Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

make my appointment another member who whose turns out at the end of the month I think she thought it was last Um and we decided to apply for I am off. No, I actually was intentionally

Oh, you join. Yeah, you should

Yeah, see I was there five years in the chair. a bit more why are you here?

The chair comes back and then it's like there's a new chair. It's like, no, it's just Watch the way. Where are you?

Good. That would be a little higher. What's that? Did you see any particular Yeah. There's some rules.

Yeah, it's really weird. Yeah, it's I think it's I think it's still out of commission. Yeah, it's still not working for me. Anywhere you have any data? Yeah, like my husband. You can't even move these stairs.

I want to put in for a butt cushion for the ones upstairs there so that I can Yeah. Oh, all you're like, "Is my phone messed up?" And then I drove by Verizon store just like too tall. Well, it's good for the judge, but it's makes us sort of unapproachable.

The little kid table. Yes. Matt sat down like this table high or the chairs low. Google maps switch away. We're going to look at here.

Yeah. Right. That's what that's good a good practical use of that function. Step out. Still, you make it into every picture. You were in the Stratford picture. You were uh Tim Tim is where? I know Tim used to be, but you're I got to know there. Tim's on there, but he's tall. So, at least you're photogenic. I have to I have to wear I have to wear bright colors in order to be noticed. But Tim like towers over everything. At

least giving out free beers at that thing. behind me. No, you meant I get it. The alternative, right? Him in the picture. It looks like we're trying to recruit for a basketball court. All right. Um, do you want to order? You want to eat first?

I'm fine to do both. I'll wait till I can't do anything without this. Guess forgot who I was. I know. It's just enough time that I forgot what I ordered. So, this is a nice surprise. Surprising.

I got the bacon turkey bravo. I don't want that hungry. I should say next Tuesday. First question. You need to go bring up your Yeah. Look for drinks. I'm going to find a light. I think I think maybe people are grabbing. I don't know. I just brought water. Am I supposed to bring a drink? Or drink? I supposed to bring a drink? Uh water. It's okay. I'll get it.

This is the second time I made my water bottle. Oh, really? There used to be. I don't know if they're still there. They probably aren't. For once, I didn't check the fridge. For once, I didn't bring any. Wasn't much in there. I grabbed the zero sugar fruit splash ginger cherry. Almost everything's sold out. Fixed a lot of boxes. That's pretty. That was the only one that was in there. That was in a hurry. So, heard of that. All right. Are we ready, Jack? Are you good?

All right. Let's call the January 14th, 2026 planning commission advance to order. Uh Jack, you want to call the role? Oh yeah. Mr. P Mr. Pollinsky here. Mr. Duncan here. Uh Mr. Kraner here. Chair Kont I'm here. Stevens here. Miss Freedellander here. And Mr. Kinsky here. Thank you. And Cororm. Awesome. Anybody happen to have the agenda? I realized I don't actually have the agenda. I thought this was pull it up.

Let me log on. You want to sit here? I know that there's no roomary. Oh, yes. I need two chairs.

There's one right down here. He's going to go. Yeah.

Okay. All right. I think next we need a motion to adopt tonight's agenda. Any um edits, changes? If not, is there a motion to approve? Move to adopt the agenda. Second. Yes. All in favor? I. That brings us to receipt of petitions. Um, do we have a summary of written correspondence? We have no public comment tonight. Is that correct? That's correct. Yeah, there there's no uh in person uh comment period for the advance. Um, there were also no written petitions for the meeting. Okay, that's easy. So, that brings us to the advance. I think we are turning it over to you, Mr. Peter. Is that right?

That's right. Jack, could you bring up the presentation? And I'm going to skip around a few slides. Uh, but we wanted to do I think you all should have this handout um that we just distributed tonight. Um, we want to obviously spend some time and kind of go over the presentation that was posted last week. Um, some clarifying questions. Uh, we'd like to kind of get those out of the way first. Um and then what we have in store are three exercises that I think will um allow everybody to participate but also solicit I think some helpful feedback for our benefit as we kind of test the way we are capturing priorities the way in which uh we're signaling uh the importance of some of these items but also kind of get your thoughts. Uh a lot of these are not brand new items. you've been looking at them for a while and part of what lies ahead for the planning division and others that are helping us is you know scoping and initiating some of these efforts and we want to make sure that we are all on the same page in terms of what they're meant to accomplish. If we are not in agreement on the destination, the journey will be very bumpy. Uh and part of that I think is a helpful conversation tonight to make sure that um particularly on one item in particular, we are heading in the in the same direction. So um we once we get through the presentation and the clarifying questions, the plan is to break out into three groups. Um there are no assigned seats, but we want to make sure that staff is joining each group. uh it could help to take some notes. Uh somebody one of the commission members would be the spokesperson or representative to report out as you go through some of these exercises. Um and we are also particularly for exercise three making sure we want to evenly distribute folks who have some broader knowledge of the strong towns concept and framework. So if everybody's very

familiar with them, ignore what I just said. But if you're not, make sure you have somebody in your group that is. That'll help the conversation. Uh, we're going to try to fit this in in a 2-hour window, but I also want to make sure we have a productive conversation. So, if some of the exercises go a little bit longer, I'm more than willing to extend the time to make sure we get to a good outcome. Uh, there's no shock luck here. We're not going to get penalized if we stay a few minutes late. So, just want to put everybody at ease. Any questions before we go forward? Okay.

