Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

July 15th, 2026 long-range planning committee meeting on the low residential study. We will be holding a hybrid public meeting which enables remote electronic participation as legally authorized by the Code of Virginia for the Planning Commission's electronic meeting policy adopted on July 7th, 2022. Members of the LRPC are participating both here in person and virtually through electronic means. This meeting is being recorded for our public records and will be posted on the Arlington County Commission's meeting YouTube page. Please avoid sharing any personal information that you would not like to be made public. At this time, I'd like to orient everyone to our hybrid environment and cover a few specifics about how tonight's meeting will run. Members of the public may attend the meeting here in person or electronically by using Microsoft Teams link provided on the LRPC webpages, the county's events calendar, and the email notifications sent to LRPC email subscribers. Additionally, there is a dial-in phone option for those who wish to use it. For our planning commissioners joining virtually, number one, If anyone loses interconnectivity or internet connectivity during today's meeting, please reconnect with us by phone. Please keep your phones and devices muted until you are called upon. Turn off sound to any other devices around you to minimize interference. For our virtual attendees and teams, please turn off video feed. I will address when it is appropriate to turn it on in a moment. The Microsoft Teams meeting chat is active to serve two purposes, to assist participants who need technical support and for participants to propose Brief clarifying questions to the audience. While the clarifying questions will be monitored, they will not be formally acknowledged. Staff may address these comments as appropriate. Teams chat should not be used for discussion or inappropriate statements. Those who are planning to provide public comment may only do so after the presentations are complete here, as the chat may not be used for that purpose. All public comments must be shared verbally for the record during the assigned public testimony periods. I would also like to remind remind everybody here to speak up and really point to the microphone. So talk to the ceiling when you're getting your remarks here tonight. If commissioners participating virtually wish to recognize, speak on an item during the course of the meeting, please turn your video feed on and raise your virtual hand in teams. I, as well as staff, will be monitoring the video feeds. Are any commission members who joined us by phone today without a video option? I don't see any. Unlike Planning Commission's regular meetings, this LRPC meeting is not a public hearing. Therefore, public comment is at the LRPC chair's discretion. I will call for speakers after the presentation from staff. and before the committee discussion has begun. Members of the public attending virtually will speak first, followed by in-person attendees. Speakers are allotted two minutes per speaker. In-person attendees, please add your name to the speaker list on the table. And virtual attendees, please indicate in the chat that you would like to provide public comment, and your name will be added to our list of speakers. Ms. Flores will acknowledge your request in the Teams chat. When virtual attendees are called upon to speak, you must unmute yourself by clicking on the microphone icon that is located on your meeting command bar. The moderator does not have the ability to unmute you. You will be muted with time excluded. As an alternative, public comment may also be provided on the public comment form based on the LRPC webpage. And lastly, this is a public forum. Today's meeting will be recorded and posted to the county website. All information associated with today's meeting, whether written or spoken, is subject to freedom of speech. Go around the room, do brief introductions for people who are a part of the LRBC committee here. So my name is Tony Strada. I'm in the Planning Commission. I'll be chairing the committee.

Jim Lantelli, member of the Planning Commission.

Carolyn Haynes, Forestry and Health Resources Commission. Lisa Marcellos, Climate and Energy and Environment Commission.

My name is Jennifer Horn. I'm just observing.

Leah Bagley, Planning Commission.

Paula Lodeau, Planning Commission.

Nick Rogers. Me planning, housing and development in the planning division, and on the code project manager for the low residential study.

No, I fly as L. R. P. C. Jason cosmic environment services and any members of the committee here online.

Robertson Robertson planning commission.

with the committee online? I don't think so.

Mr. Chair, we have two additional staff members supporting us tonight. Oh, yes. Of course, Mr. Ladd is here. Yes, he is. I'm hiding. And then joining us virtually is Mr. Bergway with the Department of Parks and Recreation. All right.

That's everybody. Nice to turn out here tonight. So with that out of the way, what we will do now is we'll go into the staff presentation, then we'll open it up to public comment, and then we'll go put it with the committee here. We'll have our discussion, talk to Blue and Face or anything less than that, and then we'll all go home and have a nice night. Sound good?

