All right, everybody. Meeting to order, work session to order. And so, if you could please call the roll, I would appreciate that.
President.
Here. Here.
Here.
Mr. Cone is absent.
Okay. Thank you. So appreciate it. So discussion items reviewing of the comprehensive plan. I'm hoping everybody had a chance to.
scan through it. Will, do you want to sort of walk through like we did last
time? Sure. Yeah. Happy to. Thank you. And if I may just one second, if you've
not met Sue, Sue Foote, she is not the new Rhonda. She just happens to be sitting
in her seat this evening.
She is she is our planning and project associate. So that
position has been vacant for a little while and we were successful in stealing her from
the police department where she was serving in an administrative role. So she's now with us in
the planning and zoning side. So welcome.
Yeah the chief threatened to charge me with
large knee and a bunch of other things.
So similar to last month, what I have attempted
to do is just an initial markup of the chapter. Some of which I put in here is kind of editorial
asking if you think maybe things still apply. Some of it, there are a couple of suggestions
you'll see under the strategies that came directly from Mr. McConey. He knew that he was going to be absent, so he'd sent some comments in.
And then there's also just some updating of data from the best available sources that I could muster up, and we'll kind of talk about that as we go through here.
So,
again, just in general, I'd prefer to skip maybe at first the goal and strategies
areas because sometimes those are better informed after you discuss the meat of what
is in the chapter and then you try to go back and say, hey, does this goal still necessarily
apply and second to that are these strategies still the ones that would be the best things
to kind of attack to achieve what is in the text of the chapter.
So kind of just going through here under population growth you'll see that we've updated
with the 2020 census number.
So the 2010 census had Middleburg at 673 in population,
the 2020 decreased by 4 to 669.
Under the local trends, we start talking about this issue
about how can we get good data or how good maybe
is the data that's available to us.
So, similar to when we updated the plan in 2019,
we were almost as far removed from a census
as you could be at that point.
But we note that oftentimes we believe
the census count in the town to be a little shy
of what our actual population might be
In the intervening years, between the Dysonial Census, there's what's called the American Community Survey,
which is a product of the U.S. Census Bureau.
But it is rather than the door-to-door count, which the census strives to get an actual count of each citizen in town.
A lot of this is just statistically derived and the methodology is beyond me.
What I do know is that in general, the smaller the locale, the greater the margin for error
that occurs, and particularly in the ACS, the American community survey, they try to
offset that a little bit. The ACS does an update every year, but they don't do it for the
town level every year. Each year when they do an update for anything that is a population,
I shouldn't say town, it's population driven. Anything that's assumed to be less than a 20,000
population, they use a five year aggregate of their estimates to try to better make
up for the margins of error that come with the small samples.
So I have a quick question. So in some of those surveys, they do it based on
square footage of the houses, so they determine how many bedrooms and what the
expectation is of the estimate of humans in the building and then take the number of houses
and then they just extrapolate from there or do they have some I'm not exactly sure of
the methodology. They try to baseline from the most recent census that they're working from,
However, what we know is that with each census, the actual information that is being requested
varies year to year.
So in the 2020 census, it was a really short form census, so they were not collecting
nearly as many data points as they had in previous years.
But the intervening years of the American Community Survey, they always have tons and tons
of data points.
So, we'll see kind of as we go through some of the charts that I've updated with the data.
For example, it had our number of housing units decreasing from 429 to 422 and there's
no legitimacy to that at all, but still it's the data that's published and available.
so I've used that. We can talk about whether we want to try to do any of our own manipulation of that.
My general feeling is that's probably a bad idea, but that we simply recognize, maybe within the text,
that there generally is a large margin of error.
are we safe to maybe assume that what we've got with this data are a couple of brackets.
We've got the census and we've got the ACS. So we're pretty safe in saying that the
number probably falls somewhere between those two points, right?
I think that's safe. That's almost word-for-word what our text in the 2019 plan said, and I would suggest that we would include a similar statement.
I think I've kind of done that in the markups. I think that's probably the best way to attack that.
So,
kind of going on within the next paragraph,
that paragraph kind of focused on the,
it gave a lot more background on the development of the resort
than maybe we need to retain in this plan.
I think it's still very important to recognize
That is probably still fair to call the largest development project in our recent history.
But of course, at the time of the 2019 plan, ground and not broken yet on any of the homes within the residential component.
And obviously that is well underway at this point.
One of the things I wanted to run by you, and I took my own approach here to see if you're
okay with this or not. So in the 2019 plan, we discussed during that process that in the mixed
usage village area of the Salamander development.
So that's basically what's directly north of us here
on mostly on this side, Pendleton Street,
that there's a profit array of uses, which includes
a significant amount of commercial space
as well as 60 residential units, 48,
which would be multifamily units, 12, which would be homes.
and there are some qualifications on who those homes or apartments would be reserved for.
The homes would be reserved for teachers, but if there was no market for teachers
and for elderly housing, the 48 units would be for quote-unquote workforce housing.
