May everyone here tonight to the special meeting for August 10th for the Plan of Commission.
And at this time, I'm going to ask Ms. Kirby if she will please to call the roll.
Ms. Iverson, Mr. McGee, Mr. Abbott, Mr. Haydra, Mr. Ledbetter, Mr. Whitaker, Chairman Bailey.
If you did not get a copy of tonight's agenda, there should be some at the back of the auditorium.
If you want to pick those up to follow along, at this time on my ask everyone to stay in it and I'll ask Mr. Abbott, if he will, the leaders in the pledge of allegiance.
Before we get into our schedule hearings for tonight,
We do all our citizens in opportunity to speak to the Commission on any item that is not
on tonight's agenda, if you want to make comments on anything that is on tonight's agenda.
We do ask that you wait until we're discussing that case before you make those comments.
So at this time, I'm going to open up citizens' time.
Anyone who wants to speak and come forward, I've got one card here from Mr. Terry.
If he wants to come forward, see
in the auditorium,
you can pardon me.
You can come fly, I'm so I couldn't understand.
Oh, if it's only a gender, no, just wait, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Anyone who wants to speak or want anything that's not only a gender for tonight?
If not, I'm going to close Susan's time, and we're going to move on into our cases for tonight.
We have one case tonight that the Commission will be taking action on, and then we have
two other cases that we're going to have for informational purposes.
One would be the conference to plan up date and the other is the solar policy.
We will allow some citizens to come in on that, but the official vote on that will not
be until our regular meeting, which would be next Thursday, to 17.
So, having said that the one case that we do have, that we're going to have action on tonight.
I'll turn it over to Mr. Pompeii if you would please for the presentation.
Thank you, Mr. Bailey.
So, the first public hearing for tonight is a specific case related to an amendment to the current 2018 Comprehensive Plan.
The Hanover County Board of Supervisors has submitted a request to amend the Comprehensive Plan
at a new school complex in eastern Hanover along the U.S. Route 360 corridor. This particular
proposal would locate the schools within the Henry district. Here is a map of the properties
that the county's under contract to purchase where the proposed schools will be located,
a proposed middle school, and a proposed high school to replace Bel Creek middle school in
mechanicsville High. The properties stretch from U.S. Route 360 mechanics will turnpike north
to pole green road at its intersection with Williamsville Road.
This is just east, almost a mile east of Walnut Grove Road
and the Route 360 intersection.
The particular map was a zoning map
and if this amendment is approved,
this is what the conference of plan would look like.
The community facilities plan
in particular, the schools and libraries plan
shows existing libraries and existing school.
That map would be amended to show two proposed schools,
again, between Route 360 and pole green road,
near its intersection with Williamsville Road.
So, for a little background, the school board and the Board of Supervisors are working together to locate a site for a replacement for Bel Creek middle school,
and mechanics full high school, those schools are aging and are slated to be replaced in the coming decades.
After some consideration, they chose the site, which is several parcels again, between Route 360 and Pol Green Road.
This would be the first step in all of the necessary land use approvals that the county would need to obtain before those schools are constructed,
even the county and the school board need to go through these different processes.
So the first step is to show on the companies of plan where generally where these facilities
would be located, all public facilities need to be located on the comprehensive plan maps.
In eight to ten years, the school board is a anticipated to pursue a conditional use permit,
the properties are a zone day one, so they would need to go through that conditional use permit.
At that time, there would be detailed plans and studies and actual engineering drawing
for the planning commission and the Board of Supervisors to review.
But this time it's just a high level concept.
Hey, is this the right location for these schools?
Once the conditional use permits approved,
if it is, the project would go through the site plan
approval process.
Again, this is just to help the county do its due diligence.
Has it resues purchasing this land?
The conditional use permit process would not
have them for eight to ten years in the school
constructed after that.
This is a potential site layout.
Again, this is a concept.
Once the conditional use permit is applied,
they'll be detailed drawings.
In the shows, how two schools could fill in the property with associated athletic fields
and then an access road, stretching from pole green road, where it intersects with Williamsville Road, down to U.S. Route 360.
There are a couple key issues that the county is investigating as it pursues purchase of this property.
Transportation is a major issue. Again, these schools would not have direct access onto the Route 360 or pole green road.
There would be an access road with the school entrances off that internal access road.
To better understand the impacts, these schools could have on the surrounding area, a traffic impact analysis is completed at this time.
Once the condition leaves permits applied for there also have to update that traffic study.
But at this time, based on traffic volumes currently and with projected, there are some recommended improvements at each of the site entrances,
as well some improvements recommended at the intersection of U.S. Route 3, 16, 1 at Grove Road.
The county is already planning for those intersection improvements at Walnut Grove Road in US Route 360.
They're included in the 10-year funding plant, the Board of Supervisors adopted in July.
Another important piece of this is that these schools will be located just east of the boundary of the suburban service area where
growth is anticipated and utilities are provided.
Public water and sewer would be extended to these schools from the SSA.
They likely be extended down US Route 360.
But since these properties are outside of the SSA, no other properties be allowed to connect to these water and sewer extensions that would only be designed to serve the school.
Historic resources, a phase one field survey was conducted.
There are a couple of battlefield features located on the property and a cemetery that's associated with one of the historic homes.
That's located on the parcels as well.
The historical commission did review this case and there will be potential impacts as part of this construction.
They want to be involved as the conditional use permit and school design continues and as a phase two study is conducted since these
Features were found in the phase one study a more detailed study will be conducted to help design the site and determine how to mitigate negative impacts to any historic resources on the site
Environment there are some streams and upon they're located within a adjacent to the site along with adjacent RPA areas the site
the ideal or conceptual layout does acknowledge those different features.
And the most surrounding area is rural residential uses.
Again, it's outside the suburban service area,
where there is more of our higher intensity development.
A church is adjacent to the property along Pol Green Road.
There are a few limited commercial uses along US Route 360,
but again, most of the area includes residential uses.
Community meeting was held on June 21.
Some of the issues and concerns that participants
shared was concerned with traffic, noise, light pollution, environmental impacts, perimeter buffers,
and impacts to historic resources. Again, some of these more detailed questions, concerns,
will be fleshed out in further details, part of the conditional use permit as a site is designed.
Right now, we're just to determine, hey, is this generally inappropriate site for the schools?
Based on that feedback staff recommends approval this request, and we do have a public hearing
I'd be happy to answer any questions the Commission hasn't.
All right, thank you.
Since the county is the actual applicant, I'm sure you don't have anything else to add
other than your presentation.
So I'm going to open the public hearing at this point.
Is anyone here who would like to speak in favor of this case, would you please raise your hand?
Anyone here who is in opposition to the case, raise your hand?
Okay.
Seeing none of them will close the public hearing.
Was it one?
Well, I'm sorry, thank you, pardon.
I missed it.
Yes, sir.
You're an opposition?
You're an opposition to the case or in favor of the case?
Neither.
I'm kind of like a middle ground, so to speak.
All right.
I just got some rough guy.
Let's say it away.
You get five minutes, sir.
Yeah, no problem.
My name's Doug Terry.
I own land west of your school side, about 75 feet west of there.
My concern is, you know,
Roof in development, I understand all that,
and traffic's going to be y'all's main biggest concern
on this thing I believe, from the general public.
But my whole thing is on his own,
it's doing it the service area, expand in that,
and lead frog and over the top of the existing properties
between the school and the current service area.
You're going to put a water and sewer down through there,
nobody can hook to. And to me that's, you know, you're doing it for the community and for the
area, for the whole, uh, bottom of the whole county, but you're limiting who can actually use
that sewer and water in that area. Um, you know, your whole sponsor hands at playing talks
about, you know, uh, harmonious, uh, expansion, and continuous expansion. And then when you leave
like that, that's not continuous. It talks about, you know, allows for the expansion for schools
and stuff like that, but it talks about expanding the service area, not jumping over much
properties. So my whole thing is, make it continuous, make it something that people in the community
can use on your warden sewer and, you know, beware of that approach. But like I said, you know,
I'm not in favor, I'm not in favor of against this thing.
I'm in favor of it, I guess, as I were to speak,
but I was just like to see it done,
you know, really smart planning.
You know, smart planning, you get good results out of it.
You know, just like to see that happen, you know,
you guys can talk about it and go your way,
but in the end, that's kind of like,
yes, thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Terry.
Anyone else
want to make any comments in opposition to the case or in favor of the case?
I don't want to miss anyone.
Okay, I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing.
Mr. Pompeo, you might want to address some of his concerns on the SSA.
The only thing I can comment on is that, how do the Haskell is outside of the SSA as well?
Am I correct?
Hand of High School is actually just inside the SSA, the opposite side of the SSA, but Paul Green Elementary School is outside of the SSA, Patrick Henry High School is outside the SSA, and while both of those schools are outside of the SSA, they do have public utilities providing service to them.
the same as this would. And I don't think there are any plans right now to include
to expand the SSA, but I mean, the school, if the cup is going to be in eight to ten years,
it could be 10 or 15 years before the school is built. And by then, I mean, I'm not saying that it
would be, but it could be that the board at that time wants to include more into the SSA. It's
just that they don't want to expand the SSA. Am I correcting that? That's correct, if it was 15
years out say there'd be three updates to our Congress of Plampton and now.
Okay.
So, any other comments concerning the SSA that Mr. Terry is referring to?
No other comments, but again, the board is indicated that it won't allow connections between
the school and other properties that are outside the SSA.
Okay, thank you. All right, the public hearing is closed. I'll just make a couple of comments.
One,
the mechanical high school right now is about 82% capacity.
Real often, I think all of us will hear comments on the schools that are at 100%.
I don't think there are any schools that handle the county at 100%.
The high school is about 82% and middle school right now is at 81%.
But the driving factor, I think, in the kind of being interested in the life of a new school is those schools are so old.
Mechanical high schools built in 1959, and Battlefield, I'm sorry, Bill Creek, middle schools built in 1969.
So you're talking about old structures.
It's a lot of money to try to, you know, for maintenance and upkeep. And it's still 10 years out before this school would come into fruition.
So the main driving factor, I think it's going to be, you know, the age of the schools that they have right now.
This is just one step as Mr. Pompey indicated that the county has to get approval on when they sign the contract with the Bolshef family.
And there are certain steps that the county has to meet in order to honor the contract.
And one of those is they've got to know that that way and can be included in the comprehensive
plan that we can include in a amendment to accommodate that.
And there are many other factors that come into play in a lot of other hurdles, I guess, that
the county is going to have to contend with over the next 10 or 15 years.
So having said that this is in my district, I would
like to recommend approval of the comprehensive amendment
on CBA-2023-00002.
I would recommend approval and be afforded onto the board of Sympathias.
Do I have a second?
Second.
Second from Mr. Hager, any other discussion?
All in favor say aye.
All opposed nay. Okay, motion carries.
Okay, we're going to move on to the
Comprehensive plan update
and take citizen comments at the end that as well as I think Mr. Pompey is going to do this. I think
Miss Hunter's going to do the solar and energy policy. So Mr. Pompey is all yours on the comp update.
Yes, sir, so I'll give an overview of what the conference of plan update process has been as well as some of the proposed planning concepts and changes, so I'll start with that presentation before we have the public hearing.
So the comprehensive plan is the long range guide for growth development and the investment of public infrastructure here in Hanover County.
Every county and locality in Virginia is required to have a comprehensive plan and the code of Virginia requires that that plan be reviewed and updated every five years.
Our current plan was adopted in February of 2018, so we're reaching that five-year mark.
We started the planning process two years ago, and for those of you that are curious,
our first comprehensive plan was in 1972, and we've been pretty diligent about updating
that all of those five-year increments.
The plan is called comprehensive because it addressed a wide variety of topics,
land use, economic development, history and culture, a variety of different issues that are
all unrelated to how we grow, develop, and invest in public infrastructure in the county.
We started this project in October of 2021.
Public outreach started in January of 2022 as we launched the website
and began holding public events.
Motor's 2022 was oriented towards general visioning,
working with the community to identify strengths,
weaknesses, and what their long-term vision for growth and development is
here in Handover County that also included in-person meetings,
virtual meetings, as well as a combination of surveys.
As we moved into 2023, we began taking a deeper dive into those topic areas I showed in the
difference screen. We spent January and February looking at land use, economic development,
history and culture. And then we moved on to the other topic areas through July. Based on the
feedback that we heard, we've developed a draft document which you all received as part of your packet.
One thing that was a major focus of this planning effort was to try to get the word out as much
possible about what this planning process is and try to get as much feedback as we could from
the community.
There have been 20 in-person meetings, which many of y'all have attended, over 4,000 comments
were received, about 700 people attended one of the webinars or in-person meetings.
We had three to 400 people respond to the online surveys that we had, we had two of those.
We tried to reach out to the community through different social media platforms as well as
the website.
We also sent letters to property owners that are impacted by proposed changes that are significant to the general land use plan.
We place signs out. We got about 100 calls based on those signs. We posted a different location where changes were proposed.
The Planning Commission, the Board of Supervisors, have been actively involved in this project through different workshops and quarterly updates.
And one thing that was new that I don't think we've done in previous planning efforts is we went out to different festivals and fair strawberry festival to made a festival train day to try to get more people involved in the effort we might not be involved.
in different Plainy processes otherwise.
Again, here are some of the different stakeholders and groups that we held with those different
topic areas.
We really relied on the expertise of some of our existing commissions, so the historical commission
met a few times required, feedback, the economic development authority met a few times
required feedback.
And this process was guided by the community participation team, which you all were a part of
as long as well as with citizen members.
So again, we try to get feedback in different ways and through different platforms.
Based on this 4,000 comments, plus comments that we received over that 2 year period, we identified
some key themes.
As you can imagine, with 4,000 comments, you get 4,000 different ideas.
But again, some key themes emerge along the way.
One of the top things that we heard through this process is many people want to preserve
the real character along with that managed growth to make sure it occurs in appropriate
locations.
And there's also interesting providing different housing options, whether that be people
I'm interested in making sure their kids could come home to an affordable and quality housing
product, or some people said as a age they want to be able to move to a low maintenance
option in their community.
Community infrastructure, maintaining and enhancing the transportation network, and that wasn't
just comments about improving roads, but providing more infrastructure for pedestrian bicycle
mobility, maintaining the quality of our schools, providing more parks, particularly in the
server and service area, and expanding broadband access.
