for all your efforts. I want to thank the TJPDC and the Regional Housing Partnership for letting us do the incentive conversations and the workshop and this board's faith in them to be able to do the workshop in July and then to have the conversation and then time to talk to everybody in December.

[02:11:21] But I'm looking forward to hearing everybody else's conversations and taking action on this today. So thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Galloway, for helping me to organize my notes so much better than they were before. because this will help get on to the next person much more expeditiously.

[02:11:41] I've learned a lot and agree with many things. I first gasped when you said that cash in lieu is still very much alive and well, because to me personally, over the last 30 years, that's where we failed. We took $16,000 and didn't get the $200,000 unit.

[02:12:00] And so I'm just going to put that out there, that I hope that the guidance full speed ahead will be get the unit somehow. And I understand if you have to have something else to balance it. But that was a hole that I'd rather not fall back into if we can.

[02:12:20] Excuse me. I agree with the renewal at the end. I think that sounds great as long as there's the right, appropriate reinvestment, as one would do for HUD. I mean, you don't just get to go again without reaching deep in your pocket. Another thing that struck me in the presentation was, well, if costs go up, then we'll give you more.

[02:12:41] The big challenge for both of you, and I have no idea how to do it, is the monitoring of the management of the process, because I don't want anybody feeling like they can be sloppy in their product development and then decide the county's going to come and bail them out.

[02:12:56] So, as I said, that's a burden for the management and monitoring of the program that I think is very, very important. I'm so grateful that there's money available for the rehabs of the NOAAs, because all in every single district, there are many, many people who are invisible, whether they're urban neighborhoods or at the end of the country road, completely invisible.

[02:13:24] I mean, there are people who have no plumbing, indoor plumbing in the Whitehall District. And so if there are other programs outside things to be able to scoop up those occasional properties to keep the ability of our seniors very especially in their homes at the end of their lives, and I know that finance has worked a lot in other programs to help that be possible, that's just really important to me and the people in whom I represent.

[02:13:55] The doubling up is absolutely a feature in the rural area as well. And I remember way back many years ago when the school department was describing the homeless children in the schools. And one of the categories was are they doubled up with somebody else in their family, which was a federal homelessness category.

[02:14:16] So I hope that there are ways to help get at that statistic still. as well. I've been a long-time supporter of the maintenance code, which I know we're not talking about today, but I will just pile on with Mr. Kiel to say, yes, please, let's figure out a way to talk about that some more, because it is everywhere. I mean, there are trees growing through the roofs in buildings all over the countryside, and so anyway, that's the voucher unit inspection. My note written on that was people living there feel very vulnerable, that

[02:14:54] if they complain they're going to get tossed and there's nowhere else for them to go so if we get to the maintenance code then that removes the ability the necessity of that vulnerable person who has nowhere else to go to who is afraid to speak up about their circumstance so um more problems than answers but i'm very supportive and thank you for getting us here today as it evolves it's really important thank you thank you supervisor bruit uh thank you so much and also So thank you, Supervisor Galloway, for asking like half the questions I've written down.

[02:15:28] That was excellent. And I just want to begin by saying this is a really exciting document. I'm very excited to be voting on it today. Thank you for bringing it to us. I know this has been a very long work in process. It is something I've been following, but I know this is the first time I think on the record my voice has any role in it.

[02:15:48] So I just want to recognize that I am a latecomer to this conversation. I want to begin with just two quick comments and observations that I want to share about this and then go into a few more specific questions. First, like there is a very essential part of this program that I feel like we miss out on just because of what has become de rigueur, like standard business in Albemarle County, which is this is always going hand in hand with a zoning map amendment.

[02:16:18] When you compare inclusionary zoning policies in other localities, that upzoning is the benefit. That is the benefit that they're getting in exchange for their admittedly more modest inclusionary zoning requirements. And that is already just par for the course.

[02:16:36] And I want to point out, like, there is maybe from the developer community a little bit of alarmism about that because it does seem to touch all projects. And it seems to touch all projects because of what I think is increasingly maybe going to be the thing I bang the drum on every single meeting, which is our mismatch of our zoning map.

[02:16:56] It is inconsistent with our own stated priorities and our own stated comprehensive plan goals. It does not line up. You can do a one-to-one comparison, and it will not line up, which requires a zoning map amendment, which is why this is introduced in every single conversation that we are going to have to have.

[02:17:13] So I just want to flag that for everyone's attention as something that gives me just concern. It influences the way we do business, and this program is kind of built around that fundamental assumption that that is an unusual way we do business here. And the other thing, I'm excited about this program, but I do want to point out one weakness that kind of leaps off the page for me.

[02:17:34] We were recently looking at, for example, Avon Park and my own southern neighborhood. This is a place where we have very limited options for infill, and our continued development depends on what I would call creative infill. To satisfy a 20% at 60 goal, that is going to be much easier with significant scalability of the project, right?

[02:17:57] Large developers are going to satisfy this more easily than small developments. But as we have increasingly constrained geographies, that's going to be hard to do. There's only so many plats left in Albemarle County that are in the development area that we can even do the kind of project that needs to be successful under this.

[02:18:19] So we will need to be, as a board, as a housing office, as staff, as a community, we are going to need to be very creative about how we deliver infill because it's probably not going to be through this. This is going to be challenging to do smaller scale creative infill. And maybe there are other solutions that we could look at to be able to leverage this as well.

[02:18:41] But those are two, like, I think, overarching things that I don't want to go unaddressed as we talk about this. So I really appreciate you and Supervisor Galway digging in more on the timeline question.

[02:18:56] But something still kind of pesters me. I think you hit it on the head when you said, like, these are not things that we are going to scrutinize very hard. We're not going to sit here and have a long, drawn-out public hearing over an approval of one of our performance agreements.

[02:19:14] We want to get that on the agenda and through the agenda as fast as possible. Does it have to be on the agenda? Can this be a ministerial approval? Because I care a lot about math and math related to housing, and I am not going to be sitting there with my calculator, I can assure you.

[02:19:32] So I'm wondering why I even need to see it. So I guess that's a technical question. Does it need to come before us or can it be a ministerial decision? And if no one has the answer, then maybe no one has the answer.

[02:19:48] I would think it would, just speaking to the same way that economic development projects come forward. If we get to the point where we have a housing advisory committee, they could function in a similar way like the EDA. But at the end of the day, this is a budget question.

[02:20:06] So it would have to come here for us to say, yeah, the offsetting revenue here over 30 years is 18 million bucks. I don't think I want the staff having to field that question. We have to decide if that makes sense or not. Well, as we go through this and we actually have cases and we get more comfortable with it, it's just a thought and I don't know, but it might be that they could go on the consent agenda in some way.

[02:20:34] And if we have concerns, then we could pull it because that's what we've done with several of our, you know, our Airbnbs or our changes and stuff. So, but I don't think you want to start off with that right away. I'm just saying, though, as we go through the process and get more comfortable in it, perhaps that would be a way to speed it up in some shape.

[02:20:55] Yeah, I don't disagree. It's just that it's not an open checkbook. No, no, I agree with you. Each one of these has a dollar amount associated to it. So that's the part that the process should be quick to get to us so that we can quickly scrutinize that point and then decide. But I think once we've gone through some and we have a comfort level with it, to have it on the consent agenda, perhaps.

[02:21:16] And then if someone had a concern, we call staff or we pull it or, you know, just saying. But that's a ways away, I think. - I also might flag to one of the points I heard that the broader housing album model plan, if I'm remembering from when I last read the whole document, does actually call for the creation of an album model specific hack, which could potentially take this on as a duty.

[02:21:37] Maybe then to still come for final approval on the consent agenda, but that is actually an element that we could potentially attack some of the case backlog on this. We have talked about how this could be used additionally to reauthorize continued terms, would that need any editing of the ordinance or can we actually continue to execute that with it as drafted?

[02:22:01] Like, would we need to go back and create a thing? I realize we've got a 30-year runway on that question, so maybe it doesn't need to be addressed. - No, we can add a clause in the draft proposal before we make it public. - Sure, and just for my own situational awareness, the other tools we have for attaining those, would those be exactly the same set of suite of tools that we would use for new construction or substantial rehab, like leveraging the Housing Trust Fund or some other tool?

[02:22:35] - Yeah, I think there's so many different tools, not a ton, 'cause we live in Virginia, but there's a suite of tools that we have at our disposal that we can use. And it's really picking and choosing the right ones for the right projects. So nothing is off the board when it comes to that.

[02:22:50] all open for discussion um something that i'm embarrassed that this popped into my head so late but my understanding is that this applies to all of the county which would include the part of the county that we don't have zoning authority over which is the town of scottsville is that accurate is this applying in the town of scottsville no this would not apply to the town of scottsville because the town of scottsville is a town not a development area okay thank you um just wanted to get clarity on that, because I could see town leadership being very frustrated by this, basically, their own zoning authority kind of being hamstrung by the side.

[02:23:29] I want to actually join the Planning Commission in, I would very much prefer to see this as a structure of a forgivable loan rather than a grant. And I know I've discussed with you why I feel that way, but I just want to say it again for the public record, which is one of the main ways that we deliver significant amounts of affordable units and a major tool both private and for non-profit developers use is the low-income housing tax credit, LIHTC.

[02:23:59] This, structured as a grant, lowers their eligible basis and therefore reduces the amount of federal dollars they can get. I would expect they're still going to apply for it, though, because it's money on the table, which basically means so long as it is a grant, by my own reckoning, we are saying we will pay for this amount instead of the federal government, which is never a position I want to be in as a local government.

[02:24:26] I'm not trying to let the federal government pay for something. I don't see, and so I guess this is as much a question to you, I'm not clear what additional burdens or difficulties a forgivable loan structure would introduce that might make this a more complicated program and why we might not want to do that.

[02:24:46] We don't have any structures in place to do a forgivable loan program at this point. That's, I think, the biggest hurdle. But I also would say we specifically removed the word grant from this draft to address those concerns.

[02:25:04] So to use low-income housing tax credits, the state of Virginia is okay with a tax abatement. We're not allowed to call it that. So we've just replaced the word with incentive. But it sounds like we have found the tedious middle ground of language that satisfies all the interested parties.

[02:25:24] So if that is how y'all are reading this program and we think that is how Virginia Housing will read it, then I rescind my discussion. I also do, I know Ms. Schweller, I think most of her issues have been touched on, cash in lieu, timeline and sequencing.

[02:25:42] The one other thing I did want to just make sure she had asked about baselines. We talked about this beforehand, but I don't know that it's actually been explicitly said. There has been, in addition to the 10 to 15, we're no longer looking at the incremental change in tax revenue. We're now looking at the gross tax basis, right?

[02:26:00] So that is answering her question on what the baseline of what's being looked at, which is a more significant benefit for the developer. That's correct. It's not the increment from what the current tax would be to the tax afterwards. It is on the full amount. So that was also driving towards predictability and consistency and ease of calculation on both staff, but also on the developers as they're trying to put together their packages for these projects.

[02:26:28] Thank you. Thank you so much. So I also do appreciate, like, I think earlier stages in this conversation, certainly talking with people from Williams-Mullen and from other, like, representatives of the developers lobby, there was this idea that was mentioned today of they expected to be made whole, which I think is the wrong assumption going in. This is a regulation that is necessary for the health of our community. We do not expect to pay people a benefit every time we say, actually, you need to conform with design and construction requirements. It is not a making a whole. That is not what we're

[02:27:06] doing. We're imposing regulation that is necessary for our community's ongoing safety. But we are doing something which is making them competitive. And I know that being competitive in a market is a moving target and we are also even starting from what is frankly a best estimate of what is necessary to to make them competitive so I just want to say that out loud is my understanding of what we're doing here but also just to chime in with uh everyone else and say this this does need to be an an iterative process um you know I I self-style myself as a housing nerd I read all a bunch of

[02:27:45] reports about what did Montgomery County do right and how do we do that? And the main thing that was consistent across all the different evaluations, there's a lot of things we can't do because the assembly has hamstrung us significantly. But the one thing that they did do that we can do is iterate on it constantly. And specifically these main metrics, right? What our term of affordability is what our what our incentive value is and also what the AMI target is and those have been in the most successful program in the country those have been changed significantly over the course of its

[02:28:21] lifespan in order to ensure it's a successful program so I would very much want to know if and how we want to iterate on this and also just because of the way that we work as a board I would want to have a structured decision point even if the decision point is continue what you're doing I would want to have a structured decision point in the relatively near future whether that's one or two years I would very much value if we could plan on your office coming with a this is the next iterative step because there are significant uncertainties and I agree I think we are ready

[02:28:59] to pull the trigger as it is but I would like to know I would like to be prepared not just with the idea that we're going to iterate. But this is the day that we will examine very specific iterative changes based on market performance of the credit so far. That is where I'm at. I'm very excited by this. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor LaPesa-Curley. Okay, I'll take my 30 seconds allocated to me. But I do agree that Supervisor Galloway asked many of the same questions.

[02:29:33] But I did want to piggyback on what Supervisor McKeel was her interest regarding some of the units that are in fill or actually just currently being rented where they're not habitable, frankly.

[02:29:55] And what I'm wondering is, do we, I realize we can't go into that building, okay? It's complaint driven. But do we also have someone going into the buildings where we're giving vouchers for an apartment?

[02:30:11] So I give you a voucher, you have an apartment rental. Does someone check that to make sure it's frankly livable? Yes. So before we approve any lease for a voucher holder, our inspector goes and performs an inspection of not just the inside of the unit, but the outside of the property as well to make sure that it complies with housing quality standards that HUD issues. Those are about to change. We're going to do a new sort of inspection process with new rules and regulations starting in July, and they're huge, and I haven't

[02:30:48] memorized them yet, so I can't say what that will be. But we do an initial inspection, and then we do an inspection, I believe we're doing them every other year at the moment, just to streamline the process. If we find that we have too many units that are going into abatement, meaning they failed an inspection, then they failed the inspection the second time or failed to make the changes, then we stop payment. We stop paying rent on behalf of the tenant until those changes are made.

[02:31:18] So we inspect them on a regular basis to make sure that at least the units that our tenants are living in, our past inspection. And has that proven, the inspections we have done, has that proven successful?

[02:31:35] Yes. Okay. So that makes me happy. Because I have a real thing against slum wards, frankly. But I'm sure we all do. I really like the expedited review. I like the whole process.

[02:31:51] I look forward to voting for this today. I did want to ask, there was a, on distribution of affordable units, you mentioned that the mix of affordable unit style, square footage and number of bedrooms, et cetera, must be equal to or greater than the mix of the market rates.

[02:32:15] And I'm asking regarding the square footage, does that increase the cost for the developers or is the cost, for the developers, is the cost the same if it's the same square footage or not?

[02:32:31] I mean, it just seems like that that's maybe someplace where they could, if it's a little smaller, maybe depending on the unit size, or, you know, if it's one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom, that maybe that's a way for developers to save money.

[02:32:47] Is that important? Is it not important? Does it even matter? Well, so we're trying to keep those requirements consistent with the rezoning process. And I might need to tweak the language in there. I'll take a look. Make sure that it says exactly what our codes, our zoning ordinances, and what we require in a rezoning application. I'll make that language match, but that's the reason those are in there, so making sure that the style and the other word that you used are the same and consistent with the market rate units. That is consistent with our rezoning process. Right, and I

[02:33:24] agree with with the style i was just the square footage that kind of stuck out at me um i know that our our previous housing um affordable housing program did not do well because we did not have a list of affordable of people who could purchase or rent and i'm wondering if we don't have an affordable rental list is this going to be successful so we are working on creating um waiting list not just for rental units but also affordable for sale units we are hoping to have

[02:34:01] at least a pilot up and running by July 1st we are getting some final things together and then that way they will be marketed directly to people on the waiting list that is to say usually the rental units that have been proffered have no problems being filled okay it is we've had more difficulties filling the units that are for sale that's a more difficult group to finding people that income qualify to purchase housing at the prices that we have in

[02:34:35] the county today is difficult okay and for the house for the purchase of a home the developer has to keep that affordable is it 90 days or 180 because i know it used to be i've heard both um developers have proffered both time frames so it's really dependent on their proffer so they can offer 90 days affordability or 180 days we don't require that it so we i believe it is a minimum of 90 days um some developers have upped that and they will proffer 120 days or 180 days

[02:35:12] to give extra time um but that is strictly marketing that's time period they need to market it as affordable. And if they don't find a buyer in that time frame, then they can sell at market rate. So question, if I'm a developer, why would I opt to go 180 days when I could go 90 days and then flip it to a market rate? I don't know. I think that it's an effort on their part to try to get those units filled and purchased by income qualified. But there's no penalty if they don't.

[02:35:45] If they go to 90 days and flip it to market rate, there's no penalty for them whatsoever. Correct. That's the way the system has worked so far. Thank you. That answers my questions. Thank you. Very few, I really appreciated the discussion.

[02:36:03] I think there have been a lot of really great points raised, and I'm really excited about this. Really quickly, though, if I may, I appreciate the idea of expedited review, getting it on our agenda quickly.

[02:36:19] I don't know if there's any Q-jumping plan, but I really do appreciate that it's also on the developer to bring applications that don't need to be reworked over and over again because they're already well flushed out. Could we go to slide 12 quickly?

[02:36:37] I apologize. So I was comparing the two documents and trying to understand what we've changed from the Planning Commission. And I noticed in there the mention of two things here.

[02:36:53] In two, you've got utilizing program to incentivize rental housing development outside the development areas. And then six, ensure incentivized projects are consistent with the comprehensive plan. I'm just trying to wrap my head around. What are you thinking we need to do in terms of flexibility here as far as development areas versus comprehensive plan language?

[02:37:14] That's a good question. I don't think we discussed that slight challenge with the Planning Commission. And I think, really, if it's a project that, if it's a buy-write project outside of the development area, or if it is a rehabilitation project for an existing property outside of the development areas, then the consistency with the comprehensive plan does not matter.

[02:37:46] So it would only really be looking at projects that are coming forward for rezoning, and those larger rental housing projects tend to be located in the development area. We'll have to think about how that would work.

[02:38:04] All right. All right. Thank you. We'll come back eventually. I just want to comment that I agree with the comment made about the possibility that we'll be concerned about smaller projects and infill projects and whether or not we can find a way to extend these incentives in some way that would apply to them.

[02:38:25] From there, my questions are pretty straightforward, I think, because what I see, what I hear is a board that's ready to do something, and I really appreciate that. We have an existing ordinance, if I'm right, and this is filling in the gap by giving us a program to go with that ordinance.

[02:38:43] Thank you. The ordinance, of course, I believe says Affordable Housing Grant and Loan Program, and I appreciate the decision to change this from grant to incentives. I understand that, you know, based on Attachment A, we have at least the amendment that we're taking it from 10% to 15%.

[02:39:03] I've heard a comment about revising it to talk about cash in lieu, but I would suggest that we not do that now because I'm sure there's some concern about how that would work and that we not take the time to try to rewrite this to do that, but that they come to us maybe the next iteration if there is a time for that, okay?

[02:39:27] And so I just wanted to clarify that what you're looking for from us is not just the comments that you've received, but also at this point, is it still appropriate to ask about approving the proposed Affordable Housing Incentive Program as amended to reflect 15 percent in the financing of the property's real property tax increment.

[02:39:58] Yes, we actually put together a proposed motion, not as detailed as yours, if that works. Well, I just want to make sure that we know what amendments have been sort of agreed to in the discussion. And my understanding is that we're really just talking about the 15 percent at this time.

[02:40:14] Correct. Unless you wanted to add a sentence about the cash-in-lue payment. It sounds like you don't support that. I don't know. Actually, I don't want to say I don't support it. I just, I'm not sure whether we're ready. I was not proposing a modification in any way. I was just saying as I hope that both are pushed. I thought Supervisor Galloway might have been proposing a modification at this time with cash-in-lue. Okay, great. I misunderstood. So, yes, Mr. Sumner.

[02:40:41] I just want to add a little bit of clarification, too, so we're consistent in the language. Yes, the changing or mending the percentage from 10 to 15, but also the clarification that this is on the real estate tax bill and not the increment.

[02:40:56] Right. Not that. Okay. So real estate tax bill and not increment. Yeah. Thank you. So those both would appear in the first paragraph under Section 3. And simple two changes, increment to bill and 10% to 15%.

[02:41:16] Board, do we have additional comments or questions? I do. I just have one. I just want to clarify, and I really appreciated these comments. When I'm talking about the property management and the apartment complexes, we're doing a good job on one-offs where folks have vouchers.

[02:41:37] What I'm talking about is the other people that live in those apartment complexes that are experiencing the same problems but are living there because it's an affordable complex, but they don't have a voucher, just to be clear. And wouldn't that be perhaps a state issue?

[02:41:56] Yes, it's going to need legislation. That's why I said we need to come back to this. I totally agree with that. I mean, it just drives me crazy. I didn't want to get into all that right now, but I wanted to be clear. Right. And I did want to ask regarding the cash in lieu.

[02:42:15] I'm sorry. Excuse me. The cash in lieu. Is that just a small portion of what an affordable unit would cost? Because if they want to pay the entire cost of an entire unit, that doesn't bother me.

[02:42:31] But if they just want to pay a small portion of what a whole unit would cost, I have a problem. I don't know that the county has a specific amount for the cash in lieu for units.

[02:42:48] I will have to check on that. So far, I have seen those amounts range from as little as about $1,200 per unit up to $20,000-some dollars per unit. Thank you.

[02:43:03] So I gather that this would work by, if this process were to have the incentives approved first, and then a rezoning comes later, that the rezoning then would try to request the proffer of a cash-in-lieu, and we would be evaluating at that time whether that cash-in-lieu was an appropriate proffer for the needs that should be met.

[02:43:25] Correct. This incentive program is to help avoid the cash-in-lieu proffers? Thank you. I just wanted to echo several other supervisors of saying, like, I have, I think, a significant just blind spot in my own understanding of county housing policy on our cash in lieu program.

[02:43:46] And I find it very striking, actually, that it is not really relied on. We don't see people offering cash in lieu of offering 15% affordable, which is interesting because in other localities, it is ubiquitous.

[02:44:03] It is the main way that certain housing funds are funded is the main way that certain that developers will meet certain goals. So I guess I'd be curious how it's calibrated and if it does warrant like revisiting both by staff and the board in order to make it actually something.

[02:44:23] Especially as we look at how we are going to grow and scale the housing fund, I would expect that cash in lieu is going to be a part of that conversation. So I personally would very much value maybe a primer at some point on our current things, on our current program, and how we might want to move forward with cash and loan payments.

[02:44:46] Any additional comments? There were just a few things that I did find here that I want to make comments on. They're not really questions. It was specific to the rural area comp plan development area. That was Commissioner Firehawk, if I remember right, from the Planning Commission meeting, bringing that up.

[02:45:06] And it was kind of the idea, I think she was speaking specifically about perhaps ESMOD and if there were additional units. So the rezoning would have to take place. But it's not that that would be precluded if something like that came out. We still have the flexibility to consider it. But a rezoning in the rural area to get to that density would probably be a different hurdle than the incentive conversation.

[02:45:29] But I'll leave that there. I think the board should be ready, especially with the flexibility of the amount of the incentive. Like right now with the interest rate environment, the costs just are higher. So to get them in line with that, knowing that that's going to be on the spreadsheet, But even one basis point, if the Fed starts bringing that down over the next couple of years, I mean, they're not going to drop drastically.

[02:45:54] But that's a lot of money on the table that has made it more difficult to get this stuff to balance and to get to the profit margin that the developer is seeking. So we just have to be ready for that. I think we also need to be ready to, I don't know if this, I don't know underwriting enough in the development world to know the changing property valuation from market rate to then when you do deeper and deeper affordability, how that impacts their underwriting. So I think we just need to be ready and open-minded to hear that and learn if that is

[02:46:28] something that impacts what they have to deal with to get their loans in place. I want to make a comment about getting the rental people in the units, because if I thought in December we were hearing, and you just thought reiterated, that we're doing a good job of getting the people in rental units but there seems to be this notion that we're not for the rentals and that was coming from our planning commission i've brought it up at the regional housing partnership where i'm like we've got some some information sharing to do here because there are a lot of tools now to help get people into the rental units that that's happening regionally not just in our own jurisdiction so i

[02:47:06] think it's contingent on all of us to be pushing that message out the home ownership is just a a different animal because the costs but the rentals were succeeding in and people need to know that like they can't be thinking that if we approve a development that is 20 units that oh well the people aren't getting in those units well yeah they are and I don't you know I don't know exactly what to do about that other than to just keep reminding people that we are getting the renters in the rental units and it's a different problem for the for the homeownership stuff. The only thing I would throw out there, too, I've said this in the past, is that, I mean,

[02:47:44] you've got your immediate next steps that you put there, but now that the incentive question is there and we get this out there and driving it around a little bit, the conversation about a trust fund is going to be on my radar of when is that coming forward. Because we don't have a trust fund. We have a housing fund, a reserve, but trust fund was the next biggie in our housing Albemarle policy that we were going to tackle after the incentive conversation was done.

[02:48:12] So I'm just putting out there that I'm interested in knowing, starting some timeline conversations and when we can expect to start kind of, you know, dipping our toe in that water. But that's all I had. Thank you. No other questions or comments.

[02:48:28] I'm looking for a motion. Mr. Chair. Yes. Chair Andrews. I'd like to offer the board some guidance on the form of the motion. But before I do so, I just want to make sure I've heard discussion about two changes to the policy or consensus concerning two changes to the policy or program.

[02:48:52] And I want to make sure I understand the change from 10 to 15 percent, but I want to make sure and I apologize if I didn't hear clearly the prior discussion about the basis for the computation of that 15 percent.

[02:49:09] So is the consensus that that 15% is based on the entire tax bill annually for a specific property and not only 15% of the increase in the value of that property?

[02:49:34] That's what I heard Jacob say. Yes, sir. That is correct. Back to that slide. I'm just looking at the first sentence in that Section 3 as well.

[02:49:53] Oh, yeah, that increase in property tax revenue. So I think there's, you know, I understand that if you all change the second sentence to refer to 15% of the property's real property tax bill that there's a bit of an inconsistency with what's recited in the first sentence.

[02:50:32] Well, I think the net increase in the property tax revenue is not about whether it's affordable or not. It's just about the development of the property. So in any case, if the first sentence is left as is, my suggestion, rather than using the phrasing that Dr. Pethia has presented on the slide, would be for a member of the board to make a very specific motion about the two changes

[02:51:12] to change the, you know, to move to approve the program as presented with the following two changes to Section 3, to change 10% to 15% and to change the word increment to the word bill

[02:51:45] So that it's very clear in the motion and people don't have to slog their way through the minutes in order to figure out the specifics of the modifications that were made by the board.

[02:52:03] We're going to have to state that someone. I transcribed the. You ready to make a motion? Yes. And I also get just the language from the original one just to compare very briefly. Great. Thank you. Thank you. I move that the Board approve the proposed affordable housing incentive program as presented with the following two changes to Section 3.

[02:52:24] First, change 10% to 15%. And second, change the word increment to the word bill. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt and a second from Supervisor Malik. Without objection, the Clerk will call the roll.