All right. Awesome. Thanks so much, Mr. Chair. Unfortunately, my co-project lead Eileen Winquist for the Department of Environmental Services could not join us tonight due to a family circumstance. So I'll be carrying the load for our slides today. There's a lot of information we're going to work through. I hope it's conversational in part. I've got a couple stops. I'll ask for your help and Ms. Flores' help. If we hit slide 22 or slide 32 and I'm still talking, you know, smoke signals, wave a flag, something along those lines so we can Have a break in the action for the mission. Lots of technical terms and terminology, so I want to start off with a very basic slide to make sure that you and your colleagues are are understanding how we're using these in these terms. So you're going to hear discussion and mention of main building footprint tonight. So you know for those of you who are paying attention in phase one main building footprint doesn't zoning regulation. that sets a maximum limit of how much a main building and any attached parts that are connected to the ground can occupy. There's also a zoning requirement associated with that called lot coverage, and that sets a maximum percentage of how much of a lot can be covered by certain types of features. Those features are listed in the zoning ordinance, the main building footprint, is part of lot coverage. It counts as lot coverage along with accessory buildings over 150 square feet, driveways, parking pads, and several other items listed in the zoning ordinance. You'll hear me speak most tonight most likely about impervious area. Impervious area is this. It's a hard surface that water can either not penetrate or it's difficult to penetrate to infiltrate through. And as we get into, as we sort of further warm up for our conversation tonight, I want to bring you back to February of 2025. This is the short version of the board's charge that they endorsed directing staff to conduct the low residential study. Our charge or scope, if you will, the primary deliverable is for staff to recommend a zoning ordinance amendment that would establish impervious area limits for residents development in low density residential areas, our residential neighborhoods. And the primary objective in the board's charge was for supporting better stormwater management and tree canopy outcomes. Now, the colors are a little muted on the screen here, but that green box includes four different policy considerations that the board added on. To that direction, to staff, we're going to go into those very briefly towards the end of the presentation today. The five bullets in the middle are guidelines that are informing staff's work. And then the last square on the right-hand side is just as important, the board-directed staff to not devote time and attention to several topics that are tangential and related to the overall topic. the board directed staff to not study or make recommended changes to maximum main building footprint limits, maximum building height limits. We were directed to not set absolute total square footage limits for lock coverage or to consider any potential changes to the zoning ordinance's definition of lock coverage. So there are some clear lanes that we're working in. And with that, we'll go into We'll orient you to where we are in the timeline of things. We're probably right in the middle of this continuum here you're seeing on the screen. Phase 1 wrapped up in the December-January timeframe. We've been in the midst of Phase 2 in the more internal portion of Phase 2, studying impervious area. data that we have through our stormwater management utility, tree canopy data, zoning districts, lot size, and we're gonna share a plethora of those findings with you tonight. And we're turning the corner, this is basically our initial, one of our initial, the initial public conversation we're having on the more front facing part of phase two. You'll see that we'll mention it towards the end of the slide, We have several community engagement opportunities coming up. Those have already been populated on the Low Residential Study website. We expect that the engagement portion will wrap up in October and at the board's scheduling discretion per our project plan, we'll be reporting the findings of phase two and a recommendation on a course of action for phase three And the board will provide their response and guidance to us on how to proceed in phase three. A preview of our schedule at the end of the slide, our preference would be to come back to this body in that October, November timeframe so that we can share with you the findings and the experience we've had with phase two in advance of that board conversation. so that the board is not just hearing from us, but they're hearing from the Planning Commission and your roster of members as well. So we'll cover a lot of ground tonight. I'm not going to read these verbatim, but a couple sort of PSAs or items of information. There is no, there is no draft zoning text. You saw how that was in phase three. So, so staff has not, there is no document where we've drafted recommendations. There is no recommendation at this time for, for what the board should or should not do. Number one, we're going to go through different impervious area limit options with you tonight. These options were generated for community feedback for your feedback as well. and we oriented the engagement events in the coming months to really be focused on those options, to really communicate those and receive that feedback on those. I mentioned that there would be public feedback in a variety of different ways during phase two, and that'll inform our direction for phase three. It's been since October 29th, since we last chatted with you about the low residential study. We were at the tail end of our phase one conversations at that time. Now we're at the beginning, I said, of the more publicly facing part of phase two. So we didn't want to just sort of go into the limits and options and more technical things we've been working on without just taking a quick look back to phase one. So you would have seen a version of this slide in our phase one materials. the low residential studies being conducted to serve a variety of different objectives amongst others, including implementing the forestry and natural resources plan and admission and an acknowledgement that our existing regulations are not serving our needs when it comes to tree canopy outcomes to stormwater management, particularly in our low residential areas. And that's where we're seeing most of the increase that we documented and shared during phase one over time, countywide. And I don't need to go into detail about some of the dramatic and oftentimes catastrophic property loss, damage, trees down, other storm events that have really harmed a lot of our property owners. So a variety of different objectives and checkpoints that Delo Rose adjusted low residential studies is accomplishing. A bit of a deep dive, again, a familiar slide on impervious areas. Again, any surface material that significantly impedes or prevents the ground from absorbing water. So buildings. Buildings, as a reminder, are impervious area and would be included as impervious area, would count as impervious area because they meet that performance standard. And a lot of our conversations in phase one talked about how it's complicated and the county makes it complicated, candidly. We have our zoning requirements. We have our stormwater management requirements in chapter 60 of the county code. We have our stormwater utility that offers credits for different materials. A lot of questions about pervious pavers in phase one and for good reason. So it's pervious. That must mean it's not impervious, right? Well, we count pervious paving materials for the purposes of the stormwater utility as impervious area, but there are credits that homeowners can ask for and receive if they're using these materials and other best management practices. So we acknowledge that the terminology is similar across the board and And we're happy to work with any members of the public who need, you know, who we can help answer those questions and make sure that they're understanding what we're working on and what our objectives are. I mentioned that phase one engagement, a couple of open houses, a virtual open house, several appearances at neighborhood events and pop-ups. I think the main takeaway based on the folks that we spoke to in phase one and all of those events that the public supports the Board adopting a maximum impervious area limit. A simple statement, but we, of course, received feedback on a number of different fronts that further informed Phase 1. And we have this documented on our website in a more lengthier summary. But things like specific feedback on what I mentioned previously, what do we mean by impervious area? What are we talking about here? What counts and doesn't count? A lot of conversations about trees, the importance of trees, the importance of preserved trees, existing trees, the importance of trees, and getting us to that 40% canopy goal in the FNRP. And then also a lot of concern about the size of buildings. Can an impervious area limit be effective to achieve those goals, given what we're seeing in those development trends? So, quick recap there. Some additional recap. We asked members of the public to, again, the famous dot exercise. If you were speaking to the county board today and you wanted to highlight what was most important to you, what is the beneficial outcome you would like to see? In an impervious area limit the overwhelming favorite was more space for trees and other plants, along with protecting water quality and reducing. Turning the corner from phase one to phase two we've been working with we've been grateful and generous to have consultant support on a floodplain modeling. hydraulic study that is looking at two of our subwatersheds. And what we wanted to do was confirm our assumptions on the impacts and effects that the impervious area has had and will continue to have, particularly if there was no action. The models have confirmed several of our assumptions that we went in with. namely that, of course, water quality and quantity worsen as impervious area increases. When you add tree canopy, as tree canopy, as we expect it to grow over time, that growth in tree canopy helps, but it's not a one-source solution. It doesn't solve all of our problems. And particularly when it comes to not the big, colossal storms, but the more frequent, smaller ones the smaller storm events, over time, you see the impervious harmful effects really inflicting their most damage at that point, not the biblical flood, so to speak. So we are, I wanna say, a couple weeks away from posting that final report, that technical memo on this, on the LRS website, but this is forthcoming. We wanted to make note of that consultant support in our presentation tonight.

Is that okay? Go ahead. So when you're talking about the tree canopy and solving all of our problems, did you also look at heat island and shade and all of that cooling with the neighbors?

We're certainly aware of it and we're certainly aware of the effects that more trees provide in minimizing the harmful effects of heat in the summer. As far as quantifying it in a specific way, I don't know if we've fed that in or factored it into any of the consultant support, what have you. Maybe Jason has some further thoughts on that.

Well, I think just to clarify, it'd be helpful if we post it. What we looked at specifically, Caroline, was with projected impervious area increases, if you also could increase tree canopy, how would that affect runoff? And the point was, it doesn't eliminate the impact from the increase of the plant. So that's the lens we were looking at just in that context.

Yes, that was my question. Was it broader than that?

We didn't do a heat island. We are going to do that in the climate action plan. We didn't look at that specifically.

Thank you. You're welcome.

If anybody has any questions, please raise your hands. Like I said, it's fun.

I'm sodding now.

I'll keep going, but... I don't want to interrupt. Interruptions are welcome as well.

Like I said, this is a dense one with a lot of materials. You want to make sure everybody's following along.

So limiting impervious area from a zoning ordinance regulation, you can really do it one of two ways. It's either setting a maximum percentage that the property cannot go beyond or setting some sort of allowable square footage, some sort of, you know, here's the amount of area that can be impervious and then everything else needs to not be impervious. For studying that, for analyzing that, for formulating those recommendations, you really need to understand, number one, the property's zoning district, and number two, how much lot area that property has. And the reason these are important is zoning districts are set in place to establish a generally uniform pattern of development for everything within that district. And so we want to keep development that's zoned similarly, looking similarly, and having the same standards across the board. But unfortunately, as we'll see from subsequent sides, our lots are not uniform in size. We have the zoning district and the classification does not necessarily give you a clue. It gives you somewhat of a clue, but it's not a definitive clue as to how much area that an individual residential lot would be. And we'll show why that's important. But R6, R20 zoning districts, what are we talking about here? Of our about 32,000 lots in the low residential study area, it's in and around 28,000. 1,000 of them, about 85%, have one-family dwellings on them. You'll see me focusing a lot on lots of one-family dwellings for a number of different reasons. But to be plain spoken about it, when we hear feedback and concern about teardowns, rebuilds, the harm to tree canopy, it's happening on the lots of one-family dwellings at a much greater rate and extensively than townhouses or two family developments, what have you. So a lot of our focus is gonna be on, yeah. Okay, definition.

The zoning district is single family, but that could include lots that have ADUs on them or have grandfather duplexes on them that are within the usual size of what is allowed anyway. So when we say single family, we're really talking about those buildings that are otherwise allowed in that zoning district.

I think the answer is yes, Jim. So R6, we're going to talk about R6 a lot. So that number, that 17,847 lots, each one of those lots has a one family dwelling on it. What we're not seeing in the R6 column on this chart are the remaining lots, like you said, some of which have a two-family dwelling that, you know, is, of course, no longer permitted by the zoning board. It's legally nonconforming. What ADUs, though? Which RLS? Well, that's accessory dwellings. Yeah. And... So that's not really considered... That's not factored. It's still a one-family, even with an ADU. Yeah. Whether you have an accessory dwelling or not... You're still considered a one-family lot. That's what I wanted to know.

Yeah.

Any other questions on the one-family distinction? Single-family dwelling is the common vernacular. You're seeing me use the sort of tried and true definitions in the zoning ordinance just for consistencies purposes. So as you can see, the majority of lots with one-family dwellings in the low residential study area are R6s. And there's more R6 than all the other lots combined. And so what we've done with this chart is categorized those 17,000 lots in groupings by size. So you can see that, again, with R6, the minimum lot size is 6,000 square feet. The majority of our R6 lots are at or above that minimum requirement. Of course, the smaller lots on the left of the screen, the larger lots on the right of the screen make sense intuitively. But take a look at some of the other ends of the spectrum here. So we've got almost 4,000 lots with one-family dwellings on them, that are undersized. They do not meet the minimum lot area requirement. They are legally nonconforming, as Commissioner Lane was talking about with the different housing types. Legal non-conforming, real quick, you only need one to be legally non-conforming. You can be legally non-conforming for a bunch of different reasons. Maybe you don't have enough, maybe your house is too close to a side yard. Maybe you don't have enough parking or what have you. But not having a lot area is one of those ways you can be legally non-conforming. So we have almost 4,000 small lots, undersized lots. Why do we have that? Could be they were developed before the zoning ordinance, the first zoning ordinance was adopted in 1930. Could be a change in the district regulations that has occurred multiple times, particularly before 1950. And so when they were approved originally, plotted and subdivided, they conformed with the zoning requirements or there was no zoning. Things have changed in the multiple decades since then. Mr. Amadei?