And then many comments really delay in use in the quality of development and where different
types of uses should occur, one of the key themes that came through this concept and through
recent zoning cases that you all reviewed is providing transitions, not only transitions
between different use types, how do you address that interface between say residential and
industrial uses, how do you transition from the suburban service area, which are designated
growth area to the rural parts of the county.
Again, with 4,000 comments, you get 4,000
different ideas and it's a really tough job for you all. The Board of Supervisors and staff
to try to balance all those different ideas and all that feedback we're receiving.
The goals to have a compromise that reflects the overall vision of the community and all
those different feedback and interest groups that we hear from.
In terms of major planning concepts, one overall concept that helped guide decision-making
through this process was updating our population forecast.
In previous plans, we used annual growth rate of 1.5%.
As far as this planning effort, we anticipate or a potential outcome could be 1% growth annually.
That's how fast we grew between 2010 and 2020.
So looking forward, as you looked at land use needs and facilities needs, we assume that 1%
growth rate, which is slower than we have anticipated as part of previous planning efforts.
Land use and growth management, one of the key concepts that Hanover County is used to control growth since 1982,
has been the suburban service area where utilities are provided and growth is directed. As far
this planning effort, the Board of Supervisors indicate they want to maintain the boundaries
of the suburban service area as is. That makes up 22 percent of the county, those boundaries
will not change with remaining 78 percent of the county designated as rural and agricultural.
One major concept that's new is part of this planning effort of actually some previous plans,
but not the most current one was providing a suburban transitional residential designation
Along the edge of the suburban service area where possible, that's up to one and a half units per acre,
whereas much of the suburban service area is one and a half to three units an acre.
Again, providing a transition from the suburban parts to the county to the areas that are intended to remain rural.
Continue the target distribution of residential growth, 70% in the SSA, 30% in the rural areas.
We updated some of the names and descriptions of land use designations, and we've read a little bit more detailed guidance on the design of different uses.
So with a different land use designation, there is a recommended mix of uses, how we address
transportation access, landscaping, and buffering, building quality, and then transitions
between different use types.
One major component of the conference of plan that relates to land use is the general land
use plan that indicates where different types of uses may be appropriate and what areas of
the county may be appropriate for growth moving forward.
That plan was updated based on land use vision workshops we held in July and August of
2022 feedback from different staff experts and different departments regarding infrastructure,
capacity, and economic development.
Lessons we heard from recent zoning cases in the public feedback we received through those
cases and I'm mapping exercise that looked at what existing conditions are in the county.
We're possible we try to make the links as nations follow a clear boundary so they weren't
so ambiguous.
That's not the case in all places but we could do that.
We try to make those changes.
And then all the detailed changes that were significant are detailed in the staff report as well as the public notice that was in the case of local.
Some new designations are on the map. Again, that suburban transitional designation along the edges of the suburban service area inside the suburban service area.
In the 2018 plan commercial is commercial. It doesn't matter what the type is to help address neighborhood compatibility and compatibility with adjacent areas.
we divided that commercial classification up to the three different categories, highway commercial
which would be something you might see on Route 3, 16 year, at 295, the more intense commercial.
And then other areas we have that neighborhood commercial designation which is lower intensity
commercial that might be adjacent to residential uses. And then rural crossroads, these are historic
communities where there might have been a store or something like that. Those are found in our rural areas,
provide services to those living in the more rural parts of the county. A new designation,
And I was also at his parks and conserved lands.
That shows county owned parks, nationally owned battlefield parks,
properties on our own conservation easement.
It shows properties where there's already some sort of voluntary
or ownership situation where those properties
will never be developed.
History and culture, the main change in addition
in this particular chapter was adding specific guidance
on how we address development when it occurs
in our national register districts.
we have three of those, Brown Grove, rural historic,
district, Canaver County Courthouse, and Montpelier.
There's also more guidance on how different historic features could be addressed
as development occur.
So, for example, there's a development site that has battlefield features.
There's certain guidance on how development can occur on that property,
while respecting those different features and preserving them for the future.
Economic development, the main change we had here,
was categorizing our different types of economic development zones.
Since 2010, we've identified economic development zones,
which is where we want to target those economic development efforts
of the county pursues.
In the previous plans, they're all treated the same no matter where they are.
As part of this effort, we categorize them
to different types based on existing conditions
and what their needs are.
So emerging employment hubs, those are green field sites
that have the potential to really accommodate larger scale
economic development projects.
There is one new emerging employment hub that's located north of the town
of Ashland.
Establish employment hubs, these are areas where there's already existing
businesses and there's not a lot of green field development potential but we want to support
those existing businesses there to make sure that they remain viable.
One example of that is the industrial airpark and then one new concept is having a renewal
areas.
These are areas where we can invest in streetscape improvements or other types of improvements
to continue to make them attractive for businesses such as mechanics full village.
Rule and agriculture, this is a new chapter as part of this draft update process and this
This is on the 78% of the county that is intended to remain rural,
strategy related to land preservation, residential development outside the suburban service area,
how that development can occur and still be sensitive to those rural surrounding uses,
and then fostering the local agricultural economy.
One thing we hear through the outreach process is even people that live in the suburban area wanted
to have that rural feel in their neighborhoods and their communities.
So there's some strategies on how to incorporate rural elements into more intensity
in residential developments within the suburban service area.
Housing is a new chapter
that's not in the 2018 plan based on feedback we receive from experts in the
community participation team as well as the Board of Supervisors. They're
stradged that really focus on how we invest in our existing housing stocks since we
do have ageing housing stock here in the county, exploring density bonuses for workforce
housing, perhaps using surplus county only and for affordable workforce housing
that comes available, raising awareness affordability challenges that again
continuing to invest or spurring investment within our established neighborhoods.
Active living was a new chapter in 2018 based on the lessons learned since that chapter
was introduced.
We've made some changes to enhance it and make it a more usable part of our plan.
There's more design guidance on how sidewalks and bikeways can be incorporated into residential
and commercial development.
Most of these recommendations relate to development within the suburban service area.
Regional trail networks, the fall line trails coming online, how do we capitalize on
that particular investment in our community.
And then with the limited dollars we have for sidewalks,
bikeways, the plan identifies priority areas
where we want to invest those dollars
so they have the biggest impact for the buck.
Transportation, we looked at our functional classifications
what different road types are classified as
and there were a few changes related to that.
One new concept was focus corridors.
We have limited transportation dollars.
So based on the analysis we conducted looking at,
existing capacity and congestion issues,
potential future capacity issues, as well as some different connections in the network.
These focus corridors are ones that we want to monitor during the planning horizon and
where we might want to prioritize transportation dollars as they become available.
There's 27 road segments, designated focus corridors, most of those are in the suburban
service area, but there are some rural segments that are designated as part of that focus
corridor network as well.
Concept roads have always been part of the plan since 1972 these are future roads that could be built as development occurs most of these roads
Have any funding or plans associated with them to realize construction in the near term? So, for example,
creating parkways on that particular map. It's been on the map since the 1990s and is still not
been completely realized. But these are roads we want to think about as development occurs in certain
areas and how we can make key connections to accommodate anticipated land uses. Updated typical sections
on what the roads could look like but we want to plan for where it's growth occurs. And we also
transportation, promoting interconnectivity, conducting more studies of those
concepts, we better understand where they go and how they impact the
transportation network, and then studying the possible interstate 95
interchange north of the town of Ashland, that's something that's been in
the plans since 1972, and this strategy helps move that forward in
term and whether or not that's an appropriate infrastructure improvement.
Environment, there are some gradually protecting and improving water quality, protecting titles,
rivers and streams, working collaborative with the public and private entities for
technological habitats, and minimizing light pollution, DEQ is looking at this draft plan
right now and we anticipate some guidance from them and feedback from them.
Resiliency is a new part of the environment chapter that focuses on hazard mitigation, how
do prepare for potential hazards, how do we efficiently use resources, renewable energy,
provide some guidance on how we address solar facilities and those types of things.
And then historic and culturally sensitive communities, how do we consider the impacts
to communities that might not have been involved in the public decision-making process as
other communities have in the past.
Community facilities, this chapter deals with all of the public infrastructure we have in the
county and the major facilities that are intended to serve the existing and future population.
So, based on the population forecast through 2045 that 1% anticipated growth rate, it
implies needs as well as any potential facilities.
One component of this chapter is to update our economic developments, strategic plan,
parks and recreation, master plan, as well as the water and wastewater facilities plan.
So, we take a deeper dive in each topic area and really understand and can move forward
on how to provide the best infrastructure most efficiently to our community.
One new chapter is implementation, so throughout the chapter we have all these different objectives
and strategies that we want to pursue over the planning horizon, this implementation chapter
identifies programs and different initiatives that could implement one or more of those strategies.
So conducting small area plans, relaunching the citizens' planning academy, reviewing our
subdivisions and zoning ordinances and seeing how they align with the plan, evaluating
our proper policy and updating the parks and wreck master plan and other topical plans that
These are all different examples of what's the implementation chapter that can help move all those different strategies forward.
So the Board of Supervisors has held several workshops throughout the planning process and you all
as the Planning Commission held a joint workshop with the Board of Supervisors on July 26.
Based on discussion at that workshop, there are a couple of different outstanding issues
that I just wanted to introduce in my presentation and we can discuss after the public hearing.
There might be additional issues that come up during the public hearing.
Again, these are three or sorry, five outstanding issues I'd want to introduce, they're also described in the staff report that warn some future discussion or further discussion and recommendations from the Planning Commission.
Some of the feedback at the meeting talked about introductory language really clarifying what the role of the comprehensive plan is in terms of land use planning and capital improvement planning.
There's some language and a staff report that could be added to the
Interruptory chapter if the planning commission deems that appropriate to really clarify again
What is the role of the conference of plan as a planning commission in the Board of
Society for people residents make decisions?
There are fair buffers. There was a lot of discussion about thoroughfair buffers throughout the planning process
Many residents indicated that they'd like to have a more robust thoroughfair buffers
So they can screen development from view and help maintain that rural character
There are some specific recommendations regarding the width of buffers and there were some concerns
expressed by some members of the Planning Commission aboard regarding those recommended
widths.
There are some sample language that could be a consideration for the Planning Commission in
the staff report.
So some options we wanted to discuss and get feedback on are, do you want to keep the recommended
width says is, do you want to change the recommended widths?
Do you want to take them out and have a more qualitative description of what the third
We have buffers are intended to do screen development with different types of design features
that could be used.
Again, that's something that we want to guide and saw because there wasn't a lot of consistency
on what was discussed at that joint workshop.
Transition between uses, as I mentioned, really major thing we heard throughout the planning
process is how do you provide transition between different use types in between the rural
areas in suburban service areas.
There is some specific guidance in the draft plan on how transitions could occur where a residential
use or a lower intensity use about a higher intensity use in vice versa.
There were concerns in that particular document amongst the members present that maybe we
don't need to have a specific width in there.
We can just describe different features that could be part of effort to provide transition
for different use types.
So that's something we'd like some kind of so on as well.
Building materials and design, there's concern about the recommendations in the plan about building materials and design,
the relatively high level recommendations they don't provide requirements regarding particular styles,
or anything like that, but there are some recommendations on building materials and different design features
that could be incorporated into different development types.
A lot of this comes from what was offered as part of previous rezoning cases and what other localities are doing in the region.
And then there are six areas in the general land use plan that have kind of stuck around in terms of differing feedback and opinions.
The Board of Supervisors has discussed these twice and these were discussed with the joint workshop as well.
Some of these areas include how what uses our appropriate intersection of Route 301 rule point road in Uashk Road.
Another area of discussion has been Metabirds Road, Shady Grove Road at Interstate 295.
In the staff report, there's some a suggestion that maybe that southeast corner could be changed in the 2018 plan.
It's recommended for multi-family development.
In the current draft of the Invision Hanover plan, it's recommended to suburban high.
Since that joint workshop, you all held there was a neighborhood meeting where the residents really seem to support neighbor who commercial at that southeast corner.
So that's a potential change we can consider that's in the Chicago Harmony District.
Poll Green Road, there was a quest to have more highway commercial between 1995 and Bell Creek Road.
That's in on the boundary of the Henry and the Kanksville district.
That issue was resolved based on the suggestion from a board member that we modify the description
of the Employment Center designation to recognize that retail uses can be part of a master plan project.
If it all is compatible with the surrounding uses in the Employment Center designation,
so that one has been addressed. U.S. Route 33 at Winschurch Road, State Route 54 at the Eastern
Town Limits, that's a transition area where there's been a discussion on what uses
maybe appropriate, and then new ash cake road at sliding hill road. There's an area between
the adjacent to the airport where there's been different opinions of what uses maybe appropriate
there.
So again, those are just some of the issues that we heard of the joint workshop. We
wanted to get direction on as a move forward. In terms of next steps, the Planning Commission
public hearing will be held tonight. After the public hearing and discussion, you all may
recommend approval of the draft plan is presented. You may recommend approval with revisions
and listening revisions you'd like staff to make, or you can defer a decision to the regular
meeting, which will be next week, August 17th. Once the Planning Commission makes a recommendation
on the draft plan, it's forwarded to the Board of Supervisors who will also hold a public hearing,
and their final decision would be the final plan that will be used over the next several years
into the next update, which would be in 2028.
One thing I really want to mention, we talked about the public engagement.
This has really been a team effort and collaboration amongst the citizens that have come
to these meetings.
The community participation team.
We want to thank them for all their efforts.
You all were on the community participation team as well as six citizens.
The planning commission, the Board of Supervisors, multiple different departments have been
involved and really had some great ideas.
So getting to this point has really been a team effort and has been really great to work with
everyone in the solicitate discussion to get these different ideas, not everyone might agree
with the ideas or concepts in the draft plan, there's been a lot of great discussion
over the past two years. So I really appreciate y'all's help as well as the other citizen
members of the community participation team.
So that's all from my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions right now or wait
until after the public hearing.
I think we'll wait till after the public hearing because some things may come up that
commissioners have questions on as well at that time, but if everyone is okay with that.
Okay. Okay. How many people here tonight would like to speak on the comprehensive
plan would you raise your hand? I don't have one.
All right.
I see about 14 hands because of time constraints. We normally allow 15 minutes
or comments. If we do three minutes, we're going to go from 15 to 42 assume that there's
So what we want to do is to allow each person up to three minutes, stage a name, the district
that you're in, try to limit your time to the three minutes, Mr. Hazel will keep track
of time and when you have 30 seconds left to go in your presentation, he'll let you know
so you can try to wrap things up, is everyone okay with that?
That's almost tripling their mentality and normal haio.
