HomeMy WebLinkAboutCCP201800003 Other 2018-07-17Albemarle County Planning Commission
July 17, 2018
The Albemarle County Planning Commission held a public hearing on Tuesday, July 17, 2018, at 6:00
p.m., at the County Office Building, Lane Auditorium, Second Floor, 401 McIntire Road, Charlottesville,
Virginia.
Members attending were Tim Keller, Chair; Julian Bivins, Pam Riley, Vice -Chair; Jennie More, Daphne
Spain, Karen Firehock, Bruce Dotson and Bill Palmer, UVA representative.
Other officials present were Andrew Knuppel, Senior Planner, Elaine Echols, Chief of Community
Development; Bill Fritz, Manager of Special Projects; Andrew Gast -Bray, Assistant Director of Community
Development/Director of Planning; Sharon Taylor, Clerk to Planning Commission and Andy Herrick,
Assistant County Attorney.
Call to Order and Establish Quorum
Mr. Keller, Chair, called the regular meeting to order at 6:00 p.m. and established a quorum.
The meeting moved to the next agenda item.
From the Public: Matters Not Listed for Public Hearing on the Agenda
Mr. Keller invited comment from the public on other matters not listed on the agenda.
Sean Tubbs, new Piedmont Environmental Council field representative for Albemarle, Charlottesville and
Greene County, said the PEC is here as a resource for anybody who needs any information about
anything and he looked forward to working with the Planning Commission.
There being no further public comment, the meeting would move to the next item.
Consent Agenda
Approval of Minutes: January 16, 2018, March 6, 2018, April 24, 2018 and May 22, 2018
Mr. Keller asked if any Commissioner would like to pull an item off the consent agenda. Hearing none, he
asked for a motion.
Ms. More moved, Ms. Spain seconded for acceptance of the consent agenda.
The motion passed unanimously by a vote of 7:0.
The meeting moved to the next item.
Regular Item.
CCP-2018-00002 Yancey Community Center
MAGISTERIAL DISTRICT: Samuel Miller
TAX MAP/PARCEL(S): 120A2000001800
LOCATION: Former B.F. Yancey Elementary School — 7625 Porters Road, Esmont, VA 22937
PROPOSAL: County use of the former B.F. Yancey Elementary School building to establish a public
community center and provide enhanced access to programs and services to the Southern Albemarle
community.
ZONING: RA Rural Area - agricultural, forestal, and fishery uses; residential density (0.5 unit/acre in
development lots), and other uses including public uses.
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COMPREHENSIVE PLAN: Rural Area — preserve and protect agricultural, forestal, open space, and
natural, historic and scenic resources; preservation of crossroads communities that provide support
services and opportunities to engage in community life, and residential (0.5 unit/ acre in development
lots). (Andrew Knuppel)
Andrew Knuppel presented a PowerPoint presentation to summarize the staff report for CCP-2018-00002
Yancey Community Center for the Commission's consideration. This is a review of consistency with the
Comprehensive Plan for the proposed county use of the former Yancey Elementary School as a
community center in accordance with Section 15.2.22.32 of the Code of Virginia.
You may know this as "2232 review" from the State Code requirement, but the purpose of this review is to
consider whether the general location/character/extent of this proposed public facility are in substantial
accord with the Comprehensive Plan. The scope of the review and action by the Commission is limited to
the appropriateness of the site for the proposed use, and your findings will be forwarded to the Board of
Supervisors for their information.
Yancey Elementary operated for 57 years in the Esmont community before its closure by the School
Board and transfer to the Board of Supervisors in 2017, with the intent to use the building as a community
facility. The School Division continued to maintain and operate the building and grounds at a reduced
operating mode for the remainder of FY 2018, supporting near -term uses during the transition period. As
a part of the transition, a Transition Advisory Committee was appointed, and meetings have been going
throughout 2017 and 2018. The most recent community meeting was held on June 30 and a community
meeting was not specifically held for this review.
The site is designated Rural Area in the Comprehensive Plan, and Zoned Rural Areas. The parcel is just
over 7 acres, located on the east side of Porters Road, 1500' south of Route 6. The primary structure is
the 28,000 gross square foot elementary school building containing a gymnasium, media center,
cafeteria, and classroom spaces. The building is served by well and septic system.
The surrounding properties are primarily low -density residential and rural area uses, and Simpson Park (a
county park) is located directly across Porters Road from the School.
The Community Center proposal follows the Long -Term Use Framework for the Yancey Community
Center that was endorsed by the Board in March. The facility will have a mix of short-term rental, or
"shared" spaces to be administered by Parks & Recreation Department, as well as dedicated spaces
available for long-term leases to be administered by the county's Facilities and Environmental Services
Department. The space plan can be seen in the presentation with the shared spaces in green, the
dedicated spaces in blue, and other undetermined/available spaces in yellow also to be managed by
Facilities and Environmental Services.
The Center anticipates a range of users and activities, including public users (such as Parks and
Recreation; County and Schools departments; and citizen committees such as the Yancey Transition
Advisory Committee), community agencies such as JABA or PVCC, and private organizations or
businesses.
In moving into the conformity of this request with the Comprehensive Plan, the Couny's Growth
Management Policy, it aims to promote the efficient use of County resources through a combination of:
protecting the elements that define the Rural Area and promoting the Development Areas as the place
where a variety of land uses, facilities, and services exist, and are planned to support the Couny's future
growth.
Although this proposal is located in the Rural Area and not the Development Areas, the proposal does
utilize the existing structure and no new construction or expansion is proposed. The reuse of existing
structures removes pressure to build new structures for community use, which helps protect the Rural
ALBEMARLE COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION -July 17, 2018 2
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Areas. This use does not promote new residential development but helps meet the needs of existing
residents.
Objective 5 of the Rural Area chapter of the Comprehensive Plan aims to: "Recognize and
support crossroads communities, which serve as rural -scale community meeting places and
provide opportunities for residents to take part in community life."
This objective refers primarily to the crossroads communities identified in the 2003 Survey of Historic
Crossroads Communities, which is referenced in the Comprehensive Plan, although it notes that others
may be appropriate for a future designation. The Esmont community was not explicitly identified in this
survey, but shares a number of characteristics, which staff believes makes this an appropriate measure
for the conformity of this proposal.
Although it lacks the crossroads "center" of many communities identified in the survey, this community
contains a number of small-scale public uses, including the Yancey School, Simpson Park and a post
office. In the presentation, the red stars indicate other quasi -public institutions including churches and the
Oddfellows' Hall, which is home to the JABA Senior Center. In historic photos of Esmont, Mr. Knuppel
noted the structures on Esmont Road as well as an updated photo from Esmont High School that was a
segregated school opened in 1904 and then Yancey Elementary, which was established in the same
location in 1960. There is quite a history there and interestingly historically a major site for the
community.
Although not an explicitly identified crossroads community in the 2003 Survey, Esmont is a historic and
significant rural community within Southern Albemarle of a comparable scale and containing a collection
of small-scale public uses. Maintaining the Yancey Elementary School building as a community meeting
place and center for community life will support the Esmont community and its existing residents.
The overall goal for the Community Facilities chapter of the Comprehensive Plan is, "Albemarle County's
facilities and services will be of high -quality and delivered in an environmentally responsible and cost-
effective manner." This proposal allows for the reuse of an existing facility and the recovery of
associated costs wherever possible, as discussed in Objective 1, which is, "Continue to provide public
facilities and services in a fiscally responsible and equitable manner."
There are three strategies listed below which focus on prioritizing health and safety needs that has cost -
benefit ratios for the population it serves as well as locating complementary services and facilities
together and would be using obsolete facilities.
Strategy 1a: Give priority to facilities and services that address emergency needs, health and safety
concerns, and provide the greatest cost -benefit ratio to the population served.