[02:52:41] Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lapista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. mr andrews yes board that brings us to a 15-minute recess so uh we can get back here at 10 after four

[02:52:58] we're a little behind but i think we'll be okay all right board we will come back to order there

[03:07:55] and uh we are on to item number 11 which is the font chain fontaine interchange improvements and we're going to hear from mr mcdermott deputy director of planning welcome thank you chair Andrews and members of the board. Good afternoon. Thanks for having me today to talk about the Fontaine Interchange Improvements Project. My name is Kevin McDermott, Deputy Director of Planning.

[03:08:22] My presentation here, second screen. Okay, wonderful, thank you. So a little bit of background with this project. Back in 2020, the Charlottesville-Albemarle MPO submitted a SmartScale application for improvements to the U.S. 29 and Fontaine interchange. Stakeholder concerns since then as the project has moved forward have led VDOT to reevaluate the proposed project. They have

[03:09:01] hired a consultant to do some additional analysis and to look at other options they might have for solving the problems that we saw out there. VDOT has requested that the MPO policy board make a decision on this project at the February 28th meeting. That's next week.

[03:09:19] We have a few members of the board that are on the MPO policy board. And so we're presenting this information so that the full board is aware of this upcoming decision and give everyone an opportunity to share thoughts on the project with those members of the policy board as they go into that. So the location of the project, just to orient you all, is this is the primary area where the improvements would occur at the Fontaine-US-29 intersection. You can see US-29 here and I-64 just

[03:09:55] to the south and the Fontaine Research Park is located right here. The primary concerns that we're trying to address with this project are that at the ramp terminite currently where the 29 bypass and Fontaine meet on both sides of that we see significant congestion. In a lot of the peak hours it actually backs up almost into the main line. We've got a lot of additional development that I'll point out in a minute and so we're concerned that's going to continue to cause problems out there. Additionally down here at 29 and I-64 where northbound 29 makes a left turn

[03:10:34] to get onto 64 westbound. The current storage for that left turn lane is not sufficient and it doesn't have enough room to extend that storage because of the bridge piers. As a result we see traffic backing up into the main line of 29 and also we've had some significant crashes from people making that left turn getting hit by southbound traffic on 29. Just a little reminder of some of development that we have going on in the area down here on the southwest

[03:11:09] quadrant of the interchange seek property is currently in review for a very large mixed-use development residential and commercial property the Regent's School is currently under construction a large private school on Reservoir Road the Fontaine Research Park UVA has quite a bit of plans for expansion of services out there at Fontaine Research Park, including a new biomedical building that they're really getting close to starting construction on. And then Piedmont Housing is an affordable housing project that is

[03:11:46] currently in review here on the north side of Fontaine, just across from Fontaine Research Park. So the project that was submitted, this is a picture of the project that was submitted, and I understand it's a little confusing, part of our problem with it actually. But I'm going to quickly run through some of the major elements of this. So the idea is that one, we can close that 29 northbound to 64 westbound movement and send

[03:12:22] all of that traffic up to Fontaine where they would be able to stay in the left lane and make an immediate left and then an immediate another left to get back on the highway or get back on 29 to go down to 64 and get back on there. This is a fairly easy movement with very little restrictions, no signals, or anything that you would have to go through. Additionally, the northbound exiting ramp would continue to be able to make that right onto Fontaine and either go into the Fontaine Research Park or into the city. Some of the big changes are that if you are coming

[03:13:01] from west of the interchange and you want to go on northbound 29 you would have to go through this interchange up to a u-turn movement here where there's a loon located and make that turn and come back and make a right additionally if you were coming off the interchange and you wanted to go to the west of the interchange you would have to also go up and through the loon and go back All other movements still operate fairly similarly, except for the left.

[03:13:35] This is what's called a displaced left turn that you see right here. What happens there is that traffic heading westbound on Fontaine that wants to go southbound on 29 actually crosses over the traffic right here at a signalized intersection, and then that's the displaced left.

[03:13:55] So they're displaced to this spot so that they make that movement easier. That allows this movement to clear out much quicker. Additionally, you can see there is a shared-use path shown on this that would connect from existing or proposed shared-use paths on Fontaine that continue into the city and connect you over to west of the interchange.

[03:14:19] So some of the concerns that we've had with that funded design. Number one, that is somewhat confusing. And when we brought this to the board when it was being suggested, The board shared that concern, staff had that concern. The issue was that this project came to us with a lot of changes fairly late in the application period for SmartScale.

[03:14:42] And we wanted to move forward because of our major concerns with the other problems that I identified earlier. So that's why we moved forward with it, despite that it was somewhat confusing. Also the out of direction travel for the access to and from the west side of the interchange that I mentioned.

[03:14:59] Additionally, further analysis has shown that the design may not handle the future expected traffic volumes from all of that additional traffic. So over the next 20 years, we might see some failure of that. It's difficult for pedestrians to navigate and that loon I pointed out in front of the racy hunt drive is not desirable.

[03:15:20] So as I mentioned, VDOT has gone back and they've looked at a lot of different alternatives for ways that we could change this. It has gone through a lot of iterations. I know that the policy board was presented on some of those iterations in a couple recent meetings.

[03:15:36] But at this point, we are really honing in on this base plus, I think is what they referred to it, option. So what this does is there are new signals at the ramp termini, it's no longer a displaced left turn.

[03:15:52] They just add signals to these ramp termini. They've analyzed this and the preliminary analysis that they've shown, and they're still working on that analysis, but the preliminary analysis does show that it's expected to operate sufficiently into the future, even better than that displaced left turn.

[03:16:12] This also adds a second southbound lane to reduce the queuing and allow that to come out faster when they get the green light. It would still include the shared use path on the south side of the roadway, but you don't have to cross as many lanes. So it would all be on the south side.

[03:16:28] And it still does close the existing left turn from 29 northbound to I-64. What happens now is that that traffic comes up, does have to wait at the signals, but it still makes the two lefts and comes back. So that is still included in this proposed alternative that VDOT has put forward.

[03:16:52] So as I mentioned, VDOT is coming to the policy board next week and asking them for, to make a decision on this. Essentially, they have three options. They can move forward with the funded design, the displaced left turn. They can support the alternative design that I just walked you through.

[03:17:09] Or we could cancel the project and evaluate other options that may address the problem better than any of these. But of course, we'd have to go back for funding for anything like that through SmartScale. it would be delayed significantly. And there's never any guarantee of funding because it is a smart scale competitive grant.

[03:17:29] So they are still working on the full analysis of that alternative design. I'm hoping that they will have a little bit more information on it to share with the policy board. But as I said, this is an opportunity for the board members to share thoughts on the project, or if you have any questions for me, I'm happy to answer them.

[03:17:48] And with that, I will hand it back to you all. - Thank you. We'll go through our order. Supervisor McKim? Yes, and I know it's redundant, but would you go back to the proposal and just run us through that one one more time just because? Yeah, sure.

[03:18:03] So realistically, this doesn't make a lot of changes from the existing conditions, but it signalizes these two ramp intersections. It does add right now this is one lane that I mentioned backs up quite a bit. they would add a second lane so you'd have a left a left turn lane dedicated and then a through right left turn so when that was green all of those vehicles could flush even the left turn vehicles it does still have two dedicated right turn lanes to head into the city and towards

[03:18:38] the fontaine research park but it has this additional through right left turn where the vehicles that were going to make the left from northbound 29 to westbound 64 could come up and then make that left turn at the when they got the green light come up and make another left turn to go back and make a right to get onto the ramp. Aside from the addition of the shared use path which has been preliminarily shown just to go along the south side right along here with a small

[03:19:13] barrier to separate them from this traffic because it is a narrow bridge and come across here and join up with the other proposed shared use path. Other than that, there's really not a lot of changes out here. Thank you. I appreciate the redundancy of going back over that for me.

[03:19:33] And I guess you're wanting just our impressions and our thoughts from this. I would deep six the current project design, right? I just think that's way too confusing. And, but I do have a question about this one.

[03:19:52] So VDOT seems to think at this point that this new alternative design would actually handle what we're going to see in the future along this road. Because there are some construction projects that are going to happen, you know, between Piedmont Housing and what, the university.

[03:20:10] So I think that's what you said, Kevin. That is what I said, but I will reiterate that they've told us that they've only got a preliminary analysis at this point. So I'm hoping they're going to have a little more detail when they come to the policy board. At this point, the preliminary analysis does show that those two signals perform better than the one signal that they had before.

[03:20:31] Yes. So I would say that accepting that, I would certainly rather go with support this option than not having an option at all based on the changes that are going to be happening fairly quickly. Now, I don't know if everybody will agree with me, but there's no guarantee if we go back to the drawing board and come back to SmartScale again that we'll get any funding at all. That's what I would be concerned about. But my one question is, if they did decide between now and, what is it, the 28th or whatever the meeting date was, that there were concerns, they would be able to step up to the plate and say,

[03:21:11] wait a minute, we found this out and we don't want to go forward. I just want to make sure, Kevin. Yes, I believe so. We don't have a hard deadline necessarily from VDOT. I know they really want to move forward with a project out there because this has been funded for a while.

[03:21:29] So it would probably be up to our representatives on the policy board to ask VDOT for maybe additional time if that were necessary. And I'm not sure if that's available, but it's an option. Well, I really like, I guess for lack of a better word, the simplicity of this.

[03:21:48] This makes a lot of sense just when you look at it. So I would be supporting this recommended alternative, at least at this point in time. But I would definitely deep sex the other one. Thank you. Thank you.

[03:22:03] Supervisor Galloway. Thank you, Kevin. And obviously these are probably questions I should be asking Sean next week. But, I mean, so you can defer me to them if you want. But the, I mean, I'm just making the presumption that they've taken into effect a lot of the queuing that would come up to do that left and go around or track trailers and not just cars.

[03:22:27] I mean, there's a pretty long lead way there. But I don't want to just recreate, you know, the issue that we're trying to solve coming down southbound now there with all that volume going in there when there's tractor trailer activity going that way. I mean have you had those conversations with them? We have pointed that out and VDOT has assured us that that is considered as part of this analysis they've done. I mean obviously they came to closing that left turn because one of the other options was to keep it open and still do this iteration. So something's led them to say let's close it. I mean probably

[03:23:03] the safety concerns more than anything but yeah we told them you have to close it find a way i mean the original project that seamless they could go up and just do the u-turn basically without having to stop was part of the the beauty of that confusing design was it kept all that moving and for the tractor trailers now they have some speed to hit the hill and go up there so i mean i i still agree that we need to get them up here and moving around but during the how does the signage work. Do you know that yet? We do not know that. Because this is all westbound traffic coming

[03:23:42] north. We'll have to go up and go through here in a place that is not going to be intuitive that why the hell am I not getting on the interstate at the interstate? They'll figure it out. They'll be big pictures. Well I figured they're going to figure it out but I'd like to know what the hell the plan is. That's what I'm asking. Agreed and I think these are these are really valid questions to ask VDOT at the meeting. Right now this is still very preliminary but you know this is the I'm sharing with you the information that I'm aware of about it.

[03:24:10] What, where does this, this is a, this would be a vastly cheaper project. It would appear so, you know, obviously since 2020, when we submitted this application, all costs have gone up. It does seem to me that this would be possible.

[03:24:27] One of the requirements of any change to a smart scale project is that it fits within the current budget. We've been told this fits within the current budget. I'm not sure exactly if it is a lot cheaper or not. Do you know just on your experience where the savings go?

[03:24:43] It's a funded project that we received, and it comes in under budget. Do we just lose that money back to the state? Yes, that goes back to the state. I mean, it goes to other transportation projects. It stays in the smart scale stuff. Correct. All right.

[03:25:01] Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Thank you very much. This has been a long time coming because even 20 years ago, people were begging for more stoplights, especially at the bottom of the southbound ramp. And so now it's proposed, and I'm really excited about the possibility.

[03:25:20] The 18-wheelers, someone with the compass, et cetera, has figured out the turning radii and everything because I know at Earliesville Road, there's a two-lane right onto Hydraulic Road south, And 18-wheelers are there all day, every day.

[03:25:39] And they all start out in the left lane. Or they start out in the right lane and they move over into the left lane to come around the corner. And people just have to pay attention. So I hope that they will be thinking about that because they may, with the islands and whatever, they may need to make a wide turn to get the back end of the trailer to stay off the grass.

[03:25:59] So that's the only thing that pops into my non-engineering brain. But as I said, I'm sure they can figure it out. And the two lights, I'm also assuming, but that's always dangerous, would work together. So once the queue starts, they just go and clear those 10 trucks or whatever, however many there are.

[03:26:19] That's the most I've ever seen, actually, 10 in the actual northbound lane, plus the two or three in the slip lane. So they will clear that whole group and get them out of the way. And then I'm optimistic. I hope it's going to work.

[03:26:35] And certainly, I'm happy to say, one in three options I'm glad to let go of. Thank you. And fight for number two. Supervisor Proulx. Could you help me understand where the shared use path is in the version that's on the screen, the simplified one?

[03:26:53] Yes. So the only thing that we know for sure is that it's going to be on the south side here underneath the bridge. And we know that because they had to measure the distance between the piers and show that they could fit four lanes, a median, and a shared use path.

[03:27:12] The idea has always been that it will run along the south side, according to our previous study or our previous project, because currently coming out of the city, the city has a funded smart scale project that would put a shared use path on the south side as you're leaving the city.

[03:27:32] and Fontaine has said that, or UVA has said that they would like to extend that across their property. So our thought right now is that it would likely be on the south side. There could be some benefit to putting on the north side, but they have not quite gotten to those details yet.

[03:27:50] Thanks. Do any of the plans include a trans-Fontaine crossing in this area? There is currently an at-grade pedestrian crossing at Ray C. Hunt, which is the VDOT.

[03:28:12] So you can see that right in this one, or the UVA entrance. There is a pedestrian and bike crossing right here that connects to a small section of shared use path. That's what's going to be extended into the city. And there is a section of shared use path that comes along here and goes back up into the main portion of the campus.

[03:28:31] We have actually seen or heard from UVA that in the future, they would love to put an off-grade crossing over Fontaine to connect from the research park up to the main campus. But I think they've said that's well into the future.

[03:28:50] For everyone else and for you, something that is on my mind, I am very familiar with this intersection. I've driven through it maybe two times in my life. I go through here as a pedestrian constantly because this is on the RTF, which is a very important local amenity for a lot of people.

[03:29:11] And this is actually an incredibly important part of the RTF because most out-and-backs to Ragged Mountain through Foxhaven start in parking in Fontaine Research Park because it's the largest amount of parking available. So the southbound access is very important because it helps them cross a more dangerous part of the road.

[03:29:29] But the RTF itself crosses Fontaine at this intersection. I, as a pedestrian, illegally cross this road south to north very frequently, and I know others do. I recognize that none of them are including that, and maybe the general consensus is that the pedestrian crossing a half mile up the road obviates that.

[03:29:55] I just want to point out no trail runners are going to go half a mile up the road to use that intersection. Just like they currently cross the railroad where they're not supposed to, they currently cross here.

[03:30:11] I currently cross here because it's a significant imposition. So I'm very excited about the southbound shared use path. I think that's an essential part of that because that is a particularly vulnerable. these are people who go out very early in the morning in large groups and cross a very dangerous part of the road as their first order of business. It would be nice to see something crossing north to the south, though. But I recognize that that's not really in the cards. But I don't know if there's someone at Culpeper District that we could put that bug in the ear of. I think it's important

[03:30:47] that we recognize as a board the incredible value of this basically free local amenity that it is non-profit led through partnerships and it provides tremendous value to the urban ring and i think it's important to protect access and uh enjoyment of that amenity as much as we can may i interrupt to ask where you the where the crossing would be the most helpful whether you were talking about at racy hut or down toward reservoir road end where the developed section of the proposed shared use path that is where people cross right now yeah oh all right you

[03:31:25] You can see the, I think the trailhead on the north side is right about here, and the RTF is coming along this side and then hits the road right here. And as Supervisor Pruitt mentioned, most people on the trail just run across at this location.

[03:31:45] The idea, you know, UVA does say they would like to extend this shared use path, And so that would give you the opportunity to go along a path that doesn't exist right now to this crossover. And there is a, you can get to the trail and run along the north side here on that power line easement.

[03:32:05] It's out of direction, I understand, Professor Pruitt, I do the same thing as you, I run it right across. It is also a confusing part of the RTF, people like lose track of where they are. So there's a lot of people who double back right here across the road multiple times.

[03:32:20] be like, am I in the right place? It's a common place where Fontaine is one of the more confusing places where people normally get a trail guide for their first time. So if there's a connection there that's not there now, though, that could be very helpful because they're going across right now because there's nowhere to run right there. So, yeah, that makes sense. I'd be honest that it would be very difficult to get a crossing in right here. It would be a mid-block crossing.

[03:32:45] It is heavily trafficked, although under the new alternative, there wouldn't be the need to send a lot of extra vehicles up around this loon so it would be less traffic than under the the funded alternative that we have right now under the proposed alternative. I would expect it wouldn't be able to be added to this project but it would be a great place for an underground tunnel similar to under 53 for Saunders Trail or under the the Crozet connector for the Crozet connector trail under Eastern Avenue those are they were both developer done and easily carried out this one

[03:33:23] to be a lot shorter than the one under 53 so in this location the both north and south side of Fontaine are actually up quite a bit so it might be easier to put a bridge than a works for me than a tunnel but that's what UVA is recommending but theirs is over by Ray Seahunt. Supervisor Yes, I think the first alternative, I spent quite a lot of time looking at it, very confusing.

[03:33:57] In fact, it makes the diverging diamond interchange of 64 and 250 look like this is very confusing. So the other one looks very simple compared to this one.

[03:34:16] I like the alternative route. I think that this is a good way to go. I do have a question going on Fontaine, the southern two lanes going eastbound. The number one lane, is that a left turn and a right turn, or a straight and a left turn?

[03:34:37] Yes, exactly. So this is just a through lane or straight lane, and this would allow left turns on the northbound. And to go straight also. And to go straight also, yes. So my question is, you have two right lanes on the off-ramp.

[03:34:57] You have two right lanes going into Fontaine south of the signal. Yeah. So those two lanes are continuous or just the right lane is continuous? Because otherwise you're going to get a collision even if you can't have the two right lanes be continuous with the signal there because you have two lanes going into one lane.

[03:35:19] Yeah, I think it would be that the far right lane would never have to stop. That would always have the green arrow. Whereas the second and actually the third, because this lane is proposed as a left through right currently in this analysis.

[03:35:35] And so the number two lane there, the one in the middle, that would be, they would have to stop at the signal. That's my understanding, yes. That's the clarification I wanted. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm a little confused on that. But my understanding is there are two lanes going off the ramp and two lanes going to the east.

[03:35:52] I don't see where there would need to be a slowdown. There's currently free-flowing traffic from that ramp onto Fontaine East for two lanes. It's only if you want to go straight through Fontaine, you take the third lane, and then you still turn right, but you stay off.

[03:36:11] Yeah, sorry, this does add a second lane. I should have pointed that out. Currently, there's only one lane. Because of the other lane that you have to keep the signal for that second lane. Okay, that makes sense. Supervisor Lupiso currently pointed out, there is that second lane that can go straight now.

[03:36:28] I'm sorry, I get it. As far as either proposal, there was no widening of the overpass. It was just simply existing overpass to be used with different lanes.

[03:36:44] Okay. Correct. Obviously, you know, it looks confusing. There may be some aspects of it. I'm not so much confused by the first option as I am agreeing with the concern that this sends an awful lot of traffic up to Racy Hunt just to turn around.

[03:37:03] But the tradeoff, of course, is that the traffic that's simply trying to go from U.S. 29 north to I-64 west is able to do so without stopping. Now they have to stop. And I guess, you know, when we talk about signalized, synchronizing of signals, it's not really possible to synchronize both the Fontaine through to signals and the truck traffic that will be coming off the Fontaine northbound exit

[03:37:42] and turning left and then turning left again. You've got two different directions coming in, And I don't see how you synchronize for both. Yeah, I agree. I'm not a signals expert.

[03:37:58] So it is difficult, but I think it just depends on what the level of traffic making any one move is, is how you want to synchronize that. So I would say that they're probably going to want to just make sure, because the heaviest movement really is in the PM, the westbound traffic that needs to make that left.

[03:38:23] So I would assume that they're going to want to make sure that this has a green at the same time that both of these movements have a green so that they can move that. Right, because you can get queued up in. Exactly. And you're still with the other, because those are big trucks that are going to be making that left and making their way over to make the second left.

[03:38:41] I think this is the second alternative is certainly an improvement over the existing left turn from 29 northbound and I-64 westbound, which isn't signalized, and therefore it's not a question of, you know, there's a lot of queuing, and I drive there every day.

[03:38:59] But the queuing is necessitated by the fact that you've just taken your life into your hands if there's a lot of southbound traffic that you have to get across. And some of the trucks will just eventually just go across regardless. There'll be a lot of cars coming, and they'll just say, I'm a big truck. Go ahead.

[03:39:14] Do your worst, which is frightening. So in this case, they wouldn't have that option. They would have to make these two lefts. As long as the lights work well enough, we could clear that queue. I would hope not only would they think about appropriate synchronization, and it may be that the synchronization would be different for the times of day when people are all leaving the Fontaine Research Park or leaving UVA and trying to get home versus the rest of the day when the traffic is just simply going up 29, trying to get on to 64,

[03:39:50] and they want to get through this as quickly as they can. Also, I hope that there are, you know, strips or something to indicate when traffic is waiting, because there are times of day when this is a very quiet intersection still. First blue tier in the early 80s, it was an extremely quiet intersection, but not so much anymore. I guess I would also just, you know, be concerned. I think

[03:40:20] it'll work that we have with the two lanes going southbound onto 29 south. They're merging in just as other lanes are also trying to go westbound on 64, and that's just already been a problem as

[03:40:43] Those people are coming in and trying to go, and a lot of those people may be trying to then make an immediate left turn onto 64 eastbound, which requires them to queue.

[03:41:01] Now there are two lanes to queue in, so it's a good place to queue. The problem is that even there, they queue up too much and end up blocking the through lane. And now you not only block the through lane, but you have the lane that's trying to.

[03:41:17] So I'm cautiously optimistic that this is better, particularly better for Racy Hunt and the Fontaine Research Park not to have to go have truck traffic go through there and make a U-turn that way.

[03:41:34] But I hope they do a thorough vetting of this in light of the development that's currently occurring or expected because I can see several places here where you're going to see some queues at the wrong time of day.

[03:41:49] And I can't really say more than that because without that data, I don't know if it's going to work or not. And I don't know whether if it's a lot less expensive, they can put some of that savings into a better shared use path and improvements for the pedestrians.

[03:42:09] Because pedestrians are going to be crossing, if they're on the south side, they're going to be crossing two lanes either way on the west side of the picture. And then on the east side, they have three lanes that they have to cross, one of which is constantly moving and will have no signal.

[03:42:29] So there will be no signal for pedestrians in this plan, is my understanding. I believe they would signalize the crossings of the ramps, so those will have a pedestrian signal.

[03:42:45] Even for the far right lane? Yes. Oh, okay. So there will be a full stop in that case for the far right lane? We'll reach out to VDOT to verify that, but that would be a concern that I think staff would have as well. Those free flow right turns are a significant safety hazard throughout the county that we see.

[03:43:07] So we will verify that, but I think we would ask that VDOT make sure that that traffic, if it's a push button activated pedestrian crossing, that would actually stop that traffic, that right turn traffic.

[03:43:23] So they wouldn't have to stop for other vehicles, but they would have to stop for pedestrians. Okay. All right. Yeah. A lot of doctors are in a hurry to get to the hospital here. All right.

[03:43:41] I have no other questions. Do you, does anyone else have any additional comments? Do you have what you need from us? Yeah, and I just wanted to add real quick, just to let you all know that VDOT was a really great partner on this, and I was remiss not to mention that earlier.

[03:44:00] They took the time. They spent a lot of extra money on this analysis and have been to the policy board, the technical committee, the MBA technical committee, multiple times and worked with us a lot. So I just wanted to make sure that you all understood that we really appreciate their help. We have been taking some notes on this and your concerns.

[03:44:19] We will make sure to share with them, and really this is for our members of the policy board to make sure they have, you know, enough information to be able to help them make a decision next week if necessary. I haven't heard any go jump in the lake comments about don't do anything, so that's reassuring to me.

[03:44:36] Right, no, I don't think any of us want to just live with the status quo. And part of this is, like I said, closing the existing left turn has gotten dangerous. But I appreciate the need to keep commerce moving. And, Jim, I just have a process question because my gut says, and Jim made an interesting point, that if there were savings from the project to be able to use it for a shared use, my gut is that once this is funded through smart scale and there was a proposal, you probably can't take money that's left over

[03:45:15] and reappropriate it to even another part of the project. I'm just asking if you can. They're usually pretty tight about that. Well, we can verify, but I think because this is all one project, the shared use path was part of this original proposal anyway.

[03:45:32] So if there's something they need to do to make sure that shared use path is safe, I think that that would still fit within the same project. That's great, good. I was trying to sort that out in my brain. Okay, thank you. Well, at the very least, if we couldn't get a crossing where the RTF goes across, we could get the shared use path to run all the way to RAC Hunt.

[03:45:50] on both sides as a connection and have that funded as part of the fact that Racy Hunt was part of this to begin with. You may say they were going to take care of their section. The only other thing I was going to add is all the concerns that people have described are all made worse by the speed on the bypass in both northbound and southbound directions.

[03:46:13] And I've been asking for quite a long time what can be done to slow that speed. And the corridor of statewide certificates designation that previous Commissioner or Secretary of Transportation Connaughton labeled on that stretch all those years ago is a major inhibitor of us being able to say this is really, it's already 45 when you get over the hill in the city.

[03:46:38] Why couldn't it be 45 from the George Dean driveway on? Because that would make it so much safer for all these various vergings, weavings, et cetera. So anyway, that's another question for Sean another day, but it is something that is, Sean Nelson, but it is definitely something that's out there that they're aware of that is a huge issue for our, at least law enforcement can safely nab people along that straight stretch there.

[03:47:09] But there are hundreds a day who are going 65, and you can't catch them all, that's for sure. And so that just really, when they come flying off the ramp in either direction, that just exacerbates all of our problems that we're trying to solve here. So thank you. I mean, to the extent this would ever have to go back, I will say that there have been several deaths, unfortunately, and therefore the urgency of this would not, I think, be lost.

[03:47:35] I appreciate this. Anything further? We're good? Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. Board, we are now ready to go into a closed meeting. Supervisor Pruitt will read the motion. Yes, Mr. Chair. I move the Board of Supervisors convene a closed meeting pursuant to Section 2.2, TAC 3711, Parents A, of the Code of Virginia, under subsection 7, to consult with legal counsel and receive briefings by staff members pertaining to actual litigation concerning the Ragged Mountain Natural Area in the case styled Board of Supervisors of the County of Albemarle, Virginia, versus City of Council of the City of Charlottesville, Virginia, where consultation or briefing in open meeting would adversely affect the negotiating or

[03:48:14] litigating posture of the county and the board. Move a motion. Second by Supervisor Malek. Without objection, if the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Mr. Pista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malek? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. All right, board.