So having said that, first speaker can come up, Mr. Nelson,
you want to come up first, stage a name, district,
and see what you come up with, sir.
Good evening, Chairman Bailey.
Members of the Planning Commission, Mr. Hunter.
My comment, my name is Bob Nelson.
I reside in the National District.
My comments tonight concern the parks and recreation section.
I sent you a four-page critical review on Monday.
First, in that review, I stated that there were no strategies in the
advantage and had an overdraft.
I was dead wrong.
There are strategies in the draft.
I failed to properly check for them and apologize for that failure.
Second, 2007 and 2018 Virginia Outdoor plans, and the 2010 Parks and Recreation Master Plan,
all recommended a minimum of 10 acres per 1000 population for neighborhood, community,
and district parks, three acres for neighborhood parks, three acres for community parks,
and four acres for district parks.
The Envision Hanover Draft claims three acres is sufficient
for neighborhood and community parks.
It's not.
Six acres is the recommended minimum.
Using six acres for neighborhood and community parks,
doubles the recommended acreage in the draft from 345 to 690 in 2025.
Hanover is deficient in that category by over 650 acres.
Third, both the 2007 and 2018 Virginia Outdoor Plans contain a playground designation
with no minimum acreage.
This classification can be oriented to children or adults
and may include passive recreation.
Call it what you want.
pocket, small or playground. This state designate state recognized park classification should
be included in the Invision Handover Draft. Developing small public parks is vital to
preserving affordable housing and revitalizing handover's older established subdivisions.
Fourth, the 2010 master plan recommends new neighborhood community, neighborhood community
district parks. In 13 years, Hanover hasn't added any new parks or developed the two undeveloped
parks, winding Brook and Little River. The park plan hasn't been implemented. Park needs
haven't been addressed in the SSA, where 69% of Hanover's population is, thank you.
A basic comprehensive planning issue is infrastructure
advocacy and over needs an honest assessment of county parks and open space in my view
it's lacking. The park and recreation section needs to be reviewed, revised, and rewritten.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Nielsen.
Okay, next speaker, please.
Good evening members of the Commission.
My name is Patty Blan, and I reside in the beaver dam district.
First I'd like to say that the draft plan has many aspects that have improved and are
going in the right direction, and I'm thankful for that.
But I'd like to address two items needing some change in the draft comprehensive plan.
A favor keeping the pre-red lined text for buffers and open space in the site design standards
with each zoning type. I think we need to keep a reasonably high bar that could be negotiated
due to challenging site conditions, but only during an application process. For instance,
why not keep 20% open space in the suburban transitional residential instead of knocking it down
to 15? Or why not a 75 foot buffer instead of 50 feet in a transition area from multifamily residential
to lower density uses. We need unapologetic standards for site
design or else our end.
Restoration for stronger aesthetic and environmental protections, just vaporizes under development pressure.
I will also speak to strategy R4J in the rural AG section, a strategy speaking to the possibility of establishing a rural support program position.
Instead of the introductory phrasing, investigate the feasibility of creating a rural support
program position, which sounds very timid and tentative, I suggest perform a feasibility
study for a rural support position.
We say we want Hanover County to be a great place to live, work, and play.
We have to back it up with firm resolve and crystal clear language.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Boyam.
Next speaker, please.
Hi, my name is Elizabeth Raffordy, and I am the Chikahomni district representative
on the economic development authority here for the county, and I'm here to speak in
support of the comprehensive plan update, and particularly the designations of the
economic development zones that he outlined.
We understand and respect the desire of the county to designate over 75% of the land
area as rural and outside of the suburban service area, but we feel this gives stronger reason
to better utilize the small portion of the county that is designated as economic development
areas and hubs. This means more strategic and intentional focus on quality development
and projects, which bring higher wages, greater tax revenue, and decreased truck traffic.
And they're recently completed target industry analysis conducted by Virginia Tech sectors,
such as biotech, data centers, and advanced manufacturers, advanced manufacturing, where identified
as targets for which the county can attract.
These sectors would easily be able to establish and successfully operate in the economic
development zones that the plan has identified.
In addition to identifying areas for future strategic development, we support language in the
plan that emphasizes the improved setbacks, buffers, and transitions, which will make
these types of strategic developments better fit within our community.
We face significant expenses in the future from maintaining existing infrastructure as well as proposed capital investments in schools, parks and utilities.
By focusing on quality development in these specialized zones, the county can encourage the types of projects which will generate strong revenue to help address funding needs well into the future.
We're appreciative of county staff and all the work that you've done and we hope that you will support approval of the plan.
Thank you.
Next speaker.
Yes, sir?
Good evening.
My name is Tim Merrell, I'm in the National District, and I am also a fellow planning
commissioner.
So I want to thank you all for your service and I understand the commitment required to
see a comprehensive plan update through, and I've been impressed with what I've seen on the
website and the meetings that I've attended.
So thank you for your service.
I appreciate your time on this project.
I would like to draw your attention to one section of the plan, however, that the town would
like you to reconsider, and I have four points to address.
it's particularly relation to the Woodside Parallel Road proposal.
The four points I'd like to make are one to reference the history of this area of Ashland.
In 2007, the Hanover County thoroughfare plan did designate Woodside Lane as a major collector with a hundred foot setback
right of way to access the plan development of the county further to the north of the town.
Back down Woodside Lane was within the town boundaries and through a discussion with the town and the county and the state
the border of the town was shifted inside to the east to the west side excuse me of Woodside Lane
and understanding that the intention for that road was to be a major collector back in 2018.
The change that came suddenly for my second point was while the town and the staff are
only recently engaging in the preliminary discussions about the county's plan to add
this parallel road, it was surprising to see it appear as a major collector located just
800 feet west of Woodside putting it within the town limits.
Without really town awareness or participation or opportunity to discuss this change to the
So it's understandable that perhaps this was done due to citizen input from the members of the communities that are adjacent to Woodside Lane.
But the town would like an opportunity again to engage and have more of a longstanding discussion about this change and this proposed addition to this major collector.
My third point is obviously related to traffic, and the proposed parallel road to Woodside Lane would obviously create another intersection on to Route 54 east of town, which is already encouraging some concerns from residents that I've heard as a planning commissioner about the potential for additional traffic and additional congestion, additional lights going up at Mount Herman Road, perhaps in this adding another one.
to that section, you also may know about the diverging diamond approach that is going to occur on 54 over
on 95, which is going to add additional traffic changes to the area, and we just thought this was
another added perhaps burden to the citizens with this collector parallel major road. The fourth point I want to
make is about the proposal of this road to split Washington, Lacey Park. It's one of my favorite parks in the
I ride my bike through that park regularly and this road would create a four lane major or two a road through that park and again
I would like the commissioners to reconsider that so in conclusion, thank you again for your work
I appreciate the delicacy and the sensitivity of producing a significant plan like this and my ask is
of myself as a citizen and of my fellow planning commissioners for you to reconsider that part of the plan
Now, thank you, much.
Thank you, sir.
I'll acknowledge to it.
We've also got an email today, I think, from Amy, hey, I don't know if you know her or not,
who is on the Ashland Planning Commission who really sort of voiced the same concerns
that you did.
So I'll acknowledge, you know, we have gotten an email from her about that as well, but thank
you for your comments.
Next speaker, please.
Yes, ma'am.
Hi.
Good evening, Chairman Bailey, members of the Commission.
My name is Elizabeth Greenfield.
I represent the Home Building Association of Richmond.
We represent builders, developers, and a variety of industries
that support home building and land development.
I'd like to start by thanking you and the staff
for all your hard work that's gone into this plan.
And also thank you for the introduction of the housing chapter.
I'm not here to oppose support, but I'm here
just to offer a couple of comments about some of the language
the chapter and items to think forward or excuse me, think of as you continue discussion on buffers
and move into the implementation phase. The housing chapter notes that housing costs have
continued to rise and that makes it difficult for some segments of the workforce to find housing
to meet their needs. The chapter also notes that there's been a 32% increase in the median home
value between 2020 and 2022. A lot of that is not in your control. We know that housing is expensive,
interest rates are rising but land as at a premium and it's also at a minimum. This plan also
notes that you are consuming more lots than you're putting back on the ground. We need to see
more inventory on the ground to keep up with housing population and if we're going to be able to
provide any affordable workforce housing, we're going to need to do that at densities that aren't at
one and a half to three units per acre. That's how you're going to get a variety of housing at
from price points, so we're concerned that we won't be able to deliver the housing that
we've heard some of your residents come in on in the public engagement process about
needing more affordable workforce housing with the wide buffers, with taking some of the
suburban service area down from one and one-half units to three units down to just the one
and a half units with all severe requiring mandatory water and sewer connections, and while we
want to see quality design and quality built housing.
Some of the design standards will also just increase that cost.
So again, I appreciate all the hard work that went into this.
It cannot be easy balancing the thousands of comments that staff noted that were received.
But as you move forward into the implementation phase, I would just ask that you keep in mind
that we need to get more units on the ground and we need to do that in a way that there's
a variety of price points that we're able to deliver.
So thank you.
Thank you,
next speaker,
let's try it.
Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the Planning Commission, my name's Larry Shire.
I've lived in Hanover County for over 30 years. I've developed in Hanover County for over 30 years.
Mr. Pompeii in his opening statement said that the compound is a long range plan.
It is not a policy, it is not an ordinance. I feel like the compound in some respects is over reaching
It's confusing and it's contradictory to the ordinance, which is the rule.
He also spoke of the rule character of Hanover County.
Well, 78% of Hanover County is rural, 78% check done.
I don't know how much more you want for all to be.
The implementation strategies on page five mentioned an implementation strategy is a policy.
I do not think that the complaint should be rated as a policy because on page 14 it says the land use plan is advisory.
There's contradiction right there in those two items right there.
You have tons of contradiction when it comes to buffers.
I don't know why buffers are in the comp plan.
You did have 100 foot buffers, now you have 50 foot buffers, and then you're taking buffers all the way around property that have a different use.
So, if you have an industrial use, there's a buffer on your property because you want to develop maybe townholds.
Then there's agricultural behind you, then you have another buffer, then you have a thorough fair buffer.
The ordinance doesn't have those buffers, so again, confusing, contradictory to the ordinance.
I don't think the buffer should be in the compound at all.
When you speak to the building standards, I just want to make note that there's one or two things in there.
One of them speaks to what you want high end.
I build high ed, you all know what I build, and I agree with that. That's great. That's what I build,
so it doesn't matter to me. I'm going to build brick. I'm going to build high ed properties.
But on the other hand, it says, mix affordable and workhouse housing with market rate units
and design exterior so that affordable housing and workforce are indistinguishable from other housing
types. It's impossible. It's impossible to do that unless there's some sort of subsidy from
the county and I have not seen any type of subsidy from the county. So again, I just
wouldn't want to say that Hanover County is rural. You don't need orchards in communities
where after a while they're not going to take care of it. I know you have one or two communities
that try to have that, and the buffer shouldn't be in there, and there's a lot of contradiction
within it.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate your time.
Thank you, sir.
Good evening, members of the Commission.
I'm Carolyn Cook, and I live in Beaverdam, District.
At your pleasure, I'm going to read an email that you all received from President of
as well, Ms. Hunter, the Mr. Pompeo, you probably
did not receive it, so for your benefit,
and with your permission, I will read it.
Planning Commission members,
as a resident of the beaver dam of district,
I'm contacting you to voice opposition
to any expansion of industrial or commercial land
in the county as a function of the new comprehensive plan.
Certainly the explosion in housing, mixed use,
and certainly overwhelming warehouse construction
needs to be curved, not further encouraged.
The concept of an economic development zone between
Ashland and Daweswell is unfathomable.
Those of us who live here do so for a reason
and don't want the part of the county north of Ashland
looking sadly like what is happening around
and south of Ashland.
There is no infrastructure for anything like that
in this part of the county.
We need to be focusing on land preservation
and lifestyle for the residents, not further rampant development.
Thank you for your consideration.
Please feel free to contact me at your convenience,
and it is signed.
Doug Boardman, Old Ridge Road, does well, Virginia.
Thank you.
Good evening, Chairman.
And members of the Board, I'm Martha Wingfield,
and I live in the Beaver Dam District.
And I appreciate the many opportunities
that this process has given us citizens
to participate and give lots of feedback, you know, the varieties of venues, times, and events.
It's been a really open and receptive process for citizens,
you know, that I think this
is about my sixth complaint update and I only mentioned that because I've been pretty consistent
almost all of over all those complaint updates about the message and I think that is reflected
in this update, we want to maintain the role character.
That's what we, those of us that live in the rural area want to maintain the rural area. And I think our neighbors in the suburban service area want to do the same.
And to achieve that, I support the design standards that are part of this complaint update. I think that will help make an insure that that happens.
They were determined when there is development what standards they should meet from buffers to all the other areas that are addressed in the design standards.
So I think that's a good move. I also support the new land use designation suburban transitional residential, which will allow single family dwellings of up to 1.5 at the edge of the SSA next to the rural area.
because this will keep us having a hard edge of pretty dense development right up against
foreign land.
I also want to say that adding the rule ag chapter is a big step.
We've gone from a paragraph to a chapter, so I think that's progress.
I appreciate that.
I want to certainly second what Mrs. Blan said about the need for a rule support program
position.
I'd say you don't need to study it.
We need it.
I think most of us know that.
So I hope we will move in that direction.
The last part that I want to bring up and that gives me the most concern is the chapter
on transportation and all the roads that are in that chapter and all the focus areas and
all the changes that might bring.
I believe our transportation plans major goals should not be how do we get semi-tracked or
trailers off in 95 when it's backed up or how do we get interstate traffic off in 95.
You know, through back roads past the obstruction.
And I think it should be, how do we protect and preserve and enhance the communities in
neighborhoods that exist?
And that's what I would ask that the transportation plan focus most on.
As those of us that live here, how can it enhance our communities, how roads designed and
improved or not, and how do we control traffic so it doesn't disrupt the rural neighborhoods?
I appreciate the opportunity to have comments, and again, I really appreciate the opportunities
We've had to participate, I think you've set a standard for our neighbors and other communities
to follow in terms of how to get citizen input.
So thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Wilson, we can feel.
Next speaker.
I'd even ladies and gentlemen of the Planning Commission.
My name is Jesse Lenin.
I live in the Chicago State District.
And I would just really would like to thank you all for the time and attention you've given
to this.
This is a pretty lengthy process to say the least with a lot of them moving parts.