Strategy 1d: Continue to locate related or complementary services and facilities together when possible
and when other goals of the Comprehensive Plan can be met.
Strategy 1 h: Prior to the disposal of any existing but obsolete facilities and sites, determine the value of
maintaining them for potential reuse by other services and facilities.
Again,
• This proposal maintains an existing public facility for residents in a geographically isolated area of
the County.
• A mix of complementary services potentially including exercise classes, senior programming, and
office access for police officers will facilitate the provision of health and safety services.
• Facility fees will be minimal and will be set for "cost recovery of operations and facilitating access
to excess County capacity".
The factors favorable are:
• The proposed use would support an established rural community and its existing residents by
providing services without encouraging new residential development in the Rural Area.
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The proposed use would provide public facilities and services in a fiscally responsible and
equitable matter.
The proposed use at this subject property does not appear to be contradictory with the
Comprehensive Plan, and would support and advance goals, objectives, strategies, and other
policies contained in the Plan.
No unfavorable factors were found
Staff recommends that the Commission find the location, character, and extent of the proposed Yancey
Community Center facility, and use thereof, to be in substantial accord with the County's Comprehensive
Plan, for the reasons identified as the favorable factors in the staff report. Mr. Knuppel said that he would
be happy to answer questions at this time.
Mr. Keller invited questions from the Commission for staff.
Ms. Riley asked were members of the community in the immediate area at the community open house
and was there general accord with the recommendations of this advisory committee for those uses.
Mr. Knuppel replied there was not a specifically held meeting for this review and had not attended any of
the prior meetings for the listening session. He said the county and the liaison working with them as an
additional advisory committee prepared the proposal; however, the information that was provided
appeared to be consistent with some of the activities and the uses that were suggested prior.
Ms. Firehock asked to add to that having attended a community appreciation dinner for the reopening of
Yancey as a community facility two weeks ago that was very well attended by local residents and the
County Administrator's Office that they talked about the different things that would be going on, what
Parks and Recreation had already planned to do there and the food pantry that is operating there. She
said there was great excitement and interest with high support. She noted one resident asked could it
ever revert to a school again and nobody knew the answer to that but hoped it would one day.
Nevertheless, there was very great attendance and strong support with several dozen local residents
there.
Mr. Keller invited public comment. Hearing none, he invited questions for staff.
Ms. Spain asked if the kitchen facilities would be kept operable.
Mr. Knuppel replied no, that details on the kitchen facilities were not included in the information.
Ms. Spain asked if the dinner was prepared there, and Ms. Firehock replied that they had it catered so
they did not actually cook there; it was local barbecue and they did not need to use the facilities. She
noted that everything seemed operable so my mind races with ideas like providing opportunities for
people to create local jams because it could meet commercial kitchen standards. She said there is a
whole lot of potential there and it is going to take a little time to iron out since lots of people want to use
the facilities and so how do you do that and who is in charge of which rooms and spaces and how those
are leased out.
Ms. Spain noted the precedence of the Jefferson Center of having food vendors or small restaurants
there so if the kitchen was preserved in some working order would it have to be rezoned in any way if a
commercial enterprise wanted to go in there.
Mr. Knuppel replied that maybe Elaine could answer this better; however, he did not believe so.
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Ms. Echols said that Andy Herrick might be able to answer that a little better, but we know that Parks and
Rec is doing the management of the different users there and so imagined that the County Attorney's
office has looked at that with the Board of Supervisors.
Andy Herrick, with the County Attorney's Office, said this is not an issue that he looked at in advance of
tonight's meeting, but can go take a quick look as to whether that is an anticipated use in the rural areas
zoning district. He said that is something that we would need to look at.
Ms. Firehock said the way it was presented at the dinner it would be potential for use if you were an
entrepreneur you could ask to lease one of the classrooms for some set period to teach a class or do a
workshop so it is not limited to be just for county run things. It will have social services, voting will
continue there; however, there certainly are opportunities for that. She said the details have not been
worked out, but they have already got many activities planned to start this fall assuming that we make a
favorable recommendation.
Mr. Keller asked if there were questions for staff. Hearing none, he asked for a motion.
Ms. Firehock said it was in my district and having been there many times was prepared to make a motion.
Ms. Firehock moved to find that the location, character and extent of CCP-2018-00002 Yancey
Community Center public facility and public use thereof, as proposed, to be in substantial accord with the
Comprehensive Plan.
Ms. Spain seconded the motion.
Mr. Keller invited further discussion.
Mr. Bivins said having been in and out of Esmont for a good 30 years and being down there recently that
while being glad that there was excitement over the repurposing of that building that actually it looks like
the Esmont community is being forgotten and the town of Esmont looks like a place on hard times now.
He said the play equipment was lovely, which was actually put there by a generous grant in the school,
could be repurposed some place. He said what this is coming to is that if it is only going to be a satellite
operation then in fact he thinks we will probably lose that critical space in our community. If there is a
way to put an activity in that space that has purpose and presence on an ongoing basis then he thinks it
may actually be able to survive; otherwise, in five or six years you will see an empty space.
Ms. Firehock noted there were several county agencies that already asked to continue to use certain
spaces whether it was the media center or the gym area and she also had talked to Supervisors Palmer
and other community members about the idea about some targeted housing restoration in that area
maybe similar to what was done by AHIP recently in my district. She suggested that was something to
think about is the regeneration of that community using that structure as a place to help build the
community and bring people together. She said that it has been a site of a lot of disappointment with the
closing of the school and thinks that it could be turned around as an opportunity thinking of housing rehab
and affordable housing and maybe that is a focal area.
Mr. Keller asked if she would like to do a friendly amendment or perhaps a resolution of intent as an
added push. He said there seems to be a significant interest in the historically African American schools
in the state, there is a major movement for preservation of Virginia and we know that one of our members
of our staff has done a very interesting program on the public schools.
Ms. Firehock asked to add that they have received a grant to do a historic interpretation display to be put
in the lobby; it is a very small lobby, but Monticello has also offered assistance in design of that display
and the committee has already been up to Monticello to meet with the team of designers to help them.
She noted that they have funding and experts and so they are excited to work on the history and a whole
number of things so that story telling has already begun.
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Mr. Keller invited further discussion. Hearing none, he asked for a roll call.
The motion passed by a vote of 7:0.
Mr. Keller said the motion was approved and it seems in light of the discussion that we have had here
and the work that has been done by you and others on this that there is the opportunity for this to be
turned in to a shortened piece for the website for public distribution.
The meeting moved to the next item on the agenda.
Work Session
ZTA-2017-00006 Updates and Clarifications to Section 33 Zoning Text Amendments, Zoning Map
Amendments, Special Use Permits and Special Exceptions.
Work Session on Zoning Text Amendment related specifically to Deferrals. (Elaine Echols)
Elaine Echols, Chief of Community Development noted that Bill Fritz is helping with this since we both
have been dealing with the problems with the ordinance related to deferrals for many years. She said
they have bounced many ideas off each other about how we can use our time most effectively as well as
serve the public the best with zoning proposals that somehow are postponed. She pointed out that Bill
Fritz is here to help answer questions and he will be taking this after I have retired on to the Board of
Supervisors. Tonight we want to talk about proposed changes to a portion of Section 33 of the Zoning
Ordinance. As noted in the staff report, this is not the complete group of changes but may be the most
substantive thing we want to talk about. We will review these proposed changes and see if the
Commission have any questions that we may answer and you may want to get some public comment on
this, advise of off any changes and if you are ready for a public hearing after we are done. Staff can go
ahead and set the public hearing sometime in August.