[03:48:31] welcome we will come back together for our evening session and we'll be coming out of

[05:00:58] closed meeting so first ask supervisor prude if we have a motion come out of closed meeting yes of course give me one moment and i will have that take your time we're firing sorry i do that myself yes i would like to move that the board of supervisors certified by a recorded vote that to the best of each supervisor's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt, second from Supervisor Malek. Without

[05:01:34] objection, if the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lapista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malek? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. And board, I don't believe we have any motions coming out of the closed meeting. Do we have a report from the county executive?

[05:01:57] No, sir, chair. I do not have a report this evening. We enjoyed the report at the chamber of commerce recently. So board, that brings us to our next item, which is matters from the public. Matters on the agenda, but not listed for public hearing or matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board. And I believe we have at least one person signed up to speak. We have one person signed up to speak and no one online. All right. Supervisor

[05:02:26] McKeel will read the rules and introduce the speaker. Do that. They may be concerned about whether it's. And what is this name? Couldn't read the writing. Mr. Chair, please proceed. Oh, okay.

[05:03:05] So we're fine. Okay. All right. During the time set aside for matters on the agenda but not listed for public hearing, individuals may address the board of supervisors concerning matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board other than items listed on the agenda for public hearing. Individuals are allowed one opportunity of up to three minutes to speak at each board meeting during matters from the public. A sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office. Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and a light system at the podium. The green light will go on when you begin speaking which begins your allotted time. The yellow light

[05:03:42] indicates you have one minute to finish speaking. The red light indicates your time has expired and you will be asked to end your comments. To give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the board requests that its speakers adhere to the following guidelines. When addressing the board, state your name and if you live in Almar County, your magisterial district. Address comments directly to the board as a whole. Any written statements or other supporting material may be given to the clerk. If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in recognition. Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker.

[05:04:19] Back and forth debate is not permitted. Do not speak from your seat or out of turn. All comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Almar County website. And we have one person who signed up this evening, and I will call on Matthew Helt.

[05:04:40] Good evening, y'all. I think this will probably be the first of two times I get to have the pleasure of speaking to you all this evening. On November 15th of last year, I spoke to this board about Western Park.

[05:05:00] Oh, Matthew Held Crozet. I think probably most people are here. Thank you, just for the record. That's the esteemed Whitehall Magisterial District. So, on November 15th of last year, I spoke to this board about Western Park. I asked each of you if you had visited the park. I believe two of you raised your hands.

[05:05:16] I hope in the last four months that the rest of you have visited the future home of the park, our park, Western Park. It's not really a park. So hopefully you've been there. In the 15-ish years the county has owned the land that is supposed to eventually become the park, the county has funded two master plans.

[05:05:39] The most recent being 2018, and you've built a playground. In 15 years, you have built a playground. During that same 15 years, the developers, many of which are here today, have built hundreds of millions of dollars in housing, in roads, and sidewalks.

[05:06:01] You have built a playground. You were supposed to finish that park. What are you waiting for? There are three phases to the 2018 master plan. The first phase, parking, pavilions, restrooms, playgrounds, mounds, overlooks, amphitheater, walks and trails, landscaping.

[05:06:20] That's $2.6 million. dollars. Phase two, parking, restroom, playground, basketball court, play and sports fields, forest orchard, natural play area, bridge, walks, and trails. That's two million dollars. Third phase, garden renovation, vortex lawn, natural play area, bridge, trails, boardwalks, and bridge. That's 750,000 dollars. For a total of 5.47 million, so a total of 5.47 million dollars in 2018 dollars.

[05:06:45] Y'all have got some really smart people who work for the county. I'm pretty sure you could do some inflation adjustments. You've built a playground in 15 years. You spent a couple hundred thousand dollars on a playground. Is that acceptable? No, it's not. Do better, build Western Park. I would have provided written documents. I would have provided you a copy of the master plan, but this county did not even have a copy of the master plan that you paid a contractor to write for you.

[05:07:15] You had to reach out to the contractor again because you all did not have a copy of it. So once I receive that from the great folks down in the county attorney's office, I will be ensuring that each of you receive that. In 15 years, one playground. Build Western Park. Thank you.

[05:07:35] Thank you. We have no other speakers lined up tonight. Okay, board, we will now turn to our first of three public hearings and our first public hearing tonight is sp 2020 307 home depot outdoor sales storage and display and i believe margaret malashevsky is presenting this welcome

[05:08:06] thank you good evening everyone the second to pull this up let me take the moment to just remind people that if you are interested in signing up for a public hearing the sign-up sheets are to my left or right against the window. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Margaret Maliszewski. I am one of the managers in the planning division of community development and I spend a lot of my work time with the architectural review board and reviewing development proposals in the entrance

[05:08:45] corridor and what I'm presenting tonight is a request for a special use permit for outdoor storage, display, and sales in the entrance corridor overlay district. As you know, entrance corridors are streets that lead to and through the county's historic areas, and the architectural review board is charged with regulating the design and development within those corridors.

[05:09:08] The goal is to ensure that new development reflects the traditional architecture of the area and that it's orderly and attractive. This proposal is for outdoor display associated with a new Home Depot store at the Fashion Square Mall. The site is located at the intersection of two entrance quarters. That's Route 29 and Rio Road East. And it's the fact that the proposed display is within the entrance corridor overlay that the special use permit is required. In this image, Route 29 is at the top of the slide and Rio Road is to the right. The Home Depot store would be located where the Sears store is currently located at the north end of the mall. The Sears store

[05:09:48] would be demolished. The Home Depot store would be built as a standalone building and there'd be a travel way between it and the remaining mall. The orientation of this slide is the same as the previous one. It's just zoomed in on the Home Depot plan. The proposed storage and display includes the garden center that's located at the north end of the new store and other various locations distributed around the building and around the site, and they're highlighted in yellow in this slide. The items displayed in those areas would include lawn and garden items and related

[05:10:22] merchandise. These elevations show the design of the main store and the garden center and the related storage areas. The garden center is shown at the left end of the top elevation in the slide. The fencing around the garden center is seen in the middle elevation, and that wall would be facing Ryo Road. And at the left end of the bottom elevation is the tool rental storage area, and that wall would be facing the remaining mall. I realize the individual display areas are a little hard to see at this scale, but this perspective

[05:10:59] view shows the areas around the garden center a little more clearly and shows the character of what that would look like. Now, the entrance corridor overlay section of the ordinance limits the factors to be considered for this type of special permit to determining whether the use is consistent with the applicable design guidelines, and those guidelines are the entrance corridor design guidelines. The ARB applied those guidelines in its review of this proposal and that review addressed a wide variety of topics including visibility, scale, building

[05:11:34] forms and features, materials, colors, screening, and lighting. The details of that review are found in the ARB staff reports. On December 4th of last year, the ARB voted unanimously to recommend approval of the request with staff's recommended conditions and the planning commission reviewed the proposal on January 9th of this year and took the same action. The conditions are typical for this type of request, and they include limits on the locations of display, limits on illumination of the display, and landscaping to mitigate the visual impacts. Our recommendation is for approval

[05:12:12] by adopting the resolution that was attached to your staff report. We'd be happy to try to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you. Before opening a public hearing, we'll go through with questions. Supervisor McHugh? I don't have any questions, but thank you very much. Your pictures were great supervisor gallowin yeah thank you i mean the conditions are basically the same as when it came through nothing changed in the conditions because of the standalone building nothing changed and then the the street that basically or what did you call it a through way i mean a travel way but i see parking spaces so clearly somebody can drive from the front to the back now

[05:12:49] um the doors i see there's the crosswalk closest to 29 but there's actual doors into the old mall further up do you know or do they know how that's going to like is the crosswalk going to align with if anybody want to walks to the building to the actual entrance of the old mall are you let's go back um are you talking this if you look at that top right maybe it was a different picture yeah i see j entrance but i see the d crosswalk j's oh d crosswalk yes that would take you to

[05:13:28] a sidewalk along the new wall of the mall building, but the entrance would be sort of at the, I think, more at the top end of that wall, and it would be a service entrance or employee entrance. And there's no way to exit the Home Depot on that side anyway, that left side?

[05:13:52] I don't think so, but I'm sure the applicant can give you more detail on that. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Malek. no questions at this time thank you supervisor prude i have no questions thank you supervisor lupisto currently no questions at this time thank you and i have no questions as well thank you um at this point then we will open the public hearing i believe the applicant is represented uh by uh valerie long of williams mullen am i right uh and the applicant will have 10 minutes

[05:14:28] to present is there are there any we have no one from the public signed up so i will read the uh the instructions. Applicants are limited to a 10-minute presentation of their proposal and are allowed a five-minute rebuttal at the close of the public hearing. Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and light system at the podium. The green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time. The yellow light will indicate you have one minute to finish speaking. The red light indicates your time is expired, and you will be asked to end your comments. All comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Almarie County website.

[05:15:07] Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Good evening. I'm Megan Adostup with Williams Mullen, representing the applicant Home Depot this evening. With me tonight is a representative of Home Depot and the architect. So if there's any questions that you may have for them, they're here and available. Pull up my presentation, a lot of what was covered already by Margaret. So I'll, we'll skip through some of the repetitive information.

[05:15:38] But as Margaret explained, the project is to redevelop and replace existing seers and a portion of the mall with the Home Depot by right store in the garden center. And associated with that is the outdoor display and sales with the display of products, lawnmowers, grills, and temporary staging areas for items such as mulch and lumber that you typically see in a Home Depot.

[05:16:10] This is another view of the site. It's a little bit more close. So, Mr. Galloway, your question about entrances, there will not be a public entrance on the southernmost side of Home Depot, and I'll move on to the concept plan and show that more clearly. But there is a crosswalk existing, and for some reason my laser pointer is not working. Here we go. There is an existing crosswalk here that will take you to the Belk entrance. And it's a little bit off the map,

[05:16:47] but there is an entrance further south. So the sidewalk that's being proposed along the new mall wall will take you to either existing entrance. And the crosswalk across that travel way is just to allow people who may want to go to the mall who've also gone at Home Depot and back and forth. So here's some views of the existing mall from Route 29. And this is a little bit closer in that main entrance. You can see the Sears in the background and the Belk over here on

[05:17:25] the right. And I'll have some photo simulations mainly from Rio Road later on in my presentation. And here is the entrance at Rio looking into the site. And as you can see, you can see the Sears, but there is quite a bit of existing vegetation that we hope to retain and then supplement with additional screening vegetation. And here is another view from Rio Road along the sidewalk looking in. And the garden center will be approximately here in that parking lot. And as

[05:18:02] you all know, there isn't any landscaping there currently. And so as part of the project too, were providing the required landscaping for trees within the parking area, not just along this side of Rio Road, but also along 29, the front of the Home Depot. Here's just a different angle. And another one on the other side of Rio, looking towards the southwest. And the last view

[05:18:36] looking back towards where this year's is currently and um margaret showed this overall concept plan and the staging area is along proposed along rio with some in the rear and then display areas up front and now have some enlargement of those areas as well so here you can see circled in red those display areas just like any other typical home home depot store um you know in the there's a tool rental center that's kind of tucked away for people who want to

[05:19:15] rent ladders or various things um so that will be enclosed and around the corner but only a small portion of that um is would be at the end of the home depot and just a close-up of the temporary staging areas and here's the enlargement of the plan showing all the the new landscaping and sidewalks that will also go in which are exactly a part of the special use permit review but we

[05:19:48] think are a great enhancement for the site in the landscape area and i'll move ahead to the we're proposing some landscaping along 29 if you all recall there used to be some large trees along there but when the um the grade separated entertained went in those trees came out and so there are a number of utility easements there that we're working with vdot to see if we can enhance

[05:20:20] the landscaping there but it may not be possible due to those easements um here are the um elevations that margaret showed too a little bit close up again the garden center with the fence and i'll go in a detail of the fence materials all the way to the tool rental area you could see is tucked away on the mall side and a close-up version of of that display area out front in front of the garden center and then the full garden center elevation that you already saw so I'll just go

[05:20:56] into a little bit of detail on the fencing and I'll say a Home Depot doesn't have this type of fencing anywhere else in another store and so we don't have unfortunately we don't have a picture of what this final will look like but the bottom 10 feet of the garden center fencing will be three layers so the outside is this medical metal sorry metal vertical fence then the middle material is what is called this black expanded metal mesh fence. And it's actually shown in this picture

[05:21:34] here. You can see how tight the weave is of that. And then there it will be a black fabric mesh. And we didn't have a picture of just the mesh. So it ignored the chain link on that portion. So it's vertical metal, the metal mesh, and then the fabric to provide screening there for the first 10 feet and then the second 10 feet will include the black vertical metal fence and then it will have a chain link fence like what is shown here with the fabric but there will be a decorative

[05:22:14] vertical fence that will be on the outside and it's actually better illustrated here so you can kind of see the security portion of that bottom portion. These are just some pictures from the waynesboro store so you can get an idea of that that metal mesh material and then the outdoor display areas and what they'll look like this is more pictures with some of the display we have a condition that says our material can't go above the fence line so it will be different from this

[05:22:53] these pictures here and this is just an example of the temporary with the temporary staging I'm sure you are all familiar with mulch and things and this is a picture of the garden center roof I'm just going to move quickly through some of these renderings that we have of what the additional landscaping it's really going to once it's grown with full maturity it will of course be a big you know vegetative buffer there and here's another rendering looking from Raya Road

[05:23:32] and one last that's looking back along the sidewalk there's some shrubs that will be along there and here is the rendering from that corner of the rio road entrance with the existing landscaping and the store and this is with the proposed landscaping so you will see some of the store but for the most part once the landscape is mature it will be grown up and these are just some pictures of a store, recent store in Texas that Home Depot did to give you an idea of what that

[05:24:07] roof in the garden center would look like. And kind of the, it's a little bit higher of a view from Rio Road, but what that would look like. And again, the product would be below the fence. It can't be higher than the fence line. One last view there. And this is a nighttime image showing where um the the lighting of of the garden center and that is again i'm happy to answer any questions thank you we'll go through our order for questions this evening uh supervisor

[05:24:45] mckee thank you excuse me the pictures of the existing condition are very sad but i'm excited about your landscaping and so quick question um in and i don't i don't remember the number of the the picture but the big lights that are existing you're talking about lighting are those going to remain are you going to change that lighting they look very old yeah they they are old so on the seven i just heard slide seven oh seven yeah i've missed the slide number so thank you this one

[05:25:22] um yes so those will be replaced with um new lighting yes that is much more efficient down lower yes that's great yep full cutoff meets the ordinance requirements perfect that's great to hear um i just i think i i think that's the only question i have for right now i really thank you though for the all the greenery oh i did have one more question the parking lot that you showed your the greenery i think it's the one before this i was just one more there was a was it the

[05:25:59] rendering yes okay uh-huh should have written down the page numbers this one or because you showed the parking spots and then there was oh there were there was i just my question was were those planters or what were those um you showed the parking lot and then with the spaces let me go back i was just trying to get a sense of it was early on oops maybe six oops there we go this one yes so yes so those are landscape islands that will be installed with the new parking lot

[05:26:38] um that will have the required um landscaping for for the parking lot that's great thank you very much i appreciate it sure thank you supervisor gallivay so that street so it says what is it like 33 34 feet with the width of the street between the old building and the new building and it's fine whatever the distance is I don't remember two cars can pass I'm assuming just based on that but it was designed to be able to get two cars fine it's not like a one-way or one right yes so when as part of the process through this review and I thank Margaret for

[05:27:17] her patience with the challenges of infill development when we first came and submitted it was just going to be this year's building but once Home Depot construction staff got in there they realized that there's one wall and not two walls as originally thought and so they needed to tear down the mall wall to even build the Home Depot and so there was an opportunity to have a standalone store with that travel way in between which is actually was great because it then matched

[05:27:51] what was envisioned in the Rio 29 small area plan so starting that framework when everybody was concerned that we were drawing streets through the building we now have our street through the building that's right that's actually a good thing this special fence that you don't have a picture of is this courtesy of Albemarle ARB is this our doing well a combination of we knew that the ARB would be concerned about the view of the product and so we worked with Margaret and the ARB to come up with a solution that would block a lot of that product, also provide security fencing with that

[05:28:29] metal mesh, which is typical, but also having a decorative vertical fence we knew was important to the entrance corridor. The entrance corridor design guidelines are very specific that chain link fence can't be seen from the entrance corridor, so that's a big part of it. So you'll have to indulge me to make this point. It does not have anything to do with your application, but go to, I think it's 30 or 31. That's good. 30. Go back to 30. So I'm going to make, because the slideshow won't be available to me during the comment section. You all know what I'm about to say, don't you? So look at the median and look at the stuff growing up through the cracks.

[05:29:09] We just specified because it's an entrance corridor, a very specific treatment to this fence because it's on an entrance corridor, but then that condition is allowed to exist. So when we had our AC44 conversation, we were emphasizing and reinforcing the strict guidelines of design elements for entrance corridors.

[05:29:31] And this was where I brought the point up that maintenance and continuation of those strict guidelines need to continue. And this was a pure accident. Look at what just presented itself. It's the perfect example that if we require this application to adhere to these strict design elements to the point where they're creating a product that doesn't even yet exist, but then we allow this to happen it's it's just not in line and I don't think that's right in four months those will be a foot tall yeah you took this after they were maybe cut down or something now I am glad to see that there I'm hopeful you may have taken this after the street sweeper went

[05:30:06] through because I don't see problems in the curb and gutter so that's a good thing so thank you for letting me make that point but that that's a reinforcement to my earlier comments during the AC44 updates. Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Thank you very much. Many, many things as improvements here. I appreciate it. On your slide 15, you showed the parking lots. Are you able to use any lowered islands to receive stormwater rather than having big curbs around everything and then having the water have to leave? So we're exploring that with our civil engineer during the site plan

[05:30:45] process, but we haven't determined whether or not that's feasible yet. Might be some self-watering for all of your landscaping that would be helpful. I don't have any other questions right now. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. I don't have any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Lupista. Thank you very much for your presentation, and I like all the upgrades. My only question is regarding the trees and the shrubs you'll be planting. I am hoping that those will all be

[05:31:15] native trees and plants where you can? I can't recall exactly what we've specified for the landscape plan, but we'll meet the county's guidelines for the plant recommendation list.

[05:31:32] Okay, which would be the native plants. And also, if you have any areas, small areas, I think you may know where I'm going with this, but any small areas where you can put, even if it's a two by four, two-by-two little pollinator plants to encourage people to have pollinator gardens thank you that's awesome thank you thank you thank you my questions have been answered um you actually have five more minutes if you like to use it well do we have any i guess speakers first before i

[05:32:06] we have no uh public speakers no i i don't have anything i i thank you all for your questions and appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you very much. With that, we will close the public hearing and the matter is back before the board. I'll ask each of you in turn, Supervisor McKeel.

[05:32:25] I'm very supportive of the project. I'm excited. Supervisor Galloway? Yeah, I mean, this is the only thing that's changed is it's now separate from the other building. So I'm happy that this is finally going in and hope that Home Depot will be encouraged to do other redevelopment on the property once this this first project's done and out of the way. Supervisor Malik. I think it's going to be great. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. I am so happy to welcome Home Depot as a neighbor. I have had a gift card burning a hole in my pocket for three years that I haven't been able to do anything with. Three years. I hope it's still good. I don't know if I know where it is

[05:33:04] anymore, but I haven't. Supervisor Lupisto-Gurvin. I hate to tell you, I think it's expired. I agree with Supervisor McHill. I have no other questions, and I think there's a wonderful beginning for the Fashion Square Mall, along with the J.C. Penney renovation.

[05:33:21] Thank you. And I'm also supportive and happy to have a refreshing look at that property. If you have a motion that you can put up, I believe I look to Supervisor Galloway.

[05:33:38] This is in the Rio District. So I move that the Board of Supervisors adopt the resolution attached to the staff report as attachment D. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Galloway, a second from Supervisor McKeel. Without objection, the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. Lapista-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Mallett? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt?

[05:34:03] Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Thank you. Board, we will now turn to item 17, ZMA 2020-000012 Montclair, formerly known as White Gate Village. My understanding is that Mr. Cameron Manjil, Principal Planner, will be presenting this.

[05:34:25] And I have asked, because Items 17 and 18 both relate to the Montclair property, that just for the staff presentation, that he'll present both items so that we know what the background is and what the context is for the second public hearing.

[05:34:43] but then we will have two separate public hearings following that. Thank you. All right. Well, good evening, everyone. My name is Cameron Langell, and I'm a principal planner with the Community Development Department, and I'll be giving you the staff presentation on the Montclair zoning map amendments. So to begin, I just want to give a little overview of the specifics of the ZMA proposal for a second. It involves two parcels of land in Crozet that are zoned rural areas in light industry and this request is to change that zoning

[05:35:17] district to the neighborhood model district. The ZMA itself totals 14.9 acres. You'll notice I've got the red color that appears to go across two parcels. It does, but the parcel on the left is only half of it being rezoned and that's the southern portion. I can't draw that in GIS so I had to do it by hand, but I just wanted to make that clear that there are two parcels here and you will see the full parcel boundaries on the next slides. But for conversation purposes, the one on the left, the only southern port in the being rezone. So this is an aerial view of where these

[05:35:53] properties are located. They are at the southeast corner of the intersection between Park Ridge Drive and Three Notch Road, which is Route 240. And of course, we're in Crozet. I've got some adjacent neighborhoods labeled. Immediately to the east is Wickham Pond. Further to the east is the Highlands neighborhood. Across Park Ridge Drive to the west is an office building that's run by Sentara. South of these properties, immediately south, is a CSX railroad. And then further south beyond the railroad is the Western Ridge neighborhood. So this is a slide that shows the current zoning as it applies to these two properties. The one on the left, which again,

[05:36:33] only the southern portion is being rezoned, is the color light blue, which represents the light industry zoning district. The property on the right is white, and that represents the rural area zoning district. Surrounding these properties, there's a variety of zoning districts of all different types. To the west, primarily, is light industry, and you can see that. That's that light blue color again. It's basically every property on the south side of Route 240. Immediately to the east, which is where Wickham Pond is, they are currently zoned neighborhood model district, which is what this request is for tonight, and that's that dark green color. To the north across three

[05:37:08] notched road, the color white, and that's because that is actually the comprehensive planned rural area boundary between Crozet. So all those properties are zoned rural areas. Both highlands and several areas of Western Ridge are yellow on this image, and that represents the R4 residential zoning district. And then there's the PRD zoning district, which is a teal color that you'll see to the southwest and then further west at the very, or excuse me, further east at the very end of Western Ridge. There are two overlay zoning districts that apply to the properties that are proposed to be rezoned tonight, and that includes the entrance corridor zoning district and both the

[05:37:48] managed and preserved steep slopes overlay district. This is an image of the future land use plan from the Crozet master plan, and what this is is the, again, the future land use classifications. This is what staff uses when we're evaluating rezoning or special use permit proposals for any property within the development areas. Each color on this image represents a future land use classification. Within our subject properties, there's three colors. The first one I'll talk about is orange, and that represents the middle density residential future land use

[05:38:23] category. That allows for dwelling unit types between 6 and 12 dwelling units per acre. However, if a proposal does include some small-scale unique dwelling unit types, so things like triplexes and quadplexes, a proposal would be allowed to go up to 18 dwelling units per acre within that orange color. The next color is yellow, and that represents the neighborhood density future land use classification. That allows for low-density residential uses between three and six units per acre, allows single-family detached homes as well as some single-family attached. Finally, there's

[05:39:00] the light green color. That represents the parks and green systems. Generally speaking, that applies to areas of property that contain sensitive environmental features, so things like 100-year floodplain, wetlands, water protection ordinance stream buffers, steep slopes. Occasionally, and it does apply in a part of this property tonight, that land use designation is given where the master plan recommends something like a landscaping buffer. I'm just going to go ahead and use my laser pointer to call that out. I imagine there'll be questions later, and we can pan back to this slide if need

[05:39:36] be. But right here you'll notice green. That coincides with areas of some managed slopes as well as a stream buffer. But right up here adjacent to 240 there's a strip of green that's 100 feet wide and that indicates an area that the Parks and Green Systems chapter of the Crozet Master Plan recommends a 100 foot wide landscaping buffer to screen any development on this property from the rural areas again which is just on the north side of Route 240. So now we'll get into

[05:40:12] the specifics of this proposal this is page five of attachment a4 which is the application plan that the applicant has prepared this is the block plan i'm going to get to more images that show further detail in the next few slides but this shows the four different blocks that would be developed within this project there's an orange color for block one red color for block two yellow for block three and green for block four. The acreages of each of those blocks is also indicated.

[05:40:44] Basically, this is a request to allow development of 122 units maximum within the property. All of the dwelling units would be within blocks one, two, and three. Block four is going to be left alone as open space because that is where a stream buffer is located. The density, gross density, if they develop to that maximum would be 8.18 units per acre. The net density would be 10 units per acre. The code of development and the application plan do allow for a maximum of 16,500 square feet of retail or commercial uses, which I'll just go ahead and say right now, retail and

[05:41:24] commercial are in a permitted secondary use in both the neighborhood density residential land use classification as well as the middle density future land use classification. In total, there There will be open space elsewhere in this project other than block four that will be visible on a slide in a moment, but they have committed to 2.98 acres minimum open space.

[05:41:50] This is sheet seven of attachment A4. I'm using this one because I think it's the best to talk about basically the transportation network that would be within this project and how the project would be accessed from adjacent roadways. I'm going to use my laser pointer again.

[05:42:06] There would be three entrances into this project. The first one we'll talk about is up here, right along Three Notch Road, or Route 240. That would be a full-access entrance, right in, right out, left in, left out. This would be a full-access entrance over here on Park Ridge Drive. And then there will be an interconnection to an existing public road in Wickham Pond.

[05:42:26] There wouldn't be any real turn movements here. It would just be vehicles going either east or west. Other than that, there are proposed private streets within the internal street network. And then these two streets right here.

[05:42:43] Those are the streets that dwelling units or any lots would actually be fronting on and gaining their lot frontage. Both this road, which is the main north-south entrance road, and then the east-west entrance road, those are going to be publicly owned roads managed by VDOT.

[05:43:04] Other things to talk about, I'll start with the bottom text in this image. The applicant is proposing to reserve some right-of-way along Route 240, not just on the portion of the parcel that's being rezoned, but on the adjacent parcel as well.

[05:43:20] That would be dedicated to public use. I believe it's 11,000 total square feet. And they're also proposing to construct a 10-foot-wide multi-use path along Route 240. That is one of the highest-rated implementation projects from the Crozet Master Plan.

[05:43:40] Calls for a shared use path from Park Bridge Drive eastward to the entrance road with the Highlands neighborhood. There's a very small segment of that that currently exists along the frontage of Wickham Pond. But again, this ZMA would propose to build that along the frontage of both of these two properties.

[05:44:01] Again, they are proposing that right-of-way. I mentioned 11,000 square feet. I believe that comes out to 0.28 acres. Within the project, there will be a variety of sidewalks and pathways. I will let the applicant get up and talk a little bit more about that programming.

[05:44:17] But basically, there's going to be pedestrian facilities, bike facilities, and several different ways for vehicles to get into and out of this site. This is just some other details. Anytime we have a neighborhood model district, we have an application plan as well as a code of development.

[05:44:33] And the neighborhood model district is required to basically develop its own zoning ordinance. And that specifies everything from permitted uses to performance standards, so density, setbacks, building heights. I just pulled some relevant information that the board and the members of the public might be interested in.