Just as a quick aside, something I've told my children, I heard it from someone else, is that we should all be very careful who we let in our head.
No growth leads to stagnation, which ultimately leads to decline.
It doesn't happen overnight, but it does happen.
One thing that I did want to mention, which I was glad to hear someone from the Economic Development Commission,
And our dimension was in page four under community character, I think it is community engagement.
It mentions a comedy, high quality commercial.
Seems like to me that word might be better used as in a courage.
We do want to encourage commercial growth, I believe, in the county.
I think the concern that I have is I think we're still kind of mixing up the advisory
are aspirational components of the compound with the ordinance and to echo previous Mr.
Shia.
You know, when I look at things like community garden orchards and things to the sort,
the buffers being in their shorter buildings versus really no mention of them at all,
they do sort of belong more in the zoning ordinance, not so much in an aspirational or an
advisory document.
I have no problems with the being in the ordinance.
It just seems like it's confusing to have them in both places, and confusion is obviously not a good thing for any locality to try and contend with.
I found it interesting that on page 17 the county referenced with strategy, lu.1d, financial responsibility to its citizens as a property owner of rental properties as well as a developer.
I have to be financially responsible to my residents and in order to do that I have to make sure
that I have spent the money wisely to bring a quality product to the county by having
these buffers in there, especially the very large ones, it's essentially a taking of the property.
It devalues the land and it thereby decreases tax revenue and if I'm not mistaken, I think
the tax revenue of something that the county can certainly use.
I appreciate you taking a few moments to listen to my comments this evening.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Lowe.
Next week, please.
Yes, ma'am.
Good evening.
My name is Nancy Young.
I live on Old Telegraph Road in the South Anadistric.
And what I'm going to say may seem trifling, considering all of the all encompassing things that
people have addressed tonight. But what I would like to point out is there's some very specific words that are listed in this plan. And while we all may have an understanding of what it means.
Ten years from now there may be all new planning commissioners and all new supervisors and they'll look back at this and they'll go, oh let's do this.
here's what I'm addressing.
And I also would like to thank everybody for all of the input
that we've been able to give you all for your hard work.
I've been to a lot of meetings.
I'm sure you're very familiar with my face and sick
and tired of looking at it because you've seen me a lot
in the past 12 years.
But anyway, I'd like to address the active living section
of the plan specifically concerning the pedestrian
and cyclist alternatives along Route 1.
On page 8 of the draft plan, it states, due to high traffic volumes along U.S. route
one itself, it may be appropriate to provide alternative routes for pedestrians and cyclists
along parallel routes with lower traffic volumes such as telegraph road and old telegraph road.
On page 4 of the Envision Hanover Topical Area Outreach Part 2 feedback summary in April and May,
it states, there seems to be general support for providing pedestrian bicycle mobility within the suburban service area.
Support for pedestrian bicycle mobility was not unanimous as a few participants expressed concerns
with more people walking or biking by their homes or on roadways near their homes.
I was one of those that expressed concern about Old Telegraph Road,
because the north end of the road that connects that did connect to Route 1 is now closed.
The map shows the walking path should be developed touching on Old Telegraph Road,
which I'm not really sure what that means, but at any rate.
There are no destinations on old telegraph road.
The road, there's nothing for anybody to see or do.
There's a steep hill, it floods, every time it rains.
I just would like to suggest that old telegraph road be removed from the language in that.
And to backtrack a little bit on a side note, I built in 2004.
I think we have been coming to planning commission meetings since 2007. I don't know, but I know,
since 2011,
this is the community of Old Telegraph Road starting in 2011.
I'm sorry. That's okay. Go ahead.
30 seconds.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Okay.
We have addressed Lake Ridge Common Suppartments, the closing of Old Telegraph Road,
the rezoning of Old Telegraph Road, the North End.
Lake Ridge Sports Complex, the wigwam strip mall,
and venues, stony run condominiums,
wisteria park development, the Powell property
developments of style craft homes, the strip mall
on route one of the Hopkins property
that corner sliding hill, the warehouse behind Marvin Lane
and Witch and Capital Warehouse in its because of language
that is in compliance or whatever.
So thank you very much and thanks for hearing me out.
Hopefully it sparks the thought.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Young.
Next speaker.
Yes, sir.
Jasper Lewis.
And I live on called Road.
And my concern is that just to give you a little history.
Some years ago, there was a blanket of rezoning and that land on that road was his own commercial.
And it destroyed a almost entire community.
And it made it impossible for people to keep homes there.
And businesses moved in.
And it was easy for them to do because if they bought somebody's house, it was already his own.
It was a blanket of rezoning.
Nobody knew about it, the community, the people weren't told, and it just broke the community up just about.
But there are some homes still there, and it's a provision I understand in this, that
would like to leave the commercial profit, not commercial, but the agricultural property in that
section agricultural. And if that happens, then it would make it easier for the people
who live that now to be able to have a community, which has been there for years. And when I
say years, it goes back to the 1800s or longer. So I'm for the grand thing.
What road is that you're talking about, sir?
Cops, road.
Cops, Cops, road.
Right, well, we're waiting.
Right, yeah.
Yeah, like I said, that was done back in the 70s.
And it, you know,
all right, thank you, sir.
Thank you.
And you say, you're a favor of the plan, sir?
You're welcome.
Yeah, I'll see you.
Yes, ma'am.
You want to go next?
I'm Hatsie, I'll say South Island District.
First of all, I want to address the old telegraph bike path against it.
I drove through there today, there are banks with driveways that drop anywhere from 10 to 15 feet on the south end of telegraph.
There is a flood flooding around the bridge which you'd have to go over to connect to your path.
And there's also a horrible wet land right at the O'Keeaton and Telegraph area that water comes flooding down into the backyard of the ground the other side of it and it goes into my yard.
But anyway, I think it would be a big mistake to have an old telegraph of the part of the bike path.
But tonight I have another subject, I want to address the traffic in the corridor between
Ashland and Henrico County.
I'm shocked at the fact of this list of focused corridors on the list of one accent here,
and they don't consider it even near capacity or that it's entrance to key areas.
That is a horrible area.
And to make matters worse, every time somebody leaves my house, we tell them to be careful,
pull it out.
Be careful.
It's very dangerous, very dangerous.
And things are keeping an ad, and the Rex, on 95, are continually causing the traffic
to be stopped on Route 1, either direction it can happen and you can't get out and the guy
can't drive on Route 1.
I would like to mention, if you go to Ashton Residence, here's some of the comments.
95 backed up from Ashton, the Richmond again, lots of fire trucks and ambulances.
That's why Route 1 was a congested nightmail.
Route 1 is getting as bad as our 95, backed up through Ashton from Atley.
January 6, does anyone know what is going on on our 95 and Route 1?
Took 45 minutes to get from Atley, Elmont, to Louis Town, so sad.
These are comments and we live it every day and there's nothing in this plan to address this issue and tell
2000 and 45 and not only that we're going to be bombarded with, I'm sorry, I'm getting out of breath, I have heart
problem.
We've been bombarded with performance food, had any problems.
Okay, and and wagments had had it is a fact in us Virginia Center athletic event opens this month.
The hospital will be built a hundred and ninety apartments up on King Charlotte and you want employment center says it will be heavy truck and heavy traffic.
And it just goes on and on, and there's nothing to address it. And that's my biggest complaint. Thank you.
Next speaker.
I good evening. My name is Harry Messina. I am an Ashland district and I didn't plan to speak, but I'm one of just to share some thoughts as a person who grew up here.
And it was raised here in Hanover in the study area and brought her family back here
nine years ago and is about to leave again because of all of this that we're talking about.
So it's just really sad to me just to see that 700 people participated in this
and vision hand over plan, but we have a hundred and nine thousand people in our county.
So only 700 people were able to somehow get the news or attend or be able to leave their families
in the evenings to go to the library to speak. I went to Atley High School with the brain storming
session that was there originally. I did the survey online. I went to the Atley Library and spoke.
I've shared multiple times about the need for a slow growth plan.
I do not feel like this plan is ready to be approved,
but yet I know that formality is going to happen,
and so I'm just here to share that I think the pieces that are missing
are having meetings per district.
I would love to just have a focus on Ashland district.
I'm sure the people of Cold Harbor would like to know exactly what they're
changes are going to be, and visualizations are very powerful, so having overlays as to what the
area geographic area looks like now and what it will look like in five years, ten years.
What does it look like? Because there's a lot of wordage, and for me, I'm not a planner,
but I would love to be able to see visually what all of these things happening simultaneously are going to look like.
Also, just the Parks and Rec, as was spoken to, we have a lot of different groups that
have tried to come and use our parks, use our school playgrounds, give our children alternatives,
to screen time, and they've been denied.
I've tried to get my son into I-9 sports at rule point at one point.
They got denied.
There's been, I know, an Ashland soccer group that's been trying to use poor form, park for
their services, they get denied.
We're sending all these people to Henrico for strikers and kickers and there's money there because people are eating in Henrico when they're taking their children to parks and wreck and athletics and other counties.
So we really need to focus on our parks and wreck. I think there's a lot to be gained there. And also with the design and implementation, I don't think it just needs to be necessarily in the historically registered areas.
it needs to be around in the suburban transition areas as well.
So local color is very important to Hanover.
Thank you.
Thank you, man.
I think we have one more speaker.
Good evening, Chairman Bailey.
The planning commissioners.
Ms. Hunter and Ms. Randolph.
I'd like first of all to thank you for your service.
And I appreciate the willingness of the staff and the planning commission to listen to
constituent input throughout this process. I think very important. There were a lot of meetings
and I think people who did attend did get the opportunity to give their input. Nice
certainly did. And I certainly understand that it's a balancing act where you're trying to
balance the competing needs of various constituencies, developers, commercial businesses, residents,
agricultural and sustainable bits. So it takes a lot and there's no such thing as perfect
And I support the plan, and I would encourage my friends and neighbors that do not, to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I think good, this comes around every five years.
Five years from now, they'll be another opportunity to fix some of the things that maybe weren't perfect in this plan.
But I have some specific comments about some specific things that I've heard that I wanted to get across,
And some of these came from Mr. Pompays to do list from the Joint Planning Commission,
Kenny Board of Supervisors and Meeting. First of all, language clarifying the comp plan.
I would encourage you guys to speak with Ms. Randolph, perhaps you could expand upon this,
but it's my understanding that state law defines the purpose and the interplay of the comp plan and the zoning ordinance.
And I think any language to clarify the compound, which is further confused the issue because it would be just an additional overlay.
I support buffers and I support the width.
And there should be aspirational. I support the idea of leaving the space.
Even if the buffer is something down the road, when there's a use, we all know of areas where a buffer is impossible because there's no, there's just not any space.
So even if the buffer is a staged buffer, and we just leave the space for it, then a use comes in.
And we add that later, that's great. We need transitions between uses, transitions between offensive uses and residential uses are absolutely key.
And we need high standards. This should be aspirational. We should let this set atone.
It doesn't have to be perfect.
I mean, developers can seek relief from the comprehensive plan if they need to, for a project, otherwise good.
And I would ask you, leave Washington, Lacey Park alone.
We have two few parks as Mr. Nelson has pointed out any number of times.
Let's keep that one intact.
And thank you.
Thank you.
Anybody else, the wants to speak?
I think that's the 14.
Okay, that's all right, come on, ma'am.
We'll have one more speaker.
Thank you so much.
My name's Dorate Tae Henry, and I live in the mechanicsville district.
And I actually wasn't planning on speaking, but I don't think I heard anybody speak from the mechanicsville district.
So I've just wrote a few notes down, so bear with me.
And I'm also new to this process.
So thank you so much for all that you've done.
I'm learning as I go.
I have gone to some of the meetings, and I'm really appreciative of all the work that's been going into this.
But I do have some thoughts and some concerns.
I don't know if this is the right link to use, but I would ask, as somebody in the mechanics
will district, we've been living there for over 20 years, and we've absolutely loved living
in this county.
My husband was a Hanover deputy.
We've just really invested ourselves in this community, and for the first time, and probably
the last 20 years, over the past two, we're trying to build out our exit strategy.
The growth has been so fast, the lack of parks, the lack of walkability, the building,
lack of design and architectural standards has really harmed our quality life.
Anyhow, it's really harmed our quality of life.
And so I don't know if this is the right link we're going to use, but I would say I would support or ask to solidify
in any place whether it's in the conference of plan or in the ordinances, anything that increases our parks,
whether there are small pocket parks, but specifically in the old mechanicsful area for my children to go play
a part week to drive 30 minutes in traffic. Also increase anything that adds to walkability.
Sidewalks to shops, greenways, expanding bike paths on the side of roads, anything that increases
the walkability or the bike ability in the community. I also support the increase of buffers.
I think I've seen a hundred feet and then 50 feet, but anything that will absolutely just increase
that feeling of roll culture in downtown mechanics for the mechanics will district,
which is just growing so fast in every inch of space that's the size of a postage stamp
has a new development on it, so anything that increases those buffers and robust buffers,
trees, bushes, anything that can support that sort of visual aid to give that role feel.
Again, architectural standards, there's a specific property that's been recently built that does
not match the architectural standard that's really an eye sore, if you will, and so I would
to support anything that adds to that role feel.
If we're going to develop something that gives it a colonial or brick, or whatever
facade is agreed upon, that gives it that role architectural feel.
I would really support that and ask for that.
An example I would use is something that misses that mark is the blaze, cooling and heating
building that's on, goodness, it's on the lead Davis and Paul Green Road.
So that's something that I would say is a miss.
And then also downtown mechanics law. I saw that it's under a renew. I don't know if it's possible to look that up as maybe a historic district as well because I know there's some historic buildings there.
And I don't know all the designations and what that would imply, but I can tell you old mechanics will really have some beautiful things and some beautiful people living there and be great to put some investment into that space.
And that's it, thank you.
Thank you, ma
'am.
Okay, I'm all.
Did you want to speak, ma'am?
Okay, please make it real quick.
We're good.
We're at number 16 and we're on the 14 raise a hand.
Good evening.
My name is the LV and I'm the Ashland District.
Thank you.
Everyone for your hard work and all the staff and everyone.
I'm not speaking favor or against the plan to plan
to have a very positive improvements
and some things that are of concern.
The number one issue I see is that we all need to learn more about growth and development.
And it should be a combined effort of this commission staff, residents, and yes, even developers.
I moved here from in RICO because everything got out of control there.
And Hanover offered a better way of life in every aspect.
I don't want Hanover to become in RICO, but I also don't want the county to die out.