All right. So Jack, could you slide down to uh slide number four for me? What I wanted to emphasize the uh go up one. There we go. Um is the current structure of the department within which the planning division is uh located. Um, this is a very busy graphic, uh, a little bit blurry in that scale, but what it helps to identify are all of our internal partners that in some shape or form are directly related to helping us achieve every annual work program. Uh, CPADS covers a lot of ground. Everything from establishing the vision, helping realize it, working with all the various stakeholders, inspect properties, work to make sure we get tenants in buildings. So a toz you name it this department is uh in a very visible position and carries a lot of critical functionality. So um the slide here is intended to highlight what the grouping is how we are organized. Sometimes it's been a while since we've had a clean or chart. So we wanted to make sure the most current version could be out there. I did want to point out that at the very top you'll notice we are currently un without a director uh which is uh and will continue to present challenges from a work program perspective because that position carries a lot of responsibility uh it is the glue between the four divisions that make up the department and serves as a critical liazison to the business community development community and others. Uh and in that absence, the four division leads and other staff are doing their best to jump in and kind of fill in where possible. But that position is a full-time position for a reason. And uh I think the four division leads are very mindful of not uh departing from their other responsibilities and the very staff that they have to support as well. So uh this I'm sure is going to come up in the upcoming budget process. I suspect it may be an annual question we have to ask, but we're going to keep highlighting it because in our opinion,

it really needs to come back. Uh, and it will have some direct, some indirect, uh, impacts on our work program. Uh, so we're going to adapt either way, but I want to make sure we highlight that. Uh if we go down to the next slide, um it's also important to highlight all the various responsibilities that the planning division in particular maintains uh in our regular coordination with very uh significant amount of external groups. And the reason we're highlighting that is because a lot of this engagement, coordination, and support doesn't quite elevate to the level of a work program graphic. So the things we're going to be looking at, they kind of gloss over this in some ways, but it does make up for a huge chunk of staff resources and our bandwidth. Uh and it's something that in many cases we are required to fulfill in staff and uh anything we consider in our work program is in addition to these responsibilities. Uh so this is again a healthy reminder of where we are. Um the next slide I wanted to focus on is number seven which is where were we this time last year. Uh so this graphic is should be very familiar to everybody. This is kind of with Gary's help at the beginning of 2025. We're trying to figure out what can we actually tackle. uh and you can see the format I think works really well in the first uh row being those routine assignments and the work that's mandated by us in support of various groups and committees and boards and commissions and only after that can we start to think about between these five different umbrellas zoning environmental planning transportation current planning and long-range planning what else can we accomplish in a calendar year so last year this was the the kind of anticipation and forecast with the final row kind of beginning to think about, okay, if we don't get to something in 2025, what could 2026 begin to address? So things that maybe were

identified as priorities but didn't quite make the cut. Uh but we're not ignoring them and we're trying to track them moving forward. So compared this snapshot to the next slide which is what did actually come off this list as the planning team progressed through 2025 which as you can see here there's a lot of blank cells. It was quite a productive year. Uh some of these things are wrapping up this month next month. Um but a lot of things came off which is great. uh at the same time we're looking at those blank cells particularly in some of these key columns as a clear signal of where our bandwidth is. So if we are adding new items for 2026 where do they have to be distributed right bandwidth is everything uh given that a lot of these efforts and with the upcoming budget we are not likely to get any consultant services from what I'm seeing we may but we're not expecting it so this work program assumes this is all done inhouse by staff all right so with that in mind I also wanted to highlight um we can probably go by order now um to slide 10 maybe uh even though things came off if you go one more there we go um there are some ongoing projects and again the reason we're highlighting this I'll use Stratford as an example from a public perspective that that project is done from our perspective there's still some inspections that have to happen the ass builds have to be reviewed there's a lot of small lowh hanging fruit very specific details that we are required to uh approve and issue before a final certificate of occupancy can be uh set aside for that project. So, um from our perspective, it's not quite complete and it's still carrying over into this year's work program. And that would be true for any other project, especially the transportation and environmental ones which are ongoing. There is in some cases not really a deadline or an end