Although, if you actually look at the details of the prophets,
What they describe in there as who would be eligible for the quote unquote workforce housing are those households that earn 80% or less of loud in counties median household income, which with the current ACS is at about $174,000.
thousand dollars. So even 80% of that is that really what we envision as workforce housing.
So all that being said, we do at the 2019 time frame as we do now that
representatives of salamander have publicly stated in a planning commission meeting that they have
new intention of pursuing that array of uses that is currently
profiled. Our consultant for the 2019 plan thought it would be
best to still include those 60 potential housing units in the
pipeline, if you will, for development in town. I'm suggesting that
we should have the conversation whether we want to continue to
include that or whether we want to do something similar to what I've done in the mark up here
and that is recognizing that that zoning is in place and they could theoretically be built
but also recognizing that again, salinear officials have said they don't intend to pursue that
and further that if they want to do something that's not in conformance with the
that they would need to return to the town for a rezoning process.
I think that's a better approach.
It still recognizes that those 60 units are on the books
and if the winds changed for whatever reason
and they decided to pursue what's profit there
as long as it was in accordance with the profits they could build it.
But the likelihood, I think, is that they will not as they've stated.
Yeah, and I think that we should at least leave some sort of comment about it.
But I wouldn't, I don't, like it's my understanding that there really isn't a market, you know,
I don't think that the retail spaces, it was concerned that they could even fill the
retail spaces, then you're going to have a bunch of open storefronts, I'm not even sure
they could fill the, so it's my understanding or what I gained from it was that it's probably
not going to happen at that. But since it's not completely off the books, my suggestion would
be to at least leave a comment that it's out there, but the likelihood of it actually happening,
I don't know if we can say that, but I mean the chances of it happening are probably slim at this
point from their perspective.
Yeah, and I think that's a fair statement, and again, because it's a statement that
they've made themselves, that they don't intend to pursue that.
And as you read through this, it doesn't have to be tonight, but if you want to wordsmith
anything that I've marked up in here, even if we're saying we're generally in agreement
with it, I'm not only am I open to it, I welcome it because it might not be the crack
Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
I remember at the time the
the developers for the resort approached several merchants in town, I think
including Safeway, suggesting that it would be a good thing that they could
move over to the mixed use village, and I believe I don't know that they
It was completely unsuccessful. There was no interest on anybody's part to move into the village over there.
And I think it's important enough, Will, that instead of saying
and salamander officials publicly stated, perhaps it's worthwhile digging up the minutes
from that council meeting.
And say something along the lines. However, the council meeting on such as a salamander representative stated that. That's great.
Thank you, bud.
Yes. Yeah, I also think wheels wording without addition is great in the sense that it alerts and the comprehensive plan that the community is aware that the planning commission is aware and it alerts the community that we are aware of the need that have been changed.
It would come back before planning and they would have a chance to voice their opinions on the new idea.
Great.
Thank you, Chris.
But as far as we know, I mean, they haven't actually taken it off the books.
They just said it's not, I mean, they still have the ability to do it.
Correct.
It's just they stated they're not, they don't have any intentions right now of making that happen currently.
So it's not technically off the table, it's just, I think we should just, like you were saying, we should just note it as, but it said we should just, we should use those minutes to validate our comments and then leave it at that.
That's great.
Is there a time limit on Proffers?
Do they expire?
I'm sure.
Only if there's a time limit built into the Proffer itself.
No.
Okay.
Thank you.
So kind of just continuing, we have some additional demographic changes in the age and race
section. I have stricken a sentence that reveals that the past U.S. census counts revealed
small decline in residents over 65 and increases in residents ages 25 to 34, simply because
that's not supported in the newest date. It actually shows the opposite. It shows the fairly
significant climb in those over 65 and a decline in that particular age group of 25 to 34.
And again, we'll go through those charts here in a minute.
There's a statement that I think still is true in that the racial diversity of
Middleburg has declined since 1980. It's a little bit
weighted though and I thought it was important to point it out because it was comparing it
essentially to the African American population which has further decreased between the 2010
and now the 2023 ACS, the African American population had declined from 18.8 to 11.9% of
our population. However, the category of those identifying as two or more races increased
from virtually nothing to 10.2%. So I think that's more so the decline in the African American
population is more so with this trend of more people identifying in that category of
two or more races, whereas in the past, if you had two or more races in your background,
you were essentially choosing one or the other two identifying as.
The educational income, in particular, this is where the largest skew, if you will, between
the 2016 data and the 2023 data has occurred. While I'm not pulling my hair out trying
to figure out all of my new changes, this one was a huge one in the town's median household
income, which had this at about 43 and a half thousand, 43, 43, 8, and 2016, and the
2023 ACS now has us at over 115,000. So that rise is extremely curious to me in that
length of time. Again, I'm going to do a little bit of a deeper dive and see what
that they're reporting as their actual margin of error on those numbers, but I can't find
any good explanation to this point as to why they would report such a vast increase.