➢ Fee changes have not been included
➢ Page 4 of Table has a mistake
➢ Pane 5 of Pr000sed Ordinance has funkv numberina --
Purpose of Work Session
➢ Fee changes have not been included
➢ Page 4 of Table has a mistake
➢ Page 5 of Proposed Ordinance has funky numbering -- is supposed to reference for 32.52
Context
Ms. Echols said just to give you some context, the County Attorney Office has been working on a lot of
housekeeping changes; it is to cleaning up and clarifying the language of the Zoning Ordinance trying to
modernize it. The Commission have seen two that have been approved and there may be more that you
have reviewed. When we bring them to you, the Commission provides us with the comments about when
we think this is ready to move or we think you need to go back and look at this a little further. Therefore,
that is why this is in a work session format and not trying to do a public hearing. She said what we are
talking about is mostly deferrals related to zoning text amendments, actually some of the procedural
things with zoning text amendments, deferrals for zoning map amendments and special use permits but
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we are not really talking about special exceptions. The biggest change in here is for us to ask for hard
dates for action by the Board of Supervisors.
Ms. Echols said the Commission should have gotten the explanation table, the color copy of the changes
to the ordinance and the flow chart, which was sent out with the email sent to the development
community letting people know that we were having a Round Table and the changes are to:
• Remove citizen -initiated zoning text amendments (ZTAs) from the text that is a request from the
Board of Supervisors basically if somebody wants to request a zoning text amendment they need
to approach you to find a sponsor with the Commission or the Board of Supervisors to get a
resolution of intent passed. That is something the Board wanted to do to better manage their
resources and not have staff working on things before the Board agrees that staff time needs to
be spent on this and the State Code does not require that we have a citizen initiated zoning text
amendment policy.
• Clarifications about the community meeting is the rule, not the exception. When we originally
started community meetings, we were not exactly sure how to do them and it became clear that
the way the ordinance was written some people were interpreting that this was an option and we
had to make it clear that this was the rule and not the exception. Therefore, staff just wants to
clean up the language for that.
• Refine language and set firm deadline for action by the Board of Supervisors (BOS).
• No separate legal ad fee; and instead increase the application fee to cover the cost of ad.
• Remove deferral fee because it takes more staff time to administer that than we recover in the
cost that they pay.
• Reduce fee for reapplication of the same rezoning request, if authorized by Board of Supervisors
(BOS). Ms. Echols said if you get past the 36 months but there is some compelling reason why
your project has not been able to get an action on it you can't reapply for a year except to have
the Board of Supervisors give you that permission. Therefore, what we are saying is in addition
to that permission they can reduce the fee so that you do not have to pay the full fee and we are
hoping that will be sufficient to help encourage people to continue getting this thing done and only
use that as an exception.
• Remove fee reduction for special use permit/zoning map amendment (SP/ZMA) concurrent with
Site Development Plan (SDP) except for Entrance Corridor (EC) projects. This is to try to clean
up some of those timepieces that take a lot of time and discussion when we get concurrent site
plans With a ZMA or SP.
• Active projects under review right now that have already passed 36 months we would say you
have 12 more months to get to the Board of Supervisors for action. If a project is currently under
review because we do not have an end date for when action needs to be, taken saying that you
have up to 36 months from the time your application was accepted.
Ms. Echols said the question that we really wanted to concentrate on is what is a deferral? The problem
with our ordinance is that it implies that everybody knows what that is, but it really is not explicit. A
deferral is a postponement but it might be a postponement at the time for a decision, a suspension of
review, an extension of time for making a decision or an extension of time for an applicant to resubmit.
Any one of those could fall under what people think of as a deferral and we want to make that clear in this
ordinance it is a suspension of review that allows for extending the time period for action. In other words,
we want projects to be in the best state possible when they come to you and the Board of Supervisors
and from time to time after someone makes an application, they need to do some more work. Therefore,
we need to stop the process in order for them to do something more but also need if we are going to
establish an end date for when action is needed to allow for an extension of time because the State Code
requires that the Planning Commission take an action within 90 days of acceptance of that application. In
addition, the Board of Supervisors is required to take action within 12 months of that same beginning
time.
Ms. Spain asked is a request for a deferral always initiated by the applicant.
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Ms. Echols replied that the Planning Commission is allowed to defer something only if it is within that 90-
day window. Therefore, if 90 days has not passed and you want to postpone a decision that is the only
opportunity you have; otherwise, it has to be up to the applicant because you are obligated to give them a
decision within 90 days. She pointed out the Board could defer but only up to a year.
Ms. Spain thanked Ms. Echols.
Ms. Echols said as noted in information sent you can see that we have a lot of projects that defer and she
was not sure if anybody outside the Planning Department really had any idea how many projects there
are that go into deferral. Those deferrals range from any number of things from we want our first set of
comments and, oh, we may resubmit again someday maybe to yes, we will resubmit and then four or five
months goes by and we say you need to do something and so they say yes, we will resubmit next month
and then they don't. Then staff has to say you need to resubmit because we've got to have this on a
schedule and keep this moving. What we are trying to do now is to establish for all those projects at a
level playing field so that we can do our job and spend our time and resources wisely.
Ms. Echols pointed out in the flowchart staff is recommending that you have five options after we give you
your first set of comments. Staff provides a set of comments 32 days after we have accepted an
application for submittal. That is a hard deadline and we need that deadline. Then it is in the applicant's
hands and they have a choice to say we are ready to go to a public hearing, which happens about a tenth
of the time; or, they can say we want to resubmit and are not ready to go to a public hearing; or, they
cannot respond to those comments at all. What we are proposing is for those three things, they are
going to a public hearing because we want to keep them moving and to take responsibility for what
happens with their project. We are recommending that the other two options that already exist are that
they can withdraw their application or they can request a deferral. The only change in this is that instead
of having an applicant decide when they are going to a public hearing, and we have to wait on them
telling us, we are taking them within 90 days. That puts the onerous on the applicant to say oh no do not
take me I am going to put in my letter of deferral and we say give it to us or we are taking you to public
hearing.
Ms. Echols said we do not do that now because we don't have the public hearing fee that has been paid,
which is why we want to include it in the initial cost. Therefore, if you look at the top level in the flow chart
the gray box on the left says public hearing and decision within 90 days of acceptance and that is if
somebody wants to go within 90 days. There is a minimum of 25 days from a Planning Commission
meeting before we can schedule something for the Board of Supervisors.
Ms. Riley asked where does the case of an application that does not have complete information come
into this.
Ms. Echols replied that it never even gets its first set of comments.
Ms. Riley asked if it is halted at the very first level.
Ms. Echols replied yes that an incomplete application is not processed, put in our system as incomplete.
we contact the applicant and say you need to give us all this information the next submittal period, which
information complete enough to meet our ordinance requirements. She said it may not satisfy all the
questions we have but it meets the legal standard for being able to process an application. Therefore, if a
person gets to the Planning Commission within 90 days and decides when they get here and to they are
not quite ready and ask to defer then they can do that. We are recommending that continues but they
just have to give us something in writing and tell us what the time period is that they want and can still get
to the Board within 12 months if they make all their submittals on time. These are the two fast tracks and
she would say many of our special use permits where the applicants are serious about their project get
through in less than a year. Many if not most of the projects for special use permits for an applicant
conscientiously pursuing approval they will get through somewhere in 4 to 6 months, a year at the most.
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Ms. Echols said we have the other group of people who have deferred and what happens to them.
Therefore, if someone has requested a deferral they need to give us the information within the time period
that they have asked for so that a decision can be made within 36 months or 3 years of the time of the
acceptance of their application. We have heard that is generous and it may be but that is sort of the way
the ordinance is set up now. If you read the ordinance, you can see that it implies that you can have a
deferral for one year from the planning director, the planning director can extend it for up to another year
and then if you want another deferral you go to the Board of Supervisors. They are not restricted to a
year but that is their cutoff generally and why we are talking about the 36 months to try to follow the
pattern that was already in the Zoning Ordinance. We have projects that have been here for well over 36
months with a project that has been here since 2010 that has been deferred and taken out of deferral and
deferred and taken out of deferral; a project from 2015 that is very controversial and the public keeps
asking when is it going to get to the Planning Commission and to the Board; and we have a lot of trouble
answering that question because we don't have that ability to cut it off and say they have exceeded the
time period that they have.