Yes. I have a question about the way to categorize any of these numbers here. Are you saying this is still within R6, that these are, that you have these many lots that are this size?

That's right.

The ones that are R5 that would be, this is not what this is about, right? Because R5 would be conforming here between the 5,000 and 5,900.

If I were, so for years in the commissions, Just if we were to replicate this for R5, it would be about the same pattern, number one. But you're correct. If this was R5, we were showing where the minimum lot size is 5,000 square feet, that block line, I'd move it over one category.

So you're saying that there are, right now there are, did you say 4,000?

Close. When you add up that 2,971 and the others below it, it's about 4,000.

That small.

That's right.

That are still categorized as R6.

That are still categorized as R6. That's right.

Okay.

That's right. Thank you. And then, you know, we've got the other end of the spectrum where we have lots that are one and a half, two, sometimes three times the minimum lot size. And we're going to get to why this matters, but the zoning ordinance sets a minimum lot size. It does not set a maximum. You can have as much, you know, land areas as you want, so long as you're you're meeting that minimum lot size requirement. So extensive, so we were looking at the lots, we were looking at the lot sizes and the relationship to the minimum lot size requirement. We, of course, were also looking at the impervious area, again, using our stormwater utility data and mapping those out and breaking those down by zoning district. And so what you're seeing here is the breakdown of buildings and non-buildings in impervious area. And we've shared that information with you both in percentage of lot area, as well as just the square footage, the raw number. And so looking at the R20 lots, the median impervious area would be 24%. But 24% on an R20 lot where the minimum lot size is 20,000 square feet is very different than, you know, 24% on a tinier R5 lot or an R6 lot. So you're seeing that breakdown between the buildings and the other driveway features. Our source here is our stormwater utility data. And then we can also take a look at that and say, well, you know, again, teardowns, rebuilds, increases in pervious area. Can we identify some trends there? Is the data showing what we're seeing with our eyeballs? And the answer is yes. When we take a look at, and the reason we chose 2024 is we wanted to make sure that the building permit approval, there had been time to actually construct the dwelling 25, 26. We don't know if the improvements have been completed necessarily. And so, The blue is the entire LRS study area. And when you compare the entire LRS study area to more recent development, again, confirmation through the numbers that impervious area with more recent development, there is no impervious area limit in place right now. Just those block coverage requirements, it is elevated compared to the entire study area. Trees, Commissioner Haynes is talking about our tree canopy analysis. There are a variety of different ways we could have presented this information, but we thought this one was best. Again, it sounds intuitive, but it is important to run the exercise and do the data, particularly with the accuracy and precision that we have with that stormwater utility data, something that we haven't had until recently. We can see how when lots have less impervious area, take a look on the left there, 20 to 25%. This is all the zoning put together. It's just looking at the relationship between impervious area and tree canopy coverage. Lots with less impervious area have more tree canopy coverage. It's important to note that they're not mutually exclusive. Trees and canopy can, to a certain extent, overhang the impervious area. But even with that, you can see that pattern that as impervious area increases on a lot, we typically have less canopy coverage. And so again, confirming the notion that we can expect to see an outcome and a positive outcome on the tree front with a limitation of impervious area. Through the equity lens, what we've done is use the community vulnerability index map and generate some maps, again, using our census tracts, using those six indicators, If you have a chance, please click on the CVIN link, take a look at the CVIN if you haven't already. This is a tool that we've developed and it indexes several different census variables to identify where our vulnerable residents live. And on the right, what we've done is we've used our census tracts, we've used our housing data to say, where do we have our greatest concentrations of low residential housing types, low residential development, certainly in North Arlington, down closer to Pentagon City and Crystal City as well. And then what we've done is just a basic comparison with the vulnerability index, showing that by and large, we don't have a lot of crossover between the two. And so from an equity perspective, that's helpful and it informs our recommendations. This is not the last, this is not the one and only piece on equity that we'll be working on and focusing on as we continue through with phase two and with our engagement. But it's important for the commission to see how with an equity analysis, thinking about equitable planning practices, something that can be a benefit at one level and one scale for one property, it could be a burden at the other end, particularly when it comes to different scales, something at the lot level where an individual property owner has an impervious area limit, they have to perhaps make trade-offs on what improvements they'll be able to add to their property and where, versus for the previous sides, we foresee a benefit and a beneficial outcome on the stormwater front and on the tree canopy front with that limitation, with that regulation in place. So we have been thinking about equity. We're going to be continuing to think about equity as we listen and work with members of the community. Mr. Chair, this is my slide 23, so I remembered my stop. Okay, very good.

Any clarifying questions?

Anything from online? All right.

So what we've done is, well, before we get to what we've done, I'm not going to read all these different bullet points, but I want It's important for the commission to know that establishing an impervious limit option, there's an art to it and there's a science to it. If it was easy enough to run a model or a query or conduct a quantitative analysis and say, this would be the best option, I think we probably would have done it already. But it's not so. And then on the same token, simply looking at a different community, like we did with our benchmarking analysis. We looked at 10 different Virginia communities and two outside Virginia and said, okay, well, they do 50, they do 55, here it's 60. Well, let's pick 55. That seems appropriate. They're close enough to Arlington. You're leaving a lot on the table that's really important that needs to be factored in, particularly when we're talking about the scale of tens of thousands of lots in our residential communities. So- Some of these bullets are, you can see, coming straight out of the board's charge. Other things are best practices that we've added and are keeping in mind as we were selecting where to set these options for the community review. And what we've done, and we said we were going to do this in the project plan, was to provide multiple options for review. And there's a lower option, a middle option, and an upper option for each of the zoning districts. Now, in our community engagement, as we're at a farmer's market, we'll have this information on hand, but we're going to be really asking members of the public, you know, does lower make more sense and the benefits that come with that? or something in the middle or something at the upper end is going to make more sense. We're not going to ask members of the public, is 50% appropriate for R27? What is R27, Mr. Rogers? And so we've shared these, and these are for those standard size lots in the middle. We'll get into in a moment why we've carried forward that standard size, undersized, oversized categorization. You're seeing how that compares to the minimum required lot size. Again, we wanted to show how it compares with our lot coverage maximums already in the zoning ordinance with that acknowledgement as we started the presentation that lot coverage is a regulation impervious area is this stuff, and so there is a bit of an apples and oranges comparison, but that comparison is natural, and so we wanted to bring that in, as well as that median impervious area data from our analysis.

So in the existing lot coverage maximums there that are under current zoning, does that not include then the porches and the sidewalks and all of that that we've been talking about for years and years, or does that include?

So this is everything that's defined as log cover. So it doesn't include that in the introductory slide, the front logs and the patios, and any of the paving that you don't park on, it doesn't include that. But it would include porch and other things.

Yeah, it's just kind of a

two, as you said, the apples and oranges, or maybe pears and bananas.

Right now, anything that's lower than eight inches is my understanding.

Yes, that's correct.

Just wanted to clarify for those numbers.