Was it because they think we're actually at that level now and that it was under-reported
previously or has there actually been that large of a change?
Well, I think that, I think what I see in a lot of areas, I think the demographics
have changed in the types of jobs that people are taking now that are paying higher.
The IT industry has gone through the roof and those people tend to make a little bit more
if they're qualified. I mean, I know in the part-time works that I do. I mean, it's a huge thing.
So I wouldn't discount it. I mean, maybe back then it may have been that way, but I think the
demo, I think the types of jobs that people are taking now are paying more money. But that could be
a factor of, you know, our economy, inflation, people are making more money. You know, it's hard to say,
But I would think that that 115,000 is not that far off the mark when you look at
where we are and what people can do remotely and how much money they can make.
I can't have any argument against that, but it almost seems contrary. One of the things that we
had already assumed was because of the slightly older population that we have
compared to Loud County with a lot of retirees that that was kind of
forcing maybe income level down and you combine that with an increase in that
older population in this same survey. So the 2016 survey had the 65 and older
somewhere around 22, 23% of the population, 2023 has this more like a third of the population.
So again, there are things that just aren't seeming like they match at first glance.
Mr. Chairman?
Yes.
Well, one of the questions I would have would be 2016 to 2023, seven years,
years, kind of how it changed over the years, and with the small population we have,
all it really takes is a couple of people with substantial wealth moving in and that
could skew that pretty significantly.
Well, yeah, potentially, yeah, I was thinking the same thing because I think a lot of those
there are people and I'm just going to say in where I live, their paying cash for a million
home now whether or not that's considered income but they have the net wealth so
you know if you're looking at income it may be different than having somebody that
comes in and buys a house for a million dollars a cash they have they have the
net worth there so but it may not be considered an income right I was thinking
more income yeah it isn't it isn't important though to recognize that it's the
median income, not the mean. So while you're writing for an average, just a few really big
outliers could skew the data. The median helps to prevent those outliers from really skewing
the data. But still in a small sample size like this, you're not wrong that it doesn't take as many
to change those numbers.
I was just going to add that I definitely just knowing having lived in a couple of streets
where around where I live, the people who are passing away are people who have had very
modest income.
And it's either people who are of what we'll call median income or higher that are buying
that.
So I definitely, when I read that, I wasn't surprised at all.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
I don't think I would have been surprised to see an increase, even a substantial increase,
but the amount that we're talking there is so substantial that it just caught me off guard.
But I'm glad we're talking through that part.
It possibly be that maybe those dollars from the 2016 census were not accurate.
That's very possible as well.
Yeah. They could have been low. Yeah. Yeah. It is possible.
Okay. Well, I'll spend a little more time kind of digging into that just because I can't let it rest.
It's still bothering me. Well, I think it's great. I'm not sure you all can obviously correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's interesting.
interesting piece of information, but is it so important that we need to focus so much time on it?
I think it's great that you're willing to do that, but I don't know that it's going to change the overall
comp plan and what we're looking at, you know, peace, but it's not a significant, interesting fact that's written that way.
Okay, great.
Under demographic strategies, this is something that I've not felt like there would be any maybe change in, but just kind of saying I wanted to test with this group.
if you think this bill seems like it's a valid point and then once we go in the later part of our
update process when we actually do public input we want to test kind of assumptions that we have
but one of the big ones is that we talked about in the crafting of the 2019 plan was the desire
to attract younger families and then the other part of that was particular to housing was also to
have housing that meets needs of older populations too.
But this one particular sentence, for example,
public input consistently suggests the community
would benefit from more young people and families.
And just noting that I don't sense that that is necessarily
changed, but I wanted to get your input.
And then I think we should also just test that when we do eventually
go to the public input part of the process.
It's definitely still a case I can tell you we had a new couple move in on Stonewall and our neighbors we were just jumping for joy. There was a young couple good good good.
Yeah, I think it's certain correct to say that that's a public vision, if you will, that younger families would be good for the community.
And if that's what you're asking us to test, I think it's accurate.
That's certainly what I've heard.
Kind of moving on to the housing characteristics.
Another interesting change that I noted was that the previous data indicated that 45,
46 percent of housing units were renter occupied with 54 being owner occupied.
There seems that that gap is widened according to the data now, which has closer to 35% being
rent or occupied, 65 being owner occupied.
So it's looking like maybe more owner occupied, but again, I'm not necessarily sensing in
the community that change, but not that we necessarily would.
Mr. Chairman.
Is it possible in the renter category to put like the percentage of homes that potentially have short-term rentals attached to just in thinking about what's potentially tracked above?
Interesting.
I'm not sure, I mean it's such a small number currently and I don't know I think
Currently, all of the ones that have approved short-term rentals are oner-occupied, although
that's not a requirement. It's not a requirement, but all those are currently.
I think having some additional commentary on short-term rentals, which is later in this
is going to be important.