We have the suburban service area and that is designed to keep the county from becoming
in RICO, but that does come at a price of more density inside the suburban service area.
Another aspect that I cannot ignore is private property rights.
I can't stand here and consider myself a believer in our constitution and dismiss private
property rights.
I also don't want to see our economic development zones become warehouse distribution centers,
the likes of Wegmans.
We want to attract businesses, but we want to be clear about what kind of businesses.
And while I bring up Wegman's, I might point out the irony of the plans goal of reducing
light pollution, because there's plenty of that with Wegmans.
And I'll save you to the time, speaking about the solar policy later if you let me.
The solar policy, if the plan, the goal of this company has in plan is to reduce, to protect
the streams and the rivers and the natural habitat, allowing large-scale solar facilities
will destroy our farmland, our water sources and our natural habitat, and all we need to
do is look at Lisa and Spotsalvania to see the damage that's been done there.
Lastly, Sheets is not an appropriate, sheets is not appropriate to put across from someone's
backyard and right around the corner from school.
Thank you and God bless.
Thank you.
Okay, I'm going to close the public hearing at this time.
Mr. Pompeii, do you want to come up to the podium and I'll see what questions any of the
commissioners might have a comment first and then if you want, if nothing is, if everything
is not covered, if you want to address some of these others on this, is that okay with you?
Yes sir.
I'm going to sort of lead this off myself,
in your presentation,
you mentioned something about
a density bonus for workforce housing, can you expand on that a little bit?
Exactly, what does that mean?
So some localities offer greater density if there is a profit condition or some sort of guarantee
that workforce affordable housing is in the greater end to the project.
So for example, if the maximum density is 10 units an acre, they might allow our project to go up to 11 units an acre if there's some sort of guarantee that
workforce affordable housing is integrated into the projects.
One thing too, and I know we've talked about this before.
I had talked the Mr. Rogers today.
We've had numerous conversations over the last year or so.
We've got an email from him, and it's maybe some people here tonight that want us specifically
talking about the property there, three or one at a real point.
And I know his concern was making a change in that designation.
And I think this 100 had mentioned in the past something about the amount of land that's involved
there, well, and not that is really in complaint, even with the existing complaint.
But we already have mixed use coming on. I call it the self-west corner, the three or
one. This lady mentioned the sheets on the northwest corner, which we've got numerous
emails on that. And I think the issue they are specific to with the sheets is the number
pumps because the way it's so right now, by right sheets, can go there. It's mild sanding. So I mean,
the reason we're hearing anything on it is because the number of filling stations they want
of the fueling stations.
But can you talk a little bit about the area they had 301 and rule point in why we were making
that change?
Because I think there were six areas that you listed in the comp plan that was just one
of the six.
So we're not trying to pick on that piece of property because there are other properties
that we're changing as well.
But can you talk about that since that happens to be in my district and I've got numerous
comments on it.
Yeah.
And like I said, we did get an email and a phone call Mr. Rogers and I have a couple of conversations on that today.
Yes, sir. So there were six areas shown on the general land use plan, where there was not really this agreement or there was not agreement on the comments we received.
That intersection, U.S. Route 1, New Ashcake Road and Rule Point Road is one of those areas where there's different feedback.
Some people want more intensity, some want less intensity, and there is a recommendation on the table.
That's actually three districts that come together right there.
Check a homony, beaver dam in Henry, so there's different ideas and feedback.
Right now, in the comprehensive plan, the 2018 plan, three of the four corners, the northwest,
the southwest and the southeast are designated multi-use, and then that northeast corner
where that house sits close to the road that's designated commercial, and that's the edge
of the suburban service area.
The draft plan shows the Southwest corner as multi-use that remains the same because that
properties already zone under development for multi-use type development.
The Northwest corner where the sheets is proposed, and the current plan that's recommended
multi-use in the proposed change would designate it neighborhood commercial, which is the lowest
intensity of commercial use.
One challenge on that particular corner with that recommendation is neighborhood commercial the proposed land use designation is less intense than what the actual zoning is that property has been zone B2 since 1969 I believe in the neighborhood commercial recommends B1 type uses and does not recommend drive throughs or 24 hour businesses more small scale type uses.
So, again, that northwest corner is proposed to go from multi-use to neighbor who commercial in the land use designation.
The northeast corner where that house sits close to the road, that's commercial in the current plan, and that's proposed to go to neighborhood commercial again, that lower intensity use.
The southeast corner adjacent to Stag's leap in the church.
There's a strip in there that's on either side of the church and includes the church, and the current plan is designated multi-use.
multi-use recommends a project that's at least 20 acres, that's a master plan type project.
That area that's doesn't even multi-use in the current plan is not 20 acres and it's multiple small parcels.
So the recommendation that's been introduced since January is to have neighborhood commercial
at the corner and then where the church is and moving towards the creek is suburban neighborhood residential
one and a half to three units in acre.
the challenging feedback that we've received on that particular
south east corner where the church is some the property owners want to maintain
that multi-use designation some of the comments we received from different groups
they want the whole the whole side of that corridor to be residential so the
neighborhood commercial and residential designations kind of in the middle of all
the feedback we were receiving so that was introduced in January and that's been
remained remained the same but as you mentioned one one challenge with keeping
And that side of the road multi use is there's not 20 acres, it's multiple parcels, it's hard to create.
What's described in employment generating mixed use project with what exists there.
I'm just giving some bullet points here, okay.
I want to say that ladies name was Greenfield, the spoke.
There's a Greenfield in my correct.
Okay. She had mentioned something about the inventory that it appeared that we were consuming
more than I guess is getting approved. Do you know what the current inventory is in
the county as far as residential? Yeah. Lots that could be developed at this point.
So I don't know the exact number of the top of my head, but each year we track that as part
of our community development report. And right now it's just over 2,000 lots that are available
for residential construction countywide.
As Ms. Greenfield said, as we track that over the past 10 years,
we are consuming more lots than our,
so more building permits are being issued
than lots are being created.
So roughly, how many, I guess how many,
lots of being consumed each year?
I want to say that.
Assuming it's 2,000 will be the point
where it would be a zero, assuming, you know,
it varies from year to year,
and the building permits issued
has been going down this year, but last year, I believe we had about 600 building permits for
new residential units. So if we create no more lots and continue at 600 homes per year,
you know, that's four years.
But if you consume, if we had 600 requests and we got 2,000 an inventory, what about how many
requests, do we have more requests than the 2000, or do we start with 2000, had 3,000 requests
and we're issues 600, which mathematically dropped to them to 1700.
Yes, so the inventory each year, so say last year we started with 2500, we add the lots
that are plotted in the subdivision by-right, and then we, in the past year, and then we add
the lots that were re-zone in the past year,
and then we subtract out the building.
All right.
Carmen Bailey?
And I say something, please?
Yes, sir.
11 years ago, we had over 4,000 lots of inventory again.
Okay.
There were just a bullet points I wanted to head on.
And just for clarification purposes,
we'll go back with the comments from citizens.
Take a look at those comments.
I'm sure there will be some meeting with yourself.
I'm just honoured or something over the course of the next week and it may become back with some recommendations on any changes that we could do or send us an email on that.
Is that the process you'll go through?
Well, I think one thing we were hoping from you all is some of these outstanding issues to get some direction on.
So if you'll have collectively some consensus on some of these issues, you direct us to make changes.
And if there's something you want us to research, we can also research that and bring it back to ideas on some other issues that were brought tonight that we had an identified.
I'll be quiet for a while.
Let all the commissioners bring up their come.
It's a question.
I'm going to recognize Mr. Led by the first.
Thank you, Mr. Taylor.
Mr. Pompey on page 1415.
You captured in some wording and italics in the introduction section that
our buffers and the transition between uses. You kept it a lot of what we talked about,
but did you want to meet? And I think the wording is done very well. Especially on the buffers,
you give a little bit of flexibility to some wording that actually was a one-size-fits-all.
So I think that's a good thing. I'm in favor of that. I would like for you to add, if you would,
If everybody is in agreement to it, under the introduction section, the wording in the paragraph
in the talix, I expect to third line down this technical analysis and include the word
compatibility in there, because we talk about compatibility in pretty much every zone in case
we have.
I think that wording should be included in as well, and I also wanted to touch on the bicycle
I don't think telegraph road is a road that you should route a bicycle down.
I don't know, is that something we put in that was not already in the connecting between?
The 2018 plan doesn't show interconnection, so that is a new concept.
And one thing I want to note is those, those routes, they aren't saying that it's safe or
recommended to walk or bike today, what it's saying, or what's suggesting is, as development
occurs, we read your brief zoning requests, as funny comes available, as make road improvements.
Those are places where we could consider pedestrian bicycle infrastructure.
What I think telegraph erosion, but you're just taking off the map, if you entered it from
the North entrance, which is the only place it would be, you have no way to go.
you'd have to turn around and come back, there's nobody's going out in the right hand and
exit on right line. So I think that one should just be taken off the map. Do we have
any control over the major thoroughfair roles like Asyl Road? I mean, I know there's a
bicycle route, but that is one road that everybody puts their life in danger of riding a
bicycle down.
It's like the National Bike Routes, we have two National Bike Routes, you have a
We don't have any control over those. I guess we could talk to Vietot and see if there's an alternative route that could work
But yeah, those are I think this should be some consideration in what other we could do to address some of those roads
That's all I have terrible bailer right
now.
I'm going to reserve the right to come back again
Just going to piggybacking on Mr. Ledbetter on the page 14 for the suburban high-residential
370 disbreaker. Where is it going to be appropriate for us to make sure that if it
in MX development that businesses have to be built along with housing, where would that be appropriate,
maybe not here, but probably where.
In the land use designation, the description for the different land use
as nations that have MX or mixed use development recommended, there's some language in there that's
a phasing plan should be developed that ensures that residential or, sorry, commercial development
is built before or as residential development occurs.
So that's in those land use recommendations that the designation themselves.
I just want that to have a little bit of teeth because the couple MX uses we've seen, the business
side of it was always pushed out and I didn't like that.
The next thing I want to draw attention to is on page 15, and I think we've come up with some pretty good ideas about buffers, and I'm just going to weigh in on what I think about the buffers.
I think there's probably a way that we can get maybe with the density bonus.
You know, we give them a density bonus for they make bigger buffers.
If they put in berms, that could, that could shorten the buffer with.
I'm kind of with where Mr. Shia was.
I don't know. This is where we need it is in year.
But what do you think? What are your thoughts on that?
And I think one thing I wanted to clarify.
I think Mr. Ledbetter was referring to page 14 in the staff report,
where we have the draft language, we came up based on the concerns we heard with potential
language all could consider. So on page 14 the staff report, it has some potential
language that could be incorporated into different land use designations that doesn't necessarily
have widths, but has guidance on how buffers should look, be designed, and that kind of thing.
So, you know, it talks about having a mixture of dissiduous and evergreen trees,
these underserved trees and shrubs, maintaining existing vegetation where possible, in open
areas where their style of vegetation consider using berms, decorative fencing, those types
of things, narrow buffers might be appropriate if certain design features are incorporated.
So if you all collectively don't think it's appropriate to include widths, then there's
some language that it gets more to the quality of the buffer than the actual width of it.
What's your opinion on that?
Should we address the buffers in the ordinance?
Yeah, so the comprehensive plan is the policy advisory document that we use and usually what localities do is once we update the comprehensive plan,
we go look at our ordinances and see how they align or don't align and make updates.
So if buffers are an important concept, which I think based on public engagement they are,
We do need to include them in the comprehensive plan, the level of detail, you know, maybe
up for debate, but I think we want some good guidance on how these buffers should function
and look like.
So as we evaluate zoning cases, we know what to look for.
And as we look at our zoning ordinance and subdivision ordinance, we know what to look for.
So I think having some guidance on what buffers look like and what their purpose is is an
important part of the plan based on public feedback.
I agree with that.
Speaking of buffers again, I don't think that's, and we've got this, if the joint meeting,
And I think it's one size fits all.
I mean, if you've got a 100 acre development,
the buffers could be bigger.
If it's more industrial use and things like that,
and it depends on where it is, too, right?
We don't want to transition area going from urban to suburban to rural.
We want that transition to phase.
And I think that's where the buffers in my mind are really impactful, because you want
to keep that rural character going out.
And if there are some things, so I think I've given you more questions and I am answers
that I'm sorry about that, but in my mind, it should be, you know, with the transitional,
Well, they should be bigger buffers or more
dense buffers, so that could be burners.
And I think there's negotiation there.
If you put in this type of buffer, we could do this many feet.
If you know, I think there's room to improve on that.
And I don't know if it's in the comp plan that we do that or if it's in, but I think there's
way we can get to, and not perfect,
but Mr. Morgan said.
I'm not perfect, but good enough for now. But I don't think we're there with the buffer yet.
You stop. I'm not done yet.
Go ahead.
The other thing I want to address, too, when I forgot what page it's on, I'm getting a lot of feedback from
as soon as it ends about the wood side road and not of its good is there are we put the
car before the horse by putting that particular road in the comp plan I don't know that we
have a plan for it yet and if we put it in the comp plan that means we're going to develop something
The original idea behind that particular road and one of the reasons for having discussion about it is we do have the economic development zone, north of Woodside Lane, north of Washington, Lacey Park, that area has been designated for economic type development plan business since 2007.
So that route could be a potential route, that would allow traffic to get up to that economic
development zone without going by the existing residential subdivisions on wood side lane.
It's entirely, it would be entirely located on county property, because that is something
that county owns.
That means that we'd have to build it, generally those concept roads are built by developers
as they propose a development along the way.
they dedicate right away or they build and so that would be a project that the county
would have to build and it was an idea to try to get access again up to that economic
development area without impacting the residents. It may never be needed, it may never be
built but the proposal would be to have that as a potential option.
Well, isn't in our former plans, wasn't that the reason for what's I made?
This was to eventually extend to that economic development zone.
Yeah, from what I understand from the town and what the one planning
commissioner mentioned, that was the route to get up there when that economic
development area, plan business area was proposed in 2007.
And if that was to extend and I can't picture it in my mind right now with that,
from adjacent to the park, or would it run right through it, or it would run on the western
edge kind of where the parking area is, it would just, what's I would just go straight,
it kind of parallel the, there's like power lines, and that kind of, but it wouldn't necessarily
go straight down in the middle of the, what's I, what's I like sitting would go through the edge.