And then in the bowl, they would count because they are, by definition, impervious. Great, thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Any other questions? We will keep rolling along. We, another task order amongst our consultant support, we recognize that, you know, what is 25%? What is 50%? What does that mean for me? Something visual was going to best connect with our community engagement. My hope is that it connects with you in the room today as well. And so what we asked our consultants to do is using actual Arlington County lots that we provided to them. So they created sort of stylized diagrams inspired by actual Arlington County lots to show a possible layout with the plantable area filled with trees at those different limits. So we have diagrams for R5, R6, R10, and R27. Those will be posted to the Low Resonance Study website. So if a member of the public is saying, well, what does this look like? What is 50% or 55% or 45%? What does that mean for me? Or what... like what could you or could not do with the property, we have some illustrative examples to help visualize what those options could mean for our lot owners. The bar graphs that we showed with the standard size and then those undersized lots and then the oversize, it shows a real limitation and a weakness of using a regulating impervious area, regulating lot coverage, candidly, through a percentage. With those smaller lots, like Commissioner Amadeo had pointed out, the 3,000 to 4,000 square foot lots, a percentage at that size can really make it very inflexible, can really make it hard to fit on the lot. The customary, understandable things that our residents would want to have on their home site. At the same time, at the oversize lot, well, they have plenty of room. They have plenty of space to fit everything on the site, but it's that it creates an opportunity for excessive impervious area, excessive coverage that still complies with the zoning ordinance, but simply by the fact that the zoning ordinance sets a percentage of that can be used to develop the features on the larger lot. These are the opportunities where we could see excessive impervious area that undermines those goals for tree canopy. And yes, Jim, I see how this would sort of work.

So I get the concept. It has logic to it. Yeah. I appreciate that. So you have an R6, but you have an underside lot.

Yes.

That rather than having 6,000 square feet, it's 5,000 square feet. Yes. So then you'd have a specific square footage. Now, if that exact same lot was R5, it would be a percentage then, with the percentage for the 5,000 square feet in an R5 be different than the square footage in the 5,000 square foot for the R6 lot. Believe the answer is yes. So we're going to have weirdness because of that.

There is no purpose. You're exactly right. There is some weirdness. There's no perfect solution. I'll go back to one of those sort of foundational principles, how we were approaching things to try to keep things as uniform as possible by zoning district. You're exactly right. We thought about this considerably. How, okay, well, a 10,000 square foot lot, is it, how different is it going to perform if it's R10 versus R20 versus R5.

Because also in your example, when you had the R6 at the break count, there was actually one 22,000 square foot R6 lot. Yes. That would be R20 otherwise. And that's going to be totally different coverage than the R20 zone. So they're going to maybe get a huge amount more than they can cover because they're in an R6 zone. That's right. Even though otherwise you'd think they could cover a lot. Okay. As long as we acknowledge there's going to be a lot of weird stuff.

No, it's just student observation. Like Nick said, we talk a lot about it. And one of the things that convinced me, because I'm thinking from a stormwater perspective, just do it by lots of times. Who cares about the zoning? But I think it was pretty clear that zoning really matters. People are accustomed to what their zoning is and what's allowed in that zone versus a different zone, setback, et cetera. So it really started to make sense to me that we use zoning as our kind of our core star.

There are some allowances when it's downsized and then oversized. So it's actually interesting because I've seen the tables split when you have an R6, but you only have 5,000 square feet. That's happened. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so it's interesting to see how that percentage versus the actual number is kind of an interesting relationship.

Yeah.

Looking forward to your resolution.

Well, you won't have to. Well, here's an idea. You know what? It'll it'll be up to the board to determine whether it's a resolution or not in your recommendation. But but but our our. We're on this at a very timely moment in the presentation for those undersized lots. Our proposal and what we what we think makes most sense for those undersized lots to allow them the flexibility to have an amount of impervious As if they were a standard size lot, so that that 5,000 square foot lot that's zoned R6 that Commissioner Amedeo was talking about. But, you know. On balance setting a square footage limit that treats them the same as a standard size lot. We feel that that's appropriate. That's equitable. Yes, there is. You can see the overage on the diagonal line. Are they going to have a higher percentage of impervious area? Yes. But at the same time, the board also asked us to consider the use of land, dynamics of older and newer homes as well. And this is what we think is a solution to address that.

Why is the cutoff at 8,500 square feet rather than eight?

Instead of the R8, getting a R8. So the boundaries of the green, the standard size, we didn't base it on zoning, like looking at R8, R10, and comparing those two. We based it on the distribution of the lot sizes. And what we said to ourselves was, can we set a band, a range within that green so that each one of the zoning districts is, the majority of the lots are standard size. And what it comes down to is 140%. And so it's actually 6,000 up to 8,400. And Commissioner Langton, you see that on that next slide, as we go from the undersized and we look at the oversized cap. So that's, thank you for prompting me. Once, Once you have that 140% and you've defined and determined what an oversized lot is for the purpose of regulating impervious area, our proposal would be to set an absolute cap so that just by way of having a large lot, there isn't an incentive and there isn't, we would still be saving space for trees and stormwater, on those larger lots and not having sort of an implicit incentive in zoning to continue.

So in that huge one, they couldn't put the swimming pool, the tennis court, and the basketball courts because it'd still be too much impervious service.

The way I'll answer your question is that individual lot owner may need to have some trade-offs to consider. which one of those different features.

Yeah. I mean, I just want to be clear that there will be that limit. You can't just go, oh, boy, I have all this space. That's correct. You know, I can have almost a country club here.

Yeah. And to kind of continue the thought line on that, the reason is in the board's charge, you know, what are those environmental benefits? What are you, you know, what the board's charge didn't say was, oh, set it so that there are no nonconformities, that everyone has what they have right now, and that they can move forward. When staff was providing reaction to and advising the board on the charge, it was very clear-minded, and we said this consistently in phase one, there will be non-conformities created. In each one of these zoning districts, we've tried to minimize and limit that as best as reasonable as possible, but at the end of the day, there will be folks who have a non-conforming amount of impervious areas,

And so when they sell a house, this swimming pool could stay, even though it's not conformable for these purposes. That's my understanding. Yeah. And they could replace the pool if it, once it reaches the end of its useful life.

Rather than going into individual circumstances, I'd rather not play zoning administrator. It's not a case-by-case basis. But what isn't, what we, What is important for the commission to know, members of the public to know, is that if the board adopts an impervious limit, there is no automatic requirement to jackhammer the pool.

I'm not concerned about that. Well, you know that because you're a planning commissioner. Right. But it's also because it entails what can be on this. And when something reaches the end of a useful life, are you allowed to replace it as is? I can understand you can't make it bigger. I understand you could also tear it out, no problem, but can you then replace it with a blank thing? That's a question that could come up. I mean, I presume the real estate agents want to know that because when a sale comes up, people don't want to know that if their pool is reaching the end of its life.

It's a very common request that our zoning division gets for those. We always call them the bank letters. You know, can you, you know, what is the address? What is the zoning? You know, are there any zoning violations? And it would be in that bank letter, that determination letter that the zoning administrator would write and say, here are the improvements. You know, here's how it compares and the improvements in the area. is if they're asking about this specifically, it's legally non-conforming. It was established prior to the adoption. Again, if the board adopts an impervious area.

I understand, got it.

This gets at a little bit of that. So if there was public sentiment, board sentiment on a lower limit, middle limit and upper limit, where that line is drawn and where that limit is set will have implications on how many lots would have a legally non-performing amount of impervious area. And so this, again, we've touched on it in different parts of the presentation, right? But that trade-off there, you know, with less impervious area, more space for trees, more space for stormwater runoff, for overland relief, better performance and achieving all of our environmental objectives. But then at the same time, with a higher limit, more flexibility for the property owner, for their use, less non-conforming statutes to navigate when and if they need to do so. So like I said, there's no one size fits all and that there are trade-offs based on how different

guidelines are weighted from the board's charge.