Ms. Echols said that is why we are asking for comments from you of putting in a definitive time period so
that then we know when something will end, close the file out and say nobody is going to come back and
ask to resurrect this. Therefore, there are different points along the way that we are asking people to
either resubmit or withdraw and if they fail to resubmit within a time period then we are considering that a
voluntary withdrawal. If someone defers the onerous is on the applicant and if they have not given us
anything and we have nothing we can take to the Planning Commission for a public hearing at that point
we say you have failed to meet your obligation and voluntarily withdrawn.
Ms. Echols said you did not have this in your packet so you could really look at it in some detail, so not all
of my detailed pages shown in the slide might make any sense to you right now, and you may or may not
be ready to make any recommendations or decisions on this. However, she wanted to set it up for you to
see that we are trying to establish the different times during the process that someone can ask for a
deferral, resubmit and what happens if they fail to resubmit. She said it is not unusual for someone to be
in a state of deferral but in contact with us asking questions if this will work; and that is okay because they
are still actively pursuing but we still need to have some deadlines on it.
Ms. Spain noted that it is a state of deferral and it sounds like a state of denial.
Ms. Echols replied that we have had some of those, too. She painted out when we went to the
Roundtable there was only two people and she had sent between 55 and 60 emails to our applicants for
the last several years and our regular customers. We had one member of the development community
who does a lot of work with clients and represents a lot of applicants that came and she provided a great
deal of good comment. We also had a Board of Supervisors member who was there to also listen and
provide some comment and they thought in general that the proposed changes seemed fair.
Comments from Roundtable
• In general, changes proposed seem to be fair, but...
• Concern: Unfair to take advertisement fee up front and not use it if the applicant withdraws before
the public hearing and the applicant would be out of that money. Ms. Echols said what we tried to
explain to them is that we spend well in excess of what we take in for an application and maybe
as much as 2Y= times at the minimum of what we take in. However, we also said we would call
this an application fee; we are not separating out the legal ad fees; we would just increase the
application fee to represent the average advertisement cost. We still are not going to recover our
money but we will be able to cover the advertisement in almost all cases by that increase in the
fee. That gave the Board member some pause because increasing fees is not done lightly and
so he wanted to bring some of those issues to the Board of Supervisors so that is something else
we would need to be talking about is how we deal with fee increases. One of the things that was
talked about was in order to deal with what might seem like an unfair situation is to setup a refund
based on the percentage of activity that had taken place. We kind of do that now, but something
a little more formal like if you are doing it from the application point to the time you get your
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comments we might give you one-half of your fee back because we have not done all of that
work. Therefore, you would not be out of that money. That is something the Board wants to
review as well.
Refund of a portion of the application fee should be available if withdrawal takes place before
public hearing.
Requests for action or withdrawal should go to the Planning Division, not the Clerk.
From Board of Supervisors member: we need to look at reducing fees for special use permits
(SPs) for certain uses. He was most concerned with the impact of the fees on religious
institutions especially the small religious institutions that don't have a lot of money to work with in
the first place.
From applicant representative: we need to look at reducing the number of uses for which special
use permits (SPs) are required and that might also save everyone some time and money.
Ms. Echols said we provided a lot of examples to the two people that was at the Roundtable on the kinds
of deferrals we get and they both were surprised at the range of things we deal with that take so much
time to figure out what state is this in. However, after we explained that she believe that is why they
came to the conclusion that they felt like the changes that were proposed were fair. We can come back
around and you can ask all of your questions but from here we need to know whether you have enough
with what you have gotten to say okay you can bring us the rest of the Section 33 changes and we will go
ahead and set a public hearing for August 7. We can get you those changes 10 days in advance and it
is possible that if we get through this in August that it could go to the Board in September. She said the
staff is very anxious to see this change so that we can discontinue the activities we have to do to get
applicants to give us some kind of a letter telling us the state of the application. The changes in the fees
we need to do a little bit of work on and bring back and we need to talk about that internally. However, for
right now we wanted to know if the basic ideas about deferrals and the 36-month deadline are things you
could support.
Ms. Spain said when we asked for that in Pantops she had no appreciation of the complications involved
here in the number of cases and thinks this is a well -needed change and asked the grandfathering
situation for those in deferral now and if those would be held to these changed guidelines.
Ms. Echols replied staff is recommending that anything that is under review now that is past three years
from the date of acceptance has 12 months to get finished and anything that has not hit three years yet
they have up to three years.
Mr. Keller asked to build on what Ms. Spain said, and suggested that it would be helpful for new planning
commissioners from this point on to get whatever ultimately is the process that is agreed upon that this be
in the orientation packet and explained. He said the details presented are a great clarification to some of
the statements made from the development community, staff and the public at different points asking
these kinds of questions. Mr. Keller asked Andy Herrick if a note could go in that notebook given to the
new commissioners.
Mr. Herrick replied that he was making a note of this for Mr. Blair and agreed that is a great observation
for what might be part of future commissioner orientation.
Mr. Keller thanked Ms. Spain for pointing that out.
Ms. Firehock said the first question about the ordinance language pertaining to community meetings and
public notice is one under #3 guidelines, which is on page 2 of 5, that says the director of planning shall
establish written guidelines pertaining to notification for nearby property owners scheduling and
conducting community meetings. She said this is changing it from they are authorized that they could do
this to they "shall" do this.
Ms. Echols replied that they are established and we provide them to the CAC's if you have not seen
them.
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Ms. Firehock replied that I have but was just confused by the thing that it says shall using a future verb
tense, and Ms. Echols replied that there always will be established community guidelines and it won't be
lost.
Mr. Fritz pointed out the other advantage is if we discover a better way of communicating it is easier for
the director to amend that than to have to come back and amend the ordinance.
Ms. Firehock said that makes sense and then the other question was regarding the community meeting
will be held ahead of the public hearing. She asked staff how far ahead of the public hearing the
community meeting must be held.
Ms. Echols relied that we typically like the community meeting to be held within the first 30 days so that
we can get the comments we send to the applicant so that we note that these were the items that were
discussed at the community meeting please pay attention to them or we believe these things are
important. But, right now all we have said by practice is that you need to have that community meeting
before the public hearing and so people have said well the ordinance does not require that and we are
thinking that is what the intension was. That is the only reason why we wanted to put it in here so that it
is clear when people say I don't even want to have a community meeting then staff can say you need to
have a community meeting and it needs to happen before the public hearing.
Ms. Firehock asked would it be too difficult to specify how many days prior to the public hearing, such as
7 days, because sometimes it seemed that the community meeting is held so close to the public hearing
that in fairness to all sides the applicant has not had a chance to even digest what the community told
them. She said we are not really realizing the importance sitting around the dias saying well what about
these comments and how are you addressing those when they have not even had time to address them
and they just might not be realizing the importance that we place on the community input. She asked is
there some way we could say like 7 days before or some period of time where one could have maybe
done something with their application or at least come up with a proposal for how they might modify it.
Ms. Echols replied yes, we could put that in the community guidelines but not in the ordinance.
Mr. Fritz pointed out that the director is sitting here and he heard you so when he goes to develop those
guidelines that we have talked about in the prior section for scheduling and conducting of the meetings.