I'm not sure this is the place for it.
Well, when you look at metal broke, do you consider those rental units?
Because the school rents them to their five to teachers and one is rented to someone else, only two are occupied by owners.
yeah so I guess the way I would answer that is if I were the one doing the
data collection I would consider yours to be owner occupied I would consider
those that the school owns that teachers live in to be rentals but I'm not sure
I think the short-term rentals, I get what you're saying, and I think what you pointed out is that they're usually owner occupied that received the short-term rental ability to rent them out like that. The rest of them are long-term rentals, I'm assuming. They're truly long-term rentals.
So in the same paragraph, you'll see that there's been a marked increase in the median
home value, but that's, I think, pretty self evident that we've seen in assessment values
in the market, and you'll see it's a similar jump, almost identical with Loud Counties
so not questioning that data, at least.
Under housing initiatives, there's some things that you might want to slog through here separate from this meeting, but if there are things that jump out to you, we've talked about managing the housing stock in the future through changes and ordinance.
I'm thinking that this might be a good place to recognize some of the development regulation changes that were initiated last year.
I'm not sure how extensive we want to go into that commentary but just, you know, a quick note with some background that the town was experiencing some infill and redevelopment
that we didn't necessarily felt was in character with the town and as such there were some
fairly extensive
changes to the
development regulations passed in
2024 so I
Think this would be probably a good place to put put that under the help. I think this section
Under housing initiatives would be a good place to put that commentary
But again, open to your feedback on that.
I thought a couple of sentences would do it.
I made notes and of course didn't bring them.
But while these older homes are a big part of the town's historic character.
gotata, maintenance, lower injuries, and so on, have made these properties attractive
to developers interested in building homes with larger footprints, etc., etc., and to
meet this challenge town undertook, we did it in 2023, I guess, whatever it was, we finally
passed it in 2024, like 24. Some sentence indicating that we stiffened the requirements.
Okay, it's up to you really well whether you go into any great detail about those requirements
but just to highlight that.
Yes, sir.
Perfect.
Yeah.
Your thing here has become attractive to developers
to raise in order to help.
And then finally, I did include a couple of the graphs
in this last paragraph because they were so interrelated.
Again, this is talking about projecting future population
in housing. The Welding Cooper Center for Public Service is the kind of clearing house for
that kind of data that we look to in Virginia. Again, they don't drill down and do these projections
at the town level, but just talking in general about what's happening in the region and in our direct
surrounds with Loudon and Faulk here. I've kind of updated some numbers here based on the 2020 census and then have extended their projections out to 2050 instead of 2040 where we had those before.
and then will given the mayor's recent article on expansion and housing in
Loudon County that appeared in the Zest magazine. It's I think it's an issue
that it's going to be very hard to hold it back unless we have strong barriers
in the comprehensive plan and the regulations that would support that.
Yeah, I think there's, I think that's absolutely true.
This chapter may or may not be the chapter to have those types of issues raised that probably are land use chapter is where we talk about our efforts in the town as well as outside of our borders.
but no that's a it's a it's a very good point yeah so the town section of this chart again this isn't
there's nothing magical that goes into this kind of projection so
using the existing population as is estimated I am plugging in that number from the ACS if you're
comfortable with me doing so. The existing housing units, again, it shows a decrease from
where we were supposedly in 2019, but it's using the same data, which I think if we're
going to pull data, we're pulling it off from one source, that's probably the way we
should attack it.
This is where I raised that question, so where it says the approved
unbuilt houses. Right now I have 32 parentheses 92 because the 32 basically
represents what is left to build and what is left to be permitted and built in
the single family section of the the residences at Salamander the 92 would
then add the 60 additional units in the MUV. We could include both of those
numbers parenthetically in this way with some notes if we wanted to or we could just
leave the 60 out whatever you think would be the better approach I think we
should keep it in because as in theory they're not going to do it however we all
know that sometimes things do change and at least we're recognizing that there
is that additional number. Okay, so I just don't think we can assume a hundred percent.
I know we can't assume that. Mr. Sherman, to the earlier point that was made, I also think
including the 92. If you see 32, you might think that oh well maybe we need to expand the city
because we need to get more housing units available to allow more people to move in. Where if you have
92, it's kind of, oh, well, there's room within the community to create additional homes.
Okay. So maybe in this kind of format, not with a big question mark, but maybe with an
asterisk and an accompanying note. Okay. Okay. Great. It might be helpful down the road if we're ever
approached as we have been for annexation and the construction of large numbers of units
in the newly annexed property. So I agree with you. I don't know. I don't normally agree with you.
Excellent.
To Commissioner Jacobs' point, should we have something in the comprehensive plan that
maybe addresses the fact that we've had people try to annex their property to build these houses.
And that's a potential, I don't know if you call it an issue, but it's certainly been out there.