Pretty much everything we've talked about right now has been up to this point has been those lots of one family dwellings. We wanted to make sure that the board was, the commissioner rather was aware that we are thinking about and we do have proposals for some of the other housing types. Our recommended limits for phase two, for getting that public feedback for what we're gonna call the traditional two family dwellings, R27, R5 and R6 in very limited instances would be to obtain feedback on 50, 55 and 60 as the impervious area limits. Now for townhouses, again, allowed by right in R27 and by special exception into the other districts and others via residential cluster. Sometimes the townhouse is, the individual lots are fee-simple owned. Sometimes it's condo ownership on one giant parcel. Many of them are subject to site plan. They were originally approved with site plan and are beholden to those individual site plan conditions. And so, you know, Our recommendation at this time would be to not, our proposal at this time is to not have an impervious area limit for townhouses. They are a relatively small part of the low residential study area. The 56% lot coverage limit, which is currently in the zoning ordinance, and again, per the board's charge, cannot be changed, would remain in effect, along with particularly for site plan control development, any development conditions that were applied at the time of approval. And then with expanded housing option development, you're seeing the numbers of what we have in the LRS study area, as well as the districts that they're allowed. This is the reason why we're using the term traditional two family, traditional townhouses. Obviously, EHO allows for two family dwellings, a max of three townhouses and a fourplex. So we are working on a proposal, and once that proposal is ready for public review, we will certainly have that and be able to report that out when we return to you later this fall.

Mr.

Chair, we're rounding the corner, but this is my other goalpost on checking in. I appreciate the questions that we've had so far. We're good to keep rolling.

You know, just public comment and discussion. I'll be as quick as I can. Yeah.

Yep. So the board included sort of four policy considerations that they are looking for staff feedback, direction, recommendation on. Some of these... We want to take the benefit of the phase two engagement to inform what our ultimate recommendation will be. Others, we feel like we have a pretty confident proposal at this time. And so this is one, for the first one, the board asked whether lot coverage should be kept alongside the new impervious area limits or not. We at staff have interpreted that as the lot coverage specific standards specific for the housing types that are in this study. So lot coverage, lot coverage includes main building footprint, which the board directed staff not to study. There are lot coverage requirements for RA districts, C districts, other districts as well. So it's important for the commission members of the public to understand that lot coverage requirements are not going anywhere. They will remain in zoning ordinance whether or not the board takes action. an impervious area limit. Possible options could be to take the impervious area limits and do a replacement of the lot coverage requirements that you're seeing in the four rows and the porch or detached structure as an improvement. the lot coverage standards could continue to remain in effect for one family dwellings, two family dwellings and such, in addition to and alongside an impervious area limit. And it's important for the Commission to know, and I think Commissioner Amedeo is gonna, hopefully I can jump beat you to it, whenever there's conflict between any two regulations in the zoning ordinance, the more restrictive standard is applied.

I think this one is difficult to navigate. I mean, I'm familiar with it because I deal with it every day. But has anybody looked at the idea that the incentive to put a garage at the end of the lot is actually creating the most impervious surface of all, which is the driveway?

We have not. And the reason... I'll be a broken record. The reason we have not is because the board directed staff to not study maximum main building footprint requirements or to touch any of these. Yeah.

Yeah, there's a lot. There was a lot of dismay of houses starting to go up with the garage door being right there on the street, taking up like half the front of the house because the vernacular in Arlington was always the garage in the back, hide that away so it looks house, and then all of a sudden the big mansion started going up with huge garage doors, that that was the primary visual element of a house facing the street. And people hated that.

I know, but what's happening is that there are people now complaining that the back of the garage is actually in their backyard now because it's only one foot. You know, the regular one foot, one foot from the corner. And people are like, wait, why is my neighbor's garage now in my face? So And also, why is that driveway so long? Right. I'm giving you why. No, no, I understand. I know that we're not about to talk about that right now, but that is an elephant.

It was one of the errors of when the county was being laid out after World War II and alleys were not being put in anymore. I mean, alleys would have solved all these problems. That's right.

They had that in California. That came from a planning commissioner, though, that moving the garage to the back was very much advocated by a previous plant commissioner. So other plant commissioners in 1950, right? No, this is more recent. Like 10, 20 years ago. 20 years ago now. That's it?

Yeah.

So, but we had a similar concern because of what it does to trees too.

When there were pipe stem lots being developed as big over those, you know, there was big, a lot of things were going on back then.

I'll just offer it. Maybe stay in the outage. An impervious area limit would help because then you have choices to make. If you want to do that, that means you can't do, you might do less of something else. So maybe they'll decide, well, I'd rather not waste the impervious area, extending the driveway all the way to the back. I'd rather reserve that for other things. So I'm not going to do it.

But the problem with this is that the allowance is given for the detached garage. And so there are two incentives. One is the setbacks and the other one is the coverage. you get additional lot coverage for detached garage, which is a little strange. So to me, this is still an elephant. And I know I'm being asked not to talk about it, but I'm talking about it.

No, we want you to talk about it.

The low residential study will not be studying or making a recommendation in that area. And in phase one, we spoke to several members of the public who either perceived or were concerned that the board's charge could result in all of these lot coverage standards being limited from the zoning ordinance. And so given that level of concern, we said, let's ask the public, let's bring this into phase two's engagement so that we can continue to work with the community, continue to explain what this policy consideration means, and we'll report those findings in phase two.

reality is we're going to have to accept that however we come out of this, everyone will not be happy. There will be a large number of people that will be upset.

Whichever direction you go, it may be different groups will be unhappy depending on the policy choice, but we're not going to get... Well, except that we're trying to come up with ways in which the Chesapeake Bay Protection Act is going to help, right? So that's what really this is going to help. And so in... Like I've also done garages where you go under, so you don't see the garage as much, so you have a slight, you know, driveway. Right. So I think there are ways. It's just that because it's still an incentive, I think it's still an elephant because you gain a lot of coverage by having that. And so on the one hand, I understand the porch. a lot more than I understand the garage. So that's, that far for me doesn't compute.

I'm going to move us along just so we can get into the real meat of it. It's kind of a pseudo presentation discussion for having anybody.

We'll keep going. So second consideration, you know, should the recommendation include a minimum contiguous plantable area requirement? And so this is one where we feel pretty confident in giving a preliminary recommendation that the board should not adopt one. And I recognize when I say that it feels counterintuitive given the importance of trees to this community. First and foremost, the Code of Virginia does not have explicit enabling authority for the board to adopt a zoning ordinance on that front. But even if that were not the case, take a look here when you layer in, presuming that there was an impervious area limit that the board adopted, and then presuming that there was an additional plantable area requirement. You have regulatory oversight of so much of the property at that point. It's a disservice to the lot owner. It's a disservice to administration and enforcement. And at the end of the day, A plantable area requirement does not guarantee that the set-aside plantable area will be planted with trees. We do not have the authority to require it.

That was my reaction. I looked at this. I thought, my God, the complexity of this is insane. The opportunities to game it are huge. That is just, just don't go there.

Just, this is bad news. Yeah. The, so the third policy consideration was, you know, should yard or separate requirements be adjusted? Our recommendation would be to not do that at this time. We recognize that the FNRP calls for a consideration on this. This is, at the end of the day, this is a tool that could be appropriate in targeted situations next to a natural area, an area that's designated as part of a separate study, an area that, you know, should be conserved, unique plant species. There's a number of different more site-specific localized ways where perhaps an overlay district or some sort of more specifically tailored to a specific geography mechanism where this would be a potential tool in the toolbox. But as far as across the entire county-wide, We don't think that this is appropriate.

Is it a matter that's happening anyway to a certain extent? Because the street that I'm on, down further away, all the houses were lined up. And going for like five blocks, they were all lined up. Except that all of them were further back than what the setback line is. So every time a teardown now happens... They come forward and you guys it's now in and out in and out. Yeah, we're used to this uniform line going straight up and down the street. So it's happening naturally.