Ms. More asked when a community meeting is held and then there is an excessive amount of time
between that and a public hearing, particularly when there has been a deferral, if there are substantial
changes to what the applicant is requesting my experience so far has been the applicant has not come
back to do another community meeting so she had a concern about that. She said your intention here is
to stop the deferrals from going on and on, and wonders if that can be considered as part of the
processes if there is a threshold where there is enough substantial changes that needs to go back to the
community because they have not given input on changes that were made after a deferral.
Ms. Echols said we could put something in the community guidelines that recommends that if substantial
changes have been made over a period of time it is strongly recommended that an applicant attend a
second community meeting. There are other avenues for the public to be able to know what is going on
and we are trying to sort of walk that line. If we have people who are very interested in a project we keep
their emails so that we can let them know when there is a new submittal that has come in. In addition, we
let you know on controversial projects that our planners are sending something to the CAC is saying just
so you know X project has been resubmitted you can find the information here.
Ms. More said that has worked for those projects that tend to not move swiftly but there is a large interest
in the CAC and guessed that was putting another pressure on the planner to make sure that list goers out
especially if something suddenly gets onto the schedule. We have had those people who have had their
community meeting, they are waiting and enough months go by and it kind of goes off their radar and
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then it is next Tuesday. She pointed out that just happened with one, but the notification did go out and
was comfortable with that. She said my other question is about the factors that would be considered by
the director of planning and waiving the community meeting and asked can you give an example.
Ms. Echols replied yes, the only time the planning director waives a community meeting is after he has
contacted the Board of Supervisors member to have them say it is okay to waive it. She said it is actually
the planning director's designee and the planner is always in consultation with either a principal planner,
chief or the director. The first thing we do is contact the Board member and we say this is the project, we
don't think it rises to the level of needing a community meeting; do you agree and then they tell us if it
does or it does not. Ms. Echols said in one case we had a body shop and the applicant was very
offended that he had to do a community meeting at all and we have made other body shops do
community meetings and he just decided that he did not want to do one. We sent it to the Board member
of that area and said the applicant has made this request and we have had similar projects that have
come through; there have been community meetings and we have had no one to show up; do you believe
a community meeting is needed in this particular situation. Sometimes the Board member will say a
community meeting is needed or not; one example is the Yancey project that you saw tonight where we
contacted the Board member and said there have been a number of different community meetings that
have taken place, do you think we need to have an extra community meeting and the Board member said
no; and it is a rarity that we recommend that somebody not have a community meeting. Another example
is a person who is asking for a Class B Home Occupation, which is for an accessory structure, what they
want to do is make their art in an accessory structure on their property and we said that one we think
maybe does not rise to the level of needing a community meeting so we asked the Board member who
agreed since it is so minor as to not really rise to that level.
Ms. More said if there is a long deferral that the applicant has been very engaged with the community that
a second community meeting probably is not necessary. However, I can think of some situations where
there might have been a community meeting and what was shown to the community and they were not
that interested at the time and a deferral happens. If there are substantial changes she feels like
something could slip through and just wanted to make sure that there is some kind of process that would
trigger the request is different enough that we need to go back to the community with this.
Mr. Keller asked what about timeframe and do you think if something is at the three-year window even if it
is the same.
Ms. More replied that she was saying it is not the same and there would have to be some kind of
whatever it is that staff could determine where there has been enough substantial change.
Mr. Keller pointed out we have seen v%fith a number of things recently that have stretched out that there is
a whole new community in effect in some of these areas; and was asking the question is there a
responsibility to involve the community a second time closer to that time.
Ms. Firehock said that is a judgment again that we can leave to our planning director, but she was
sensitive making somebody have the same meeting over again when it is a straight forward proposal and
not controversial and was comfortable with some judgement being exercised.
Ms. More said she would like to call attention to those applications that are controversial and have
substantial changes and maybe it is a reach out to the CAC of that area if that is where the original
community meeting was held.
Ms. Riley agreed with Commissioner More that if there has been substantial change or there was
inadequate information provided at the first meeting would be a good basic for a second community
meeting.
Andrew Gast -Bray, Director of Planning, said the nature of the three years being selected was supposed
to in no small part address the idea of something capturing most transients in just a pure timeframe issue.
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In fact, when he was in New England it was five years and that was because of what the state legislature
had determined as being it is no longer really the same situation so whatever that might be. Mr. Gast -
Bray said he agreed with what he was hearing that if there is substantial change that what was reviewed
is no longer accurate that he liked the idea of sort of in the context of a minor versus major change in an
application that we might recommend a second community meeting.
Ms. More suggested that it could be the consideration of the director of planning in waiving a meeting to
talk with that supervisor to find out if we should do another community meeting.
Ms. Riley said Section 33 seems to be broken up in 33.3 which is for initiated zoning map amendments
by the county and then 33.4 is those not initiated by the county. She asked what the definition is of
initiated by the county.
Ms. Echols replied if the county wanted to rezone an area like the Downtown Crozet District that would be
a zoning map amendment initiated by the county and we would not do it on a spot basis but we might
have a district or an area that we want to redesignate. It does not happen often, it is rare that it happens,
but it does happen and we might do that with what comes out of the small area plan and might initiate a
zoning map amendment for 200 properties or something like that.
Ms. Riley said so just to be clear about this then the efforts to expand the boundary for Sweet Spot would
that have been a county initiated zoning map amendment.
Ms. Echols replied that it was a Comprehensive Plan Amendment but the applicant would have had to
make and sign the application for that zoning map amendment.
Ms. Riley asked if the Southwood rezoning application was going to be a county initiated zoning map
amendment.
Ms. Echols replied no, we don't own the property so that will be initiated by the applicant. She said the
rezoning that the county does are comprehensive in their scope like the 1980 zoning map amendment
where we established zoning districts throughout the development areas; that was one the county
initiated.
Mr. Fritz said there have been two county initiated rezonings, one is the 1980 rezoning and the other was
the Downtown Crozet District.
Ms. Riley asked for a clarification on staffs recommendation for removal of language under a and why it
is being removed.
Ms. Echols replied that was a zoning text amendment and the language is something that the Board of
Supervisors back in January said that they did not want to have applicant initiated zoning text
amendments. She said because what happens is the staff may get started down a path on something that
does not have the support of the Board and we may be using those resources that we need to be using
on other Board priorities. Ms. Echols said the alternative that they laid out was if an applicant wants a
zoning test amendment they need to approach the Commissioner or the Board of Supervisors to get
someone that will champion it for them to get the Planning Commissioner or the Board to adopt a
resolution of intent to begin the process of study where we had also set up a public participation process.
She said it is not to prevent someone with a good idea from saying we think this would be a good change,
but mainly to get it to the right decision makers rather than having staff have to drop everything they are
doing and do all the work on a zoning text amendment because someone has made an application.
Mr. Bivins said regarding the flowchart when an applicant is none nonresponsive after you have reached
out to them why should that come on to a public hearing and not enough to say you are nonresponding
you are no longer on the calendar.
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Ms. Echols replied partly because we are obligated to get somebody to you within 90 days
Mr. Bivins said there are other opportunities when someone is not responsive we can push them along
earlier in the process to free up slots for people who are engaged and trying to move through the process
in a timely manner.
Mr. Fritz replied that it would be nice but thinks we are taking the view that the Code says when we get an
application the Planning Commission is supposed to act on it within 90 days. If they make the application
and it clears the hurdle to get and be reviewed they are entitled to being heard without any further action
on their part so we are taking that reading of it to make sure that we are compliant with the Code.
Ms. Echols said we are also using that as a tool for an applicant to understand; they have to make a
choice either to have a public hearing that goes down and that they are denied or they are going to defer
or withdraw and so it is trying to push the applicant to make a decision. She said we are also trying hard
to get out of the business of having to call and beg for someone to give us a status.
Mr. Fritz said it actually takes a lot of resources.