[05:44:50] In terms of structure height, in those blocks where you could have development, blocks one through three, the maximum building height would be three stories or 45 feet tall. There are some architectural standards that have gone through many reviews with our ARB staff to make sure that they comply with the entrance corridor design guidelines, because again, this is in the entrance corridor overlay district. This applicant is proposing to provide 15% of the total units as affordable dwelling units at 80% AMI, and those could be both rental or for sale.

[05:45:24] If they develop at the full density they're requesting, which is 122 units, that comes out to 18 affordable dwelling units. As I mentioned earlier, there are some landscaping buffers. here's that 100 foot wide one which is what is called for by the croze master plan and then this legend over here it's probably hard to read both on your screens and for anyone out here in the public but if you can access it on your computer or your phone you can see that there's different sorts of screening measures or amenity spaces things where there could be parks playgrounds other areas that are just generally left open grass maybe some landscaping in a natural state

[05:46:01] so part of this ZMA does include a proposal to disturb some existing preserved steep slopes within the properties in total it's 3,800 square feet and it's broken up into three separate little pieces this image in attachment A4 you can see there's labels that point to them but they're small. I think the largest one by itself is 1,900 square feet. The reason that those preserved slopes would be disturbed is for the construction of that east-west public street, which is allowed

[05:46:39] by Wright in the preserved steep slopes overlay district. And then some other grading would need to occur to install public utilities and stormwater management devices. Planning staff, zoning staff, the county engineer have reviewed this. We don't have any objections or concerns. It's relative minor. And so therefore, again, we don't have any objections to that. This is something that the board is not required to act on, but when it comes to doing private streets in the development areas for single-family dwelling units, it requires planning commission approval. It's not something

[05:47:15] that can be approved administratively by staff. So as I mentioned, there's private streets here, here, here, and then these V-shaped streets here. So the ZMA included a request to authorize doing those private streets. And there were two other waiver variation requests, as we call them, that also required planning commission action. One of them was to waive the requirement that these private streets have sidewalks along both sides for their entirety. And the other was that a

[05:47:53] waiver request to waive the requirement that these private streets have planting strips along both sides. This image, it's in, I believe, attachment, whichever one has the sidewalk waiver in it. It basically shows this private streets that would still have planting strips and sidewalks. Just to make it simple, each one of these streets would have a planting strip or a sidewalk, if not both, along both sides. The request was to waive one or the other along some of the streets. It's not a

[05:48:29] complete blanket. These streets won't have sidewalks or planting strips. Again, we can talk about that more in detail if need be once we get to the question and answer period. So we're getting close to the end here. I won't read these word for word, but the favorable factors that staff identified with this request was that it's consistent with the future land use recommendations of the master plan, as well as the comprehensive plans, neighborhood model principles. It also proposes to address and meet some of the most important implementation projects from the Crozet

[05:49:04] master plan related to transportation. And finally, it is providing 15% of the dwelling units as affordable dwelling units. Unfavorable factors that we were able to identify was that Western Albemarle is currently over capacity and it's expected to remain over capacity in the coming years and if this project were to develop develop out at the full density that's being requested it would create an additional 14 students at the high school level so it would be contributing to keeping Western Albemarle

[05:49:40] further over capacity. Staff recommended approval of this ZMA because we felt that the favorable factors outweigh the unfavorable factors. When this went to a public hearing with the Planning Commission on September 26, 2023. They voted 5-2 to recommend approval as well. That concludes my presentation. I'm available to answer questions, and I'll just go ahead and let the board know. I know there's a lot of interest in many different matters related to this project. I have several of my colleagues here in the audience tonight who are subject matter

[05:50:17] experts on various things, so if a question is given and I don't know the exact answer, I may call on one of them to come up and speak. But again, I'd be glad to answer any questions you have right now. And again, I can switch or move back to any one of those slides that I've shown so far. Just to start, were you going to introduce the next public hearing just so we know what that context is? Yes. Thank you, Chair Andrews. There is going to be a separate public hearing after this.

[05:50:44] It is for an Albemarle County service area jurisdictional amendment. And basically what that means is that one of these two properties has not been designated to receive both public water and sewer, which is something that is required to happen in our development areas.

[05:51:02] One of the properties does have both water and sewer. The other one has been designated as water only to existing structures. So the ACSA amendment request is to change that designation about water only to existing structures and allow for both water and sewer on that property. I do have some slides to show that once we get to that point but that's the general gist of what that request is okay uh board will go through order with questions and if there are questions about that uh part of it we can visit that as well or check on it later but uh supervisor mccueil start with

[05:51:39] you sure um could you could help me out a little bit with and clarification and maybe it's a better question for the applicant, but about the commercial. So it's always helpful if we can see it on the map as well, just so that everybody can kind of follow it, Cameron. But so there is a proposed area. Yeah, this image is probably, this is what I will use. And Supervisor McKeel, I would say, yes, the applicant would be able to go into more detail about the specifics. But from what I've

[05:52:15] been told any potential commercial or retail uses would be in block two in this general area here. The code of development, which I believe is attachment A5, has a use table in it that goes through specific uses that could, you know, be permitted here under that commercial or retail designation. If you'd like me to, I can flip to it. I've got a copy right here. I think that might be helpful for folks i took a look at that because it lists things that are at buy right and you know it goes through yeah so i mean things that would be buy right would be offices and that means

[05:52:53] something like an accountant's office maybe a dentist office retail sales and service a health spa tailors restaurants financial institutions or bank give me one moment water sewer energy communication distribution facilities, that just means utilities, public uses, so that could be

[05:53:25] something like a county-owned building. And that's all I see right here. And I don't know, again, the applicant may be able to let us all know if they have a potential user lined up to occupy that space. I'll ask the applicant, mainly I wanted to just clarify exactly the area and what I'm seen as block four and block two up in that area. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll just go ahead and add the code of development does call out some uses that are just outright not permitted. For example, like, you know, the property is currently zoned light industry, and this is the western property,

[05:54:05] of course. Light industrial uses are not going to be allowed at all through any of the blocks if this rezoning were to be approved. And that's called out on page three of the code of development. And just to make this point, we have been very concerned in the county about our loss of light industrial.

[05:54:31] And I'm not saying that I understand why it's with this application, but it is one of the things that our board has been trying to note as we're going through these projects that we're sometimes losing light industrial. So we have the three entrances.

[05:54:48] Well, you know, I was going to ask about the private streets, but I'm going to wait for the applicant for that. It's probably better. okay um the um you do we do with the three entrances and especially with the connected interest fire and i understand fire and rescue um has uh approved this without any problem they they're not seeing any problem with access that's correct the fire marshal has reviewed this application each time it's come in there's been several iterations of you know different layouts for blocks and streets and they have no objections at this point um you know if this were to be be approved it's going to have to go through both a site plan process road plan subdivision plat and

[05:55:28] i mean the fire marshal himself reviewed the zma and we have staff at fire rescue who are part of our site review committee they look at any development application that comes in okay all right and that's all for now thank you supervisor galloway yeah thank you um you just confused me a little bit where you mentioned the potential of the commercial use a6 in that attachment sheet this is sheet five of ten on screen but sheet six of ten is the building envelope closer to the parkridge drive but you pointed out between that's the preschool right up there in the

[05:56:06] preschools up there so that you kind of indicated something between the preschool and block four i thought block two had a parking lot and that are they you're saying that that's still residential i'm going to switch to this image here yeah this is the one i'm looking at so see where it says building envelope on yes yes that is the same color so you're saying that what is that going to be this from what the applicant has said that I think they get into this in their presentation this it most likely is going to be residential units and from what they have said previously to staff during reviews and

[05:56:42] then at the last public hearing was that if there is a non-residential use it would be in this sort of shaded color that you see here it's the same color the light orange color represents anywhere there could be a building footprint regardless of use type i've got it in the packet that little slivers a little different i think because of the lines i thought that was so if that were to well maybe i'll talk to the applicant about that because the roads there's no road to that back what's the proposed road to get to that back area if it's a if it's our commercial use um but you probably don't know the answer to

[05:57:19] that i think the the applicant has an answer that same question came up at the planning commission meeting and then just to say that out loud again the sidewalks and the planners they may not have them they may have them the waiver is to allow them to do just a sidewalk or just a planning strip gives them the flexibility but the if we grant the waiver and they don't put either in is that do we lose any ability to say they have to do one or the other again well again the the final action on this under the subdivision ordinance is the planning commission so i don't there's no vote

[05:57:58] on those two requests here tonight, but I can try and use my laser pointer here. Basically, let's use these two streets as an example. On this side and this side, they're still going to have planting strips and sidewalks.

[05:58:19] It's where the green and yellow over here is where they would not have planting strips or sidewalks. Okay, got it. Yeah, all right. I'm good for now.

[05:58:34] Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Thank you. So that just raised a whole new question for me under this issue, which is on slide right now. So if it's yellow and green, it means all of that would be going away. And I understood from both the Planning Commission and in the packet that it would be one side or the other.

[05:58:55] So how do we find out what's real? So the applicant has a more detailed image of where they would do it. Part of it is that, you know, let's see these white areas that are sort of between the units in each block. they're going to have an extensive internal like trailway network in there that connects to the other public roads. And so part of it would be if anyone who's living, like again, up here you see this, that's meant to be a sidewalk or a pathway. There's going to be ways for anyone living in one

[05:59:27] of those dwelling units to use the roadways and get somewhere as a pedestrian. And I'm sure it'll be clarified again when the applicant comes forward, but in pictures I've seen, there are basically stairs on the front side and cars are in the back so if someone is pushing a pram you're not going to take that down the front stairs so you have to come out the back door onto the alley but there's no place except in the road to push that pram where all the cars are going. It's a little difficult to see but there's a dark gray color behind these units that's supposed to

[06:00:03] represent sort of a driveway footprint so that would be where you're pulling in. They're going to have rear loaded garages. I think the applicant does have architectural renderings that can show that and convey that a little bit more clearly than this image can. But for the parent and the pram, they're going to have to walk. Certainly in Old Trail, we have a lot of trouble with short streets and big trucks and the trucks beds are hanging out over the sidewalk in many instances.

[06:00:35] So that's a concern about how this is going to be managed here as well. I think just for someone who would be trying to exit their dwelling from their house and get into their vehicle in that rear-loaded garage, I wouldn't necessarily imagine they're going to go out the front door and walk all the way around. They're probably going to go internally through their house. They're not going to push their pram out the front door either. What I'm saying is if you're going for a walk or your child is going to go for a bike ride, they're going to be going out the back with the

[06:01:11] cars and then having but there does not seem to be clear to me right now a place other than in the road for them to go to get to the main road where there would be a sidewalk a little person on a bicycle for example i think that would be a good time for us to ask the applicant if the fronts of these units are going to have things like stairs that would make that that sort of travel on foot difficult okay well i will hopefully they are listening and they can answer that when they get up there. In the presentation for the Planning Commission, you mentioned about the

[06:01:46] ability to get the extra, okay, bonus density comment. 18 dwelling units per acre could be permitted if there were small houses, small dwelling unit types, or affordable units for that extra density. So how that means that everything between Unit 12 and Unit 18 is one of those three categories. Am I right about that? So there's a very detailed and technical definition of what

[06:02:20] small-scale construction types, what constitutes a small-scale construction type in the appendix of the Crozet master plan. And I went ahead and listed a few here in case this question came up, but it would be things like tiny houses, bungalow courthouses, multiplexes, live-work units. And so

[06:02:40] If this rezoning were to be approved and they come in with, let's just say, a site plan that shows the whole extent of the area subject to the ZMA and they say we're going to do 122 dwelling units, we'd be asking to get documentation and information about which units specifically meet one of those dwelling unit types.

[06:03:00] They would be required to show them and denote them on the site plan. And, you know, if they're proposing things like traditional single-family townhomes and trying to count that toward meeting that ability to go to 18 units per acre, then they wouldn't be receiving an approval.

[06:03:16] It would be just a review with zoning staff and planning staff to make sure that any of the dwelling units that they're providing actually meet what the definition is from the master plan. Do we have information about that now? Because I've heard several different representations by applicants in various meetings that all seem to be a little different.

[06:03:36] So I'm trying to track down what the reality is on this. I don't have the master plan up here, which has that definition. No, no, no. I'm talking about this application. No, we don't know where those units would be and what specifically, which ones of those small-scale construction types they would be.

[06:03:56] And that's customary, even though the applicant has said he's not going to be building these, but we'll be selling it to somebody else. That's what was represented at the Planning Commission. Even if it were to be sold, if this were to be approved, we'd still be asking the next builder to give that verification at the time of site plan or subdivision review.

[06:04:14] Let me go down my list to another question. Just one second. Okay, we did that. Documentation on the existing house.

[06:04:32] In the staff report, it talked about how the documenters reported it would not be safe to restore. What does that mean? Because I've never heard that description before. Let me go ahead and just be completely honest here. That's my language.

[06:04:50] The house was documented by the HPC as well as historic preservation staff. I believe it was April 16th or 19th, 2022. The applicant had also provided us with several instances of photographic evidence about the state of the house.

[06:05:09] I use the word safely. That's, again, me. Perhaps a more appropriate word would have been extremely challenging. Internally, what was going on was, for example, the ceiling between the second and first floor has completely fallen through. From the exterior, the house might not necessarily look like, you know, it's devastated like rubble, but it had beyond a doubt, you know, extensive structural issues and so this word safely that's on me i use that it just would have been extremely

[06:05:41] hard to do to rehab that structure and make it safe again well thank you i think the the essence is it would be expensive to do and so i get that they're certainly we're fortunate to have many people who are willing to do that and i appreciate their effort no question about it um can you tell Can you tell us a little bit about the lack of sidewalk or shared-use path along Park Ridge Road?

[06:06:07] Because just in looking at the way residents in this lot would access pedestrian features, which are going to be available in the reasonable future, going south to what's available already at Park Ridge Road would be the quickest way to get there.

[06:06:23] So I'll give part of the answer to start. First of all, the reason there's no shared-use path shown is because the shared-use path that's called for by the master plan doesn't go on to park ridge drive it's only along route 240 in terms of why there's not some other type of pedestrian facility like a sidewalk we raised that question with the applicant several times um what they said was there you know there was a previous version of this proposal that did include development of that quadrant up here and at the time they did show a sidewalk but when that

[06:07:00] part of the project went away they took it off the plan they said that they may not be willing to talk about it when we get to the time of site plan review and so i think at a minimum if this were to be approved and they do get around to doing development staff would want to see sidewalk along this portion here of park ridge drive yes yeah and that's something that under the zoning ordinance we can do with any project that's subject to a site plan so if it were approved the staff would be well within their rights to say it has to be done yes and does that go over

[06:07:34] the bridge as well i don't think we could make them continue it off-site it would be limited to what the site is that's being developed which generally is the parcel unless it includes multiple parcels and the hard part with that is that again bright beginnings exists right now they have their own site plan that allowed that to be built so i don't know if maybe the county attorney wants to weigh in but i don't think we could require them to build a sidewalk that goes all the way across the bridge here at the railroad.

[06:08:10] And since you mentioned bright beginnings, also at the Planning Commission, there was a confusion about what was really going to happen in Block 2. And do you have any information that's come in since September about any more reality about what might happen in Block 2?

[06:08:28] Because there were illusions that bright beginnings would use it and therefore everything would be left alone. But if that's not reality, we need to know that now. have not received any new information about block two since september okay and okay let me run down here a little bit more talked about that um there was another representation about the tree conservation of the cedars i assume those are on the eastern side of the lot was was that a question from the public it was a question relating to someone who lives in wickham and worried about

[06:09:08] their um the buffer there so i'm assuming that it may be along block three but it also may be along the eastern edge of block one. Do we have any kind of written stipulation about the tree conservation that's come in so far?

[06:09:23] No. I will say that question came from someone from the public, and I'm looking at sheet one of the application plan, and if there are any trees adjacent to Wickham Pond, there may be a few, but it's not as if the entire property boundary with Wickham has mature forested tree cover right okay the also while it's on here the hatched area on the

[06:09:59] far western side of block two that is one of the slopes that's characterized as a managed slope is that right i believe so yes it looks pretty steep when you're out there yeah and i mean you can see it it's both within you know bright beginnings property in block two and then it goes into the right of way it's generally the uh symbology that's used for topography and that one has no protection from being changed because it's considered a managed slope that's that's correct there's certain design standards that have to be met which is limitations on how steep a retainer

[06:10:33] how tall retaining wall can be and what the steepness of the regraded land could be but it can be disturbed without needing a zoning map amendment or special use permit okay so the darker orange outline right under where it says block that is actually referring to parking area And then the previous, another slide you showed the building envelope all around between that parking area and Park Ridge Drive and between that parking area and Bright Beginnings in the case where it were developed.

[06:11:07] On this image here, this color, is that what you're referring to? Well, actually the one to its left where it says 2.8 acres, right? That is representative of a parking area and then a travel way. Right. And people would still use that travel way to get to Bright Beginnings.

[06:11:25] that's correct going forward so that'd be a combined use of all of that roadway that's correct okay um all right you've answered that answer that i think i'm almost done as far as i guess it's not wait is it within the purview in any way of the board as far as the items that are being

[06:11:57] assigned to private maintenance because for 122 units it seems like a lot of burden to care for a lot of private sidewalks, all the playgrounds, all the stormwater facilities, and the replacement of the underground features, rooftops, that kind of thing. And in some cases, developers have provided all of those. So how do we provide any kind of protection for future residents here based upon the many millions that those items would be costing? So the county does not require

[06:12:36] private street maintenance agreements. What I can say is that if this project were to get anywhere close to that density, they're not going to be doing single-family detached homes, which would be subject only to a subdivision plat application. Anything, including townhomes or above that, so multiplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, that has to have a site plan approval. All of those types of improvements like recreational equipment, sidewalks, the pavement for streets or travelways.

[06:13:08] That's something that is approved on that site plan and that is supposed to be the standard that it is maintained to in perpetuity until either everything gets demolished and something new gets built. And so if this were to be built with all of these private improvements and then things were to fall into disarray, the county would have the ability to go out and say that there is a zoning ordinance violation and it would need to be rectified by anyone who owns that improvement which i guess in this case it most likely be the hoa um i think you know again this would be a good

[06:13:44] question for the developer about their intention is they are they going to put all the open space into an hoa ownership you know what kind of covenants do they intend to have for this project but um it wouldn't just be it gets built and there's absolutely no way for some sort of enforcement to occur if things were to start falling apart. It's jeopardy all the way around, that's for sure. All right, that's the end of my questions for now. Thank you all very much for your patience. I'll be back. Supervisor Pruitt. Yes, I want to make sure I have absolutely crystal

[06:14:19] clear what we're doing with the western parcel, parcel 56E, tack two. My understanding is that it is the zoning map amendment only applies to part of it, but the parcel itself is not being formally subdivided. Is that accurate? That's correct. Which means you then have an existing parcel that is partially allowed for continued light industrial use on the northern portion.

[06:14:48] That's correct. Is this kind of split zoning of a single parcel which is not subdivided common? It seems strange to me. It happens. We've got many parcels in Albemarle County that are split zoned most of them are in the development areas because most of the properties in the comprehensive plan rural area are rural area zoning district but yeah there's many split zone properties and some of them do have zoning districts that sound interesting to have adjacent

[06:15:17] to each other industrial residential residential and commercial but yes it's it's not rare and i do also want to make sure i'm understanding correctly that for the most part this i forget the exact term, this like water conservation footprint makes it so most of it is not developable.

[06:15:38] The section that we're not looking at today, the light industrial section, except for the piece that is really abutting Route 240. Is that accurate? Am I understanding what the... In this gray area, it's not visible on this image, but there is a large area of water protection ordnance stream buffer that applies there's very limited area within that part that could be developed and just while we're talking about the water protection uh area i do want to just

[06:16:14] understand uh public road charlie which i assume is just going to be wickham way also um how that is mitigated with the water protection area because it does slice through it i i've heard this mentioned in passing but i want to make sure i have it fully understood on the record like how how is that road able to slice right on through that protection area in terms of being authorized to do so public roads are just they're a permitted use in the preserved steep slopes overlay district so they can go through preserved slopes i don't have an answer as to all the

[06:16:52] technical design details and construction i'm not exactly sure i assume that there would be a pipe of some sort. The applicant does have some civil engineers that they could speak better to it, but in terms of why can it be done, because public roads are a permitted use when it comes to disturbing the Preserve Steep Slopes Overlay District. Excellent. I believe that is actually all the questions I have. Supervisor Lupisto-Kurtin. Yeah, I have a few questions, but I'll wait for the developer to answer, or question the developer. Thank you. Okay. I guess I just want to clarify

[06:17:31] some of the things that have already been said, make sure I'm not confused. In terms of the density, we're looking at middle density residential, 6 to 12 units per acre. The net density is listed at 10.9, I guess. And I'm trying to understand where does the 18 units per acre come into this and when will that be necessary for them to invoke that under the proposal?

[06:18:03] The net density figure is basically taking the acreage that's proposed to be rezoned and then subtracting out the green space. On this image, for example, that would be block four. And so, again, it's just a calculation on how many maximum units they're proposing and then the acreage that falls outside of the green space land use designation.

[06:18:31] Does that answer your question? Well, I guess I'll ask it a different way. that mean that there may be areas in this where there's an acre that have that acre has more than 12 units in that acre if they do the right kind of units in that acre? This has been okay thank you then. This has been discussed with the applicant. If they wanted to get to that 18 units per acre or use that 18 units per acre it would need to be occurring within the areas that the future land use plan shows is middle density residential. This is the image to show it. Basically the center line of Public Road Sea or Wickham Way, which again, that is probably what it will

[06:19:10] be named. Everything north of that is where that MDR, middle density residential land use classification is. So if they were to be coming in and showing units down here that were a density of anything more than, I guess it's six units per acre max in that neighborhood density residential land use classification, then we would be having, they wouldn't be able to do that.

[06:19:34] Okay. And then, again, to follow up on a previous question, the light industrial, you said that the block two actually already has that, but would lose it, but the northern portion of that would not because that's not part of this development.

[06:19:54] Yeah, everything, if you just follow my laser pointer, everything within this area right here, again, that's all subject to be rezoned. It's currently zoned light industry, so it would lose that because then it would be subject to the NMD district and all the different regulations that are contained in the application plan and code of development.

[06:20:15] However, this northern area, which is gray, that would retain the light industry zoning district. But we know that that area also has environmental constraints and difficulties to be developed.

[06:20:27] Okay. My other questions, which I may hold off on asking at the moment, but they really will come back to staff, I believe, is that I have questions about the comprehensive plan analysis and how to think about the Crozet master plan in this context, the definition of priority areas, the impacts of our transportation projects, and the amount of shared use path that remains to get to, say, downtown Crozet.

[06:20:56] but I'm going to save those for the moment I've kind of indicated previously that I'm going to be interested I'm looking at you Mr. McDermott because I'm sure you're going to be involved in some of that but I'll look to the board first to see if there are any other questions for Mr. Angel yes thank you I do have one is there discussion about prohibiting construction entrance from the Wickham side and not having dump trucks etc. rolling through

[06:21:28] the established neighborhood and the habitat houses are right there at those street i'm not aware of any discussions that have occurred on that um that is something that would be within the purview of the applicant to stipulate if they chose okay and i'll come back thank you okay anyone else all right uh board then uh i think it's time for us to open the public hearing and we're getting the list.

[06:22:02] Just as a point of clarification, how many people do we have signed up? Vice Chair McKeel will read the rules which I intend to have applicable to both public hearings tonight.

[06:22:22] So we'll try to go through the rules one more time and just once for all speakers. Board, we have, I believe, on the order of one electronic and 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 or so people present to speak.

[06:22:45] As you know, our rules do provide that we can limit speakers to just two minutes if there are more than 10 speakers, but I don't propose that we do that this evening because I think that this is manageable and we want to hear everybody. But I would just invite speakers as you come up, if somebody's already said exactly what you're going to say to express your support for a previous speaker without necessarily having to repeat if that's the case.

[06:23:16] But I will turn to Vice Chair McKeel to read the rules for public comment and for comments by the applicant. Applicant will be first. And it doesn't look like we have one electronic and everybody else is in person. Okay.

[06:23:32] The following rules apply to all public hearings this evening. These rules are also included on the published agenda for the meeting, which can be found online and on the sign-up table to the audience's right. During public hearings, the board will acknowledge speakers addressing the item listed for public hearing.

[06:23:50] Speakers are limited to one appearance of three minutes per public hearing item. Applicants are limited to a 10-minute presentation of their proposals and are allowed a five-minute rebuttal at the close of the public hearing. Community members physically present for the meeting will speak first, and those who are attending the meeting electronically will speak.

[06:24:12] For those attending electronically, the clerk will coordinate with the speaker when it is their turn to speak. For in-person speakers, timekeeping is conducted through a timer and light system at the podium. The green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time.

[06:24:28] The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking. The red light indicates your time has expired and you will be asked to end your comments. For community members who are attending the meeting electronically, timekeeping is conducted through a timer. The timer will commence when you begin speaking and this begins your allotted time.

[06:24:47] You will be notified when the three minutes are up and you are requested to bring your comments to a close as your microphone will be muted after about five seconds. To give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the board requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines. When addressing the board, state your name and if you live in Alomar County, your magisterial district.

[06:25:08] Address comments to the board as a whole. Any written statements or other supporting material may be given to the clerk. If making comments through Zoom, you may upload written comments through the e-comment portal or email your comments to the clerk. If representing a group or organization, you may have others present to raise their hands in recognition.

[06:25:30] Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker. Back and forth debate is not permitted. Do not speak from your seat or out of turn. All comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Almar County website. If participating by phone, press star 9 to let us know you know you want to speak.

[06:25:53] Then star 6, if from a landline, to unmute. If by Zoom, please remain muted until you are called on to speak. All right. And with that, I think what I'm going to do, since we do have a number of speakers, I'm going to call three people at a time. If the first person whose name I call...

[06:26:19] Applicant's finished. Yes. I'm sorry. I was just going to... Yeah. We're going to do the applicant first. Yes, but I was just going to finish the instructions on how I was going to do it, if that works for you, Jim. Okay. I was just going to say, as I call the names, the first name that I call, If you will come to the podium, and then the second two names that I call, if you'll have a seat in the very front, there's some empty seats up there.

[06:26:45] It just helps keep things moving faster. All right. All right. So we will start, however, with the applicant, and I believe Mr. Cheta and Schleiner are here to represent the applicant.

[06:27:04] Welcome. Thank you, Chair Andrews. My name is Kelsey Schleiner. I'm a planner with SHIMP Engineering. I'm just pulling up our slides here, and Vito Cedda, the project architect and developer, is going to be giving the presentation this evening.

[06:27:42] Good evening. Vito Cedda is my name. I'm the developer, the architect, and the planner. We started on this project over four years ago. Anyway, it's a wonderful project. The drawing we're seeing now is the county's comprehensive plan.

[06:28:04] It takes up about 5% of the county area, Crozet, the area around the city, and Glenmore. And the county has an increased population of about 1,500 people a year.

[06:28:20] And it requires about 700 homes to absorb those people. And the comp plan is what really directs that. As far as I'm concerned, it's a wonderful document. Here's an example.