It's not the first time that it's happened. And maybe we should come up with some type of
leverage at some point in here that we need to be cognizant and careful about how that
has an impact on the town and what we're really looking for is that something
that we should be doing and what's the reasoning behind doing it and I think
we should at least acknowledge that piece that's out there. I don't know how to
worry but no that's great. I think I think again we're probably going to be
focusing that effort in chapter seven land use when we get to again this is
where we talk a little bit in our strategies you know working with the
counties surrounding us preserving the rural nearby rural and scenic areas
promote conservation in those areas I think that's the chapter where we start
We're talking about those efforts to protect what's outside the land, outside the town
of them.
It's at the same time maybe we address the potential of boundary line adjustment slash
annexation in that area.
Yes.
Also in that discussion, I would think with the water challenges that are hitting our community
that we directly address any expansion or even some other home units about the scarcity
to be and being good stewards of the water that we have.
Yeah, absolutely.
Agreed.
Thank you.
Great.
And then if I can, I'm going to jump over
to the charts really quickly.
And then we'll come back to the short-term rental section
if that's OK.
Again, just walk through these quickly.
This first table was just adding the latest census counts.
so nothing surprising here. This is the age distribution graph. Again, you'll
see this kind of higher pocket down here in the bottom right of the existing
data where that 65 and over group is climbing to almost a third of the
population, whereas before it was down in the still over 20%, but it's a fairly significant
climb.
And I think some of these, although it's not a direct switch, but some of this has
just taken the population and moved them along the six or seven years in between the data
data points, but I think it reflects a little bit of migration in and out, but a lot of
it has just been showing some of the existing residents ageing in place.
Well, it's kind of interesting that when you look at the age distribution in 2023 relative
to 2016, the 15 to 19-year-olds has jumped incredibly, which would indicate that their families
moving into the area so it's you know and then some of the others 24 to 34 was much higher in
2016 than it shows in the 2023 so does that mean that they're they're leaving for different jobs
or you know so it kind of makes you wonder what's what's driving that dynamic same way with the 35 to
44. Yeah. And I don't want to beat a dead horse, but again, the margins are there in this
data are fairly high. I think I can't remember what it was, but the 422 housing units, I remember
that caught my eye because it was a decrease from the previous one. And I think the margin of error
and it was like 73 plus or minus. So that's a huge number with the baseline being 422. So yeah.
Race and ethnicity, so the consultant in the 2019 plan included those categories in
the same pie, which they should not be in the same pie, because ethnicity includes
and specific to its Hispanic and Latino, you're also a race in addition to the ethnicity.
So if you add the ethnicity to the raised bucket, you come up with a number greater than 100 percent.
But I think it was more cleanly collected that data in 2020 and the ACS is reporting it a little better.
So they're reporting it clearly as separate categories now.
So we're just kind of showing that.
That essentially the racial categories of American Indian and Alaska Native, other and Asian are at zero.
According to the most recent data, I think the Asian was at 0.4, which had like three residents, but basically it's the split between white, black, African, American, and the two or more races are the three main racial categories you see here. And then within those races, we have eight and a half percent roughly that are identifying as Hispanic or Latino.
mental ethnicity.
Gender is retitled as sex in the most recent data.
Us slight.
The males are trying to catch up a little bit,
according to 2023, up from 38.9 to 44.8%,
but still the females have 5% or 10% swing overall.
So I just have to ask you, why was it changed from gender to sex?
I'm not a doctor.
I'm curious.
I think that could send us down political paths we don't want to go down.
I think technically it's the correct term when you talk male and female.
It's the correct term for me, but I don't know what I'm going to do.
Mr.
Chair.
No.
A quick question.
Is it worth including anything on Loudon County in terms of those same breakdowns?
Or is that not necessary?
I'm open to your thoughts on it.
Honestly, I didn't put that level of thought into these.
I just took the graphs that we had and updated them.
But if you think there would be value and additional data to be graphed,
I'm happy to do that.
The thought was kind of, if it mirrors Loudon, it's kind of consistent with the region.
if it's an outlier then do we need to consider kind of how attractive the
community is for different groups just kind of thinking about it and it may not
be worth doing I mean
this yeah I mean it's the the women are the females are
leaving the community rather quickly between 2016 and I'll
take a look at the
data and see if there's anything that jumps out as being oh there's a really big
difference there and maybe we add that in. To me it was more race and ethnicity.
Okay okay no happy to take a look. Great thank you. Update on household size
again there's some yeah
I won't say it's stagnant here but at the end of the day
We still have a significant population of one in two member households and the average number of persons in a household still is just under that two person markets, 1.88 versus 1.89 previously or vice versa.
Any chance we can use the same colors for the same groups?
I can try.
Yeah, yeah.
It was tricky because I'm not the expert chart generator in Excel and I was doing it that way.
It was clear that the previous data is just a copy and paste out of these existing plans.
And so I tried to get the colors to match as best I could, but I was a little bit challenged in doing that.
Happy to help with people.
Yeah.
Or I could just, in the future if I'm doing these comparison ones,
I'll just recreate the previous one, and then they'll match better.