Kind of like South Pollard Street here in the photo. There's that there's that understandable roof line where the where the facade with building and space there. There is an order that comes with that and and disrupting it in some ways. Part of the low residential study. It wouldn't. We don't feel it would accomplish the objectives writ large as as. is possibly considered in the charge. And the board asked us to consider whether the limits could be based on lot size or zoning district. I think it's pretty straightforward, Mr. Chair. It's a hybrid approach that considers the lot size and zoning district. I'll be very quick about phase two and our engagement and next steps. We're here tonight. We're going to be at Library Fest on Saturday. We do want to schedule briefings as we indicated we would do so in Phase 1 with FNRC and C2E2. We'll be working with your liaisons to get something on the books. My hope is for September, but we'll Don't quote me on that. We'll work through your liaisons to get on your calendars. You're going to see us at some upcoming farmers markets. We do want to do an industry focus group or at least work with farmers architects, engineers, other contractors, folks, industry professionals, to make sure that that feedback is incorporated into the analysis, into the study, into the process. So we're going to be doing a lot of similar things, an online feedback forum as well, working through phase two, getting back before LRPC later this fall. And then once we receive that direction from the county board, then we would be turning to phase three and some much more administrative and permitting processes if needed, and our customary ZOCO RTA and adoption. And with that, Mr. Chair, that concludes my presentation. Very much.

And I like this format of hybrid discussion and presentation for this. I think some of the questions ahead of time so that way we can get more of it once we're having the real discussion, which we'll come after.

Public comment period, which I believe we only have one public comment. Mr. Richardson. I think we have several. Oh, do we have people signed up in person here as well?

Did they sign up? Oh, did you all use the science sheet when you came in?

I pre-registered. Are you Brian?

Okay, good. We do have Brian. Okay. You can talk about this.

So, Mr. Chair, Mr. Farner, Mr. Richardson have a public comment. There may be others. Okay. I know that they for certain were looking forward to addressing it.

All right. And so no one online registered?

If they would like to make a public comment, they can.

Yeah, if anyone online, please put it in the chat if you want to do public comment. But we have the two in person here first. Mr. Richardson, if you do you want me to put a timer?

Yeah, two minutes timer.

Mr. Richardson go first and then I think he's just you want me to go first.

More interesting speakers. So it's Ryan Harder. I'm for planning Commissioner. I'm here speaking on behalf of the Arlington Civic Federation. And I'll keep it short, but the Civic Federation. Honestly, when I was on the Planning Commission, we didn't have that much interaction with the Civic Federation, but now I'm working with them, and they're a great organization. They've got more than 90 membership organizations, and it's not just civic associations. It's also civic groups, nonprofits. So they have a resolution called Study of Live Coverage High Setback Provisions of Zoning Ordinance Approved June 9, 2026. And I think Nick has this history to the commission. You know, the Civic Federation goes through a pretty arduous process to adopt the resolutions. It goes through committees, and it goes through two rounds of review and discussion at the full Civic Federation, and it goes to a vote. And so the vote on this was 46 yay, 0 nay, and 1 abstention. So briefly, this resolution, I encourage you guys to read it. It really harkens back to the board discussion to be wholesome with respect to many of the elements that were in the forestry and natural resources plan. Specifically references that asked that the board return to the original charge and looking at the elements of forestry and natural resources includes what does and does not count as lot coverage, It's been excluded from my presentation tonight. Whether or not a square footage cap on lot coverage in addition to percentage gap that's been addressed and whether to tie lot coverage regulations of lot size rather than to zoning district. So there's some real meat in there. And in addition, the. Thank you. That's that's right.

And Mr. Richardson.

I attended your last two meetings on this issue, speaking for representatives of now 27 diverse civic associations. Putting aside the problem about the foregoing true lock coverage reform, the staff's latest options here, and any closer look. First, the proposed impervious surface limits appear to be a little real limit at all. In every district that are 10, even the lowest limit proposed is above the median impervious surface of existing lots. How does this represent meaningful reform? Particularly because in repeatedly delaying action, we have significantly increased that median. And remember, existing homes with grandfathered and sold, Article 16. There appears to be no analysis how, if at all, these options would reduce building footprints so as to curb the market dysfunction by which developers of single-family homes now present buyers with increasingly unaffordable giant white houses. And slide nine says key themes from public engagement still include, quote, concerns about the size of buildings. Will an impervious area limit be affected? Second, staff tees up an option to not just do nothing about lot coverage or building footprints, but actually to eliminate these limits. Third, staff options do not adequately address oversized and undersized lots. For undersized lots, they give a 4,000 square foot lot in our eight district, the same impervious surface as an 8,000 square foot. For oversized lots, they give a lot up to 40% larger, the same percentage of impervious surface as a minimum size lot. Only using this number, 40%, can a majority of lots in each district be said to be standard size. It's 5,949. Finally, staff would drop the board's idea of setback reform because it, quote, could further disrupt existing development Slide 35. That's the whole purpose of this exercise. Eric, that's all recognized. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Comments. I'd like to do those earlier.

I just think it's more respectful of everybody's time. But now that we've gone through the presentation, we've gone through public comment, pointed with each other. I will now open it up for discussion questions about what we discussed here tonight.

It is now.

Where to begin? Obviously, you know, since we were very involved in development for the Natural Resources Plan, this is clearly not what we had anticipated in that process. And so I think it's it's starting point. We get it is, you know, considerably altered from where the county board decided to take a look at this. You know, I guess we should be grateful for the problems that we're looking at, but it's definitely not this sort of wholesome exploration that we hope for. So that's a little frustrating. So clearly the way you've teed it up then, it's option number one is what staff is recommending.

We don't have any recommendations to be clear.

that appeared that way in the presentation, I think. So is that on?

Yeah, perhaps I misunderstood, Chair Betz.

Okay, yeah, I just wanted, that would be helpful to clarify. I do understand you're going through a while of that, you know, additional outreach, but just looking at the way it was teed up, the other options were not really options. The policy consideration,

My reaction was to these limits and that there was no recommendation one way or the other at this time, other than these would be the limits that we've developed to test.

When you have the three options, only one seems to be when you prefer. Maybe it's a better word than recommend.

Yeah, so I'm not talking about this option. The policy. The policy. Yeah.

And then after I closed my mouth, I was like, she means the policy.

So that, you know, doesn't give us a lot to work with, I guess. So that's frustrating. And we do have, I'd love to see some more flexibility on the individual opportunities for tree preservation, because that's been such a big loss across the county. And to just summarily reject that is super frustrating. You know, I would second that comments about the garages and but there's so many nits that just keep chipping away at it, but it makes it really, really difficult to preserve some of these big trees that, especially in the backyards. So anyway, I'll have to absorb some more of this, but those are just starting on initial.

If I can just follow up, what sort of other elements do you feel this is lacking?

I know on one of the slides, if you can go to the FNRP, that we can, when we have the discussion, I know it's one of your slides.

My reference slides.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So those were the recommendations.

Forgive me for the small print.

There's a lot of recommendations in this plan. So, you know, I get it that the county board very much restricted what could be discussed to begin with. But, you know, after working on this plan and having it adopted by the county board, it's frustrating and so skinny down.

being on the planning commission as long as they have and see how the R5 through 20 zoning districts work. We seem to be always twisting ourselves in pretzels to try to figure out how things work with them. We're also trying to fix things because of the history of when, since it was done after the county was laid out and the lots were platted. So there are huge numbers, as we've noted, huge number of anomalies in every single district. And I would personally, I'd rather just tie it to lot size. Everybody knows what their lot size is. Nobody knows what their zoning district is. You know what the lot size is. Every lot of that size would be treated the same regardless of the district. And frankly, there isn't much difference between districts in the R's. So I'm not sure why we need to continue to tie ourselves to the zoning districts. It just doesn't make any sense to me, at least in the arts. I would just, I think the simplest, most transparent way to deal with it is simply lot size.

We leave it at that.

So just as far as legislative authority, I understand we have to ask for everything. Is that still within the realm of possibility?

a impervious area limit solely based on lot size, like Commissioner Lantone, I would say yes. And it's something that the staff team has thought about and considered. We feel like the hybrid of the approach that uses zoning district and lot size is appropriate, but the feedback is, I know Commissioner Lantone has different feelings, and we'll take that into consideration.

But, so...

Buildable area is based on setbacks and the setbacks are based on your zoning. And so then it just, there's still a discrepancy there in between. And I think what you're getting at makes sense to me that it's just the percentage or something connected to the lot size, but then still, I'm still bound to the setbacks for certain things.