Mr. Bivins said that he appreciates that so my point is since it does take a lot of resources that at some
point, a person or entity is nonresponsive and there are consequences in other parts of our life for not
being responsive. He asked why that should take the space on the Commission's agenda when you
have a group of individuals here who are actually trying to move projects forward.
Mr. Fritz noted that we are just taking a very literal reading of the State Code if they file their application
and meet the minimum threshold to get their application in they are entitled to a review.
Ms. Echols said we are hopeful that people will not want to waste your time and staff will do what we can
to encourage them to get it in a shape for you to act and not take something to you that you are just going
to have to say we have to deny this.
Mr. Fritz pointed out we would not advise someone to do that but it is an option.
Mr. Bivins said he understood that the proposal is to move all fee collection up front and not an increase
in the fee that he thinks is an important thing for people to understand. He said there is a rebate function
here that if you get to this point then we will give you some X amounts that staff will figure out. Mr. Bivins
said he would like it clear that you are not increasing fees and changing the timing of the fee.
Mr. Dotson said he had two comments and requests two clarifications. The first comment is that he would
agree with Commissioner More if a project changed substantially the planning director would have the
basis for calling for a second community meeting. However, he would not agree if the population in the
area changes that would warrant a second meeting since he would think that the original population was
still representative of public concern rather than holding another meeting if the population changed. The
second comment is that he was amazed in reading through this how much staff time must go into calling,
chasing, pushing and begging, etc. and he has served on two groups one about 20 years ago the Land
Use Regulation Committee (LURC) and more recently the Regulatory Streamlining Committee and it
would always come up about how the county staff is dragging its feet or extending the process and how
the applicant was having to push the county staff. Mr. Dotson said everybody is interested in making the
process work better.
Mr. Dotson said he had two clarifications and asked if an applicant requests a zoning text amendment or
a Comprehensive Plan amendment and has filed an application that has to go to the Board of
Supervisors for them to agree to even consider it and asked if that is a fact.
Ms. Echols replied that Is a true fact that when we were talking to the Board about zoning text
amendments and staff resources early this year what we said is we have a hard time knowing how to
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balance the Board's priorities and we think if the Board will say what is important to them the staff can
respond to them and also for the Board to prioritize the things that we do including some of the initiatives
that you would like for us to take. The Entrance Corridor issue set aside, if you have something that you
want to work on and adopt a resolution of intent we are obligated to take that to the Board and ask them
how you want us to address this so we have the staff resources to do the work that needs to be done.
Mr. Dotson said if there is an applicant who is interested in a zoning text amendment or a Comprehensive
Plan amendment is there an application and a fee.
Ms. Echols replied no, there has been an application and a fee and what we are proposing is that be all
taken out, but if someone wants to do it they need to get your ear, the Board member's ear and come to
speak to the Commission in matters not on the agenda asking if you would consider pursuing on our
behalf because we think these things can be improved by it and the Commission would ask staff to find
out more about that. We would start with the authorization of this work rather than a response to
someone's idea.
Mr. Dotson said a special use permit or zoning map amendment would be for a particular property; there
is an application, a fee and an obligation, as Mr. Fritz said to process that within a certain time. If on the
other hand there an idea, issue or a problem that person needs to either go to the Board of Supervisors
or the Commission to make a convincing case and then it becomes county initiated matter with no fee t0
that person at all.
Mr. Fritz replied that was correct and that part of the issue, and you have stated it perfectly, the State
Code outlines a process for rezonings and special use permits, however, it outlines no process for the
zoning text amendments. So it creates this false understanding if you file an application and submit a fee
we can take that and never process it and the Board could simply say don't put it on schedule ever or on
our agenda for a resolution of intent. There is nothing in our ordinance or the State Code that would
require that to move forward at all so this allows them to come to the Commission meeting and speak
under matters not on the agenda and they can talk to individuals. There are plenty of opportunities to
speak before the Planning Commission and the Board.
Mr. Dotson said in a sense if there is a private interest in a zoning map amendment or a special use
permit there is an application and a fee and if it is more of a policy or public matter then it has to go
through the public bodies.
Mr. Fritz replied that he had that exactly.
Ms. Spain asked how the applicant would know that and if they would contact your office and you tell
them that is what they need to do, and Mr. Fritz replied yes.
Ms. Firehock commented that you asked at the beginning and we were generally in support of this
approach and I am and applaud efforts to reduce confusion and wondered whether we might also at
some point move towards making an easy searchable data base since we will have this nice clear
process. She said other communities to have this where you can look up a status of a proposal and know
whether it was deferred, went to the Board or the community meeting is coming up so she spends a lot of
time as do other Commissioners and staff answering questions from confused citizens that have no idea
where that thing is in its process. She said now if we clean up the process perhaps we could make it
easier to find.
Mr. Gast -Bray said that is something we are very much working on; it is part of the Rio/29 as our pilot test
to vet it and make sure we can really track this through. He said we have been working with elements
including our County View software to see if we can track this. He said other places do that and we are
trying to figure out how we can do the same thing.
Ms. Firehock said that being on the website would help many people track projects.
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Mr. Gast -Bray said that is understood but he cannot promise because we do not have all the ducks in a
row and we will do this first and maybe look and explore that opportunity later but that is very much the
questions that we are asking as well.
Ms. Echols pointed out our Neighborhood Planner David Fox who has moved on to greener pastures was
looking into that and he did a lot of research for us on and we want to get to that point so she is hopeful
we will.
Mr. Keller invited public comment
Morgan Butler, with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said that he came tonight primarily to get
some clarification on what is being proposed and the idea of clarifying this section of the ordinance makes
a lot of sense. From reading through the staff report and listening to the discussion tonight he has one
question as well as one concern to raise. He said my question is that Ms. Echols mentioned that there
were some deferrals that have been setting there for years, the applicant requested deferral and they are
just kind of in this no man's land but they are not being moved forward and the question is why 33.4.r.2
does not address those under the current ordinance. He said it says, "an application shall be deemed to
have been voluntarily withdrawn if the applicant requested that further processing or formal action on the
action be indefinitely deferred and the Commission or the Board of Supervisors is not requested by the
applicant to take action on the application within one year after the date the deferral was requested." He
said it seems that it is getting to Mr. Bivins point that after a year of inactivity if a deferral has been
requested this to me reads that it should be at that point deemed voluntarily withdrawn; there is nothing in
here that says the request for the deferral has to be in writing so that should not be the hang up and so
that is the question.
Mr. Butler said the concern that he has is another thing that some of the Commissioners have touched on
tonight and that is the proposed process that seemed to allow for a very long deferral. As an example,
you consider an applicant goes to the Planning Commission; gets a recommendation from the
Commission within that 90 day window, and then they decide to defer; they could do so for another 2'/z
years and then suddenly bring it back up and be able to go straight to the Board of Supervisors at that
point after 2Y= years of this thing just sitting dormant. He said that to me does not seem to be fair to the
public, as folks have noted tonight a lot can change in 2'/z years; the development can occur around the
proposal; Planning Commission member, Board of Supervisors members change; the Comprehensive
Plan can change; and of course the project itself may have changed significantly in that period of time.
He said it seems that after a certain amount of time passes it will often make sense to have a proposal be
deemed withdrawn and have it go back through to the process so it can go through these different layers
of public review again. Under the current system the default rule as he just read a minute ago is that you
have one year for a deferral, yes there is a possibility that you may extend it beyond that year if the
planning director or the Board of Supervisors approves of extending that but one year is the default. If
you go beyond that you are deemed withdrawn and have to go back to the Planning Commission. He said
the concern is that we are considering some could in some circumstances change that period to 2'/ years
that is concerning and wondered if maybe the solution may be to cap the one for deferral at one year or
16 months under this proposal that has a 36-month total time period. He said it is hard to explain and
hoped that made sense.