So, yeah.
No.
I'm just saying that the one person household should be the same color.
On both grades.
Yeah.
Yeah, point big makes perfect sense. Yeah, makes perfect sense.
Number of bedrooms. Again, this is where there are some things that change that don't necessarily
make sense. It's telling us that we have five fewer five or bedroom, five or more bedroom homes
than we did. And we know that's probably the exact opposite with some of the tear-down rebuilds
as well as the new builds, some in South London which have slightly more not all, but again it's just that whatever methodology they're using to generate this, I think what remains still true and evident is that the largest number of households that we have are still in that one to two to three bedroom at most.
We still have some smaller housing stock in terms of numbers of bedrooms, whether they
get those numbers right within those categories.
Clearly, they're not 100 percent accurate.
Age of housing, again, this is the same thing.
The previous data had us with 106 units that were built in the 30s or earlier, and now it
says we only have 46.
I guarantee you, we didn't lose 60 along the way.
Yeah, so, you know, the 1980s for the same, I mean, how did you go from 96, right?
177.
So, again, I don't know, you know, are they truly, yeah, are they truing up the data?
Are they pulling any sources that are different from where they pulled before?
or like I know you can get some data from loud counties,
geographic information system on when a home was built,
but oftentimes that data is skewed
sometimes for older homes, if they didn't have a year for it,
they put in 111, which makes it literally look like
it was built in the second century.
So, you know, or no, 12th century.
Yeah, but close up.
But point made, you know, it has some bad data in there, but, yeah.
So, again, this is just what we're dealing with in the accuracy of what we have.
And then finally, housing types.
Again, some changes in the numbers.
We know we haven't decreased in the single family detached,
although it looks like it, but still fairly accurate that the majority is single
family detached, followed fairly closely by single family attached. Those would
be town homes or duplexes and then apartments and other are the small segment
that we have.
Any additional questions coming to you?
I just have a question. How important is the data? Because we recognize there's no way
that data is written. So if we know what stuff are off, A, do we just not include it if it's
stuff are off, or P, do we actually try to get real numbers? You know, this is the tiny community,
it shouldn't be that hard to find this information out.
As Reggie Dawson, he can tell you 99% of our
I guess it becomes a question, like you said, how important is the data?
We could do a slog through what's available through Loudoun County's data, which even
though they have some of those inaccuracies, like I mentioned, they have a lot of additional
data that I think we could improve upon this with, it's just it would be a tremendous
lift to do so and how valuable is that in the overarching purpose of the plan? I'm
open to doing that slug if we think that that's important. That's where I'm gonna
look for you, for your guidance.
The existing plan relied on the same type of data, and I won't say that it's been
unimportant, but no extremely important decisions were made simply based on that.
There is that question mark regarding the median household income, which could become important.
So, for example, when we were seeking grant funding to do a project a couple years ago
to get the existing homes in town that were still on septic systems, get those systems
abandoned and connected to our sanitary sewer, we were eligible for some funds that we probably
would have otherwise been ineligible for based on our median household income.
Now, I think we pulled that from the census, but I'm not 100% positive, but still that kind
of a shift could make a big difference in that one area if we had to do something similar
again.
Is it worthwhile acknowledging the discrepancies of this data and just a census or two that
just says, you know, based on what we have, yeah. Yeah, I think I would feel more comfortable
if we did that, but I would want to keep it fairly short and sweet. I mean, I don't want to,
you know, give anybody the impression that you should pay attention to this plan at all,
that kind of thing. But yeah, yeah, I'll see if I can craft something and we can talk about it
maybe next month about what that might look like in terms of terminology.
So the final thing that I wanted to raise this evening, which I had given you essentially
no input on to this point, is within the section on short-term rentals.
And this is something that even though we might move on to the next chapter next month, I think
we could circle back on this.
This section when we added it in 2022, there was a lot of back and forth on the word
smithing of it.
I was pretty satisfied with where we ended up, where the commission ended up, because
the commission ended up being the authors of it, and the council did not change the terminology
when adopting it.
But I think it would be helpful to go through and look at it carefully and then I will back
up and say, I don't see any clearing deficiencies in this section in itself.
What I think would be helpful is then back at the beginning of the chapter, adding the strategy
that helps us get where we're going in this section because while this talks
generally and I'll give the you know we talk about wanting to have stable
residential neighborhoods and their character could be affected if this use is
not carefully managed and then we go on to say likewise a saturation of such
uses in new neighborhoods could be contrary to the plan and strategy for new
development to be compatible. So that's good, but it might not be strong enough when this
body is reviewing an application, and when the Council is finally acting on an application,
it would help if we had a little more strength, and what does that mean in terms of evaluating
an application. So if we go back to the strategies at the beginning of the chapter,
I inserted
a number five and this comes directly from Mike Rukone, who had spent some time on this.