Now there's, there's another kind of road that goes to the right, and how that's designed
It's impacts would depend on how, it's, it's, in fact, the park would depend on how that road is designed, but
Woodside Lange on straight would just kind of be on the very western edge of the park.
So what impact do we have by leaving this Woodside Lange parallel road in the complaint?
What's the impact of what's not the impact?
So since that's on county property, it would just mean that if we had funding available,
the conference of playing with support, building that road, or if there was a project in that
area, we could ask for proffers to build that road. Right now there's no transportation funding,
we have committed for other projects and that kind of thing. So the impact is if funding comes available,
if there's a big zoning case in that area, that could proffer conditions, we could ask for that.
I am concerned about the route being taking here because, you know, we've got on the drawing board, we've got iron, we've got Mr. Rogers's development coming up, we've got more impact coming down that could really impact that little section of 54.
And if we put another road in there, are we just compounding our problems?
That's my big concern.
How do we get people out of the residential area, how do we get the stuff back there?
And I don't know that this road is the answer, but again, I'm getting you more questions
than I'm answering, I'm sorry about that.
But I don't know that this road is the answer, and I know we're not going to make everyone
happy.
But I am very concerned about all this development in that little area, it is not very big.
What that's going to do with the impact traffic.
Mr. Abbott, if I could clarify some of the comments about that road.
The road that would be proposed is the would line up if the Iron Horse project were to be developed.
That is a signalized intersection that's being proposed that the town has several proposals for if that iron horse project is to be developed to have numerous entrances along Route 54 and also they have recently changed their comprehensive plan to have residential development
which is proposing to use that road as well.
So there's a number of different things that are in play.
I just want to make sure you have the full picture.
Just mentioning that there was another somebody that
bring up to me.
If we did signalize my home and road,
what is the V dot standard where you can only have a light
That certain intervals on one road could go, could we put another light in here if we need it to?
So it's not at Mount Herman Road.
The traffic study for the iron horse development proposes that to be a signalized intersection.
If that intersection were to be approved, then it would prohibit any signalized intersection
at Woodside, which would be the major thoroughfare.
If that could, and I'm just talking off top of my head,
and I know there's probably not the time,
and I'll let you guys talk in a second.
If this parallel road could we put in something
like a roundabout there?
I mean, there's other options,
than just saying we can't do anything, right?
The spacing is very close between wood side
and the proposed location for the other road.
I don't think there would be spacing even for around about.
It could be looked at through engineering mechanisms,
but it is very close.
I guess I'm just not comfortable putting that road in there,
but that's just mine.
And I'll turn it back over to you.
Thank you, Mr. Trump. Thank you.
So I don't forget what I was wanting to say.
I got three things I wanted to mention right off the bat.
I wouldn't piggyback Mr. Abbott on the phasing aspect.
I know that DMX is referenced several times in the draft
comp plan in the various land use areas.
And it does say phasing there is a phasing,
but it doesn't go into any detail and I don't know if it's a
complain is the place for that. However, I also would like to see that beef
tough a little bit in that we have seen that push back and in fact I was
kind of surprised I didn't surprise that the 20 acres. I thought we had increased
the sizing of that a little bit but it may be maybe not. I still think that's a
little small for an MX situation and the thing is as I look around and look
up and down 301, I'm looking at subdivisions that are exist that had, they were not faced.
They have going to have office buildings or some type of buildings in the front of the subdivisions.
And nothing has been built yet.
And I want, I'm curious, what constitutes satisfying a phasing process, is it just putting
in a concrete pad?
Okay, now we can build more houses.
In other words, usually the phasing that I've seen is X number of homes are building permits
whatever the terms are used, allowed, and then it stops.
Then the commercial aspect has to have certain amount done, and then more building permits or
whatever.
I'd like to see, I don't know if the complaint is the place for that, but more than just
we're going to have a phasing process.
I'd like to see let's put some teeth into the facing aspect,
because I think we want I think
that that's what we're wanting to do and make sure of a commitment by the developer on
the commercial aspect of things and that because that's what was always the intent.
I mean let's face it, that's where some of the tax dollars comes to goes towards the county primarily
from commercial end-of-things.
So I think what you're imagining is having some sort of guidance, which might not be appropriate
in the conference of plan, but somewhere that says, if there's a mixed use project,
the appropriate ratio is X number of homes per Y square footage of commercial or industrial
spaces.
That can know what you're looking for.
I don't know if the conference of plan and maybe I don't want it in the conference
of plan.
I understand that. I mean, that's a three thousand foot level thing, but I think it's something
that needs to be up to support that complaint.
Well, that is something that has come up, you know, in zoning before zoning applications
where we've had phasing on on property side. Again, I'm not sure if the complaint is right
or but I do know we've had that come up in zoning requests before.
Yeah, a cold wall park that's under development has certain thresholds where a certain number of units can't be built until some business uses come online.
So we have it in previous cases and having this language in the conference of plans as we want a phasing plan, give us the tool to ask a developer, hey, this is something that's important to the county.
We need to work through this phasing plan that come up with something that's realistic and insurers that there's business uses coming online with the residential.
Okay.
That was my thought on that.
Also, I don't know if Ms. Hunter, you got a phone number, you do not have a phone number.
Ms. Raffordy is with the economic development section, and I tried to write as fast
I couldn't, I got to more focus, and then I couldn't follow any more.
So I would love to see what she had said, and I wouldn't mind getting a contact number.
I would like to contact her and find out if I can get a copy of what she was obviously
reading something and I think she has some ideas. I know the economic development is a very
important aspect and no Mr. Ledbetter and I've talked about that in a number of times for
this complaint. So I'd love to see what she has to say. That's just more of a comment.
But it's important because the last subject that ties in the Kennedy Economic Development
produces the tax dollars for us. That's the hopes so that the thing that has been mentioned
numerous times or parks. And I'm supportive of that. And I'm happy that to hear that we're
getting, they may be baby steps and getting the parks done, but or or addressed or at least
talked about. And one of the things, I don't know, this is more of a statement than anything else,
I've raised it twice, I know at least once. We need a mechanism where I know it's been raised
where citizens have voluntarily and have offered to donate property to the county.
I know it's been brought up over on the 54 area.
I know that it's been brought up in the Chikahomni district and what would have been because
it's in the suburban service area in a very small area, I would be considering it a pocket
park.
It was mentioned here tonight.
I mean we have to think I think in some areas that's the concept we've got to try to start getting a handle on.
It's not going to be a big huge park necessarily, but some small areas where particularly when somebody wants to donate property,
we have that mechanism and what needs to be done to pursue that.
So, because that has happened and that that individual said it to me personally.
And that's a couple of years ago and there was not a desire on the county to pursue it.
I wanted to, when we had the joint meeting, I brought up the complement and how we, if somebody
comes up for a complement amendment, how we broadcast that, is this in the complement?
I think that we should not give a nod like there's going to be enhanced, notifying if you
if you want to see P.A.
We could possibly add something on page six, the last paragraph of the introduction chapter talks about the many in the comprehensive plan.
We could add some general language in here that talks about how we do public outreach.
That would ultimately be something we would incorporate to our ordinance or outreach policies,
but there could be something in there that talks about.
I just feel like, like, a compound amendment impacts more people than just the people who live around that particular property.
I think it needs to be wider, a wider net to be cast.
So, all right, I'm done now.
But you're not referring specifically to the verbiage where it says that amendments are
can be submitted.
You're saying more people being notified of the request or you can't compliment them.
If you're asking for a complaint amendment, you have to tell more people, other than the
Okay. All right. Other comments? Mr. Vortico. Thank you Chairman Davis. Mr. Abbott.
One thing I want to echo with Mr. Hager said here, I've worked with a couple several years ago, and they wanted to donate a third echo in old mechanics field for a pocket part. In the time, we couldn't get a feet on a ground with it.
But if we could get something worked out I'd be more happy to go back to these people they still might be wanting to do it
And some perfect place for it. They keep it manicured
If you had a couple of wings that said to answer some sand boxes, it'd be a good place to have right in old
Cancels. So that next thing I want to talk about
Has everybody knows I'm not in favor of the 100 foot buffer in the suburban service, all right?
And I'm gonna tell you y'all have done a wonderful job
writing this up you have
But I still see where, you know, it's not really in concrete that you, you know,
that you still could have a hundred foot buffer there.
I like all these stuff about the trees, the bushes, and everything to, you know,
you can do that with a 50 foot buffer.
Owners of urban service are you side only, not to, on the side, but I could see maybe
a wider buff in that if you give them the developer some credit with some
audacity to help offset that cost because it's cost to him a lot more money
to do that and that's my two cents and I know we'll talk about it again later
but you know I like everything I'll do and I see what you put a lot of time
and if you did you listen to what we had to say and that's what all I got to say
So are you suggesting that they change the buffer from 100 or to a lot more guns?
Because I mean, I think what he's looking for is some specific language that they're going
to put into the final drive.
Well, the old says 50 feet, you know, we're talking about 100.
I'm not in favor of 100, and Mr. Peterson is not in favor of 100, but the wording now talks
about all the berms, the trees, you know, everything else that goes with it is really nice.
Landscape and coffers, berms like Mr. Abbott keeps bringing up.
I think things are a great idea.
If you do that, I think 50 foot would be okay.
In the suburban service area only, but I'm not a favor of 100 foot.
Because right back to what I say, when we talk about workforce housing, we keep getting
away from it, not closer to it, and when you go another 50 foot, you just raise that bar up
here, and you can get to it now, so you keep raising your never get to it. And I'm just
not in favor of anything over 50 foot, I'm not cornering. I just wear a state. Sorry. Mr. Lebo. Yeah,
going back to Mr. Wood, because I think a lot of that was captured on page 14 when the revised
wording. So I think some of that's there. And I want echo what Mr. Hadris said too. I had
some people come up to me doing some of the comp-lam meetings that had properties that
they wanted to donate. And some of them were pretty sizable tracks. So I think that
really should be pursued. That may be some leeway there to give something to them.
When you're referencing page 14, we've got two, four things in this staff analysis, only the actual
contract in the staff report.
And I really think talking to a couple of people, there's a very good tax advantage to that.
But people donating property to a county in federal and state taxes, it's a very good tax advantage
from the do it.
Hopefully we can get it going.
I think Mr. Ledbear and I were together when one of those conversations took place.
But I was just like to make one more statement too.
Our transportation situation is a problem on every project just about it.
And I just want everybody to realize our rows of control by V dot.
We have to go through V dot to make any kind of improvements.
And we're still driving down rows of a creative process.
So we've got a long ways to go and it's going to be our appeal battle, but I think we're
doing the best we can, we have to be careful with traffic on all these rezoning cases
and I think we've done that in the recent future, I just wanted to make that statement.
Can I say one thing?
Public comments, please.
Yes, ma'am.
Public public comments, please.
Mr. Woodaker, did you want to make some suggestion or something less than 100?
I would like 50 feet with all the berms, trees and all that that.
What I'd like to say, we're talking about the road systems, I'll just bring this up.
We get a lot of calls from a lot of people.
They were surface-treaten erodes around the Caxfield a few years ago.
I don't know how many people I'd have called me, ringing my ear off, surface-treaten.
This year we're getting their granted and payment them all, they don't like that either.
They just don't like it, you know, we can't get out of a driveway, and you're getting
nice roads.
I mean, they're coming through doing a lot of work on that roads, which I appreciate.
But that's, you know, you hear things like that.
If we change at his suggestion to buffering the SSA to 50 feet, does that impact
All the buffers, those are just, just with an SSI.
It would just be in the SSI. The way the leaners and nations are divided up, we could just
do that in the SSI. So just for my clarity, do you want us to change the width of 50, incorporate
the language and the draft report or do a combination? Is there a consensus on that?
I'd like to see a change of 50.
It's the love out of you ever in the comments on the 50 or you don't play well.
I like some of the flexibility because I don't know that every project is the same.
If there's any way we could word it so that we could capture that, I think that would be good.
And I could go off that too because we know not one size fits all.
And if you could come up with something mandatory, it'd be nice.
So blend the 50 with the language.
I think that would be the best way to do it.
Mr. Chairman, isn't that that garbage on that's attached in our report?
That is, does it allow that flexibility?
Yeah, that does not have a recommended width, so we could just have that or we could say
something like, thoroughfare buffers should generally be,
within the Suburban Service
or something to do with magic.
Yes.
Mr. Chairman?
I did.
Since the public.
Yes.
Thank you, sir.
Since the office of topic,
if the object of the exercise is visibility,
then if we have to put a footage on there,
I think 50 is reasonable,
but if that could be reviewed,
and say, you know, maybe 50 is not needed
because of the existing trees or whatever is there,
I think flexibility.
I would very much like that in the wording.
All we're going to have to give these developing my opinion is we've got to give these
developers higher density to putting those areas if we're taking land away from them.
So that's I just want to chime in on that.
I think you've given it pretty good flexibility to capture most of what the concerns were in my opinion.
You know we want to leave the natural buffers as much as possible too and that allows that to happen as well.
we don't want to, we don't want to cut down with two or three is and then plant six foot tall trees in some situations.
Mr. Abbott.
Yeah, I want to weigh in as a buffer thing.
I think the flexibility is that I'm not an agreement with the 50 foot buffer.
I just straight across the board.
I think there needs to be a lot of discussion between that.
There's some 50 foot buffers that work.
It depends on the scale of the development, right?
If you get, if you got a 50-foot building, a 25-foot or a 55-foot buffer doesn't do anything.
So, it has to be with that eye shadow, so I'm not in favor of putting a 50-foot just a number on it,
because I think it's going to have to be flexible depending on the development.
Right there they're saying 100 what if it's you give them a leeway fifty to a hundred that's the term in I guess at
Time of slight plan or
You we could have I can take all your feedback and try to come up with something but we could say generally buffers are fifty to
X number of feet based on site specific conditions the proposed use
Fifty to a hundred feet something that is that more variable to you
I think if we're going to do that, if we're going to do that, then it's going to have
to be the scale of development too. We're going to have some coverage in there as well.
I mean, if you're talking about, you know, two story townhouses, 50 feet might be fine.
But if you're talking about an industrial complex, 50 foot is not going to work.
But some flexibility, though, that, like Mr. Ward at this thing, that some flexibility
that permits something to less than 100.
Yes.
I'm agreeing with that.
Depending on the scale.
Other comments?
I'd like to see it.
Some questions today.
They're saying real cross the board.
100 feet or 50 feet.
Some sort of flexibility.
So I think we're all in a grim attire.
I guess we need to give some direction on this.
It's a wood side parallel road.