Neil Williamson, with the Free Enterprise Forum, said the intent of this is quite good and that the term of
art in the legal realm of voluntarily withdrawn is a misnomer but it is probably a legal misnomer that we
get to live with. He said in terms of the differences for requiring an additional community meeting before
going back to the Planning Commission you have seen these applications morph. He said the community
meeting identifies a buffer of trees that they want to have on the south side of the property that changes
the application from the community meeting to the Planning Commission meeting or the ARB has an
issue with the specimen of tree and that changes so the levels of changes happen all the time and
sometimes these are significant. He said in an ARB meeting on Monday they wanted to swing the
building around and make it an L instead of in a rectangle; those changes are significant changes and it
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takes time to do those things. He said that as some of you know that are involved in development it is not
always easy to get these things changed on a dime and it costs you more than a dime. He said the
process at three years for an entire process is not overly lengthy; the concern of the transient nature of
the community is something that we deal with everyday with approved projects. He said leaving it in the
36-month period whenever the Planning Commission hears it and whatever changes that he has found
that the instance of having two public hearings, unlike the city where there is one, has created the
opportunity for significant improvements between the two even if they are different and he would push
hard against going forward with anything that changes that 36 months. However, he would completely
agree to end this nebulous business, but respect the person that has paid the money on the front end for
everything, communicating so to bring it forward with the staff recommendation probably for denial for the
reasons of the comments not answered. He said if you are requiring paying everything up front, you have
to deliver everything in the end.
Mr. Keller said in light of these two speakers and the points that they have made does the commissioners
have any further thought for staff in going forward to public hearing.
Mr. Dotson asked that the request go forward to public hearing.
Ms. More said she was comfortable going forward.
Ms. Firehock said that she had already said everything except in light of the two speakers she was
leaning more in the sympathy zone for the length of time it takes to make substantial changes especially
as we saw with the last recession where financial hardship also made it very difficult for people to move
forward with proposals as they were originally construed.
Ms. Riley said she was comfortable moving forward with this.
Mr. Keller said that he was also.
Ms. Spain said that she was also.
Mr. Bivins said that he was comfortable but would still like there to be some conversation about
constructive withdrawal when a person does not response and also was concerned that good ideas and
people with investment ability tend to go to places where they can have those ideas be realized.
Therefore, given that this area is entering into a group of regions that are competitive and attractive that
we figure out ways in which we can be responsive and keep individuals who are bringing good ideas
here. He said there is a population here that is being left on the side of the road and some of that occurs
because we are comfortable with the amount of time that it takes to make a decision and does not think
that time is what the market actually would like us to do.
Mr. Keller thanked everyone for coming.
Ms. Echols said this was the hardest presentations to put together due to the hard concepts and thanked
the Commission for the direction. She said that the other changes to Section 33 and a table on what is
going on will be provided and we will set the public hearing for August 7.
The meeting moved to the next item.
Committee Reports
Mr. Keller invited committee reports.
Mr. Dotson reported:
• The working group for the Places29/Rio Small Area Plan met last week and examined the work
that has done on the transportation system and talked a lot about how you sustain interest or a
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momentum over the long period of time that it will take to implement this plan. We talked about
implementation generally and the scheduling take away is that it will be before the Planning
Commission on August 21s' and the staff and working group indicated that they hope to have the
Comprehensive Plan Amendment to the Commission before the end of the year. Those are the
two timeframe takeaways.
The CIP Oversight Committee — one of the recommendations back in the spring was that
community masterplans, which have for years been considered CIP projects, and given the way
the CIP works with the various criteria, public safety, education points and so forth assigned for
each of those — those master plans were always at the bottom of the list. Therefore, we got
behind on the schedule of updating the master plans - Crozet if it is a five-year schedule would
have been 2015; the Places29 would have been 2016, Pantops would have been 2013.
Therefore, in other words you can go down the list and we are basically behind on all of those.
Coming out of the CIP Oversight Committee was a recommendation that those plans and studies
really aren't Capital items and henceforth they should be considered as part of the operation
budget. He said that is sort of a good news/bad news sort of thing and sort of out of the fire into
the frying pan and maybe it makes instead of an impossible situation just a difficult situation but it
is an improvement. That has now become the practice for the next round in the CIP and the
operating budgets. That could have some implications for getting the funding for these master
plan updates on some kind of a reasonable schedule. As a follow-up Mr. Dotson proposed as an
item for follow-up that the Commission have some conversation about how you would go about
scheduling, are there some criteria that could be used to say what plans need to move to the top
and which plans does the Planning Department/Community Development need to put into their
operating budget request for this year. He said that goes beyond a committee report and that
would be a follow up item but I wanted to put that before the Commission coming from the CIP
Oversight Committee.
Ms. More reported:
• The PRFRA met and the Board of Supervisors has officially approved a name change to the
Albemare County Conservation Easement Authority.
Ms. Firehock reported:
• The Historical Committee had a non -meeting where we went on a field trip to northeastern
Albemarle County to an estate called Findowrie, in which they had a roll in working with the
landowner to purchase that property and they are going to restore it using architecturally relative
methods and restore it to a period appropriate. Ms. Firehock said an email was sent saying:
"According to The Architecture of Jefferson Country..., this home was "allegedly built for Thomas
Darsie before the mid -eighteenth century. More likely it was built for either John Clark or Joseph
Brand about 1778. Regardless of the date, it is one of the oldest virtually unaltered houses in the
area ... Six generations of Campbell descendants owned Findowrie until it was sold out of the
family in 1991." It is now under new ownership and the owner plans to restore it using accurate
time -sensitive architectural details and methods for construction/restoration"
• The committee of two, the subcommittee that was formed to discuss communications with the
Board of Supervisors, that was Mr. Dotson and myself, and our council John Blair was unable to
meet so we sent emails back and forth, but we are not recommending anyone vote on this
tonight. She said we want to specifically change a section of our by-laws Section 6
Communications with the Board of Supervisors and so would read that briefly and then also read
John's comment. Ms. Firehock read, "The Commission may enact resolutions of intent to request
the Board of Supervisors initiate zoning map amendments, comprehensive plan amendments or
zoning text amendments upon adoption of a resolution of intent the Secretary shall provide a
copy of the resolution of intent to the Clerk of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and to
the Chair of the Board of Supervisors within 7 days of the Commission's action." The intent there
is to make sure that while yes, it will go to the Clerk in a timely fashion that it will also be notice to
the Chair of the Board of Supervisors because there is a great deal of discretion, in my opinion,
on when an item or a resolution of intent from us gets put on the agenda of the Board of
Supervisors and it is that time in which they are made aware of the resolution, and of course they
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may have read our meeting minutes and maybe found it there. She said also she wanted to
make a point in terms of the type of communication that we have addressed potentially with this
change to our by-laws. Ms. Firehock said this is from our Council Blair, he said, "I don't think that
the proposed language would encompass the request to the Board of Supervisors to task staff
with reviewing the scheduling of master plan amendments. Resolutions of Intent are usually
reserved for pure land use matters, ZMA's, ZTA's, CPA's, etc. I think the appropriate vehicles for
your requests would either be a resolution or a letter addressed to the Board of Supervisors that
is adopted via vote of the Planning Commission." Ms. Firehock said what he is referring to there
is some communication from Commission Dotson and myself to say what about some of the
other items that we might want to communicate to the Board of Supervisors and perhaps feel are
not being communicated in a timely fashion. She said next we will meet with our counsel in
August at which time was have asked our Director of Planning to join us because what we want
to do is talk about this particular by-law proposal and then also just discuss in general other
vehicles and ways communication could be improved and come back to you with a
comprehensive report.
Commissioner Dotson said it was a great report.