[06:28:37] This is a spot two miles from Barracks Road Shopping Center on Garth Road. And if you took this picture 50 years ago, it wouldn't look much different. In fact, if you drove from here to Whitehall, it doesn't look hardly any different than it did 50 years ago.

[06:29:02] Then you make a left on 810, head to Crozet. It looks the same as it did 50 years ago. Not exactly the same, but very similar. I think that's the result of what the comp plan is intended to provide.

[06:29:18] Then you get to Crozet, and it's high density. It's supposed to be high density. That's how we're going to absorb 700 new homes a year. And the same thing you could say, the same thing about driving on 29 South. Go past 64, drive all the way to Nelson County.

[06:29:34] It's farms, trees, open space, and it's because of the comprehensive plan. So here's the plan. Again, Wiccan Way runs straight through it, and you've seen the details.

[06:29:50] I'm going to come back to this, obviously, in a moment. But we developed a Wiccan Pond, which is to the right. 240 is on the right. Montclair would be straight ahead. 260 homes. had this approved, the same process as this, exactly the same process, the same requirements in 2007. 160 homes, it has the same standards, the same requirements as we do on Montclair.

[06:30:22] It hasn't changed hardly. On the top right, by the way, is a piece we did not own, we do not own, and that's intended to be a mixed-use project. Again, we have no control over that, but I imagine when commercial becomes popular, that site will be developed. Again, you see 25% open space, parks, totally finished. And here is Wickham Way extended, Montclair straight ahead.

[06:30:52] Okay, so some of the pieces in Wickham Pond are, again, a buffer, a street buffer of six feet of grass, sidewalk. In this case, we require picket fences and front porches. Here's the same thing.

[06:31:11] We've obviously planted all the trees. These are townhouses we had here. This is front loaded, means the car and the pedestrian enter from the same part of the house. We didn't do this on Montclair. We've reversed it, put the cars in the back and the people in the front. These are some affordable houses built by Habitat for Humanity. Again, Wickham Pond. They're going to be also building in Montclair. This was a county called bungalows. Again, this is all

[06:31:47] Wickham Pond. It's a townhouse over a one-bedroom and den. That's the townhouse above. Again, these are all affordable. These and the units below are all affordable. Now, the affordability requirement has expired. As far as I know, the rents haven't changed that much, although I'm not quite sure of that. This is what the units are below. These are one in a den, and just by their nature, they should remain affordable, and I think that's what we all want. This is that multi-use

[06:32:25] path, and also this is a 100-foot buffer. We had at Wickham Pond, and we'll have at Montclair. So here's our plan. On the top of the sheet is a multi-use plan. The area north of Wickham Way is um higher density it is a footprint of 22 by 40 which these are shown as townhouse but it could easily be these bungalows and i'll show you the bungalows in a minute below are we call villas

[06:32:55] and the left is uh the area that is um habitat will be building units we're also working with the daycare center i'll tell you more about that so we have these big big cedar trees are going to remain. The rest of this all has been cleaned up. So there's two or three different kind of houses we have. These are villas. The garage and the front doors on the same side of the house,

[06:33:28] and they'll be primarily three-story. And they're expected to sell the $650,000 range. These are the townhouses, which are 22 feet wide, about 40 feet deep. And to answer Hans' concern, this is a project called Out of Bounds. It was processed through the Planning Commission. It was also a rezoning, Planning Commission Board of Supervisors. And the sidewalk

[06:34:04] is in the front of the house, and the car is in the back. So it's a technicality about this variance that's needed. You approve this, then it works marvelous. Nothing wrong with it. The sidewalk is totally on a green strip.

[06:34:23] The same thing is happening in Montclair. In the back is a muse, an alley. The cars are all in the back. Porches above the, there's parking spaces and then the garage. So each unit parks four cars.

[06:34:41] And that's, you know, that's quite pleasant. But people don't enter here. They enter on the front of the house. It is not this. This is what we would not want to ever build across. The daycare center on the bottom left, we're working with them.

[06:35:03] We drew that building on the bottom part of the seat. If they want to expand, but we think they're going to expand around their existing building, they want to redo their parking, and that's so that building probably won't get built, and parking will be in that area.

[06:35:20] We have common areas, you can see that. And the county refers to these units you just saw with the townhouse over an apartment.

[06:35:39] That's what this is here. You could have in that footprint of 22 by 40, you could have as many as four units. You could have two bedrooms on the top two floors and efficiencies like here it is right here.

[06:35:55] Efficiencies are below. So in that footprint, it could be one unit, two units, three or four units. Here, the efficiencies are on the right side, 450 square feet.

[06:36:12] And then two bedrooms, one bedrooms, towns. It's a cute little bungalow building. Again, this is Park Ridge. Straight ahead is out of the growth area. It's not the growth area. And the growth area, I'm going to say, appears to be built out.

[06:36:33] There is not a lot of land left in the growth area. We've actually built 12 different, and had rezoned 12 different communities in Crozet.

[06:36:49] This is Liberty Hall. This is one of them. The county wanted live work. That's what this is. Shops on the first floor. Townhouses above. And across from the townhouses, these are the affordable units.

[06:37:04] There's nine for sale. These were all sold with a one-car garage. This is Parkside Village, the first of the 12 projects we've done. Again, the same thing. This is the first one we did, a picket fence, front porch.

[06:37:24] That's it. Thank you. Lord, with the customer order, questions? Supervisor McKeel. Yes, go back, I think, to the picture of that alleyway.

[06:37:40] The alley, yes. To that alleyway. Because this is the nice alleyway. That is a nice one, right. It is. And I will say that because this development is near my neighborhood, I have walked down this alleyway many times with my dog and enjoyed walking this alleyway, and it connects to the sidewalks at the very end.

[06:38:07] Is that not correct? Yeah. So there are sidewalks on either end, and the alleyway goes this way. So I've seen women with baby carriages, with prams, all kinds of things. They can get out of their unit and walk on the sidewalk and then walk down the alleyway and almost walk around because, of course, the sidewalks have ADA ramps, so you can get up and down them fairly easily.

[06:38:36] I just wanted to compliment you because I think this is just such a great look. Thank you. And it's very workable. I really didn't have any questions about it other than it's very unique. Let me see, questions. Can you clarify the type of units you are going to have in this, if this is approved?

[06:38:57] So you talked about possibly numerous different types, Mr. Chetta, just the types of units, one-bedroom, two-bedroom, efficiencies. Here's the tip. It's taken us literally over four years to get to this point.

[06:39:15] And by the time you continue, you file your engineering, you do site work, it's almost another two years. it takes forever uh not that i'm being critical that's just the nature of this business um and what's happened is an example the commercial space we have on the left and we've been at this for a long time we've had no interest in a commercial space you don't want to build it if it's going to be vacant um and with the townhouses right now our plan is to have some of those bungalows a part of this and maybe i don't know it's going to be a lot but there'll be some of them will be

[06:39:51] bungalows it'll still look just like this and we have to decide how many we're going to put in and frankly we haven't decided that yet okay all right um so the connectivity within your proposal the connectivity with your proposal there are three entrances the one will be off of um three notch or off of 240 right that's great and then we see that one right here on this picture and then uh and then the other one is off of um across from the clinic right parkridge uh-huh

[06:40:28] right that's an existing one and then as because the county tries to encourage connectivity within developments so the last one is wickham way and it will go and you had a picture of that a minute ago and it'll go straight through there um so the idea is that people would be able to go down Wickham Way and then come out right on to 240 or they'll have multiple ways to go all right you uh you might recall when we did out of bounds the neighbors in the adjacent community

[06:41:04] the county wanted the road to come into uh out of bounds the neighbors did not like it don't put that road in well we had to put the road in now they're the ones really benefiting from it and they use it a great deal. Yes. That's true. That's a true statement. I think the bright beginnings, perhaps the school property might need just a little bit more clarification.

[06:41:33] The school? The bright beginnings of school property. They have a tiny little parking lot. It's a tiny little parking lot right now. Yeah. Well, we're working with them. One is they want to expand. And we've done some sketches for them to expand. They also want more playground area.

[06:41:54] And so none of this is official. We're simply talking about moving the parking to where that building is. And we're going to work out a deal. We're going to give them some of that land, if not all of that land, for a playground for them. So when you say the building, you mean the buildings right here on the corner that are kind of penciled in?

[06:42:17] the one on the bottom left the fairly big building okay there you go you found it oh now you've got it what happened here yeah there you go yeah so that's the building right there okay oh all right i see now i was confused all right the point is when we started this we're allowed to build on that uh we just simply put a building there and then we're going to figure out how to use it but now it's most almost sure we'll not build it okay all right thank you that's by the

[06:42:50] way that yes excuse me go ahead there's that big green space uh and we're gonna have paths to do that for both our residents and for the daycare they're looking forward to that okay thank you that's all i have right now thank you supervisor galloway so just to continue building on what you're talking with the preschool with then so you're i understand that building that's drawn in is likely not to happen you're saying that's where you would put parking or a playground yes parking versus um versus that drawn building correct so they still access bright beginnings

[06:43:28] the current way they none i mean they can do what they want on their property i suppose well we have what we have is a circle in the front of the of the building of the bright beginnings where you can let off the children and they can also park in that strip got it um so in the past uh today we just discussed developer incentives to get our more affordable units on this and to be fair to every other applicant that has come in in the last two years because we grandfathered people

[06:44:07] to be able to come in under the 15% at 80% AMI and I've asked every developer when they know we're aspiring to get more than 15% of the units as affordable is what was the constraints or why did you not try to get past the 15% affordable units for this particular project? Well I will show you okay we didn't include we our submission originally included that top left-hand partial

[06:44:44] and with that we had 70 affordable units 70 out of 155 almost half um and we had a water problem uh storm problem and we had to eliminate that parcel so uh now we know that every project i've ever done have had affordable housing i built them all they're good ones even out of bounds where the units are selling for well over a million dollars there's eight affordable units

[06:45:21] and we're going to we're going to do what we need to do um habitat is going to build and in our scenario with them now 12 units in there and whether we build whether we build six more or eight more you also have to make money in this business uh so we would have to evaluate it at some point. Our commitment a year ago was almost half of this project was affordable, and we actually came before the planning commission, and it got canceled that night.

[06:45:53] The hearing got canceled, so we had to drop back. And are all your, so of the units that are designated to be affordable, are they all homeownership, or are they a mix of rental and ownership? All of Habitat is homeownership.

[06:46:10] So all of your affordable units are under Habitat? Well, they will supply all we need. Our additional units would be rentals. So there are some rentals there.

[06:46:31] Incidentally, the units to the bottom right, the villas, you can see we have a landscape strip in there. Here's something else that I find real interesting. The number of homes sold these days in Elmorrow County, a big percentage of them are attached.

[06:46:51] They're not single-family homes. And as an example, the homes you see now in Wickham Pond, they hardly use their backyards. You don't have suing sets out there. You don't have barbecues. You don't have gardens. Not that I'm critical.

[06:47:06] I'm just saying the market doesn't require that so much anymore. Even in Out of Bounds, we have big villas, 45 foot wide. We're the only people who have a garden. So the market's changing. Conventional families will buy and do buy attached product now.

[06:47:26] A lot more than they did before. I suspect at some point some other supervisors have alluded to some of the transportation pieces, so I'll probably have questions at that point when that comes up. That's probably more appropriate for Mr. McDermott when we get to that point.

[06:47:44] And then Ann will probably bring that up. All right. I'm good for the moment. If one of my questions gets missed, I'll have a chance to loop back. I can add another piece to the transportation is on Wickham Pond, We have two entrances.

[06:48:04] They both have D-cell lanes and left lanes. VDOT reviewed this, and they said you don't need left-hand turn lanes or right-hand turn lanes. There's not enough traffic. That's VDOT. We would do whatever we're told to do, but they say we don't need them.

[06:48:24] All right. Supervisor Malek. Thank you. Going back up my list. Just a minute. Okay. So you, in one of the slides you were showing to another question, I think it was the alley in Out of Bounds, it showed what looked like sidewalks in there.

[06:48:48] No, that's a drainage. It's just a drainage element. The flat concrete is just a place for water to go. It's not sidewalks, right. Okay, do people walk on those when there are cars going back and forth? Well, they walk on it just like you would the asphalt. It's not just a place to walk necessarily.

[06:49:05] So it's the same grade. It's a drainage element. And you also showed an image of a bungalow. I guess in my brain I didn't realize a bungalow had changed to be something different than the craftsman home that they talked about that you could get out of the catalog, which was a true little bungalow.

[06:49:23] And now it looks like an apartment building. So am I picturing the right thing? It was like a big gray building. It looked like it had 15 or so units in it. And that's what you're calling bungalows, that you might have five or six of these in there? Actually, the county has given that name bungalow.

[06:49:40] I agree with you. Bungalow is more of a crash than kind of a house. Which you had in other pictures, which were nice, actually. So that is a multifamily building is what is being described as the bungalow in your plan. Okay, and those are all in the Block 1, or are they scattered throughout 1 and 3?

[06:50:03] Block 1. Block 1 is where those would be. i think i remember hearing someone talking at the planning commission about how the if they were the efficiency on the lower level then that had to be on the end of the building or something in order to and that's why they could just be distributed here there anyway that's right efficiencies are only on the end that's right to give space okay and then above the efficiency is a single townhouse unit with two bedrooms up and two bedrooms down that that's what can be it could also be a two-bedroom two-fourths of two bedrooms so we call it two over two okay so that that's

[06:50:39] five stories two two plus two no it'll be three stories the lower level two efficiencies two bedroom two bedroom i see all right okay um that building the picture looks so tall that's why i was confused all right and do you have any thoughts about not using the wickham way as a construction entrance whatever the county feels is appropriate that's i don't think we would need that we have two other main entrances for the construction of the heavy vehicles is what i'm most concerned

[06:51:18] about right now all right that's all for me thank you i'll be back thank you supervisor pruitt um yes uh thank you so much for your presentation uh particularly illuminating i don't think i've seen these diagrams yet they added a lot of helpful additional texture um i do want to just understand, it does seem like these footpaths that you've indicated that you intend to build are allowing it to connect to the southern road through the forested area that is being preserved. Excuse me, repeat that again? It looks like you, and you mentioned this, you alluded to this very briefly, that you are looking at footpaths through this wooded area

[06:51:57] which I believe we've identified as block four, and I see them drawn on here. Am I correct in understanding that the brown lines that I see running parallel to the stream area are footpaths that are designed to be in the neighborhood. We're talking about in the front of the units or in the- I am talking about in block four in the stream protection area.

[06:52:21] So if we look at the playground, for example, there's something running from the playground down south. And then adjacent to it, parallel to it, there's another something. I want to understand, are these footpaths that are being notionally planned? Yes, Supervisor Pruitt, yes, those are footpaths.

[06:52:39] And there are, they're primitive trails. There is limited improvements that are permitted within a WPO buffer. I like that you're anticipating what my next question was. And so any improvements within that WPO buffer would be aligned with what is permitted in the ordinance.

[06:52:57] And so really it's kind of considered, you know, one of, like, just a primitive trail recreational facility to actually be able to access and enjoy the water feature. Excellent. And in that area with the water feature, and also, frankly, in the light industrial parcel, section of the parcel that also has a water protection area, is there any plan at intentional landscaping or placemaking there? I'm thinking about the families that live here. People want to play in a field. People want to play in the woods. These are not currently playable sections of woods. They are dense thicket that folks wouldn't be able to explore and enjoy.

[06:53:35] Yeah. I mean, absolutely. It's part of our, you know, amenity packages, a package as part of this development. So, you know, we're permitted to move, remove invasive species. We are not permitted to remove natives. However, and I will say to your point about additional planting for constructing the Wickham Way road improvement there, we will be required to do some mitigation as a result of that. That results in increased native plantings in the buffer area as well. Okay. Thank you.

[06:54:05] the notionally planned playground here, and I realize I don't believe these are binding improvements as part of your plan, but is the plan that the playground, you mentioned it as an improvement for the benefit of the daycare, but I understand that would be accessible to all members of this community and also the daycare. Is that notionally? Okay. I also just want to add that I'm very, very pleased to hear that the commercial use that you're planning is this expansion of the daycare you know i i want to share with the board i just audited yesterday a meeting of the social services advisory board where they were hearing about our ongoing subsidy

[06:54:44] programs to help child care and we are i would say it is not unfair to as a community characterize that we have a crisis in available providers of early child care specifically in croze which has been identified as a major child care desert so insofar as this could expand access to child care I think that's that's very very exciting just expect allow this existing building to expand I I also do want to make sure I'm correctly understanding so you'll forgive me I'm not as read up as my

[06:55:16] peers on the sorted history of this plan um brand new here on this board um but it sounds from your description like the reason that we lost this significant higher density portion of the project and with it the 70 some odd planned uh affordable units is because of the frankly like the discovery of the fact that the plat included this this water conservation area i just want to make sure i have that understood so realistically even if it had not been interrupted even if it had not been removed from the hearing uh before the planning

[06:55:55] commission when he previously came it would have ultimately been discovered that that plan would have never succeeded insofar as someone actually got the right information in GIS. I believe those are the only questions I have for now. I want to add another thing. Oh yes please. Sidewalks are a big part of these communities. As an example if you if you're on Barracks Road which out of bounds the sidewalk is right along the road. They're dreadful. They're dangerous and all of these

[06:56:29] new communities the county requires it have a six-foot strip a five-foot sidewalk my goodness there is so much activity on the sidewalks and that's what this will have as well that's that's helpful additional context thank you and that's a good good segue into my question i was going to ask regarding the sidewalks because the the presentation by mr langill is that you would have sidewalks and trees in the triangular area in the lower right quadrant. Yes, right. You would

[06:57:03] have trees and sidewalks on the outside, but not where the triangular area is. It would be where the homes are. Is that correct? Or would it be on both sides? You are right in that we only have them on one side, but very easily could add them on the other side. I just don't think they'd ever get used. Right, right. No, I'm not saying, I'm just asking the question because I think originally it's going to be on both sides that's what i heard and then now uh the applicant wanted to make it just on one side which i don't have a problem with and but i did want to ask regarding

[06:57:38] the uh the blocks up above in the upper white right quadrant would this sidewalks where would the sidewalks and well let's see here okay so here yeah i would have a sidewalk here okay six foot strip a sidewalk a front yard and you go behind it to the muse okay and then here we actually have a kind of an interesting the sidewalk here shared by these two and it actually divides and we've done some interesting landscaping in the middle and then up here that's the sidewalk right

[06:58:15] there okay so in the middle section uh those homes are facing each other and you have a sidewalk in between exactly right yeah got it okay those are all my questions thank you very much uh yes continuing on the sidewalk question um there was a discussion previously about park ridge sidewalks oh um well it's it's not part of this application and i'm committed to putting a sidewalk there we had that on our earlier scheme but it's not part of this and if you want to make that a

[06:58:51] condition we're certainly prepared to do that i know there's an issue about tying this into the communities to the south and frankly i don't have an answer for that i don't have a suggestion but to answer your question we can add that for sure okay um there's also a question that was asked earlier about traffic and vdot's decision i'm not questioning that but i did want to ask the question, and the staff may help me with this, that when did BDOT do this analysis? Because it's been in the works for a long time, and was it prior to the pandemic, during the pandemic?

[06:59:31] Yes, Cameron, thank you. Chair Andrews, I apologize. You're referring to the Crozet transportation study that was done? Well, and the impact on this proposal and whether or not turning lanes or other additional... So the Crozet transportation study was being conducted at the same time that the Crozet master plan was undergoing an update, and the Crozet transportation study, which looked at all of Crozet, all roads, was completed in June of 21.

[07:00:04] Are you asking why this didn't have to get, like, a TIA, for example? I'm just trying to make sure I understand, yeah. Yeah, so when we were first approached about this application, which was in, I believe, early 2020, we had VDOT come to what we call pre-application meetings.

[07:00:21] they're part of the site review committee that looks at ZMAs, and based on the number of units that were proposed and the anticipated trip generation figures, they didn't meet the threshold that would require the TIA, and that was further reinforced when the Crowley Transportation Study was completed, and I guess you could say again, when the number of units was reduced from the original 162 to 122. Okay, thank you. And then my last question for the moment, because you've referenced wickham pond several times and i know that there's affordable housing there yes one of

[07:01:00] the concerns that we've had in many times is whether uh an expectation that there'll be a certain amount of affordable housing can be realized if there aren't for example if they're for sale if they're not taken uh and because this was a habitat i'm getting the sense that this has not been a problem that in fact the wickham pond affordable housing was in fact realized and still uh there i guess time periods running out but yeah again um uh habitat built those six units and they were sold and that's their formula that they're just for sale now again

[07:01:40] the same thing will happen here right yeah that just gives me comfort that we're not going to run into the situation where there's offered but never never actually sold as affordable yeah i know i know what you're referring to okay thank you um if there aren't further questions for the applicant at this time, then I would like to now invite the public to give us comments. Thank you. Thank you very much. You'll have a rebuttal period at the end. And Vice Chair McKeel will call people up.

[07:02:09] So I'll call the first three names, Matthew Helt, Carol Fairbourn, and Minso Kim. And if the last two folks will come down, it just makes it a little smoother and quicker as we move through. Go right ahead, Matthew. Okay, I want to, good evening, Matthew Helt, Curze, Whitehall.

[07:02:30] I'm going to speak pretty fast. I want to start with a basic fact. With all due respect, the drive from town to Whitehall to Crozet is not the same. I'm born and raised in Crozet. My grandparents grew up in Boonesville and ain't the same. And Crozet is not supposed to be high density. There are a few people here tonight.

[07:02:47] I don't think most of us here today are actually opposed to Montclair or opposed to additional housing in Crozet or even opposed to Vita himself. From all my friends who know him, they think he's a very great person, a wonderful neighbor. But people aren't happy with applying over a creek to squeeze in a few more houses.

[07:03:05] That should never have happened, and the county should held itself accountable for that release and investigation to the public as to what happened. And the developer should have been required not only to restore the creek, but to make a meaningful contribution to our trails, parks, outside of his development. So why are people here today? I think most people are here today because they're sick and tired of the lack of infrastructure investment in Crozet.

[07:03:24] Sick and tired of broken promises. Sick and tired of sitting in traffic because sidewalks, crosswalks, bike lanes, and trails don't exist. Sick and tired of the lies. Sick and tired that Eastern Avenue hasn't been built for 40 years. And I think most people are opposed to the Crozet master plan that was forced upon us.

[07:03:41] A couple of points. The developer is going to build a tiny little portion of the multi-use path. Will it be built to DCR or VDOT standards? Will WIC and Pond be portioned and be upgraded to the DCR or VDOT standards? Is the board going to fund the rest? You can't even build sidewalks to Sparrow Hill.

[07:03:57] Will someone confirm what recreation assets is going to be built? Basketball court, pickleball court, ball field, playgrounds? Are you going to make kids walk to Crozet Park that you all underfund? Is anything, if it's anything like out of bounds, there's not enough parking. Supervisor McKeel, better yourself, maybe you can confirm, but in my experience at out of bounds, there's always a parking issue.

[07:04:16] How would someone walk to Highlands? What about Crozet Park? Some kids want to go, what if they wanted a bike? What if I'm Jones versus I'm Sows or Cruzele or Far Downers? Can I walk or bike there? The dead end of the road and in the Y is going to be a nightmare. Many of my amazing and passionate neighbors are here tonight.

[07:04:33] I encourage you to listen to each of them and think about what has happened to Curzé in the last 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Listen to their truths, their realities, their experiences. In my 40 years, you've not invested one penny in my neighborhood. No sidewalks, no bike lanes, no park access. Why do I pay property taxes? When are you going to start? So if you want to support this development in Curzé, vote to fund the infrastructure in Curzé.

[07:04:51] You don't have any excuses anymore. Eastern Avenue, North and South, Western Park, traffic circles, and on and on. Not one of you are fully willing to account for the missing infrastructure and deferred maintenance in Curzé. Why are you afraid of holding yourselves accountable? Why must you continue to lie to our community?

[07:05:07] Why not be honest and tell us the truth? Be honest. There's $200 million in missing infrastructure in Crozet. And while I'm here, I would love the developer to provide some background on the name of Wickham Pond. I've been told it was named after Confederate General Williams Carter Wickham. If so, I'd love to know why a Crozet neighborhood was named after a Confederate general.

[07:05:25] Thank you very much. Thank you. I'd like to remind people that during the speaking, if you keep the signs out of other people's view, it would help, and also to remind people that we address comments to the board as a whole, to me, not to other members. Thank you. Carol Fairbourn. Good evening. My name is Carol Fairbourn, and I live in Curzay. Tonight, I ask our elected supervisors to deny the Montclair proposal for one very simple yet compelling reason. The Montclair proposal does not comply

[07:06:00] with the Albemarle County Comprehensive Plan. Specifically, the Montclair proposal fails to comply with Objective 9 of the Comprehensive Plan, which lays out two criteria for new development. Objective 9 says, one, new development should be focused within priority areas. Two, if there is new development outside of priority areas, then it must be matched with infrastructure availability and capacity. Montclair fails to meet both of these criteria. As it relates to the first criteria,

[07:06:36] Montclair is not in a priority area. Strategy 9A of the comp plan explicitly states, quote, the priority area in Crozet is the downtown. Montclair is not downtown. In fact, it is located about two miles from downtown Crozet. Furthermore, strategy 9b of the comp plan says the board should give priority to rezonings that are consistent with priority areas. Because Montclair is located far outside of Crozet's priority area, Montclair should not be given priority. The second criteria

[07:07:14] for new development, that it must be matched with infrastructure availability, provides the only exception for when growth can occur outside of a priority area. Strategy 9C instructs the board as follows, quote, do not approve rezoning outside of priority areas when planned facilities are not in place to support the project and existing neighborhoods unless the proposed project will provide significant improvements to ensure adequate infrastructure and services are available to the

[07:07:49] area. Montclair does not meet the criteria to satisfy the exception. As you will hear tonight, infrastructure is severely lacking in the Montclair area, and the Montclair proposal provides no significant improvements to ensure adequate infrastructure and services. Tonight, we respectfully urge the members of the board to follow the county's comp plan and thus vote no on Montclair because it does not comply in two critical ways. One, the comp plan says growth is to be located in priority areas. Montclair is not located in a priority area. And two, the comp plan

[07:08:27] says the only exception for growth outside of priority areas is if adequate infrastructure already exists or will be gained by the project. Currently, adequate infrastructure does not exist, nor will Montclair provide any significant improvements to infrastructure. Thank you.

[07:08:45] Thank you. Our next speaker. Please hold applause. Thank you. introduce yourself please and good evening my name is minsu kim and i live in crozet tonight i respectfully ask the board of supervisors to deny montclair proposal because it does not comply with the county comp plan as the speaker before me explained to you that speaker also explained the criteria which would allow the board to make an exception for growth to take place outside of the

[07:09:19] priority and how montclair does not meet those requirements for an exception because montclair is not located in the downtown Crozet. It could only be approved via the exception rule in strategy 9c if planned facilities were already in place to support Montclair and the existing neighborhoods or if Montclair will provide significant improvements to ensure adequate infrastructure to be made available to the area. Neither scenario is true for Montclair. Therefore respectfully the board must vote no on Montclair. I would like to provide more context regarding Crozet's infrastructure

[07:09:55] needs. Crozet now lacks $100 million worth of new infrastructure just to support its current population. Let me repeat that. $100 million worth of critical infrastructure is lacking within Crozet. This information is just not something that I just made up. This comes directly from the cost estimates of the capital transportation projects which are detailed in the Crozet master plan, a derivative of the county's comp plan. Furthermore, the Crozet master plan states that the intersection of three-notched road and Park Ridge Drive, which the Montclair development would

[07:10:31] abut, is already dangerous and congested. This intersection is expected to be designated by VDOT with a grade F level of service. A grade F LOS is the worst safety rating for an intersection. The Crozet master plan also states that a roundabout at this particular intersection could sufficiently address the expected traffic operation issues at that intersection. But But unfortunately, the Montclair proposal does not include plans for any such roundabout.