I'm not suggesting that these nor is he suggesting these numbers are the perfect numbers or what
they should be, but said limit short-term rentals to know more than 30% of the eligible occupied
home in any given neighborhood. He actually listed out, he said in Ridgeview and in
Chen Lane and in Resurances at Salamander. But we could say something like this in any
given neighborhood and then also limit all new short-term rentals to no more than
60 nights per calendar year. So I would ask you maybe over the next month to look
look at that short-term rental paragraph at the end of the chapter and maybe see if
you think it needs some word smithing and then to consider what Mr. Recodian suggested
here and are we on the right path with this is that all it should say if that is all it
should say are those numbers right should it be 25% no more than 25% should be no more than
10% in any given neighborhood is...
No more than 60 nights per calendar year, the right absolute cap, or should it be higher, should be lower, something like that. But I think this will be really important as we go forward, especially because we have an interesting issue right now with our current ordinance where some legislation was passed that our attorneys read of it is we can't really touch our current ordinance.
because it was adopted, it's in place and it's safe, but if you change it, it could potentially invalidate.
So our current ordinance, for example, says the maximum number of nights per calendar year that can be considered as 108.
I don't think we ever envisioned approving the 180, although we did with the very first one with that really tiny property on J Street.
I think going forward, we've realized we probably don't want to get anywhere near that number,
but we can't really change that number in the ordinance right now, because there could be risk,
because of some legislation that was passed as it could invalidate our ordinance.
So, but adding something in our comprehensive plan that gives a little more guidance
to how those evaluations or applications could be evaluated would be helpful.
So that's, go ahead.
If my memory is correct, we seemed with the decisions we've made thus far.
We seemed to have landed on the 69th of the year.
I think most of them, something like that.
Yeah, so we had, yeah,
we definitely had one in the Residence of the Salamander that was 90.
At the same time, we approved one on West Washington for 60.
I can't remember where there was a subsequent one that came in in the Residence of the Salamander.
I can't remember where we landed on that for 60.
So we can't change the ordinance but we can put restrictions on and collect as we did with the
special use permits that came in. Absolutely. Yeah, we can still impose conditions. I'm simply
saying that if we if we have a suggestion in our comprehensive plan that says limit them to no more
than certain number of nights per year, that could be additional strengths, when we make those
decisions. May we do that? I think so. Does we can say no more than that? I think so. At some point in
time, all of this is going to get reviewed by our attorney staff, but I think it's a good way to,
It's a good way to supplement our ordinance.
When we've decided what that language will look like, maybe it's worth inserting a sentence
that says parts of this ordinance are currently being contested in the courts,
and that decision
I don't think it's going to come before what the end of next year probably be a while.
Is that worth doing? Maybe we could ask Martin. Probably a lot of reasons not to do it.
Yeah, I would definitely want his counsel on that. Mr. Chairman. Yep.
Yeah, I really like what Mike put in here. The one question I have is in terms of the percentage.
Would it be reasonable to consider mirroring the long-term rental percentage that
is discussed earlier, which is a lower number than the 30%, so that just kind of making it maybe
not arbitrary, but tied to something that there's a rationale behind why we decided to do that.
Yeah, it's interesting. I think those the long-term rentals are just a function of people not
putting them in the long-term rentals. The short-term rentals are a function of people wanting to rent
their properties. So I think that would change it a little bit. I mean so it's not a that's not a
number that we that was said, okay, we're only what 25% or whatever that number is for the long-term
models. That's just a function of how many people have done the long-term because you don't need
to especially use permit correct to do a long term model. I was just going with character of
community since it's a lower number than 30 that in maintaining the character of the communities,
We would want no more than this percentage and use that as the percentage for that knowing that motivations are completely different.
It does go some way toward rebutting the charge that we're making arbitrary decisions.
The only concern I have with it is knowing that in my strip there's several houses that
are owned by one or two individuals and my concern is that since I see so many long-term
rentals or houses that could be long-term rentals, is that would that be almost an argument
that, hey, okay, well now we have more long-term rentals, but what I'd like to have is fewer
rental period, long term, whatever, have more owner occupied. And so I just worry about if we say,
okay, it's tied to long-term rentals, then as the long-term rental numbers go up, because a lot of
people are buying these houses and then holding on to them, and you know, I don't know if that's
happening, but it just feels that way in my area. So two points, I would make, not to contest what
you're saying but so the that that number owner occupied versus renter occupied that that number is more than 30 percent.
So it's it's about 65 percent owner occupied 35 percent renter occupied currently. So the numbers actually higher than what he's plugged in.
And the only other thing I'll say is when we talk about character in the community,
this is a personal feeling.
So if it's going past the bounds of the profession, but it's been discussed in the profession
is that although home ownership is, I think, still very much part of the American dream
to a point it's not as attainable as it once was and I don't want to I don't
want to ever imply to someone who is a long-term renter that they're not part of
the community whereas it's clear if you are a transient renter if you're
running for fewer than 30 days at a time that you are not part of the community so
So that's one thing where I'd be hesitant to equate the two if that makes sense, yeah?