Ms. Riley reported:
• The 511 and Avon Street CAC met on June 21s' with presentations by Kevin McDermott, the
transportation planner who gave us the status on the Avon Street Corridor. This week the
consultants on the Corridor Plan will meet with the CAC.
• A community meeting was held for 1895 Avon Street Extended for a limonene motor vehicle
rental service special use permit and a second special use permit for an auto detailing service.
Ms. Spain reported:
• The Places29North CAC met four weeks ago and the occasion was used by the developers of
Willow Glen for the community meeting.
Mr. Bivins reported:
• The Places29/Hydraulic CAC met yesterday and we were honored by Ms. Echols and her
colleagues that went through a Planning and Land Use and the role of CAC in that that whole
effort for new members.
• The MPO Tech met today and spoke about increasing bike and pedestrian access.
Ms. Spain reported:
• Not being able to attend the Pantops CAC meeting she asked Ms. Echols to talk about it.
Ms. Echols reported that at the Pantops CAC meeting staff reviewed the master plan and received good
input.
The meeting moved to the next item.
Review of Board of Supervisors Meeting — July 5, 2018 and July 11, 2018.
Mr. Gast -Bray reviewed the actions taken on above dates.
The meeting moved to the next item.
Old Business
Mr. Keller invited old business. Hearing none, the meeting moved to the next item.
The meeting recessed at 7:56 p.m. and the meeting reconvened at 8:02 p.m.
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New Business
Mr. Keller invited new business
Presentation by Crozet Community Advisory Committee Regarding Survey and Resolution of
Intent Request (Jennie More)
Mr. Keller said the first item was a Presentation by the Crozet Community Advisory Committee regarding
the survey and a resolution of intent of request. He invited the representative to come forward.
Jennie More said she had provided a brief history and why they ended up here tonight. She said this in
no way an attempt to say that the Crozet Master Plan is more important than others since timely review of
all master plans are important. She introduced Ally Pesch, Chair of the Crozet CAC, Shawn Bird who will
take us through the survey presentation and Tom Guterbock. She said the Crozet CAC is seeking
feedback and are hopeful for support from the Planning Commission as this moves forward to the Board.
Ally Pesch, Chair of the Crozet CAC, reiterated what Jenny said in there are two parts to our resolution
with the first part to draw attention to the master plan revision timelines and that we would want to support
that effort for all the districts. She said the second part of the resolution is an attempt to emphasize the
guiding principles of the existing Crozet Master Plan and use the survey that we just completed which
Shawn Bird is going to go over that supports the guiding principles as outlined in the resolution.
Shawn Bird said he was now the Vice -Chair of the Crozet CAC and where he first started in on this
process, which is an expert consultant in the process of conducting the survey in Crozet. He said Tom
Guterbock and he are both affiliated with UVA's Center for Survey Research and we both heard about the
fact that Crozet wanted to do a survey and we volunteered our time to make sure the process followed
many of the standard procedures that one does that wants to conduct a regular scientific survey. He said
through the process of being involved in all that he got involved in the CAC and so forth but wanted to be
clear he was here as a presenter of how we did the survey and what came out of the survey and give you
some of the insights. He said there is a range of volunteers in the community who have done the lengthy
process of putting together the survey which included writing a questionnaire, editing it and building off of
the previous survey we did in 2009/2010 timeframe. He pointed out that Tom Guterbock is the Director of
UVA Center for Survey Research and a member of the Crozet CAC.
Mr. Bird explained the scope in conducting the scientific survey since they wanted to be sure to reach
everyone affected in development in Crozet. (See 2017 Crozet Community Survey — Presented by
Shawn Bird and Tom Guterbock)
The Planning Commission received the presentation.
Mr. Keller said the Commission would receive public comment and then decide how to move something
like this forward to the Supervisors.
Public comment was taken from the following individuals:
- Tom Loach, Crozet resident, spoke on the participation by the volunteers and the changing
demographics in Crozet.
- Neil Williamson, with Free Enterprise Forum, asked the Commission to please not endorse,
accept or recognize this unbalanced resolution.
There being no further public comment, the meeting was closed and the matter before the Planning
Commission.
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Mr. Keller said that was taking us in another tangent and direction from what we are trying to deal with
here.
Ms. More said she would rather not because we have talked about funding and how it is allocated but we
still have issues of staff time and availability even if the money is there because it takes a huge amount of
time to take on. She said if we just want to let it go and say thanks you guys for coming we are going to
let it go, but I am willing to make a motion that we are thankful to the CCAC for taking initiative and being
proactive in overseeing the implementation of their master plan and the idea that in doing so draws
attention to the need for timely review of master plans in all districts. Ms. More said she was making a
motion saying that.
Mr. Dotson seconded the motion.
Mr. Keller invited further discussion. Hearing none, he asked for a roll call.
The motion was unanimously approved by a vote of 7:0 that the Planning Commission thanked the CCAC
for taking initiative and being proactive in overseeing the implementation of their master plan and the idea
that in doing so draws attention to the need for timely review of master plans in all districts.
Mr. Keller thanked everyone and asked if there were any other points that anyone cares to make about
this.
Mr. Bivins offered as a kind point that when you do resolutions it is hard for someone to hear a resolution
when your points are telling them not to do things. He said there are lovely wordsmithing ways to get to
that, but when the sentence starts off with don't do this, don't consider this that all of sudden puts the
person reading the resolution in a defensive position if you are asking them to move this along. So I
would like to just say if the parties are going to try to move this along they may want to do some crafting
of those six points.
Mr. Keller asked for an update on where staff feels we are in the master planning process for everything
in the growth areas. We have the new studies that are going on in the south, the work that is being
wrapped up on 29North and it would be helpful for this body to have just a brief summary from staff and
then we as a group will be beyond how we are going to do resolutions of intent and we could think about
whether we would either entertain making a recommendation for a resolution of intent to the Board of
Supervisors on that movement from the CIP to the continuing budget which is not there yet and just at a
discussion point and in some ways responds to what you were getting at. The other is whether we would
want a representative to actually go when those budgetary discussions are happening that we would want
a representative from this Commission to go and make that point to the Board of Supervisors.
Mr. Keller thanked the Crozet CAC and personally he wants to applaud this effort and thinks that you
have heard from people up here questions, comments but collectively you also have heard positives
about the involvement of community and trying to get a sense of that community. As you presented it
may well be that getting people to think about it in answering the questions actually provided the best
result of this whole process because it was asking people to engage and to think about the community in
the future and that is a great planning experience for folks.
Ms. Spain announced:
• The 2016 Planning Commission Annual Report submitted to the Virginia Chapter of the American
Planning Association Awards Committee won. This is quite a great accolade for Elaine and the
Planning staff and staff will be recognized on July 24 at the APA meeting.
Mr. Keller announced:
No Planning Commission meeting on Tuesday, July 24, 2018 and July 31, 2018.
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The next meeting will be a Joint PC/Board of Supervisors work session regarding Southwood on
Tuesday, August 7, 2018 from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. in Room #241 with the regular meeting at 6:00 p.m. in
the Lane Auditorium.
Items for follow-up
Mr. Keller invited items for follow-up. Hearing none, the meeting moved to adjournment.
Adjournment
There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 9:33 p.m. to the next Joint Planning
Commission/Board of Supervisors meeting at 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, August 7, 2018 at the
COB -McIntire, Room 241, Second Floor, 401 McIntire Road, Charlottesville, Virginia with the regular
meeting at 6:00 p.m. in the Auditorium, Second Floor, 401 McIntire Road, Charlottesville, Virginia.
Andrew Gast -Bray, Secretary
(Recorded and transcribed by Sharon C. Taylor, Clerk to Planning Commission & Planning Boards)
Approved by Planning Commission
Date: 3.19.19
Initials: SLB
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