[07:11:01] If Montclair is approved, it will add even more cars causing you to do this already dangerous intersection. This would exacerbate the safety issues at that intersection as well as cause more traffic congestion. In summary, Crozet's infrastructure is severely lacking with estimates that it needs 100 million in new infrastructure just to support the current population.

[07:11:24] Approving Montclair will only make this worse. are no planned facilities already in place to support Montclair and the existing neighborhoods and there are no significant infrastructure improvements nor services to be gained by the Montclair proposal. Therefore, respectfully, I ask the board to vote no against Montclair.

[07:11:44] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The next three people, Kimberly Gale, and if you'll please come down. Dean Ellison and Steve Walsworth. Hello, my name is Kimberly Gale and I've lived in Crozet for 26 years. I respectfully ask the Board of Supervisors to deny the Montclair proposal because Montclair does not comply with the county's comp plan and it does not meet the

[07:12:20] requirements for an exception under the plan because Montclair does not provide significant improvements to infrastructure, and no such adequate infrastructure nor facilities are currently in place. I want to point out to the board that the Eastern Avenue Connector was originally a contingency project, a catalyst project for growth.

[07:12:43] This connector project dates all the way back to 1980. The promise of the Eastern Avenue Connector was one of the factors that prompted the county to change the future of Crozet by designating our town as a growth area. 44 years later, the Eastern Avenue connector project is essentially obsolete. Realistically, it is just not going to be built. In October of 2023, Mr. McDermott stood before you to explain that the county planners downgraded this pivotal connector project from what was once number eight on the county's priority

[07:13:20] list to its current disappointing priority number of 78. It fell in priority from number 8 to 78. Why? Because of its new price tag and its many environmental impact factors. The new estimated cost for the Eastern Avenue Connector is $39.5 million, and it is no longer expected to be fully funded. The evolution of the Eastern Avenue Connector Project from a high-priority initiative to one with diminished feasibility is indeed a pivotal factor in evaluating the evaluability

[07:13:58] of proposals such as Montclair. Crozet's dependence on that connector for its infrastructure needs underscores the importance of re-evaluating development plans in light of these shifting circumstances. The bottom line is this. Plans for growth outside of the Crozet priority area were contingent upon the expectations that the Eastern Avenue connector would be built to support this growth, and we know that that will no longer happen. We urge the county to vote in accordance

[07:14:33] with the comp plan and to reject the Montclair proposal, and P.S. the daycare center is not in approval of this plan that bottom left corner up there is taking away its entire current playground area thank you thank you please hold applause they didn't hear you please hold applause thank you please don't applaud and it's going to take a lot of time when everybody applauds after every

[07:15:04] speaker um dean ellison yeah elias thanks that's fine hi good evening i'm dean elias and my um my family's here with me and I've lived in Crozet for 19 years. I've served on the CCAC, Western Ridges HOA. I'm a teacher at Monticello High School and a coach. Tonight I respectfully ask the board to deny Montclair proposal because it does not comply with the county's comp plan as we've heard. We've also heard about Crozet's severe lack of critical infrastructure and safety issues which would be exacerbated by the Montclair proposal. But I'd like to talk about another

[07:15:40] safety issue which Montclair would exacerbate. The highly dangerous intersection of route 240, 250, and 680. This is a large and complex intersection located less than one mile to the east of the Montclair site. At this split, if you've been there, you know, all these three roads awkwardly converged and intersect at various angles and speeds to create a unique commuter hazard. In fact, in 2018, VDOT ranked this intersection as the 17th worst for safety and operational concerns for the entire Culpeper District. It has also been the target of a STARS study, which deemed it one of the top 20 most dangerous intersections in the nine-county area

[07:16:20] for the last decade. This congested intersection impedes emergency vehicle access and often creates a bottleneck of over 30 cars, which I am one, crawling towards Route 250 during the hectic morning rush to commute to Charlottesville. I am highlighting this intersection for two reasons.

[07:16:38] First, the intersection is located along one of the two main arteries, which connects Crozet with Charlottesville, the other being I-64. As such, many Crozet residents pass through this critical intersection several times a day. Secondly, more importantly, if Montclair gets approved, all of its residents who travel east to Charlottesville will pass through this intersection.

[07:16:59] This will increase delays on 240 and further aggravate the already dangerous and unsafe conditions that cause VDOT to rank this intersection as the 17th worst in the district. We were pleased earlier this month when you, our supervisors, approved the resolution to commitment to roadway safety goals. Your approval demonstrates your support for the Move Safely Blue Ridge mission and that you will prioritize the implementation of recommended safety countermeasures necessary to help achieve the district's goal of reducing roadway fatalities and serious injuries.

[07:17:32] We thank you supervisors for your work to ensure that adequate critical infrastructure is fully constructed in alignment with VDOT safety countermeasures before approving rezonings like Montclair, which lack infrastructure, are located outside the priority area, and will make our roads even more dangerous, especially at the intersection of 240, 250, and 680. In accordance with the resolution of commitment to roadway safety goals and in compliance with the comprehensive plan, I ask you guys, please respectfully vote no against Montclair. Thank you. Steve Walsworth. Yes.

[07:18:10] Walsworth. Yes. Hi. Thanks. Good evening, supervisors. I'm Steve Walsworth. I've lived than Crozet for over 21 years. I'm going to talk about the number of county-approved new housing units that are projected to be built versus the county's new housing goal for the year 2044.

[07:18:33] Sometimes we hear about a planning commissioner or a county supervisor who is reluctant to deny a housing proposal based on a perceived housing shortage. Data actually shows that the county has exceeded its own 2044 new housing goal of 12,000 new homes that are in the entire county before the year 2044. In October of 2022, the county had already approved 9,300 new housing

[07:19:07] units to be built out of this 12,000 goal. Since October 2022, the county had approved an additional 4,400 new housing units to be built. That makes for a total of 13,700 new housing units approved by the county that have not yet been built. The 13,700 new housing units exceeds the county goal of 12,000 by 1,700 new housing units or that's 14 percent exceeding the

[07:19:40] goal. At this rate, the county could have projected surplus. The surplus could even become greater. Based upon proposals this year, possibly like Seag, North Point, Holly Hills, there could easily be another 2,400 new homes approved for a new total of 16,100 approved new homes by 2044. That's a

[07:20:10] possible, the possible 16,100 new homes approvals will exceed 12,000 by 34%. That's 34% exceeding the goal. Keep in mind that the new housing units already approved, the county does include the affordable housing goal of 15%. So that makes a, you can see a significant growth in the affordable housing numbers of more than 2,000 be approved and yet to be built. In summary, Albemarle County

[07:20:45] is well ahead in exceeding its goal of approved new housing units for 2044 and possibly by 34%. Given this projected excess, it's only logical that developments, that only developments be approved going forward from this point that clearly comply with the comp plan. As others here tonight have shown, Montclair does not comply with the comp plan. Therefore, I urge you to vote

[07:21:14] no on the Montclair rezoning proposal. Thank you. Rashmi Guy, Julie McCluck, Laura Pittman. Rashmi was first. Yes, ma'am. You pronounced my last name correctly. Thank you. You're welcome. It's a first perhaps for me. Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Rashmi Guy and I live in Crozet. Professionally, I'm an environmental scientist who works on projects

[07:21:49] involving recreational water quality and drinking water. I share with you tonight my concerns about the detrimental environmental impacts that Montclair proposal will have. The proposed density and construction on approximately 15 acres will further stress the stream that flows through the site. The construction and density will negatively affect the health of the stream, its aquatic life, and the wildlife who use the stream as a vital water source. This will result in habitat loss and more animal human encounters. I'm concerned about the water runoff, which will carry chemical

[07:22:26] pollutants and sediment from the construction and from everyday residential activities into the stream. It's important to note that the Montclair site and its stream are entirely within the water supply watersheds for Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville. Furthermore, I am leery to believe any reassurances from the developer and his team regarding their intentions to reduce the proposal's environmental impact. Why? Because of their track record. Two years ago, in an effort to gain approval to develop the land and to build as many homes as possible, this same group carried out

[07:23:01] two questionable acts. One, they physically buried the headwaters of the stream on this property in attempt to dry it out. And two, they had the stream and its riparian buffers removed from the county GIS maps. Thanks to a field study by the Army Corps of Engineers which showed the stream the community was able to discover and expose these dubious acts. The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. Two years ago this developer was willing to act unethically to try and avoid the extra responsibilities that come with protecting a stream. So it stands to reason that in the future the developer and his team will

[07:23:41] attempt to cut corners again. However, when this happens, it is possible that it won't be discovered by community members, which will result in permanent consequences. Tonight, the board has heard details how the Montclair plan does not comply with the comp plan, how Crozet already lacks $100 million of critical infrastructure for its current population, how Montclair would exacerbate safety issues in Crozet, and how the county has already approved a surplus of housing units waiting to be built, including affordable housing. Now, I respectfully implore you to vote no against the Montclair zoning proposal to protect Crozet's precious

[07:24:21] environment and wildlife habitat. Thank you. Julie McCulloch. Good evening. My name is Julie McCulloch. I've lived 14 years in Albemarle County and seven in Crozet. Tonight, I respectfully ask the Board of Supervisors to deny the Montclair proposal because it does not comply with the county's comp plan in numerous ways, as we've heard. We've also heard about Crozet's lack of infrastructure, and we've just heard about the development team's unethical measures to avoid protecting the stream. But I want to talk about the actual overcrowding of Crozet and how it impairs

[07:25:00] our quality of life from a pedestrian perspective. We are unable to safely walk or bike to most of Crozet's attractions due to the lack of connected sidewalks or paved paths. We could not safely walk or bike to downtown Crozet or to the library or to the grocery store. My children certainly cannot safely walk or bike to school. Sure, I could bike or walk to these attractions if I was willing to do so on the actual road, and some people in fact do this, but it is dangerous, especially given that many of these roads are quite narrow and today's drivers are distracted. And Montclair, which aims

[07:25:37] to add 122 new homes without adding any substantial infrastructure will make life even more dangerous and unsafe for pedestrians by putting more cars onto our already uncrowded roads, specifically 240, as well as Park Ridge Drive and Park Road. Simply put, Montclair will further impair the quality of life in Crozet. The developer for Montclair has offered to provide a shared use path on the north end of the property, but this will not enhance pedestrian infrastructure in any material way. The shared use path would be approximately 500 feet, less than one-tenth

[07:26:13] of a mile, and connect to literally nothing. It will not make the slightest dent in Crozet's $100 million lack of infrastructure, despite what the developer may claim. Earlier this month, when discussing the Avon proposal, Supervisor Pruitt characterized individual proffered segments, such as the one Montclair is proposing, as baffling and absurd, because it results in a pedestrian infrastructure that is neither coherent nor strategic. I completely agree with him. It is not the right way to deploy critical infrastructure to a community, and this

[07:26:48] is what Montclair proposes, a shared use path that is piecemeal and unconnected to any other pedestrian infrastructure. Montclair will make life in Crozet even more hazardous to pedestrians and bicyclists. I fear that someone will have to die before the safety issue is taken seriously by the county. I have seen a pet get run over in a hit and run on Park Ridge Drive, and I myself have almost been hit walking with my dog by people speeding in excess on Park Ridge, using it as a road of egress between these communities because we do not have the Eastern Avenue connector. For these reasons, as well as the many other reasons you've heard tonight, the board must respectfully

[07:27:27] vote no against Montclair. Laura Pittman. Good evening. My name is Laura Pittman, and my family and I have lived in Crozet for over 15 years. What I would like to address tonight is also the overcrowding and how it is stressing our town's public services and thus negatively impacting our quality of life. As a parent and runner, every day I witness cars speeding along Park Ridge Drive, especially in the morning when there are also children waiting

[07:28:02] by the side of the road for the school bus. One key reason, as Ben explained, is because there are very few ways to get in and out of the neighborhood. Unfortunately, Montclair will also add and worsen the congestion in this intersection, and that is because everyone leaving from there will have to go the same direction. At the September 23rd planning commission meeting, the developer stated that traffic conditions are safe in the area and that traffic isn't quote that bad. These are very interesting comments coming from someone who does not live there, nor travels this route every day, nor has experienced mornings where it can take 15 to 20

[07:28:41] minutes to get down to the Y, as Dean explained, one of the most dangerous intersections as it is. Unfortunately, overcrowding isn't just a problem for our roads. It's also a problem for our schools. And as a parent who has raised four children through the local school system, graduating from the years 2013 to 2023. I have experienced this firsthand. I can also comment that my 2023 grad was very excited that I was here speaking about this tonight and that it

[07:29:14] affected his school year tremendously. There are, and anybody can be in the hallways when the bell rings at Henley and just see how that feels. Crozet's middle school and high school are already bursting at the seams with eight trailers being used at Western and eight at Henley. Crozet's overcrowding is hurting our quality of life and stressing our public services. How? Through increasing our commute time, increasing the response time of emergency vehicles, creating unsafe conditions for our citizens, and hurting the education of our children. Montclair will only

[07:29:53] make these factors worse. Therefore, we respectfully urge the board to vote no against Montclair, And I sincerely hope that everyone here, you are listening and that we are being heard and that while I understand each project needs to be decided on on its own, we trust that you all are keeping your eye on the big picture.

[07:30:16] Thank you. The next three names, Joan Fadden, Lee Gale, and Bill O'Malley. And Joan, you're up first. Thank you and good evening.

[07:30:37] I appreciate this opportunity. My name is Joan Fadden and I am a resident of Crozet. Respectfully, I ask the Board of Supervisors, you, to deny the Montclair project because it does not comply with the county comprehensive plan.

[07:30:54] Tonight, I want to point out to the Board a few distinctions about Crozet. Unlike other growth areas designated in the county's Com Plan, Crozet lacks adequate infrastructure, employment opportunities, residential amenities like retail, personal services, restaurants.

[07:31:15] This means many of these residents, for these needs and services, we go to Charlottesville or Waynesboro. Crozet is a true satellite community and the population growth is far outpacing the infrastructure and amenities.

[07:31:31] Since 2004, when the county designated Crozet as a growth area, we have watched our green spaces disappear, our roads get more crowded, and our schools get more overcrowded, all degrading to our community.

[07:31:47] A previous speaker pointed out the Crozet master plan shows that our town requires $100 million in new infrastructure just to support the current population. This deficit in Crozet's much-needed infrastructure has grown exponentially over the last decade, along with Crozet's population.

[07:32:10] The deficit will only increase if Montclair is approved and to the detriment of our Crozet residents. The county designated downtown Crozet as the priority area for growth, not the area where Montclair is planned.

[07:32:28] As mentioned earlier, the master plan indicates $100 million of critical infrastructure is missing for Crozet. The Montclair Department development will most certainly compound and exacerbate this known deficit of critical infrastructure.

[07:32:46] I respectfully request the members of this board to acknowledge that the Montclair proposal does not comply with the county's comprehensive plan and must be denied. Thank you. Lee Gale. Good evening. My name is Lee Gale. I'm a 26-year resident of Crozet. Tonight, I specifically ask that the board deny the Montclair proposal because it does not comply with the county's comp plan in numerous ways, as you've heard tonight.

[07:33:21] We appreciate that the Board of Supervisors may be reluctant to deny some rezoning applications for fear of creating a moratorium against rezoning. However, a vote against Montclair will not create a moratorium of any sort.

[07:33:38] Virginia's Attorney General has encouraged all boards of supervisors to judge and approve or disapprove every application fairly on its own merits. In accordance with the Attorney General's guidance, the decision here tonight pertains only to Montclair and will have no bearing on other proposals.

[07:34:00] Voting no on Montclair because it does not comply with the county's comp plan will not establish a moratorium. To be clear, we are against establishing a moratorium. Please simply judge Montclair on its own values. In summary, we support growth in Crozet, but we support growth that is responsible growth, growth that has significant infrastructure support, and growth that is aligned with and in compliance with the Comprehensive Plan.

[07:34:32] Montclair is none of these things. Montclair is not responsible growth because it severely lacks infrastructure support. And Montclair does not align with nor comply with the Comp Plan because it is located well outside of Crozet's priority area, and it provides no significant infrastructure improvements.

[07:34:54] Therefore, respectfully, the members of the board are urged to vote no against Montclair and without worry of establishing a moratorium. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Bill O'Malley. Good evening.

[07:35:15] Chairman Andrews, Board of Supervisors, I'm Bill O'Malley, a resident and small business owner in Crozet. Tonight, I stand before you to voice a critical concern that affects us all, the Montclair proposal's glaring disregard for our county's comprehensive plan.

[07:35:32] You've heard how this proposal will intensify the already acute infrastructure deficit in Crozet, which will exacerbate our town's overcrowding and safety risk. Like others, when my wife and I moved to Crozet, we fully expected future growth in our town.

[07:35:49] But we expected that growth to be responsible and in compliance with the comp plan. The Montclair proposal starkly contradicts this vision, failing to meet the plan's criteria and if approved, it promises to severely impact our community's quality of life.

[07:36:07] This is not just my stance, but the collective outcry of more than 942 petitioners. I'm sorry, that's changed. It's 956 since this meeting began. And countless attendees here and online united against Montclair.

[07:36:23] They've all signed this petition. Because Crozet is a satellite community, we lack the political representation that other areas in the county have. We rely on you as a whole board to represent our best interest and to oversee the big picture and to ensure growth in Crozet is responsible.

[07:36:43] So I ask you, have we reached that tipping point? So as a reminder, here are the new housing proposals you heard earlier about the county, but in Crozet that you've already approved just this year alone. Pleasant Green 173 homes, Glenbrook 140, Old Dominion 115, Park Road, the Home Park 14 homes, Jarman's Gap 5 homes.

[07:37:07] The total of these homes you approved last year still waiting to be built is 477. And with other Crozet developments not completed, like Old Trail, it's estimated that Crozet now has over 1,000 approved homes in the pipeline just waiting to be built.

[07:37:26] Some might argue that at 122 homes, Montclair is a small-scale project. But we need to look at these approvals in their totality for their overall impact on traffic, safety, and quality of life. For Crozet, approving more homes like Montclair without a plan for supporting infrastructure and services, in my view, is irresponsible.

[07:37:50] Montclair's noncompliance with the comp plan threatens to erode the fabric of Crozet, push our town over the tipping point. You have the power to deny this proposal because Montclair is not located within Crozet's priority growth area. And we've established tonight that it does not comply with strategy 9C of the comp plan to earn that exception.

[07:38:12] Therefore, with our community's welfare at heart, I urge you to vote against the Montclair proposal. The next three names. Thank you. Luke Fairbourn, Dan Sheets, and Heidi Brown. Mr. Fairbourn, you're first. Thank you.

[07:38:30] Good evening. My name is Luke Fairbourn, and I also live in Crozet. Tonight, we have heard many compelling reasons on why the board should vote no against Montclair. First and foremost, Montclair does not comply with the county's comp plan.

[07:38:52] It is located outside of Crozet's priority area and does not meet the criteria for any exception. Montclair will exacerbate Jose's lack of infrastructure, creating unsafe conditions and stressing public services, including our schools.

[07:39:12] Montclair will destroy habitat and harm a stream. In terms of housing stock, Montclair is not needed. The county already has approved more than enough homes for the next 23 years. Lastly, as evidenced by the collective outcry of over 950 petitioners and the many speakers here tonight, the Crozet community strongly opposes Montclair.

[07:39:41] Board of Supervisors, we truly respect your work on behalf of the county. We support your efforts to facilitate growth. But please don't approve growth for the sake of growth. Please approve proposals based on their merits.

[07:39:58] And the merits of Montclair are severely lacking. The proposal is ill-conceived. Before submitting the proposal, the developer had full knowledge of the comp plan and full knowledge that Montclair is located far outside the priority area.

[07:40:20] Therefore, they should have known that the proposal would not satisfy the zoning criteria, the rezoning criteria. Not only has the developer put forth an ill-conceived proposal, but they have acted unethically. The property contains a stream, and the developer, to advance the project, physically buried the headwaters of the stream. Compounding this misdeed, they erased a segment of the stream from the county's GIS system. Thankfully, the Army Corps of Engineers

[07:40:55] intervened and saved the stream, but I am very concerned by the developer's unethical actions. Next time, we might not have the Army Corps to protect us. Some of the claim that voting no on Montclair would be unfair to the developer.

[07:41:14] On the contrary, for all the reasons you've heard tonight, voting yes would be unfair to the residents of Crozet. In closing, for the sake of the community and to comply with the comm plan, I respectfully request that you vote no against Montclair.

[07:41:31] Thank you very much. Thank you. Dan Sheets. Thank you. My name is Dan Sheets. I'm a seven-year resident of Crozet in the Whitehall District. I'm not here tonight to deny firefighters a 401k.

[07:41:47] I'm not here tonight to make up stories that the Army Corps of Engineers didn't find a stream that wasn't there that is really there. I'll leave that to others in the room. I'm also not here to claim that white picket fences and little alleyways with flowers in them are a beautiful sign in our community.

[07:42:05] What I'm hoping for out of our relationship with you all, respectfully, is that we improve Crozet. Let's get past this patchwork quilt. This is not Napa, California. It will never be that way. It's got weeds growing everywhere. It's got a super fun site downtown.

[07:42:21] It's got ugly fencing. Let's fix that. Let's get beyond squabbling over how we squeeze 150 more homes into this really small field and how we build trees that won't be cut down with a stream that will actually fill up and there'll be a sluice way next to those beautiful houses. I'm just imploring you to go home tonight with a feeling that you did something right for us and then we will all feel that same satisfaction when we go to sleep instead of being in the bag for developers. Thank you.

[07:42:52] Heidi Brown. Good evening. My name is Heidi Brown and I've lived in Crozet for 24 years And first of all, I wanted to say thank you to the board for all of the work that you do for the county.

[07:43:10] I know it's not easy balancing growth and development issues with stewarding the resources or lack thereof in Crozet. But I am here tonight to urge you to please deny this proposal, and here's why.

[07:43:27] I'm a journalist. I've heard from so many people, and I don't think you fully understand how many people are opposed and upset and angry in my neck of the woods about this continued growth, this Montclair project in particular.

[07:43:45] So I just wanted to share some of the fellow citizens in my neck of the woods and what they had to say on the online petition that over 935 of them signed. So David wrote, we need to beef up structure before adding more demands on an already overburdened basic physical and organizational structures and facilities in Crozet.

[07:44:09] Ann wrote, the Montclair proposal will only exacerbate the already overloaded infrastructure. One example of the town not being ready for more development is how the recent school rezoning did not include this new proposal. The roads are overloaded at the present time. Let's fix the infrastructure before adding to already overburdened basic physical and organizational structures and facilities in Crozet. Helen writes, I oppose any new housing development in the Crozet area. All infrastructure is already overwhelmed, as you've heard so many times tonight. As supervisors, you are responsible

[07:44:49] to protect our resources and provide infrastructure already voted on. It seems that all one cares about is how to raise taxes and spend our dollars detrimental to the taxpayers. I'm going to add my own comments. As a board, you need to make sure that the developments that you have green-lighted are meeting the obligations to the county, and they are not. And I'm talking about the environmental issues and the problems that have been left behind by these developments after their proffers.

[07:45:20] that you think are fulfilled but are not. For example, Southland Homes was permitted to build out at Westlake. As part of the proffer, they were required to plant hundreds of trees to replace the forest that they ripped out along the Licking Hole Creek Basin.

[07:45:37] Three years later, there are thousands of trees just strangled by the plastic sheeting that they left behind. It's a travesty. You go down the trail and there's nothing but trash and plastic and the trees are not able to grow.

[07:45:54] They're getting fungus and weird things, and it's a problem. It needs to be cleaned up, and you need to look after that. If you have comments that you want to provide to the clerk, please do. Barbara, and I'm going to pause just a minute because I'm not sure if this is Barbara Westbrook or Barbara Westbrook.

[07:46:13] Westbrook? Westbrook? Maybe it's Westbrook. Barbara Westbrook? And the next person is Charles Fortlidge. Oh, Frank, see, I'm sorry.

[07:46:32] I'm struggling to read handwriting, and with my pronunciation, it's a problem, too. I apologize. And Colin Stephen. Stephen? Stephen. All right. Please proceed. Go right ahead, Barbara. Thanks. Barbara Rosencrantz-Westbrook.

[07:46:48] I'm proud to say I was born in Crozet 77 years ago. What Montclair may have bearing on my concern, um my concern is the intersection of crozet avenue south the intersection with 250 west and miller school road north uh i live about a half mile i live in parkview subdivision which my father developed in 1965 about a half mile north of 250 i have nothing prepared so i'll

[07:47:25] have to use my brain. This morning, my neighbor's daughter missed the bus to Western. So I had to drive her there. It's about one and a quarter mile, 1.4 miles to Western from my house. It took me at least 15 minutes just to get to 250. Once you get to 250, the right turn lane is only about 20 feet long and once you get there you've got to wait for all the traffic coming from from 250 east

[07:48:05] and middle school road and once you do get on to 250 the traffic's already backed up from western that's another 15 minutes it took me to go 1.4 miles a half hour um i have i'm not a planner but I've had a lot of common sense and had two solutions, one, a longer right-hand turn and something to do with the stoplights to keep all this traffic from all bombarding us trying to get

[07:48:40] to 250. I think that's it. Thank you. And Montclair traffic would bear on this too. Thank you. Charles Fralick, it was a good try. Good try. I apologize, but thank you. I live in Crozet with my family. I just wanted to thank you for listening to us. I think the other speakers made it very eloquently clear there's empirical reasons to deny the Montclair submission. I did note as

[07:49:16] well, Mr. Pruitt, thank you for digging into the green space protection area and the road that appears to cut through it. And I don't know why the green space on the remaining light industrial was not shown on most of the indications there, but it also spoke to, and I think I heard it referenced a bit with the other speakers, and in fact, from our applicant referring to the fact that they had to change the plan as the water problem was how he put it, his water problem that killed the profits, part of the profits for his project. So when we talk about what would be the

[07:49:51] downstream, both literally and metaphorically, results of approving this development, they are unclear at best so please respectfully deny the application and thank you for your time thank you evening my name is colin steven i live in crow's i live in wickham pond for the last 12 years just three quick points i agree with much of what's been said here before me three quick points from a more local perspective or a hyper local perspective i don't believe there's enough

[07:50:26] parking set aside for on-street parking. The houses that I live around don't absorb all the houses, all the cars that live in the neighborhood, and so we are kind of always dealing with the on-street parking, and I think given the 122, maybe that 240 cars that will be coming in there will potentially spill over into our neighborhood, exacerbating our already problematic parking situation uh second point uh i'm wondering about the more comprehensive approach to that path along

[07:51:03] the front of the neighborhood the block to the right which is part of wickham pond would then so we'd have a path pretty much going to nowhere and then a little another section of path going nowhere in wickham pond and then uh finally if you do uh eventually approve this neighborhood i would recommend strongly that you stipulate construction traffic doesn't use uh wickham pond as an entrance to the neighborhood. So thank you very much. And that's our last speaker in

[07:51:36] person. Claudette, I'm looking at you. So we have one person who's speaking electronically and it's Ian Atkins. So I'll let you take it from there. Thank you. I can hear you. Yeah. Thank you. Sorry, I couldn't be there in person. My whole family's recovering from COVID. So appreciate the opportunity to speak remotely and thank you guys for your

[07:52:12] service I'm a small business owner in Crozet married to a preschool teacher in Crozet and we have three children and all three of the public schools from elementary to high school and I'm just kind of here to reinforce what you're hearing in terms of looking at this project on its own merits but also in the scope of the bigger picture of what's happening in Crozet we live in

[07:52:46] western ridge and i can't even bike my kids to school because of the congestion just leaving our our neighborhood and the threat of being injured or killed by all the traffic and this development would exacerbate that issue um i guess my kind of question for you guys would be to think about what you're hearing and answer not even rhetorically but really answer the question of

[07:53:21] why vote yes on this? What is the reason to vote yes when all the evidence and information and appeals are saying the exact opposite? You are elected to serve in a responsible way, and to me, there's only one answer on how to vote on this issue. Obviously, we respect

[07:53:54] how you arrive at your decision, but I would like you to consider the real reason why you would vote yes on this. Thank you. Thank you. That's the last of our comments from the public, but now the applicant has five minutes for rebuttal. Perhaps I can answer any questions you might have. You know, frankly, in all honesty, the folks who live around here, they all live in

[07:54:33] communities that went through exactly this process. And there's nothing a neighbor can gain by having a house built next door. So I'd rather have these folks be more considerate. Their projects went through exactly the same process as this, and they had plenty of people complaining.