Right, and the way I would deal with that.

Yeah, that it seems like it penalizes.

Yeah, someone's going to penalize it anyway. Right. As long as we're still continuing to wear ourselves to these far districts, which I really think is problematic. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. You put the percentages and say, nonetheless, this percentage is subject to the setback limits of this zone, which may result in you having even less than you otherwise might have. I think that's the only really way we could get with it. since we're stuck with the zoning district. It's still more transparent that way, and it gives more flexibility or more certainty, I think, and more consistency.

I don't even know where to start.

I could have my own meeting just on my comments here. I agree with you on the simplicity of it.

I remember when the stormwater thing came out that I don't think a whole lot of people got involved in that. They knew, oh, my bill's going to go up or whatever. And I think probably those who are more conscious about Wanting to have treaties and understanding this is one of the reasons we moved to Arlington because we have these beautiful things. But it was I've sat through some of those county meetings just so I would see how it would affect my own yard and my own bill. But there were that many people on them. So it wasn't like the majority of people became involved in that. To your point about real estate. should something happen, I know the county will be very good about reaching out and real estate companies will be very good about educating their agents. Although we are in a buyer-beware state, it's really the responsibility of the buyer. If you're being represented by an agent, the agent has to at least point you, should be aware and point you in the directions of what you can and cannot do, which then also leaves... somebody's coming in here and they're buying a four or $3 million house. They think they can do everything pretty much. And I wasn't in the room when the County Board came up with, let's study this, but not touch this little area here. I'm going to guess it's because of what you and your group have pointed out. And we've all driven by going, oh, that cute. Wow. But, you know, somebody, argue that people have the right to do that. Not sure that we'll ever be able to stop that in a democracy. People have the right to do whatever. However, because we have prided ourselves, if we're going to spend all the time to do the forestry and natural resources plan, and I'm a big one on this, if you've got a plan, then you should try to at least fulfill it or at least make an attempt to fulfill it. So, um, You know, I wonder, too, even if we come up with a plan here, and I guess I should have started this out by saying, staff, you've done a phenomenal job with trying to take the boards. Oh, we got to do something about this, but not really. And to try to make everybody here, you know, with something. I do wonder, though, as we sat here and we've just gone through a lot of slides, if you've got somebody at a pop-up event, how much are they really going to be able to grasp in this? Because we're all still sitting here going, even with all the slides. Not to say that I haven't attended pop-up events and I appreciate them. It bothers me that I'm not really sure if we do come up with something transparent, simple, whatever, What happens if a tree ages out, gets sick, falls down? Who's out there? Is there, you know, is there an enforcement option? Is there even, there isn't money in the, we have limited resources in the county now. So at the end of the day, what's in it for the owner to really want to, quote, you know, be environmentally a contributor? to the environment versus, you know, I mean, when we saw the infusion of the large McMansions in 22207, we also saw an infusion of stormwater issues because so many things have been, you know, lots had just cleared. So I don't know if for tree preservation that becomes a credit in some ways, but you've already got the stormwater thing, so how does that work with that? You know, in terms of whatever happens here, county resources so that, you know, the public understands. But somewhere along the line, I'm not sure that we're, you know, this is a very dedicated group of people that would take their time out of their busy lives to come out here and want, you know, lofty, wonderful things for the county long after they're gone. But, you know, how many people think like that? And I don't know. I don't think like everybody until something's happening in their backyard. I don't understand. So I still have a lot of concerns about this. Again, I understand the staff's position. I think you're doing a fabulous job with what you have to work with and to try to keep your lanes narrow as they are, you know, broad. But this is a this is like a very thought provoking. What are we really going to, at the end of the day, I think so many times when we sit in these meetings, we come up with these things that are, oh, we would really love to be, to have it this way. And if we can even get a fraction of that as an actual implementation, which I'm not sure we ever do. So I think maybe the more simple, transparent, something comes out of this, but, you know,

It's just, it's all very daunting for me.

The first, when I went through the slides for the meeting, I thought it was going to break my brain. I don't understand it. Then sitting through it, okay, it's becoming clearer. I can now form questions, get ideas. But just the quick reading through, really, it was like, oh, my God, I have no idea what's going on here. So I'm not sure how we can get useful information. I'm not saying don't do them, but is there a way you can make it easier for people to figure out what's actually happening? Identify what the problem is. Identify something, and we will not look at X, Y, and Z. what you're doing there, and then say, not even present options, maybe just what are your ideas on this or, you know, something like that. Because I don't see somebody just casually walking by and looking at a few things on easels. It's going to be able to give you useful information.

Don't tell them why the stickers are bent up.

I think this diagram is very useful.

Like this here. That may be fine, but my point is.

It doesn't cover what everybody does with their lot, but it definitely shows at least, you know, because that's a lot of lots look like this.

Well, and I think one thing that I feel from a communication standpoint might still be an area of opportunity is kind of we're all in this together. This is why this came about. I mean, we've got flooding issues. We're losing our tree canopy. Our heat is higher here. We're all in this together. So what are we individually as citizens here willing to contribute to help fix it? So we can't fix it in this room. It's clear. We can do things that, you know, help and whatever, but we kind of need everybody else's help to do this, especially, and we're all in it together. And we kind of always miss that somehow, I think.

From community, real quickly, from a community engagement feedback perspective, what information would you benefit from, from members of the public providing you and us asking them to inform your ultimate recommendation to the commission?

For me, it would be, okay, we've got this, this, you know, this is, you know, serious stormwater issues and what it means to people. So that how am I as a citizen of this county, how am I affected one way or another? And then in addition to stormwater, trees. And if the tree canopy is vanishing as we believe it is and the temperatures are going up, those are simple things that I think a lot of people can relate to that. you know, seeing slides and, you know, a lot of people might go over and be helpful or whatever, and they'll sit through that. But what's, why, for them, why should I take time out of my busy life to care about this right now? And I'm not sure that that's where we've kind of processed our package.

I would say that kind of the fundamental crux of this and then sort of balancing it from the property owner's perspective of, you know, how much, do you want to lean towards, you know, more, or I say less impervious space, and more restrictions on what homeowners can do with their land because of that, versus the sort of public goods that we get from the stormwater improvements from more green space and less impervious area.

More restrictions and and more green area.

I want the commissioners to know that we know that this is what we've developed is complex. It's as simple as we could make it to achieve those objectives. And that we are having, we've had hours and hours of conversations internally with our communication colleagues. who provided very similar feedback to what you've given us. So much so to say things like, could you make it any more scary?

Yeah.

Scary. There's plenty on scary.

Not just the stormwater, because stormwater is not as in your face, but especially now.

I mean, reach out. You have symptoms already. Bill is talking for actually a number of civic associations of the North, you know, leaving Green Arlington. Not just. Not just. I know, but, well, we've talked. If you reach out to the civic associations that have the art districts in them, at least let them know this is coming, and they can then either reach out to you or start talking to their members. And I know some civic associations are highly active, others are just a single person. you know, cranky about stuff. You know, there's a huge variation of civic associations. But doing that in a proactive way never hurts. You'll often get civic associations say, well, we never hear from the county unless we ask them something. You know, they're a resource. You know, we use them for lots of things, but then we ignore them a lot of times too. So I would reach out to those civic associations that are in, that have the R districts in them, at least significant numbers.

Yeah. Should there be also some kind of understanding or study on, and I know it's hard, probably on how much this affects property values, because in the end, that's all people will hear. And so you, for instance, when I was working with Alan Reinecke, Welt on giving points for a green building. So we were giving points. You could get gold, silver status, you know, based on your points. And one of the things we asked her to add was, you know, give additional points for keeping the original building, for not tearing down the building. And so, and that, you know, so some of the homeowners that I worked with, they were very happy that, that they could get a plaque that actually might help them sell the house. Oh, this is a gold status, platinum status. So that's gone. My understanding is that we kind of have it sometimes for some of the high-rises, but we don't have it for single-family homes.