Yeah, I think in terms of people in the community, long-term runners definitely a part of the community and makes up the fabric of middlework.
I don't think anybody would debate that.
I was mentally in my head, I had it at 25 percent, so I thought it was a way of lowering the numbers from 30 and a thoughtful manner as opposed to his randomly saying it's 25.
I love the idea of finding not only a number, but applying some sort of rationale to it, because I think that's important.
So wherever we may be migrating to, we should be able to articulate a reason why that number
was the one that was chosen.
So if I may talk
homework, if you will, yeah, it really goes to, and I could, if you're
agreeable with this. I'll put it out in an email as early as tomorrow. But having the commission spend a little bit of time on individually, maybe looking at that paragraph at the end of the chapter on short term rentals and deciding whether or not you think it needs some updating.
and then also with that strategy that Mr. Raconis started with if you have any
thoughts of if you have any additional thoughts like Dr. Herschel was going down
the line of is hey how can we how can we equate that to something how can we
tie it to something that would give us some strength behind whatever number we
end up choosing to include in the draft. I think that's a good idea. I'm assuming
So in addition to that, I'll plan on doing the same kind of initial markup of chapter five, which is on community facilities and services as we're going into this next month.
I
want to say, well, I think you did a really good job on this.
It's just looking at it.
You can see that it's a lot of work to do this update.
So thank you.
Thank you.
It was actually strangely fun.
Once you figure out how to navigate their data sets,
and which data set to look in, which is a challenge.
Once you figure that out, it's actually quite interesting.
Yeah, we spent a lot of time putting it together. So it's you know tweaking it now is I
Think more joyful than the time we spent originally trying to do it.
Okay, great
Or we said everything will that is all I have on it. All right, I will
work session and
and I guess we will call the meeting's order.
Sue, if you could please go out and think
we need to take roll again.
Disclosure of meetings with any applicants.
Sue, if you could just ask each commissioner
if they've had any meetings with applicants.
Just call the roll basically.
I have not had any meetings with applicants
before this board.
I have had no such meetings.
I've had no meetings with applicants.
I have had no meetings with applicants.
I've had no meeting with any applicants with any matters before this discussion.
Okay, thank you.
Any public comment, is there anyone on the phone that has any comment?
Okay, moving on.
Do I have an approval of the minutes from April 28th to 2025?
I move we approve the minutes, that's a second.
Second.
All in favor?
Thank you. Council representative Commissioner Jacobs.
We had a great middleburg day. I hope everybody had a chance to stop by and the rain did
not dampen anybody's enthusiasm. Music was great. 2D did her normal, great thing with
The food, it was just a lot of fun.
We also had a successful foxes on the fence.
I think they made something on the order of $24,000, $25,000,
which is really good.
And generated, I think, a lot of popular support
among visitors, at least some members reported.
We've pretty much wrapped up the budget and all of the numbers are available I think on our website if you're interested in take a look.
We ended up not expanding the police department by two positions.
Unfortunately it was just given the current fiscal and political realities in the country.
it seemed to step that might be riskier than we wanted to take.
And we're slowly working through the water issue that somebody pointed out.
The most – it's the most contentious, but I think it's the most misunderstood piece
of that is if we got through it ever got to the stage that we had to implement rationing
and people obviously really don't want that and we're going to have to do a pretty good
job I think of explaining what that is and what it would look like.
We've heard some complaints about what that would do to property values.
people need to understand, I think, that if we ever got to the stage, we have to
ration water in this town. It's not an issue of people's property values. It's a
safety and health issue. We have to be able to provide whatever level of service
and water we can under the circumstances we face. So that's ongoing. I think is
Is there going to be another public meeting, do you know of him?
There will be another meeting during which council will be asked to consider approving.
That's right.
So, but not a specific meeting.
There won't be a public comment meeting or whatever we call those.
So anyway, that's the last time I've forgotten anything important, that's pretty much where
we are.
Okay, thank you, but any discussion items?
Two.
Okay. Next item is a quorum for June 23 or June 30, which is preferable. So typically your meetings are on the fourth Monday, but there is a fifth Monday available in June. So whichever works best. Anyone have a preference for those days? Are everyone available for either one?
I'm going to be at North Carolina on both those states, but y'all go ahead.
Thank you.
I will be in Maine both Wednesdays.
Okay.
It does sound like so Commissioner Menchew would not be available on the 23rd but would be in
the 30th on both.
So maybe we aim for the 30th.
If we want to continue our review this couple of months, I think it's good to keep up momentum
more.
I think that we should set a date.
Correct.
We should set a date.
And if we can, if the 30th works and you two do the 30th, is Commissioner McCone, do you
know if he'll be in?
I don't know.
But then are we agreed that the 30th would be a good date?
Okay, okay, then we'll put the 30th on next one.
All right.
I think we're done.
Unless there's anything else to be discussed.
Hope, thank you.