[07:54:53] And what do they have to gain by having 122 houses built? They have nothing to gain, but the community does. We have to absorb these new people moving into our community. I frankly think we're doing a wonderful job.

[07:55:12] Is there anything I need to address what the folks said? You might want to have... Yeah, you've got time here for... You have some time. Oh, there you go.

[07:55:35] I'm Justin Shemp, the engineer of the project. Thank you all for the moment to speak. I've heard a lot of comments. There's a question about why I vote. Yes, it is that the community is growing. There are people who want to be part of this community who have a hard time finding housing. I don't know where all these approved plans are, because I know builders are always struggling to find lots.

[07:55:56] Many county employees don't live in Albemarle County because of the shortage of housing. So there's many reasons, but I start back a little further. We don't get to this point without having a discussion with the staff about a comprehensive plan and any impacts of this.

[07:56:12] I've heard infrastructure many, many times, and I've heard one specific thing, which is the 240-250 roundabout, which undoubtedly is a problem and needs to be fixed. But the good news is it is being fixed. I think VDOT starts construction on that spring of 2025. So before a house is ever occupied here, that's under construction.

[07:56:31] I expect before a house is ever finished, that roundabout is finished. So there are a lot of infrastructure money being put to these things. Now, we do have the sidewalks are not perfect. It was noted at the last meeting about Avon that the county has historically had sidewalks and infrastructure built by developers.

[07:56:49] that inherently makes it a little piecemeal because not all projects are developed at the same time but over a long period of time there are a lot of sidewalks in crozet is it perfect no but the county's comprehensive plan and design standards have brought developers like v to the table who have created good neighborhoods folks here mostly live in those neighborhoods and they would all say oh we love living here and it's fair to say we don't want to change right that's a very reasonable perspective to have but it's also reasonable to think about before they were there it was a farmland and it was developing housing and the county allowed that because they

[07:57:28] master planned out development pattern that would yield what you're getting which is neighborhoods like wickham pond next door mixture of housing nice sidewalks nice landscaping that's you're going to get here too so while we understand there's a concern for folks of things changing the only specific infrastructure we heard about was this roundabout which undoubtedly is an issue but it's getting fixed i think each every one of you would have in your district an area where There's a problem with schools, a problem with traffic.

[07:57:55] These are all things you're going to hear on any development. And if the standard was that we couldn't approve a development until all those things were adequately addressed, I don't know, you'd never have one. And you would have to raise taxes tremendously if you were simply to say, hey, we want to spend $100 million in Crozet.

[07:58:12] Well, that's going to be taxpayers paying that. And I think folks need to cognizance of that, that the pattern has happened over time, that the comprehensive plan has guided really good development, and those are things that will continue with this project. Kelsey, do you need to add anything? I just wanted to add just an item about the consistency with the comprehensive plan. That was talked about a ton at the Planning Commission, and the question was asked kind of directly of Cameron, you know, where is this plan not consistent with the comprehensive plan? And I think his response was something to the effect

[07:58:47] of it nearly checks every single box, and I think that's really the way that we felt about this in the staff report that we received in the analysis of the neighborhood model principles, building in spaces of human scale, connecting Wickham Pond Way, constructing the multi-use path along the frontage, which is a priority, having nearly three acres of open space, interconnected street and transportation network.

[07:59:14] It really does check every single box. I feel like we have a good proposal before you tonight and hope that we can move forward with it. Thank you. Thank you. Board, I'm sure that there are questions and questions for staff still remaining.

[07:59:31] So we'll go through our order, staying in the public hearing for the moment. Supervisor McKeel? Sure. I think it was just spoken to, but Cameron, can you just talk to us a little bit more about the comp plan, the master plan, from the context of the county?

[08:00:00] I think in the public comments that we just heard, there was a lot of reference to the Crozet priority areas. I'm sorry. Yeah, just a little bit closer. Can you hear me now? Yeah, that's great. Thank you. I think in the comments that we just heard, well, there were a lot of comments about the Crozet priority areas.

[08:00:22] In the master plan that applied to Crozet in 2010, there was a loosely defined priority area. It says, Downtown Crozet to the Music Today area.

[08:00:37] There's no map. There's not a list of tax map parcel numbers. It's a loosely defined area along 240. As of October 21st, 2021, that master plan doesn't apply anymore.

[08:00:54] In the 2021 master plan, there is no priority areas. What it focuses on for infrastructure investment is what is referred to as catalyst projects, priority projects. the language that says that you know development should be focused in priority areas which that comes from the main comprehensive plan it's one strategy amongst a half a dozen that's under one objective that's amongst another dozen the point is i think of all of these things is that when it

[08:01:28] comes to development it should be in areas that do have at least some level of infrastructure that can support it. And that includes things like utilities, roads, parks, schools, all of that. And as Ms. Schlein said, all I can say is that this plan or this project meets the future land use recommendations from the master plan that is in place and adopted today. It meets some significant infrastructure goals. Again, the catalyst project, which is the shared use path.

[08:02:06] It was noted one of the infrastructure issues, which is school capacity, but that's all I can really say. There is no specific priority area that says no development should be occurring here in the Crozet master plan. Thank you. I just feel like maybe you're the right person to ask, but from a historic perspective, there's a lot of discussion about how

[08:02:45] the developer buried the stream and changed the gis system can you help me with that i mean there there's a historic there's a there was some history about the stream but i think there's been some misunderstanding perhaps from my understanding it could you is there somebody

[08:03:06] that could help us with that maybe mr rosenberg mr herrick it's mr welcome good afternoon or Good evening, rather. Andy Herrick, deputy county attorney. Supervisor McKeel, that's an interesting question in that there was a time at which there was an understanding regarding that stream that, in fact, it was the Army Corps of Engineers that approved and has jurisdiction that allows that

[08:03:46] stream to be buried. When that stream is buried, it then affects the county's treatment of it under the Water Protection Ordinance. Again, the approval for the burying of the stream came from the Army Corps of Engineers. And once it was buried, again, that affected the treatment of an underwater protection ordinance. So I hope that answers your question. It does. It does. I saw Jody came down.

[08:04:07] Are you good? I didn't know if she wanted to add something or not. And one of the other concerns that I heard expressed was that the construction would degregate the water. Could we just talk a bit about during construction and what will happen and um to the stream and to the if this were to be approved or if any development at any point were to be approved for you know even something less dense than this it's going to be subject to the county's water protection ordinance regulations

[08:04:42] which are basically an expanded version of the virginia state erosion and sediment control regulations, as well as stormwater management regulations. I mean, we have various different application types that apply to different types of private development. And again, with all county staff, as well as our partner agencies, which do include state agencies, we review those proposals to ensure that, you know, things like runoff, which was mentioned, all of those things are mitigated in accordance with local and state regulations. Thank you. And I just have one

[08:05:19] more, one more question. If this plan is approved, the construction entrance, I think it's important that the construction entrance not go through the neighborhoods as much as, so I'm wondering, have we identified the construction entrance at this point? No, we have not identified the construction entrance. VDOT, I believe, is actually the one who determines the threshold or level of vehicle traffic that can be going into and out of a site when it is under construction

[08:05:54] i think what i what i could say is we would work to speak with vdot and try and figure out a way that they direct traffic not through the neighborhood if it's big construction vehicles yeah yeah um i did notice as with much construction you know i was out there the other day i actually spent almost eight hours sitting in my car and watching the traffic on 240 and then driving through all of these neighborhoods, including 240 to 250, just watching the pattern in the early

[08:06:32] morning and the evening. And one of the times I was there, I noticed that the construction that was taking place for the old house, I'm assuming that was what it was, and they were using that old gravel road and of course there's a lot of mud there just because on 240 because of construction entrances caused that and i just was was thinking it would be really great if we could somehow or another make sure that the construction entrance is not going through the neighborhoods

[08:07:01] yeah yeah and i think that's all i have for right now thank you supervisor galloway um based on some of the comments kevin is kevin still around cameron doesn't know the answer can we just clear I mean, there seems to be, I think this is the easier one, the 240, 250, 680.

[08:07:26] Can you just tell us what's coming for that? Because it sounds like we don't have anything in the works for that. But we do. Yes, sir. Can you give us an update of what's planned, timeline, that sort of thing? Absolutely. Kevin McDermott, Deputy Director of Planning. Thank you for the question, Supervisor Galloway.

[08:07:44] The 240-250-680 intersection, the one right by the trestle there, was funded through a H-SIP grant a number of years ago. Unfortunately, there were a lot of delays that had happened right at the beginning of COVID.

[08:08:01] So while we wish it would have been completed by now, it wasn't. But it was added to what is referred to as the Albemarle Bundle II, which is a group of VDOT projects that they put together. a number of roundabouts around the county, and it has already been bid out, and it is scheduled for construction beginning at the end of this next fiscal year. So it should be starting construction around summer of 2025. And Ann, this is the one with the truck arrest, right, that came up?

[08:08:38] No, that's the truck arrest is built on the downhill of Afton, so that roundabout is 151. That's that roundabout over there where they, I always thought that was part of this delay here. Got those two confused, but this one's in, so end of next fiscal year, end of fiscal year 25?

[08:08:55] Yes, correct. What's the price tag on that one, do we remember? I believe it was around $4 million, but it's tough to say now because it's been put together with a lot of other projects to try and save money. Now, the Eastern Avenue connector, I know that this came up.

[08:09:13] I know what we heard in the last transportation report. We never really, I never really dug into that with questions. But obviously, this is one I know that has been on Ann's radar for a long time. The uptick in the costs for that, was that contingency stuff or was that actual, were those actual numbers?

[08:09:32] Like, we've had plenty of projects that the contingencies will drive up the cost before we've got the engineering studies to really say, are those the appropriate cost upruns? Yeah, it was that uptick in cost, the one that when it went from what we had estimated to be just over $20 million up to $39 million, that was a mix of both the contingency and construction cost. And that happened during that period of really accelerated inflation that we saw just a few years back. And that was the result of that. So it's possible that contingency estimate is not

[08:10:11] exactly reality. Yes, I would agree with that. I think that among county officials, including engineering teams in our FES, we are very skeptical of that $40 million price tag. We need to do a lot more work to figure that out. We can't say for sure what the cost would be, but we do not believe that it's going to be up as high as 40 million under the and you can't answer this with certainty and nobody can hold you to what you're going to answer so i'm going to qualify it right up front

[08:10:48] thank you but under the new smart scale rankings where would this one do you think it would be we have not made a smart scale application for this project because we do not believe it would be very competitive under the smart scale scoring criteria. There are not significant identified safety issues that that would solve. There is not significant economic development within the area where that road would be going that would contribute to a high score. And frankly, there's

[08:11:22] not a large amount of congestion that's been identified in that area because of those factors we don't think it would score well under smart scale so we would be left with revenue sharing or something like that that we'd have to use so this is a big big ticket item that we might not likely not have smart scale available to us correct and we do we have applied for revenue sharing funding for this that's how we ended up at that 20 million dollar cost estimate we were awarded 8.1 million from the state that was before we found out it went up to 40 and when it went up

[08:11:58] to 40, VDOT said that we are not able to begin work on that until we get it fully funded at the $40 million level. So we had to take a pause on that. We are still, staff is still working to try and get that project constructed. We just have not found the funding and implementation vehicle for that yet. Thank you. In terms of, you've heard some concerns about speeding in these different areas. Have we had speed studies out in Park Ridge or along? Yes, we have. Yes, we've done them

[08:12:37] on Park Ridge and we have identified that Park Ridge does have excessive speeding on it. We've worked with Albemarle County Police Department to try and do additional enforcement out there and we are working to see if there's opportunities for us to implement traffic calming primarily on that area of park ridge from eastern avenue up just before the the bridge and it's we would really like to do some work out there i know we've heard from a lot of the neighbors we respect that we think that speed that speeds are too high on that road and we want to try and find a way to

[08:13:16] address it has the community done the community steps to get the threshold that vdot usually wants for traffic calming, or does that not matter since VDOT thinks it's a good idea? We have not started the process of the traffic calming study yet, which is when we start to get that public buy-in. We are, actually, we need a little bit of funding to be able to do some of the portions. There's an engineering review that's necessary for a traffic calming study, so we need a little bit of funding to be able to get that started before we'll start reaching out to the neighbors. But other than that, all the other steps have been taken to be able to move

[08:13:55] forward with a traffic calming plan. Thank you, Kevin. That's all the transportation stuff that I had. Thank you very much for that. Supervisor Malik? This is questions only? Is that where we are still? We're still trying to, we're still in the public hearing. We're still trying to find information. Okay. Well, actually, I don't have any questions right now. Thank you.

[08:14:22] Supervisor Pruitt. Yes, I want to thank Vice Chair McKeel and Supervisor Galloway for asking quite a lot of the things that were on my mind, but I was a little too nervous to ask to betray my own ignorance. So thank you so much for speaking my mind on that. I am a little curious.

[08:14:39] So the information we've heard about our housing build-out is pretty inconsistent with my own impression of the state of housing, both from county reports that we've received, including ones that are part of this development submission, note a continued lack of achieving our 2040 goals and also, frankly, my own subjective experience as someone who is planning on getting married and kind of looking at solo every now and then and knows what the market looks like. I'm wondering if anyone on staff would be willing to kind of speak to where we are in our housing build out and if some of the comments we've heard from the

[08:15:18] public are accurate on that. I can try and address that. I believe we did provide a response to some of those questions. I'm not sure if I'd admit it to the board yet, but we did do the land use build-out analysis back in 2022. There's a process for that. We look at the pipeline projects, So what has been approved, but is unbuilt, and what is under review.

[08:15:53] We looked at those numbers, and I think that was around 10,000 or so new units. And then we also, as part of that land use build-out analysis, look at all the land in the county, within the development area of the county, and the recommendations for the future land use on them.

[08:16:16] Of course, we remove all areas with environmental constraints. And keep in mind, this is all very high level. We cannot get exact numbers on this. But looking at that, we figured out what the theoretical maximum buildout is for the Albemarle County development areas.

[08:16:35] So you add the existing approved and unbilled and then the theoretical buildout analysis and came to that number. that we could fit about 24,000 homes within the development areas.

[08:16:54] Then we looked at, we had, or I say we, we did hire a consultant to do this, someone professional who looks at this, and they analyzed what we think would be the need for housing over the next 20 years.

[08:17:11] And at the high level, they determined that Albemarle County needs to build approximately 13,500 homes to address the needs of the county over the next 20 years. We do not have that number approved, but you can see that there's a difference that we can reach 24,000 and we need 13,000.

[08:17:37] We need that buffer because obviously most of that land is not going to be developed like it's called for in the comprehensive plan. Most of it won't be developed at all or based on our historical growth rates or our historical development patterns.

[08:17:54] We know that none of it really gets built out at the same level that's recommended in the comprehensive plan. To that exact point, we have a little over two acres here that's identified as middle density, which is a relatively high density area. that is not even in this proposal being used so there is a failure to meet maximum land use build out under under the land use build out plan even within this development it is actually underperforming that target right so that that is where that buffer you're speaking to comes yeah that's where that buffer is necessary and the buffer is also necessary because you need that buffer in order to keep housing prices low and because housing choice is related

[08:18:32] is geographical as well. So building housing in one area of the county doesn't really address all our housing needs because we need it in other areas of the county. It turns out there's only a few places on Zillow I can look at. It has to be in the district. I believe those are the only questions I still have. Thank you. Supervisor Lupisto-Kirtley. Yes, thank you very much.

[08:18:57] I understand that, I guess this would be for Mr. Langell, that they're recommending 122 homes, but that's the maximum amount, correct? So it could be lower than that? That's correct.

[08:19:13] Okay, so some of these things just haven't been vetted out yet. And the one thing that I, in Habitat, is going to build, I think, was it eight homes or 12, 12 homes, which, just to let the audience know, it's very hard to have an affordable home and to be able to set for sale because a lot of people are not able to buy that.

[08:19:42] But using Habitat, that really does work for a home sale, which is a plus. some will be rentals um i did want to clarify that i think because they can't it was mentioned about wickham that they didn't want that used for construction but from my understanding is coming into the community or building this out it would be through either park ridge or 240 that the construction trucks would come through would enter at those two roads not through wickham

[08:20:17] at all i mean yes i think it makes more sense i don't know why any sort of like a dump truck or something like that would try and traverse there's two residential streets that have to come into wickham and then turn right and then get into this property as opposed to obtaining a driveway permit from vdot right off 240 or even off parkridge drive which is a bigger road a wider road than wickham way i mean that would be my expectation just based on you know how it rationally would point out. Right, and then with the connector road through Wickham, through Wickham,

[08:20:56] in the other development to the right of this, it makes more sense that people in that development would actually be going through this new development to access either Park Ridge or 250 to exit instead of going back out through their own development, right? I would say so. Okay, I just wanted to clarify that part um and it doesn't sound like the eastern connector eastern avenue connector is coming anytime soon would that be a fair statement uh yeah i think for full build out

[08:21:31] as it's shown in the plan i wouldn't it's still a ways off and i do appreciate the fact that mr mcdermott mentioned how we do need a buffer because all these projects are never fully built out which is part of our problem as a board not really fully building out what we could build out in our development areas is that would that be correct that's correct um those are all the questions i have thank you thank you um i have two avenues of questions and again for staff

[08:22:08] one is just trying to understand the proper the additional shared use path and i see that as a an important part of our you know catalyst projects to get that shared juice path in but how much additional shared juice path is needed to get to say Crozet downtown how much does this contribute to that entire pathway as we've heard about piecemeal yeah in terms of linear feet from from these parcels all the way to Crozet Avenue it's about 10,000

[08:22:48] linear feet. So almost two miles. But, you know, for this segment of the shared use path that is specifically identified in the master plan as the catalyst project, it goes from the intersection of Park Ridge Drive to the primary entrance road in the Highlands. In total, that is about 7,500 square feet. And I believe this, hold on, I have the measure here. If the park that was getting

[08:23:20] built or is shown to be built uh with this zma i think it's about 750 square or 750 linear feet of that which uh hold on that's not right give me a moment let me try and find it i'm sure it's in this thing yeah and i guess i'm going to follow up with the question and mr mcdermott you might be better able to answer this is sort of what are the plans for accomplishing that catalyst project

[08:23:58] from from here how do we how do we uh how is it going to happen is it all through development or is it are there plans in the works uh well we we currently don't have any uh pending applications or anything like that to complete this and i just want to you know cameron knows a lot of the the linear foot uh but just for context admittedly this uh what's proffered in this development is a small portion of the total shared use path along Three Notch that we want to complete.

[08:24:33] We do think it's a key part because it connects to Park Ridge Avenue. And so once you get to Park Ridge Avenue, we're able to get people off of Three Notched Road. And now there is a full connection on Park Ridge that brings you all the way downtown to Crozet Avenue. And with the the pending build out of Barnes Lumber, with the pending build out of Barnes Lumber we will have that full connection in through Barnes Lumber because Hilltop Street will actually turn into

[08:25:08] a segment of Park Ridge. So you can go down, you can turn on the Park Ridge, follow that all the way through past Eastern Avenue and get on Hilltop and then Hilltop takes you down to Crozet Avenue to high street to all that stuff so we do believe that this is a key piece of it directly adjacent to this on the portion of Wickham Pond is a missing segment that we would like to see built there's been no development proposal on there but if a development proposal came in we would require them to build that segment and then there's another segment that's already built beyond that in the existing portion of Wickham Pond so you know there's a few key parts here

[08:25:49] we currently don't have any uh applications pending or immediate plans to fund the completion of that with uh with a cip project or anything like that as you all know we heard a little bit about our budget today we don't have a lot of money sitting around in our cip that we could turn to put this but it is something that we consider a high priority it was ranked highly in our transportation priority report that I had presented a draft to you all on back in the fall.

[08:26:23] So it is something that we recognize is important and we would like to continue moving forward on it. Okay. You mentioned using Park Ridge and my understanding is that there isn't actually in the proposal a sidewalk along Park Ridge or is there one existing? No, there is not. There are not facilities on this segment of park ridge on the new portion of park ridge that's built from eastern avenue over to hilltop connection there will be bike lanes on that section and as part of the uh the traffic calming study that i was discussing with supervisor galloway we would like to look

[08:27:03] at a way to get uh bike lanes in on that segment which would bring you up uh just just to south of the um the railroad uh and so we're really close once we get to there bike lanes are a little bit easier to construct than shared use paths uh so it might be something that's feasible that we could work on with vdot to do as part of their paving program okay thank you my next question is really probably a little bit on left field for you but i'm looking at the crozet master plan and trying

[08:27:37] to understand wrap my head around what the vision was and I'm I'm seeing Crozet becoming this kind of bedroom community and I don't know how much it was envisioned that Crozet would become a destination and a place where people would work as well so we've had several comments about live work live work but if everybody who lives in Crozet has to commute to Charlottesville not everybody but a lot um because there isn't that in crozet and i and i wondered if the master plan has addressed this and whether there have been issues with finding uh proper locations or people

[08:28:15] who uh businesses that are willing to locate there and what's happened with crozet that way uh yes i would say that um we we recognize that uh that residential is getting constructed out in Crozet much quicker than commercial or retail or anything else. And we would like to see it become much more of a mix. We just have not seen the development proposals that have come forward to achieve that. As the applicant mentioned, there is that section in Wickham Pond that's been sitting there unbuilt that is slated for mixed-use development. But I will say that with Barnes

[08:28:55] lumber moving forward one of the high priorities with that project is really to do non-residential development in the downtown area there was very little residential approved in phase one for that you can only get a very small number of units it's supposed to be primarily commercial and we continue to look for ways to get new commercial there is some new commercial space that's recently been built in old trail as well so we recognize this the comprehensive plan recognizes this we would like to see more mixed use more job creation in crozet and we think that's a it's

[08:29:32] a high priority have have we done anything that would tell us a sense of people who have to commute into crozet to work because they can't afford to live there i'm trying to understand sort of the the affordable housing issue strictly for croze as opposed to for the county as a whole um i'm not sure if we have an analysis okay i appreciate that just an attempt to try to wrap my head around it um other questions yes please um kevin it was interesting because in uh up to

[08:30:11] seven hours as i was watching the traffic in this whole area and observing one thing i noticed was that much of the traffic now I was there at 10 of 7 in the morning and I left at 9 much of the traffic both mornings much of the traffic going into the daycare center was coming off of 240 and coming in and I was and I'm you know I I have no this is anecdotal and but my I was suspecting that a lot of people were coming from Wickham Pond and coming in and dropping their children off of the

[08:30:46] daycare center and leaving so if we had this connection it would somehow or another maybe make it a little bit easier for people i'm just thinking out loud i don't know maybe not yeah i mean yeah it was interesting though how many of the people that were going to the daycare center were coming in off of 240 and then going back out yeah and that is why we the reason why we require these type of connections because we would like to have give people multiple options of ways to get to where they want to go so yeah it's the reason behind that sure the other thing that i noticed in my drive was of course that once you get over the bridge and i may have the wrong

[08:31:26] the the streets wrong i apologize but you're on park ridge and you gotta go over the bridge over the railroad track and you start up towards eastern avenue the road there past um well you know what I'm talking about. The road is really wide, and Eastern Avenue is really wide, has great sidewalks along it all through there, but my only point is that when roads are wide, people tend to speed. It increases the speed, and that I can see how that could really be a problem, but I had a question when you get up there. I discovered, of course, Eastern Avenue and looked at that, and that

[08:32:05] was great down at the one side what is so there's something there's a sign of something coming soon at the other side like bookends yeah excuse me this is audience please has has to be silent on this thank you i didn't interrupt you so eastern avenue is uh you know the the connection at eastern is uh one that and what's the other book bookend at the other side that goes to um well if eastern avenue right now where it ends up there in the glenbrook area um that's where it abuts up against

[08:32:43] the old uh acme visible records site that helps me in my brain is um which you know in the previous croze master plan there was the recommendation to have that full connection from 240 all the way down to 250 long eastern avenue a number of years ago we were informed that uh it's impractical I'll use those words because I spoke recently to a gentleman from DEQ who's been working on that site. It's impractical to be able to construct that northern segment at this time

[08:33:18] because of the ongoing RCRA cleanup. Yeah, the remediation. Exactly. So that northern portion is likely going to be a while before we're going to be able to get to it. It's the southern portion that we're, as I said, really working to try and find a way to get moving. I just wanted a little help on that because there were some construction vehicles and some look like some storage there and it was just so i was just curious as to what that connected to so you helped me with my map thank you very much and i only have one more question andy would you do you mind speaking to

[08:33:52] we hear a lot about we haven't completed any infrastructure and we should be completing the infrastructure before we're approving new developments and i know with the planning commission. You spoke to that. Would you speak to that again tonight? Yes, ma'am. And I think one of the speakers actually addressed this as well, that the attorney general has opined that there cannot be moratoriums against development based on infrastructure. And the reason for that is that each individual development needs to be considered on its own merits. So the board's not in a position

[08:34:26] to just make a blanket denial of any applications based on perceived faulty infrastructure. It has to be on a case-by-case determination. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I'm going to look to everyone to let me know if you, Supervisor Malik? I guess the follow-up with that is that we are doing the case-by-case tonight. No one's trying to get anything else. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have right now. Okay. Let us know when you're ready for comments. Any other questions? Any other questions to staff? Because I closed the public hearing and it's back before the board without

[08:35:05] further input okay we'll close the public hearing matters back before the board and we'll go through our order supervisor mckeon we're at the point where you want comments and the final yeah the portion of this that's great um let me pull my microphone over i'm sorry um i am supportive of this project and i think if i think about the merits of the project i can go through them because I've made a list, and I'll just use my list.