Then we'll just call.
in any other thoughts of the Mr. Abbott?
What's that?
No.
You haven't thoughts on that?
No one?
Leave it as this?
I mean, we need, that is just a concept road anyway, correct?
I mean, it's sort of like you and I had talked about.
Yes.
She's like I don't want to go out for the Crayon Road Parkway extension.
I mean, that's been in the company since 1996.
And who knows, if it would not be developed, because you've got environmental studies,
community input, you've got wetlands, you go across, you've got a funding, and we're
talking probably decades down the road before that, but even a number of fruition, even
there's been a comprehensive in 1996.
That's correct.
And that's just one of several other roads in the county.
So that doesn't mean that that road is definitely going to be there.
That's correct.
It could be there, there's some language for that particular roadway since it's an unusual
situation in that it's county owned property within the town limits, there's language
about coordinating with the town, should that road undergo design or engineering or progress
farther than a line on the map.
So, anybody else having to comment on that particular road, I mean I understand where you're
I'm sort of okay with it knowing that it's not something that we're going to do to
immediately anyway.
I guess we only comment to that would be if there is somebody that wants to develop that
economic area then it could be going to happen really quick and we've got a lot of development
going on around there and I don't know that we have a plan to accommodate all of the
what's going on in an area.
Well, I think once we vote on this thing next week, if we have it in there, or out of there,
I mean, it's still going to be up to the more supervisors, that's the law, and I think
we want to put it down and take it out, something we could take it out and they could put
it back in, or we could leave it in and they could take it out.
That's correct.
All right.
Commissal, anything else?
Yes.
The one thing I want, I think the gentleman has loved.
I didn't get this last name, I know, was Jasper.
But, you know, he mentioned something about where he lived.
It was agriculture for Martin.
I want to check that, because I mean, I'm not familiar with the company in his specific area,
because he's of the opinion that where he is, is agriculture and is going to stay that way.
I'll give you familiar with that.
Yeah, I can speak to that situation.
So, where he is, he's on a Cobb's road, just east of Stoning Run.
And that portion of Cobb's road was resumed to industrial in the 1970s without community involvement as he suggested.
There is a proposed change to the map in that area.
So there are some houses that remain along Cobb's road including his home.
We're changing the map from mixed use and business industrial to suburban neighborhood residential where those houses are.
So the land use designation is changing from a business designation to a residential designation.
And then there's a strategy in the implementation section about working with that community to
downzone the remaining residential properties to a residential district to address that issue since
base to live there and they weren't involved in that process 50 years ago.
So, his particular issue is specifically mentioned in the comprehensive plan and changes made.
So, it's not, well, the properties, it's, it's not agricultural, but the lean
United States nation is recommending residential.
But the commercial part is, is what you're saying is coming out.
Yeah, so the, yeah, where there are existing houses along that corridor, where the
lean United States nation will change to residential.
That was a good move because we had a lot of controversy on that. We actually had a homeowner that owned a home, but because it was own commercial, they couldn't get loan for it. That helped that took care of that situation. And there's several, there's right many residential homes down through that area.
Yeah, I want to make sure we covered that.
The last of coming, and I have, I'm sorry.
I'm going to tell you what that is.
Yes, ma'am.
OK, OK, I've worked with the proposal.
Yeah, OK.
Mr. Shia wrote up a comment, and I just want to sort of
further this food for thought, do we need to go back?
You know, several of us have been on the commission here
for a number of years, and we've always
that the comp plan was really just like sort of a guiding document.
So it's really sort of like an advisory thing, the number of other mitigating factors
that can come into play, that's the following not a zoning request that's approved by us,
all the board of supervise, just because it's, I'm just going to say, purple on the map.
Then that sort of means that they're going to get everything that they want within a purple dot.
Do we need to make sure that throughout the document is says advisory versus policy?
I don't know if Ms. Hunter has thoughts on this, but it is a policy guide.
There is some specific policy in there like we're not going to expand utilities outside the suburban
service area.
That is a policy that's in the comfort to plan.
I don't think that exists anywhere else.
A policy is not law.
that's just so i think policy advisory i don't think there's much difference i don't know
i mean i'm just going to notice yeah for conversation i mean if you all think it's okay the way it is
but uh yeah i apologize he's not law that's just how we conduct business in the
Congress of plan is an advisory okay i don't know if it's right off has anything to add on that or
regardless of what the complaint says uh the Virginia code uh says that a comprehensive plan
is an advisory document, you know, for the purpose of guiding and accomplishing development,
it's general in nature. So nothing we can say in the in the comp plan is going to change
what the Virginia code says the comp plan does. Okay,
anything else in the body wants to
question, and then I'd like to ask Mr. Pompey and possibly Ms. Hunter.
You mentioned in our report, we talked about there were some things outstanding issues
in one of the items.
It was General Land, he was planned, happens to be the neighborhood commercial.
Do we need to take an action on that or just basically go along with that and I'm talking
over at the Metabridge Road Shady Grove area?
And there are plans for over there.
There's been a neighborhood community meeting they are definitely I attended that and they're in favor of that.
So because it's listed in here as a outstanding issue, is that something we still need to at least acknowledge that we want to do that?
Yes, I think as you make the motion when you decide to take your vote on the comprehensive plan, that should be one of the items at that time.
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Anything else on the comp update?
If not, thank you very much, sir.
Thank you.
Make those few changes, and then we will, as a commission,
pick air vote on the next week.
So we're going to move it here to the service manager policy.
Can I repeat back what you would like to say?
Yes, sir.
For the buffers, come up with something that kind of blends
the width flexibility with the language we included in the staff report, and then modify the
map to add that neighborhood commercial in the southeast corner of Medabridge Road and
Shady Grove to the business, and that's what we'll work on and make those changes for next
time.
Okay.
And I think we're also going to add language regarding the comp plan advertisement guidance.
If there's consensus to take old-tail graph road off, y'all can tell me that.
I'm okay with that.
All right.
We'll make the work on this for change.
I'll close off in a certain hurry anyway.
That's great because I'm in it.
Yeah, but you can get out on old key, right?
Which has a dangerous road too.
One other change is that we will look
at the suburban center, mixed use section,
and look at this language for phasing as well.
Thank you.
Yes, thank you.
Thank you.
All right, let's move ahead to the soul and energy policy.
And I think this honor is going to be.
If you do want to say that you're deferring your decision,
And you're closing this next week.
Yeah, if you're going to close the public hearing, I think we should have a vote from the commission
that they would be deferring the decision until August 17th.
All right.
So if I want to make that motion.
Mr. Abbott.
Second.
I'll second.
We're going to defer action on it until the 17th.
All my favor say aye.
Aye.
I would defer to the 1st of the 17th that I would recommend meeting.
Okay.
Then we're ready for the solar presentation.
Good evening members of the Planning Commission.
Joanne Hunter, Director of Community Development and Planning.
We presented the solar energy policy to the Planning Commission
at our last meeting and there were some changes in different items
that the Planning Commission asked us to take a look at.
I'm going to try to do the presentation.
It's much more scale-down version of what you saw last time.
However, all the changes that we have made or any of the questions that have come up
since the last meeting are going to be shown in red.
So this solar policy, the purpose is to provide guiding document
for the location of solar and energy facilities.
There are four different types of these facilities, the accessory, which is primarily what
you see at local homes and businesses.
We did add some clarifying language of how much kilowattage or megawatts are allowed with
each of these types of uses.
That would be limited to 25 kilowatts.
We had the solar energy supplementary.
That would be limited to two kilowatts of energy.
And then the solar energy facility, the wholesale one, would be by those of the larger ones,
generally the small scale, less than five megawatts, and larger scale utility scale,
and then their battery energy and storage.
So again, the first one is what you would typically think of as what you see on people's
residential businesses, roofs, or ground mounted.
And the state code does require these to be by use by right use.
We did add that the clarify that the roof mount was 12 inches at maximum tilt, and these
would be allowed in all zoning districts by right.
The supplemental one, this would be up to two megawatts and canonic seed, 10% of property
or more than 10 acres.
These are allowed in commercial industrial districts and also on farms.
These are, you see in some locations, like if you've seen the Sauer Center in downtown Richmond,
they have the solar panels in the parking lot that actually provide shade for the cars.
These would be these types of uses or if you see a lot of farms.
And now we were in one that Charlottesville that it was a winery and it was completely solar operated
through the solar panels that just served their property.
And it does allow some to go back to the grid as well.
We did add some language in there,
which came up from the Planning Commission
that this would be if they wanted to have it either higher than 12 feet.
If it's ground mounted or 12 inches on the roof mounted,
that they could apply for a special exception.
And I think that was a concern raised by one of the Planning Commissioners.
The next area is what people consider solar farms.
Those are where the principle use of the property is to generate solar electricity.
There were three different categories before utility scale, community scale and small scale.
Taking a look at it, there was concerns raised by people from the state that we shouldn't use the term community scale,
because that could be confused with some other language that is used in the solar
industry.
And then that taking a look at it, we saw that the standards were the same for the
community scale and the utility scale.
So we've just narrowed it down to two categories, utility scale, which would be five
megawatts or greater.
And then the small scale, which is five megawatts or less.
Could you go back to that screen?
I thought it should be greater than 20 meter watts.
So it used to be the community scale, which was between 5 and 20.
And we've combined it now just to two categories.
We could consider keeping that community scale and changing the name of it if the commission
like that, but the standards were the same for both the community scale and the UTLD scale.
Based on some of the comments that we had received from our citizens, under the citing
locations, we did add that the areas could be considered throughout the county except for
which previously had been in their areas designated for commercial and industrial uses in the
and natural conservation areas, and also agricultural and forestal districts, and those
were made to the small scale as well.
We did add these additional evaluation considerations based on the citizen comments that we
got, that when you're evaluating these facilities, that facilities that are currently
forced it are discouraged for soul facilities and an adjacency to scenic roads, federal and
county parks, national registered historic districts are discouraged without additional mitigation
measures to address impacts. So those were added to our evaluation criteria as we were
reviewing locations through the conditionally used permit process. There was a standard in there
that it was a 100-foot setback from a property line and a 150-feet if there was an occupied
home.
I think we received concerns that it shouldn't be whether a home is not or not, so it was
changed to 150 from property line, regardless of whether it's next to an existing home or
not.
Um, clarified that it's 100 foot set back from RPA wetlands and streams and 50 feet for all other wetlands.
Um, there is a 100 foot landscape buffer requirement.
The height is limited to 20 feet.
Um, and then underground utilities was talked about.
This is any new lines.
Um, added that financial considerations should not be the sole reason for not placing the lines underground,
which was a recommendation by the planning commission.
These also have design standards for utility and small scale facilities, which would require security
fencing, lighting, which would be full cut off.
The land disturbance would be limited to 100 acres at a time with requirement of a supervision
of a third party at all times.
Facing plan would be required if the property was going to be developed in fasing, and then
some detailed information on decommissioning and removal of these projects after their natural
life, which would include bonding for all the costs to do that.
We developed some environmental considerations for the solar facilities to avoid disturbance
of resource protection areas, wetlands and floodplains, protect the repairing buffers,
to prepare a threatened and endangered species screen from the Department of Wildlife
Service and then special consideration to be given when adjacent to cultural and
historic resources.
This is for battery energy storage.
We do already allow these in the county that was an ordinance that was approved in late
2022 and they may be considered only in the agricultural and industrial districts.
the policy requires they avoid residentially-zoned areas to minimize the disturbance on
prime agricultural soils and cultural resources, and then there's information on
setbacks, buffers, public safety and training for our fire and MS officers, and then
also decommissioning as well. There are some financial considerations related to these
types of uses. We have determined that we would be using the machinery and tools tax to tax
these uses. There are two different options that a locality could use that would be a revenue
share which would allow you to charge up to $1,400 per megawatt. However, we took a look at
an existing project within the county.
And determined that the machinery and tools tax was financially favorable to the county.
The larger utility scale projects, which are greater than five megawatts, can also provide a one time financial payment to the county.
The reasoning for the payment is identified in the state code and it's pretty broad language that anything within our budget.
It could be used for broadband various different things.
We did a pretty detailed analysis and formula to determine what that per megawatt cost should
be and with the focus on broadband and public safety.
So we have determined the fee would be $23,430 per megawatt, so if we came in with a 10 megawatt
facility we would work with the developer of this facility to prepare a
sighting agreement and that would be $230,000 that would go as a one-time
payment. They would be required sighting agreements are required for all these
facilities that are greater than five megawatts. We would want them to meet with
the county and at least have a drafting agreement in place prior to the public hearing that these
uses would require conditional use permit and then they would be ultimately approved by the
Board of Supervisors at the same time as the conditionally used permit. The funding with the
for the permit megawatt fee would be a starting point. We also also put in the policy that if there
other capital projects that are nearby the facility where the facility is be located that
they should also be considered as potential additional payment for locating near those facilities.
The megawatt fee would be analyzed every three years and would be subject to a yearly increase.
The outstanding issues that I think they were down to about four of them that we would
I'd like to get clarification on, and these were all one that the Planning Commission has shared their comments with us since the last one, which was the purpose of the deferral.
So I think the major question is right now, all of the utility facilities, which is the small, which is up to five megawatts, and the five megawatts are greater,
are allowed anywhere in the county, does the planning commission feel that only the small ones,
five megawatts, or less, should be allowed in the SSA, or is it appropriate to have the
larger facilities, which could be several hundred acres be allowed in this urban service area.
So that's a key decision point that we'd like to get direction from the planning commission.
And the second decision point was there was concern raised that right now the policy says
that the no facility can be larger than 1,000 acres.
Some planning commission members have felt that that was too large so we would like some
clarification and decision points on that.
Previous policy that had gone to the community development committee and to the Board of
have specific language in there stating that you couldn't
cluster the facilities and there had to be a distant
separation of three miles between those facilities.
When the community development committee, which is
subcommittee of the Board of Supervisors, reviewed the
policy, they felt like that there was the three miles
was arbitrary that there's no basis on where we came up
with that three miles and that they felt that there
should be some flexibility on a case by case basis to allow to review it.
It is a conditionally-use permit, so if there's too many in the area, the planning commission
in board would have that opportunity to not approve that conditionally-use permit, but they
wanted to have that flexibility in the policy.
And the last one is the land disturbance being limited to no more than 100 acres at a time
with full stabilization prior to a new section.
There has been in-ask concerns with these facilities
in the past.
The county does require through this policy
and which would include it in the ordinance
that a third party inspection and monitoring
for E&M Resonance sediment control
would also need to occur.