Some of that might take care of people wanting to keep their... That always makes me nervous because the county can't really predict what's going to happen. property values. I mean, around here, it's such a bizarre market that, you know, you can at least attract a house in an area and it's still going to pay a million dollars. So, you know, it's in this county, then I doubt the county attorney would want you to do that either.

But there's got to be something there that says we are not really touching certain things that are part of what the bank assessors, you know, look at, you know, and I think they will hear that one.

And he knows that I have to deal with that. Yeah, I wouldn't get into, oh, it won't farm. It will help or hurt or will not work neutral because we can't possibly know that because there's so many other factors that go into what property value is that this one component of it isn't enough to move the needle countywide. So that's why it could affect this house really fully, but it could make this house more valuable and it'd be irrelevant to most of these houses here. And then if we go into recession, everything goes up in the air anyway. So I just really don't want to go.

Well, at least up until now, the real estate market has been driven by price and condition. So, you know, price keeps going up. And as long as conditions is good, the price is going to follow. If the condition is bad, then you see anything that sits on the market here too long. One of those two things is wrong. Maybe both. I think it would be kind of cool and maybe add value to my own property because I'm a tree lover would be to say that I have an official tree preservation area. I don't know what that means, but maybe it could mean more. On the other hand, there are people out there that I've even talk to them in some of the other commissions where it's like, trees, just get them down, come down. They fall down, they hurt things, they have birds, birds poop on my car, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, you know, for a tree to be like, but reality. So, but I think things that, I think if this is a goal that we are all going to benefit from, not just us here, but future generations that come here for the parks, for the local setting, for all the services that we have on the charts, that, you know, it's incumbent upon us to make sure that we have packaged this in such a manner that it will, I'm losing my train of thought at this hour, but that it just, it's a benefit. What is the benefit here? And we all want to be a part of it. And again, maybe your communication staff is exactly, make it scary.

Now, can you make it more scary?

Yes, exactly. Terrify them first and then give them a solution, you know. Heat island is certainly one of them. You know, strong water, flooded basements. You know, when some of the big mansions were first starting to go up, the neighbors were saying, oh my god, water's rolling into my backyard. Yes, exactly.

Yeah, a day like today, you can be walking down the street and dying, except when you get to that one tree and you're like, there's like a 10, 15 degree temperature difference, and you're like, thank you, thank you, and you stay under there for a few minutes to let the sweat dry out before you go back out. You know, it's like, so.

Yeah, staff response, and then I'm going to go comment.

Yeah, I have a bit of a question on that, how we communicate that. Obviously, you and I understand the value of trees, but We also have to kind of be careful not to tip our hand on the scale when communicating these things in the public. So how would we, in a public engagement setting, communicate, oh, well, trees have all these other co-benefits, and how would you recommend we communicate that in those contexts?

I guess along the same thing, especially right now, any engagement that's going on now with the heat, or even if this is in September, October, well, and Saturday, you're going to have heat, and you're also going to have storms, so you've got them both. But I would say that, again, if it's for heat, that, you know, trees... I mean, besides getting into wildlife and all the other stuff that trees do, but certainly can reduce, help reduce the heating effects suffering through these next couple of days. So am I answering your question, Vincent?

Yeah, I'm trying to think of this because we're trying to, when we go out to the public, we have to present this somewhat neutrally, right? Like these are the different options. And if we... Of course, I'm the biggest tree fan on staff. But if we start to say, well, trees have all these benefits, then do we then also say on the other side, well, a patio has all these benefits? I mean, that's what I'm concerned about.

Yeah, I think that the job is to present it. Like you always do, you know, say, you know, this tree has a lot greater public benefits and a patio has a lot more private benefits. And that's just a statement of fact. It's not tipping the scale in any direction, you know? Yeah.

So are you selling the trees?

Yeah. I mean, and some people like private benefits, you know, it all comes down to individual value system.

Your tree is a good neighbor. Yeah. Yeah. For some. I know.

I was going to add that I think one aspect of the analysis here that I think I'm understanding this right the setbacks are not being proposed to be amended here and even though we're doing this pretty specific spot area change to not adjust only part of the puzzle I understand that's the first charge well

Allow me to... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's understand a scenario where... And these four policy considerations in our... Bear with me as I get to them. Let's get to the setback one. So in our online feedback form, the board has asked us to look at this. We're going to ask members of the public to comment on certainly... This one, I think all four. Certainly, I think our forum asked them to comment on all four. And so let's imagine a scenario where there's an overwhelming majority of our respondents, both through the feedback form and through our engagement communications that say, we really feel that the the board should consider adjusting the setbacks in some way, shape, or form to facilitate these. Well, that's what the public engagement interface, too, is about. You know, we feel that the board should adopt a lower limit because it'll perform better for our environment. Or, you know, we love our patios. We're selfish, as Chairman Nain said. So the board should maximize the amount of impervious area we can have on our property, we're gonna have actionable information along with comments like those from Mr. Richardson and his neighbors, Mr. Harner, and you'll have that information in hand to inform different recommendations. So I guess what I'm trying to say is we're gonna ask the question on these four. We have a proposal, we have an idea, we have a recommendation on at least this one. And we feel like as proposed, number four achieves what the board's consideration was. But if, again, if there's a groundswell of public feedback to the contrary, then we'll need to take that into account and report that out to you and to the board.

I'm going to go around the room now and do final arguments for this particular area. I mean, as the sense we're getting, you know, what we've outlined here tonight this is still early on in the process none of this is final none of this is made that we still have a whole slew of public comments to go forward but i think as far as i can tell there's still some areas here that missing from the discussion the reduced scope of this doesn't help achieve some of the more expensive goals of the nafn army uh force your natural resources plan um but that there's there are efforts being made here and it helps a big That's something that satisfies the support that people get as we go along.

I would just next up, because I know you all have put a lot of time and energy and serious thought into this, so thank you for that. And with one hand, I'd be on your back. So anyway, for what I said about these. Yeah, no questions. I agree with a lot of kind of about tree preparation, things like that, but Really appreciate all the work on this. I know C2E2 will be interested to hear about it whenever that gets scheduled in the fall. But yeah, thank you for the presentation tonight. It's great to see all the progress.

Thank you.

I was just handed this patio, so I thought I would share. Tree conservation is in F&R plan patios or not. Tree benefit conservation is in action. Lots of data on diverse benefits. setbacks are essential to conserve and replant canopy trees. It's just, and I read that because I just wanted it to be part of the record and it just continues to illustrate the situation that you're in and how great a job you've done up until now to get even to this point where I understand it a lot better than I did before. Thank you. but again, how the public understands it, and what we can really do at the end of the day to help with stormwater, which, of course, trees are a big part of. Trees suck up water. Hydrangeas suck up water. And what we can do to help with the, if you don't care about stormwater, because you're like, I'm on a high ground, but you are not escaping this heat unless you're sitting inside all day long. And most of us, because we live here, like to be outside. The whole environment was kind of set up so that we could enjoy it. So what can we all do collectively to help with that? And again, maybe not just streamlining the system that you recommended, but maybe streamlining this so that at the end of the day, what you go to the board with is a little bit more simplistic and not that complicated work levels of comprehension that the public is never going to get.

I'm trying to navigate inside the guidelines, but it's very hard.

I think the elephants are speaking. I think the public, some of the concerns that connected to these elements playing a role, I think that they need to be heard. I am concerned about focusing, like in art school, we were always looking at people that instead of drawing a face, they would start with an eye. And then it would be this amazing eye, but then the face was just out of proportion. So I'm concerned about the proportions that you get between hardscape, which is body patio, you know, and the actual architecture and all those things. And then the landscape. So there are three elements that I feel like they all talk to each other. And right now we're just focusing on two. And that's a concern because The overall outcome is a living organism of three elements.

And I'm worried that one of them is ignored.

Well, I believe that brings us to the end for tonight.

So I want to thank everyone here, staff, members of the committee, members of the public. And as I always say, You could have been anywhere on this Wednesday night. And you chose to be here to help make Wellington a better place.

Thank you all for coming.

And our next Planning Commission action is over. Thank you.