[08:35:42] The project is consistent with the Crozet Master Plan land use. The proposal is consistent with all the neighborhood model principles. Even parking was mostly met. That's the one that was not considered complete.

[08:36:02] It provides transportation improvements as recommended by the Crozet Master Plan. It provides 15% affordable housing consistent with our current requirements and 18 units.

[08:36:18] And Stacey has given her blessing to this as an affordable housing project. I really appreciate the vehicular and pedestrian connectivity. The green space and recreational improvements are very appreciated.

[08:36:38] sidewalks, trails, multi-use paths along 240, the frontage of 240, and it accomplishes the needed density goals while providing a mix of unit types that we often discuss as a board that we need. I lived in an efficiency combination apartment that was just a little tiny efficiency apartment when I first moved here in 75 overall off of Lamb's Road. And it was a great starter for me. I was in the basement of somebody's house, you know, so it's a little efficiency down. And so I

[08:37:17] think we need more of that type of mix. It helps achieve a cohesive bike, pedestrian, trail network in Crozet's development area. And it meets the county's water protection ordinance. And the only thing I would add to that is that I know there have been some concerns about schools. There have Crozet Elementary School has just received an addition. The elementary schools and the middle school that we're talking about in this area are not over capacity. The Western Albemarle High

[08:37:54] School is somewhat over capacity, but the good news is that the Center 2 that has already been approved to be built on the Lambs Lane campus, I'm asked today from the school division and was told that the expectation is it will take up to 120 seats from Western Albemarle High School when it opens, and it's projected to open in about two years. So what I'm saying is, to be honest with you, there will be capacity at Western Albemarle, given the plan that the

[08:38:32] school board has for building their sender model. And with that, I think I'll finish. Thank you. Okay. Supervisor Galloway. Thank you. I'll start with one item that I think these TIA, I think the traffic analysis on these smaller projects, I do think, because this has happened in my district as well, where we have these small ones and they, you know, they say, well, doesn't merit the full analysis so I this this project in a lot of ways reminds me of East Rio 999 and that little project there's 2,000 units in the

[08:39:12] pipeline there yeah in this one little one with 20 some or 30 some didn't merit the impact well does it merit it in the face of an additional 2,000 units or 1,800 units that are in the pipeline there but what I've learned from that in East Ryo 999, now that the commercial piece of it has been removed and it's all going to be residential, is that that along with the Ryo Point or the Parkway Place development for the

[08:39:44] Ryo Road transportation issues really was the catalyst to get several things done to get to the bigger picture that I'm hearing tonight about, you know, whether this application is approved. It's not like saying no to this all of a sudden makes these bigger issues I'm hearing go way. There's solutions out there that are needed. But these are the projects, especially in that road area where there was one, you know, Belvedere wasn't even on the transportation priorities list.

[08:40:16] Now it is. It's lumped into a project. It's funded. It's getting built. The roundabout for the two intersection, which is the number one accident spot, comes. So as I was speaking to a resident yesterday from Crozet who asked for some time, you know, I'm not expecting anybody to stomach this type of statement, but it does sometimes take getting these developments in place to get the infrastructure that is needed, and it's simply because that's the way the state funds this stuff. If you try to fund something, and you just heard it, the Eastern Connector

[08:40:52] hasn't hit a threshold yet that VDOT would say, and SmartScale is what is needed to get a big project a 30 or a 20 million dollar project done um and that's a reality that you can speak to uh your state legislators about because i'd love it if vdot i mean they have to figure out a way to help us get these projects done and not just be relying on getting past a tipping point so everybody has to suffer the pain of that until the project gets put in place but that is the reality we're dealing with and i i do appreciate what residents of crozet are experiencing

[08:41:29] Relative to those bigger issues, because those issues do exist countywide. And this county is behind in getting those solutions provided. And, you know, we are working on getting some of those done.

[08:41:45] And I could list off what the developments that even I voted against in my own district have allowed me to turn around and then help get the infrastructure in place. For this particular project, you know, there's been questions about why vote yes or be honest with us.

[08:42:03] You know, every time I take a vote, even when there's not 30 people in a room, I always explain why I vote yes for something. You can go back, this is the start of my seventh year, so you can go listen to every single vote and I'll tell you why.

[08:42:19] The impacts of this project are what we look at or what I look at in particular to say what is what is the impact of the project in and of itself and what is being mitigated or added to help with that. For the school piece, the school division has decided to go with the center model to help reduce high school seats.

[08:42:37] And center one's already been built. Center two was just on our we just approved a lot of that again to keep that moving. It's funded for the high school seats. I'm trying to hit some notes here that I heard in the public comment. I think the past behavior of the developer should be looked at.

[08:42:53] But the past behavior of the developer doesn't stop with the, I'm not saying any developer has a perfect track record, but Mr. Chetta's reputation and development history goes back past this very problematic, which I'm not giving a pass on, water issue. But he does have a track record of doing very nice developments, done right, done in a responsible way, and they're around the county.

[08:43:17] So I agree that the past behavior should be looked at. Park Ridge Drive, if there are speeding issues there, I often remind because I live in an area, right in that railroad area where speeding is an issue, and you have to look at your neighbors and tell them to slow down because they're the ones speeding through your own neighborhood.

[08:43:36] And I hope that the community gets together because whether this project goes through or not, you need a high threshold to vote to put traffic calming measures in. And it's always interesting when speed bumps or speed humps get put in place if the boats are there in your own community to put those in.

[08:43:51] So, I mean, I'm ready to do whatever is needed to help with the traffic calming measures in there because that sounds like that's more internal to that neighborhood than this spilling out onto 240. So big picture items. I certainly here have heard the transportation issues.

[08:44:09] I think this one project has hit the tipping point of frustration for the community. So I'm noting that and hearing that. So as the transportation projects that are bigger and larger come to this board, just like I've done in the Ryle Road area and the Pantops area for projects that have been exacerbated by our approvals of developments to give renewed focus and energy to that to try to figure those problems out. You know, I don't expect that to be accepted without heartburn either, but that's what I can offer right now as a supervisor sitting on this board making those decisions. I think the signalization optimization, if that can be achieved out

[08:44:49] there on 240 or on 250, I think that's a good idea. I don't, I mean they're spread out so I don't know how easily that's done, but that's worth exploration. The affordable homes, the fact that habitats and they're going to be giving affordable, the hardest affordable unit to fill is a home ownership affordable unit. Just getting one over the finish line is an incredible feat in this county right now because of the cost of homes. The only way to do it is to have a habitat involved or the county has to purchase land to get rid of the cost of the land for the structure that goes on top of

[08:45:26] it. And we don't buy land to put houses on. We're starting to talk about that as a strategy. So in the meantime, when projects have home, affordable home ownership with affordable home units on it, that's a merit that must be called out. I think I've hit all my remarks for this project. I will supportive. Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Thank you. I have a bunch of comments to make. Timing is everything in many things, and I agree with Supervisor Galloway that this is a frustration

[08:46:04] tipping point, but it's only the last of many over 15 years of concern by neighbors as roadways have been built and the kinds of issues of safety that people are seeing now. No one has been more hopeful than I, that progress on these many safety and traffic issues would find solutions.

[08:46:27] Residents have asked for help long before COVID. Issues have cut through traffic along West Hall neighborhoods to Eastern Avenue. Speed control. Multiple speed studies have been done ad nauseum by our police department, none of which have met any requirements, the super high requirements that VDOT seems to impose upon these kinds of improvements. Traffic calming process has been incredibly difficult and I don't want to pretend that this is going to be easy to solve if this

[08:47:00] goes forward. The catalyst project of the shared use path, it's very small compared to what is really needed and the people in the highlands, people who have been asking for years to make a bona fide connection to which people can bike ride and use anything but a car to get to downtown.

[08:47:23] The true priority focus area of the Crozet growth area is the downtown. The county has already chosen to invest many, many millions in the downtown. That does not stop until that project has achieved success.

[08:47:40] That project is not going to stop. The downtown project funding is not going to stop halfway through so that a $5 million roundabout can be built two miles out of the center of town. This is the edge of the growth area on the northern side. across the street is conservation land that was purchased under the ACE program.

[08:48:01] Governor Cain paid for half of it in order to protect the water quality in Beaver Creek, the drinking water for the whole community. Yes, this is a destination for work, and since the very first master plan in 2005, there has been a concern about the out-of-balance ratio of jobs to residents in Crozet, and people's frustration then of driving to Waynesboro or to Charlottesville to work. Many, fortunately, are now starting to have moved to the area from far away because they

[08:48:34] can work online and be able to carry on their businesses from their kitchens or from their offices in their homes. That's a huge benefit for them, but it also means that there are many, many residents who have come and are now looking for those sidewalks that were in the master plans for 15 years, and saying, well, this has been on the list since 2005, and they're impatient.

[08:49:01] J.B. Barnes is the first rezoning downtown where there is a huge commercial focus. The whole phase one is commercial with a very small amount of upstairs third floor residential. That is going to be an opportunity, but we have to keep focused and keep investing to keep it happening. Hope is not a plan and it would be wrong of me to think to continue to say to crochet residents oh i hope we'll do it next year i hope we'll do it next year i wish that there was a signed contract for

[08:49:34] any number of these projects which are before us today that would change everything but there isn't yet and there's nothing that those things will come when they're ready but they're not ready now. Eastern Avenue is the primary one of those. To say that I was crushed when that price change happened is an understatement. But it has really thrown all new attention on this rezoning and

[08:50:10] others to follow because a thousand cars a day from Montclair is a lot of extra traffic and it will spread out to the south and west as well as to the east as people need to get to work somewhere whether they access 64 to go over the mountain or 250 going west over the mountain or they find any number of workarounds as many of our speakers today addressed about how many different neighborhoods are used by people to try to get through town to get their children to school

[08:50:42] and get themselves to work or children to daycare and then get themselves to work. So there are emergency services that are threatened. There are equitable access to schools issues that are not being well done when the traffic for Crozet Elementary backs up all the way to the rescue squad every single morning in order for people to drop their kids off at school. These are serious problems, and everyone at all levels is working on them, from citizens to county staff, but we're

[08:51:18] not there yet. Picture that was graduation traffic every single day. All of you have been to the graduation ceremony, and you understand the backups that happened with that. That is the kind of consequence that residents are facing on a regular basis. Every single district has problems like this, but imagine if they were much more frequent than a couple times a day, a couple times a year for Foxfield or move-in day, or the Friday before any holiday on 29 North, but every day. So I cannot

[08:51:57] support this for these reasons. Thank you. Supervisor, please, please, no applause. Thank you. Those are disruptive. Supervisor Proven. Thank you. I recognize I'm newer to the board. I appreciate Supervisor Galloway's point of it's important to establish what your reasons for supporting or not supporting things are. And I have a limited track record for people to see so far about how I think. So I want to be as clear as possible tonight about what factors I'm treating as particularly persuasive or compelling, which ones I think are not persuasive or compelling,

[08:52:37] and also what factors I think weigh in favor. And I do appreciate the several people who quoted me back at me, because I do also want to, through this exercise I'm about to do, try and show that I'm trying to be as internally consistent in my decision-making process across different projects.

[08:52:54] So first, very quickly, things that I don't think are particularly persuasive or compelling critiques of this project or of other projects. legalist critiques using the comp plan or other things. We have a robust legal department. If this was incompliant with the comp plan in a way that would invalidate it, it would not make it to this stage. And there's a variety of reasons that we've already touched on about that, about why that's just not a particularly persuasive point. I'm very grateful that tonight we didn't hear any critiques around neighborhood character, but we have in the past, both on this development and

[08:53:30] on previous developments. That is not a particularly persuasive critique, but we didn't hear that tonight which is lovely um and also just it is inconsistent with my own lived reality with the reality of many others with the reflected severe cost burden that we experienced throughout the county with significant numbers of members of the county paying more than 30 percent of their affordable 30 percent of their income on rents higher than all our neighbors i don't find it persuasive to suggest that we do not have an adequate supply of affordable housing either in the pipeline or constructed. That is just not correct. The critiques of this project that I do

[08:54:09] find immensely compelling and that I've listened to the points that have been made closely. Missing infrastructure, right? We have not, and there are funding issues, but we have not provided the kind of pedestrian and bicycle access that I think would be consistent with the kind of quasi-urban hub that we are starting to develop in Crozet. I previously lived in suburban Maryland on one side of D.C., and I could walk or jog literally 15 miles across the city and into the suburbs and

[08:54:44] then into the rural area of Virginia on the other side without ever leaving a sidewalk. This is something that is in the capacity of local governments to do, and I do agree that this is something that we owe people living in development areas over time to actually build out these kind of pedestrian and multi-use connectors. This is something I think I've tried to show that I'm consistently insistent on, so I'm very appreciative of the folks who brought that up. I also do appreciate that Park Ridge is a very dangerous road, especially the part that we are looking at that is right here. I try, and whenever I'm visiting things, whenever I'm trying to learn

[08:55:20] about areas that we are considering here in the county, I try and visit them on foot. I like to walk around an experienced place. I crossed this street back and forth several times on foot. It was at an odd hour of the day. No one was on the road. It was still scary as heck because people come around that blind curve and it's fast. It's intimidating. And that would be, I recognize, a challenging and maybe even a dangerous place to pull out of this neighborhood.

[08:55:46] School overcrowding is serious. I do always want to make sure that we are referencing the hardest data we can. I'm very appreciative of the fact that people did not try and bring in anecdotal data about school impacts and stuck to the data that was provided. And I do recognize that we have future mitigating plans for this, but that is something I consider very strongly. The stream impacts, I want to echo what Supervisor Galloway said. That is, I don't know the full history of this. I've not been plugged into this issue, but I recognize it feels sketchy, and I will leave it that based on what I know about it so far. And then finally, something maybe a little more,

[08:56:24] you know, thousand-yard view. I believe Chair Andrews alluded to this, but there's kind of the original sin of Crozet. We have created a community, an urban community that does not have the capacity to support its own population through employment. And so this is something that makes it challenging for us to meet our climate goals. And as we continue to develop Crozet residentially, but not economically with the kind of amenities that a community like that deserves and should expect. It becomes very challenging for us to meet our climate goals and for us to be honest with

[08:56:58] ourselves about what we're even doing there. And the thing I want to really drive home as I say this and as I recognize the things that play against this project is that hardly any of these things are resolved by voting against it. And in fact, several of them are, as has been pointed out I saw my peers combat it even slightly by voting in favor of it.

[08:57:21] It does make it easier for us to seek smart-scale funding. It is going to increase our tax base in order to actually pay for the kind of sidewalks. It will do so minimally, incrementally, but it will increase our tax base to be able to pay for the kind of sidewalk support and shared-use path support that we want.

[08:57:38] And it will bring in more people who will be more people who can potentially show Whole Foods that it is a convenient place for them to site a future location or Giant or Lidl, Lidl, I don't know, whatever grocery store chooses to do so.

[08:57:58] As your population increases, it becomes more compelling for them as a business decision to site there. There's been a lot of other, and I want to just echo the previous benefits that this offers, but one that I do want to make sure we fully capture um it was said earlier that uh there there is nothing that a neighbor can gain from this and i appreciate the point you were trying to make with this but i do want to push back on that um at the end of wickham pond road where it currently terminates um i remember walking around the

[08:58:35] neighborhood and i was like oh there's there's like an unattended basketball goal right right there um and it was actually in the presentation i think um i grew up in a rural area in my neighborhood. There were about 10 households. I was the only kid my age. I had a basketball goal.

[08:58:53] My brother and sister were much older than me and did not live in the house anymore. I never played basketball. My parents worked all day. They did not come home until late. I never once got to enjoy that community. There is something that neighbors gain from a development like this, and it's other neighbors. Neighbors and community are an amenity unto themselves that I think is really important.

[08:59:21] And I think that is something that weighs very strongly in favor of this project. There's going to be, what is it, 18 more kids estimated for the current kids in this neighborhood to play basketball with. I think that's really compelling.

[08:59:41] Fourteen. My apologies. Fourteen kids. That's all I have. Supervisor Lupisto-Kirtley. Thank you very much. First of all, I want to thank everybody for coming out. I think that was extremely important that you did come out.

[08:59:59] And I want to let you know, you all live in a very, very desirable area. And with Western High School, there are a lot of people that would like to go out to Crozet. I do agree that economically, you need to up your game.

[09:00:17] And the way that happens is, frankly, through more development and more people. Because then businesses will come there. They will not come to an area where you don't have a larger population. Now, granted, your population has grown a lot, and with that, you've gotten some amenities.

[09:00:43] One of the things you keep mentioning, sidewalks, I agree with that, but that wasn't always the case. Years and years and years ago, sidewalks weren't required. A lot of people didn't want sidewalks. that has changed. People want sidewalks. They want shared use paths, shared use paths. And that's something that we need to look at providing. And we are doing that slowly, but not fast enough, obviously. The comp plan, according to our staff, we really do check a lot of the boxes for this,

[09:01:22] really does check a lot of the boxes for this development. The affordability of the habitat homes, that really is a good point because without those, everything is usually rental. So this gives people an opportunity to actually purchase some homes. Regarding the speeding and such, transportation is probably, if not the number one, one of our biggest, if not the one issue. I hear that all the time in all the districts, speeding. And that's just bad actors who are not driving

[09:02:00] well frankly but as a neighborhood you can always petition vdot and ask for speed bumps and that's something that you might want to want to be able to do frankly i'm going to vote for i'm in favor of this project i think it's a good project and that's it okay um i'm going to express that uh while i think there are many good points to this project that have been stated and

[09:02:34] i don't want to repeat what everybody said right i do appreciate habitat the shared use path uh the variety of housing that would be brought in uh the fact that there are neighborhood model densities adjacent um there are concerns that have been raised that i also have questions about like the roundabout is coming in and i believe that will help um and uh we do need the housing that said uh i am not supportive because i agree that it's not so much just timing but also a sense

[09:03:11] that our crozet master plan expects uh there to be more of a whole community with not just a bedroom community and that we're not seeing at this point we can't build everything all at once um we couldn't have all of our projects come in uh but at this point i think it's uh it's not the right place for us to take away the what light industrial we have there and to put in more housing when we're not ready for it so um with that um i will look to first the supervisor of

[09:03:49] record but if you need a motion in favor i will not be making that okay is there a motion we have the motions that we can put up on the screen? Okay. We have a motion. You want to, I can make it.

[09:04:17] Go ahead. All right. Find it here. I'll make sure I'm reading the right one. I move to adopt the ordinance attachment deed to approve the zoning map amendment for ZMA 2-0-2-0-0-0-1 to Montclair.

[09:04:33] Seconded. We have a motion from Supervisor McKeel, a second from Supervisor Pruitt, without objection that the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. LaPiesto-Kirtley? Aye. Ms. Malik? No. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye.

[09:04:48] Mr. Andrews? No. The motion passes. Four to two. Please do not disrupt the meeting. Thank you. While we have a moment here, I think we would...

[09:05:05] There's the jurisdictionary part. I know that, but I'm wondering if we might take a five-minute recess to come back for it. It's already 10.10. We've been here for six-plus hours, and after a long day, this started at 1 o'clock.

[09:05:20] so five minutes that'd be great that's all right yep thank you okay we're board we're back together

[09:12:38] and uh our next item item 18 is acsa 2021 0002 montclair acsa jurisdictional area amendment and again uh cameron lejean principal planner is here to talk about it but i i know you've done some you might have some more you want to say um yeah i do have a presentation it's very quick and simple. So thank you, Chair Andrews. Basically, this is a request to amend the ACSA jurisdictional area to allow the property that you see, which is highlighted in yellow, and it's also color blue,

[09:13:16] basically to change the color to, I'm going to say it's a tannish brown color. Currently, that property only has water utility service to existing buildings, and this request is to change that so that it can get both water and sewer to anything there so as you'll notice it's the only property i mean it's surrounded by everything else has water and sewer um this is just text describing what i just said staff does recommend approval with this request because it's consistent

[09:13:52] with two of the objectives from chapter 12 of the comprehensive plan which is community facilities To keep it short, both of those objectives basically say that any property within the designated development areas should be provided with public water and sewer utility services.

[09:14:13] Okay. Board, do we have questions? Supervisor McHugh? I don't have any questions. Thank you. Supervisor Galloway? No questions. Supervisor Malik? No questions. And I would propose we rephrase it to say they will be required to buy into the water and shore service, not provide, because I want that tie-in money.

[09:14:34] Yes, no question. Supervisor approved? No questions. Supervisor Lupisto currently? No questions. And I have no questions. Then we can open the public hearing. And we've read the rules, but we'll first ask if there's anyone signed up to speak.

[09:14:52] The applicant has 10 minutes for presentation. It will be 30 seconds. Good evening, Chair Andrews, supervisors. My name is Kelsey Schlein.

[09:15:07] I'm a planter with chimp engineering. This request is very simple. One of our parcels is outside of the jurisdictional area, and we are requesting to connect, to have public water and sewer, and to pay our connection fees as part of that approval once this development moves forward.

[09:15:26] Thank you, and I'm available for any questions you might have. Okay. Are there any questions of the applicant? No questions from me. I will look to my right and left. Supervisor approved. I'm so sorry. No, it's quite all right. I'm realizing I have a spot in ignorance, so this is as much for the applicant as perhaps anyone else.

[09:15:44] But if we were not to approve this, sure. Is it possible for you to cross-connect across your own parcel to the parcel that does have water and sewage service? Right? So there's the western parcel that does have water and sewage service.

[09:16:02] Can you cross-connect to your own parcel without running afoul of the county? And I'll let the county wait. But you wouldn't approve any connections on that property, any meters, any utility infrastructure.

[09:16:19] This is where, okay, I know the answer to this. It's going to get a little technical. Because it's in the development area, if they tried to connect to the sewer on that adjacent property, ACSA would not accept the lines.

[09:16:35] that becomes what we call a central sewerage system request because they're privately owned. In order to allow that in the development areas, you have to go through a public hearing to get board approval. And what I would say is based on the evaluation criteria, specifically those two objectives, staff would not be recommending approval of it because these shouldn't have public utilities. So it seems like the answer is you can, but the process is the same and it's worse for everyone. It could apply, but you probably would not get it. Sure. Okay. Thank you.

[09:17:10] Idle curiosity. Thank you. Board, are there any other questions of the applicant? Are there any rebuttal comments? I guess not. So we will close the public hearing and the matter is back before the board. Any comments? Supervisor McKeel? No comments. I'm happy to make a motion. Supervisor Galloway, Supervisor Pruitt, Supervisor if someone wants to make a motion. I'd be glad to do that. I think it's mandatory now that the thing has been approved that we do this.

[09:17:45] I move to adopt the resolution attachment C to approve ACSA 2021 to Montclair ACSA jurisdictional area amendment. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Malek. Second from Supervisor McKeel. Without objection, if the clerk will call the roll. Mr. Galloway? Yes. Ms. LaPista-Kirtley? Aye.

[09:18:05] Ms. Malek? Yes. Ms. McKeel? Yes. Mr. Pruitt? Aye. Mr. Andrews? Yes. Motion is approved. Thank you. Long evening. Board, we still have more work to do. Item 19 is from the board, committee reports and matters not listed on the agenda.

[09:18:26] Supervisor McKeown. I'm going to take a pass at 1020. Supervisor Galloway. Quickly, it was interesting that the TJPDC meeting that we had, there's some big economic development happening out there in Louisa County with their Amazon stuff.

[09:18:44] We've started to get the extent of that. I mean, that's just a regional thing that we should probably keep our eyes on because that could have impacts for the entire area, not just Albemarle. But, I mean, that's a big score for Louisa County out there.

[09:19:00] And I think we were all recognizing that in the roundtable at the TJPDC. So, I mean, that's good for them. And ultimately, it'll end up being good for the region. So kudos to them for that. And I don't believe we have anything else from that meeting.

[09:19:20] Thank you. Supervisor Malek. Nothing for me. Thank you. Supervisor Pruitt. I do want to just briefly address something that I'd intended to mention earlier at the first brief announcements.

[09:19:37] But I do just want to recognize yesterday evening there was an Albemarle County resident who was killed in traffic in Albemarle County right near the city border on 29. We have spent much of today talking about traffic and safety.

[09:19:55] And I also want to point out, like, these are things that particularly tend to affect the people who we do not pay as much attention to in our community. I don't know the specific details, but this was someone who was hit at night crossing a mixed-use road. I would expect this is someone who might have been lower income, who might have been maybe even homeless in our community.

[09:20:12] These are the people who first experienced these brunts. I think it's important as a board that we recognize when these kind of incidents that are affecting people who are maybe not as present and salient in the audience occur. And I wanted to commemorate that and note that as we go about our business today in a way that was relevant today.

[09:20:38] Thank you. Supervisor Bistro-Curton? Yes, nothing. Thank you. I do have something, and this is not an action, but I do want to bring it up. up and look for a consensus board supervisor lupisto currently and i had the pleasure of attending another very productive SWAC meeting last week and i can't tell you how much i learned from those meetings a deep and varied experience of the members and they're very dedicated learned that glass for example is a major contaminant for recycling cardboard and more avenues for recycling than i dreamed of including broken pickleballs

[09:21:12] I want to commend the members of SWAC for their diligence in looking at their charge understanding what they need to do orienting their members and in that regard a discussion over many months they brought forth suggested changes to their charter to update it to reflect current status of some things existing language it's out of date clarify membership in the charge of the committee and I know that these have been reviewed by Mr. Jamie Powers who was liaison, staff liaison for the committee, and I believe they've also been looked at by Mr. Lance Stewart, the supervisor. If it's a consensus of the board, I'd like to recommend

[09:21:49] that we go ahead and let them, you know, have this vetted through the county attorney and county executive's office to be brought back to the board at some date, probably on the consent agenda, as suggested changes to the charter. Any questions, problems, concerns? I don't think I've had this happen before? Like, I don't know. Is it just the charter change? Are they looking at their bylaws, too? At this point, they were just looking at their charter and updating some things.

[09:22:21] I mean, I can give you some examples. The mix of membership, one thing that they would like to suggest is to have a student member. They're working with some people at UVA. That's something that's somewhat new. And then there were some things in there about some activities that they were supposed to do that have been done and are no longer relevant, and a couple other things.

[09:22:40] along those lines. I love that we have such a forward-leaning commission. They take their charge very seriously. I will say just, and I have no problem with that at all, that we do have some boards and commissions or committees that do need to do the same thing.

[09:22:58] I mean, their bylaws are... And I don't think we should stop this group. I'm just simply saying that there is work to do with a lot of these because they, at times, are all over the place. Okay. Anyway. Anything further from anyone? County Executive?

[09:23:16] Okay, thank you. Well, we will adjourn to our next meeting, which is a public hearing on the proposed fiscal year 25 budget on February 28th, 2024, at 6 p.m. in Lane Auditorium. Opportunities for the public to access and participate in this meeting are posted on the Albemarle County website, on the Board of Supervisors' homepage, and on the Albemarle County calendar.

[09:23:40] participation will include the opportunity to comment on those matters for which comments from the public will be received. Good evening. Thank you for your patience. Thank you, staff, for sticking with us.

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