And I do want to point out that the Department
of Environmental Quality has recently changed its standards
back in 2022 to require the solar projects to meet more stringent requirements due to the
ENS concerns that have occurred statewide and throughout the country, honestly. And so previously
solar facilities were not considered impervious. They are now considered impervious through
DQ so they do have to meet stringent more stringent erosion and sentiment control measures.
We are asking that the Planning Commission to provide those feedback on those areas.
We would like to provide the recommendation to the Board of Supervisors.
Once the Board of Supervisors is here this, we will incorporate this policy language into
the comprehensive plan.
And then also there would be ordinance amendments moving forward related to the policy to allow
these uses within the zoning code.
I'll be happy to answer any questions, and I'm going to leave the slide up with a decision
point and look forward to hearing your feedback.
Thank you.
Public comment period.
There's no requirement for public hearing.
It's one commission's discretion.
Yeah, one quick question, and this concerns the email I forwarded to you today from Mr.
to act in some, and he talked about trying to get about a definition for clustering.
What exactly is this clustering or adequate spacing mean?
And like I had pointed out, we had in the original policy, it specifically said three miles.
The board asked us to remove that.
So the planning commission can recommend to the board that they put it back in, there is no correct number is three miles to close is at 3.5 miles.
There is no exact number.
But I think it's bringing this up in the policy is something that a tool that you can use as your evaluating a conditional use permit application if it's one that's next door to another one,
our mile may only be a mile and a half way and you might feel like that's much for that
particular road. And I think that was what the concern was is using that artificial
three-mile standard, what was the right setback, our distance.
And one thing I won't clarify is that the $23,000 fee per megawatt is that one time fee
a one-time payment to the Council.
So the end-exing to the CPI, the 23 and change that's recommended in now, that's what
would be the county policy, once the compound is assuming it's approved by the Board of
Supervisors and its implemented, that would be the 23,000 for 12 months and then that 23,000
would then go up based on what the CPI is for anyone who had applications subsequent to that
12 month period for the next 12 months.
Correct.
And we have been there that we would evaluate and relook at the formula every member of
his three years or five years, every three years, so that as the capital projects in the
model would change.
Okay.
I just want to make sure we're clear on that.
Comments questions from commissioners.
I just, Mr. McGee, go ahead.
Appreciate that.
This is not a big deal, but I know my friend Commissioner Whitaker had commented a few
times about maintenance and upkeep of the large fields like the grass getting tall.
I mean, is anything we can do to make sure they look nice or the grass is called or
maintained or is that nothing we can really do?
We can add some language in there and we can work look at work with the county attorney's office to see if we can add some language when we actually do the ordinance about maintenance or something like that.
I think we can certainly add that type of language to the ordinance.
Thank you, Mr. Abbott.
On the one-time fee, if they were to come into the retrofit, the whole farm again, does that
fee apply again?
If they were just replacing panels?
My concern is the technology I've brought this up before, if the panels are 50 watt, just throw
a number out there.
And then they have a panel now that can do 100 watts
in the same footprint, and they come in and replace all the things.
Do we charge them, or do we care about that?
Do we charge them for it?
So when they do the conditional use permit,
they'll have a concept plan.
And if their concept plan remains the same,
then we would not go back and recharge them.
However, the tax would change because, and that's one of the things
is that the, the tax, the machinery and tools tax, one of the reasons why it was more viable
option is because there could be potential for changes over time. But if there was something
that they were increasing the wattage, then they would have to amend their conditional use
permit and we could look at a fee at that point.
Okay, I'll just comment on these so we can get good.
And I guess one other thing that I did not put on the slide,
but Mr. Glid Better did bring it up.
We did have that median medium scale one,
which was five to 20 acres.
So I'd like to feedback if you prefer those three.
I'm 20 megawatts.
Five to, yeah, what did I say?
Thank you.
Been a long night.
Whether you like that small medium large,
for if you just like small and large.
On the things that we have to decide,
I think.
There's a thousand acres too big.
And, you know, what's the difference.
The, the, the, this is between the other one.
If we, if we say, yes, a thousand acres too big
and they're, and they're coming with 500 acres
and then coming right next to us,
but another 500 acre, so I don't know how we can have
one without the other is my point.
I don't think there's got to be a minimum distance
or a minimum consecutive, I don't know.
But is it a thousand acres too big?
That sounds like a lot to me.
I think it's too big for the SS.
Yeah.
If you don't mind, maybe we should kind of go in order
or do we want to?
So first of all, do you like the small meeting in large
the small march. Do you like having that medium scale? You're saying though that the guidelines
are the same for the medium and the large. Yes. So other than the name, there's no duplicions.
Less for average? I think that's okay. Anybody else have a comment on that part? They're
Okay.
Yep.
For now.
Okay.
And then, right now, you can do the large or small within the suburban service area.
There are concerns that, you know, if you have a large one within the suburban service
area that you are taking up land that is designated for a growth area, it would make the next
person have to extend utility lines much longer.
On the flip side of that, some of the positive is that we less growth in the suburban
service area, which could have be good or bad, depending on if that balancing of all
the interest.
Which, theoretically, could potentially, as some point in time down the road, consider
have to push the suburban service area out.
That is right.
Which is not popular.
I'm in agreement with that.
I don't think anything over five should be in the suburban service area.
I agree with that.
Can I ask a quick question on that?
We talk about five megawatts.
What's the size of something like that?
How many acres would that?
That's about, usually about 50 acres.
have it in the very beginning here or maybe I took it out of that slide. So five megawatts would
be about 50-50-75 acres. Some of the ones that are the larger ones are, you know, 6-800 acres
and he really large. So if you took 800 acres in the Spurven Service area that would be pretty
50 acres in the SSA is pretty big too. I'm not sure, I like anything in there, but that's just my opinion.
I don't, I don't, I don't want to see solar in the SSA at all.
We'll have a, you know, protecting the SSA.
Let's say if you, whatever you let them put in now, as soon as you're going to be at, we're back asking people to expand the SSA, and we all though that's not popular at all.
So anything you give up in there, it just makes it that much closer to being able to do that.
Do we have any requests on the board right now within the SSA?
Yes, we do.
We do. We have a proposal for if believe it's 800 acres within the SSA.
In my opinion, those projects can get met with a lot of opposition.
And I think it's going to be a waste of time on everybody's part.
I, Chairman, I agree now. I think about with, must Mr. Abbott saying,
I, I think to be a real problem there, 50 acre, you just don't have 50 acres to be able to do that.
And it's going to definitely be a domino effect.
So I'm hearing definitely know utility scale, SSA, which are the greater than 5 megawatts.
And then I've heard two, it's no, not even the small scale, 5 megawatts or less in SSA.
I don't know that I have a problem with that.
You may have some lands not conducive to build on,
so it may be appropriate on something like that,
but I don't, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me.
I just don't want to see the large acreage
to get taken up, and then the suburban service area
have to be expanded into the rule,
because we know everybody does not want that.
So, are you saying that you'd like to see nothing
within the SSA. I mean let's get some princesses for one on this.
How many acres would they five on the five if it was five if it was five
like a watch? I'm going to say 50 or 75 but I'm going to look at my my industry
well it's a we have about 50 to 75 acres for less of five acres per
megawap so could be 25 acres in that could vary and that would depend
on the currently and being perfectly flat.
I don't want to worry because things like that.
I mean, I personally wouldn't have problem with 25 acres.
I would probably worry.
But I wouldn't have 25.
I'd like 25 be fine, but an applicant bring it.
If it's a major opposition, you know, it's not.
I get done there.
Well, you have to remember some veneer of substation, anyway.
Because they came forward to run the lands.
Right.
Both are small, look like that.
Okay.
the other thing is on the five megawatt within the SSA.
I just want to make sure that we're at the end of the day.
The five megawatt, you said we would take about 50 acres, 25, 25, 25, 25 acres, okay.
That would be permitted in the SSA, nothing bigger than that, but then the SSA is what we're saying.
Okay, the only common I think I could be okay with 25 acres on the common I would have
is I don't want to, I don't want things running together, I don't want somebody coming
the next day and say, I want this 25 acres to do the same dang thing, so I think we've got to figure that out too.
So do you want to put a distance between them with an SSA and not outside of that SSA?
With a classroom comment, take care of that.
I think this kind of wants to stay in order.
Yeah, we're fine with that.
Can we put in there a number of the 25 acres?
I think it's a matter of visualizing what does that look like, you know, five megawatts.
I feel much better if it's, we say, no greater than 25 acres or something like that.
Do you think that says that?
Yes, I say.
And that would mean that you have the absolute perfect shape property and perfect typo and things like that.
And then that's another question I'll ask, because, well, I'm sorry, you had no idea.
I'd run on.
But to Mr. Ledbetter's point, if the property was undevelopable for buildings and things like that,
probably wouldn't be used for solar as well too, right?
Is that a fair assumption?
Well, if it was right beside a substation, you wouldn't want to build a home near that.
No, but what I'm saying is if you, what kind of conditions do we need to build this solar
form, does it have to be flat, does it have to be, and if it has to be flat, then why couldn't
we, just because it's next to a subsation? But now, I think we heard that they don't need
to be next to a subsation anymore. So that's also a concern.
Anybody else?
I'm not sure you
can, I'm not sure you can put the
25 acres, you know, if you
talk with an undevelopable way. I think the 25 acres is fine. And then I think it's going
up to a developer to the table and not even put it there or not.
I mean, if it's under developer way and he says I can do it, I mean, that's his
net goal.
So I'm able to cave with it up to 25 watts, that's just, again, you mean, 25 acres?
I mean, 25 acres?
I'm sorry, yeah.
Yeah, what does that rate for?
It's catching.
You can do it like that.
Any other comment?
Only other thing?
Well, I think we need to, I'll take it and discuss the, let's hear it.
Yeah, I just don't think we need to discuss the thousand acres.
Yeah, okay.
What, um, any suggestions on what that number should be?
Not a thousand.
Max, I would say.
Do you know what other, um, candies, other jurisdictions?
How do you know what restrictions they might have?
You know, it's wildly different.
Some localities have a maximum acreage for their entire county.
Some have different ones.
There is not a clear clear.
You know, a total maximum acreage or maximum per flight.
Total maximum for the entire county.
Some have total maximum for the site.
but it's there is, is this a such a new technology every local
these doing, dealing with it, but I don't think there's a correct number.
I think it's best to be conservative on this.
I think a thousand seems like a lot.
And if we need to adjust, this isn't, this isn't etched and stone.
We can revisit it, but it's a what number do you think?
I think this will happen, I said, five hundred vagus.
I got a question.
How big was broadcasts?
Two hundred.
And that's plenty big for me.
I would be in agreement with that for this plan.
Two hundred.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking about.
It was bigger, they got a cup bigger,
thinking they were trying to hand over town.
They never found hand over town,
so they reduced the cup down to like,
two, 16, or something.
What do you know about the megawatts post?
So the owner put in something like 250.
I'm gonna just give her a number.
That's five hundred to two, I have about 250.
I said 250.
I'm okay with that.
Okay, it's 250.
Okay.
It's the last bottle you'll get with that.
Yes.
Look, it's the water come.
Yes.
And then what about the clustering?
Because they talk about putting them in across the street on 360.
So what are we, yes, they are.
What are we going to address that in broad?
That's outstanding issue out there.
They already have the project.
Well, they have the project that turned down.
You have the number two.
So would we prohibit one from going on the other side of 360?
Well, I don't like the idea of it being
I think within the, as I say, that, that I don't like.
That's out of the, as I say, I'm a little more,
you know, come on, twist it a little bit.
But I'm not going to tell you if you're going to take up 25 acres.
I don't think, I think we should have some sort of a
distance between facilities there.
We're all in having another one coming with another request
way beside it.
Now, my issue with that is, you just agreed on 250 acres, right?
Yeah.
Outside the SSA.
There's nothing saying that somebody can't come in and put three more right next to it.
And then right back up to a thousand and less something to the effect that you can't do that.
And I don't know what that will.
Burbage is, but you know what's going to happen?
How about property rights?
Well, that doesn't mean that we have to approve it if it brings a vibe.
No, but I think we should, you know, we should set the standard here, too.
We've got also got property rights, you can set it.
You don't know for the property home.
Two people have 250 acres and they're right beside each other.
How do you do now the other guy?
It's outside the SSA.
We can look at it.
I would be fine with that.
Yeah, that's sort of what I'm playing in.
But with any SSA, what kind of a distance?
I mean, this is something sort of new to us.
We could consider that three acre standard,
which has been used in other local, these three months.
I'm sorry.
Listen up, everything tonight.
Three miles, which was in the original policy,
three mile distance separation within the SSA.
In the SSA?
Yeah,
and then we can decide if we're outside of the other side of the other side.
Is everybody okay with that?
Just go with that.
Anything else that we need to address?
I think that's all of it.
So I think what was decided was that the changes in red that were shown would be incorporated in policy.
The recommendation would be to not allow no utility scale solar within the SSA, but could
do a small scale solar within the SSA, but no greater than 25 acres was their consistent
recommendation of that.
The maximum facility would be 25 acres, and then clustering within the SSA would be a three
on that on that 25. We came up with the 25 acre just based upon the five megawatt. We didn't just pull 25 acre. So if there is discussion with the board or whatever, there is a reason for that.
Would like the you know planning commission take a motion to forward this to the Board of Supervisors with those changes that I've had.
with what's in rear along with the changes tonight?
Okay.
I'll entertain that motion.
Someone want to make that motion the week.
Go ahead and send the solar energy storage policy onto the board with the changes
that we have noted tonight.
Want to have a draft along with the changes that have been mentioned tonight for the
So, we'll, can I ask Ms. Hunter a question, Joe?
We've got what we're doing here, do we have battery storage?
How does that come into play with this?
So, battery storage already has an ordinance in place.
This just provides some of the guidelines within the policy for the comprehensive plan.
Once the board approves the policy, we will follow up with ordinance amendments that address all the things in the policy
and codifying what could be codified as part of his own ordinance amendment.
So you'll see that back before you in the next few months or so.
Okay.
Thank you.
I have a motion from Mr. Abbott.
I have a second from Mr. McGee. Any other discussion?
I call for the question.
All in favor of sending the solar energy policy on with those changes to the board.
It's taking a five by saying aye.
Aye.
All opposed.
Motion carries.
Okay, anything on the miscellaneous?
No.
All right, not will be adjourned until our regular schedule meeting next week.