point. They're going to continue. Um so, knowing that, right, what are we bringing over from 2025 into this year? What we wanted to highlight next uh on the next slide are what was our thinking in developing the work program. So we have had several internal sessions. We brought in our partners from economic development from zoning um and really try to brainstorm uh you know how best to tackle this and in the next slide we start to give you a sense of what did that analysis and practice uh include. there were some kind of fundamental considerations that were elevated in terms of whatever happens, whatever we're working on, these things have to be included or incorporated in there. I'm not going to read each one, but it kind of gives you a sense of our logic and how we got to the final slides in the presentation. Next slide talks about how our work has to still correlate and relate to the council's priorities. For the time being, we are assuming that many of those priorities are going to continue to have similar themes, even though we are due for an update that will kind of tackle 2026 and 2027. Again, another 2-year cycle now that we completed 2024 and 2025. So, for the most part, what we're trying to do is compare the potential work program items to some of these key categories of environmental planning, transportation, economic development, and housing. Uh so again a lot of what we feel like we should be working on should have a direct relationship to those priorities uh as we understand we have to keep keep delivering on those uh as expressed by the council. So with that in mind those being the ingredients uh the next couple of slides kind of walk you through uh how we got to the proposal and the recommendation. So on the next slide, we're countercarrying uh the three major um strategies that inform some of this work. Uh I'll pause here and explain these without going

into the next few slides which detail exactly which one is. But the first one is really being strategic in that uh a lot of the projects that have been considered, reviewed, approved, and sometimes even built have happened in the absence of a lot of staff. Um, and I think a lot of folks were wearing different hats, making the best of uh, the budget situation we're in. Uh, and we got to a good place, but there were some lessons learned along the way, especially with major SE projects, which is require a lot of coordination. Before we get the next SE, we're in a perfect position to kind of look back at the last couple projects and evaluate, are there some lessons learned? Are there some procedures we can update? have we kind of have the development community, you know, highlighted some things to us that we can kind of uh take advantage of for the next project. So a lot of what you're going to see may look like it's happening behind the scenes, but really tries to target the development side of the equation and making sure that anything from the very beginning of you know uh projects being filed and the checklist they have to follow, the fees they have to pay all the way through the development cycle, site plan approval, inspection time, certificate of occupancy issuance. that whole life cycle of the project is going to be under pretty high scrutiny as we kind of verify um those lessons learned. Uh the second item on that list is uh involving uh kind of a strategic opportunity to not get bogged down with one or two major efforts uh and risk everything else just being held up. So, can we be, you know, nimble and use our resources effectively such that by the time we're through with 2026, we already have a couple of approved initiatives, a couple of wins as the bigger efforts continue on likely through 2027. Some of the things we're going to look at, and there's kind of a struggle to demonstrate them graphically, they're not going to cleanly begin in January and end. Uh, and you guys have all

experienced that. I have to tell you this. Um, but we are being mindful that expectations are set such that there's at least two or three items we're going to get into that do bleed into 2027. And then finally, uh, how do we respond to new priorities that this time last year perhaps were not on everybody's radar? Uh, the two biggest ones being Virginia Village, uh, and again some of the follow-up work for the Gordon Road Triangle. Uh, so both those would mean a couple different things. there'll still be in the scoping stage, but we can't fully utilize all of our bandwidth on everything else and not leave any room for those priorities. So, with that, Jack, you could probably skip to um slide 18, which is the uh recommendation itself. Uh so this is where again using the same format as last year uh same categories and color coding we've tried to populate uh and really synthesize what we've been hearing from this commission from the council from the community um and strategically figure out where do where do things belong uh in the broader picture of what we can accomplish in the calendar year. So for this one, and we can always come back to this, we'll have it up during the exercises, but this is our recommendation for how do we start a lot of these efforts uh and hopefully have some conclude either by this summer or by the end of the year. While if you go to the next slide, expecting some of them to continue into 2027. And this slide is kind of like our uh traditional board where we're just laying out things we know we can we need to do but we can't get to this year. Uh so we want to keep track of those and I suspect during the course of this conversation and some other ones we're going to keep adding to this list. So that's what we wanted to cover to set the stage. Um I think we have time for a few clarifying questions but if not we can jump into the

exercises. So I just want to stop there. All right. Any questions from the group?

Yeah. Uh just curious where where would something like the uh planning for the North Washington Street the $22 million uh grant that we got and I know that's for the CIP but I'm just wondering is that something that you work into your workload plans and if so where would that pop up? So, some of that uh falls into the transportation planning column where um both Carrie and Jenna are regularly involved with uh our colleagues in DPW. Um there's a lot of coordination whenever grants like that come in. Um and we try to figure out when is the best time to pencil that into the work program. Um right now, I think a lot of resources are going right into the budget and the CIP development. So, it's probably clear that until those things get resolved and come to their natural stopping point, late springish, um we might be able to address those things a little bit better. Um but we're also, you know, part of the effort here is to utilize our resources as best as we can. And it's not going to be uncommon for transportation staff to also get pulled into some of the other land use related projects because there's a lot of overlapping themes. uh and um that's going to have to also factor into can those same resources have the bandwidth to address that and at the same time something we don't have on the screen uh or staff here to answer what is the same equation from a bandwidth perspective on a DPW site

so kind of who's leading who's supporting and then how much time do we have I have a question I'll call it Jim's position but the vacant position the director of seepeds. Um I mean I understand I think you know why that decision was made to keep it vacant. I mean is it my understanding was it was actually completely been removed. Is it still sort of being held out there as a vacant position? So we the way we labeled it here was vacant and unfunded.

Right. So, um, the the debate I think we need to have, did that happen in perpetuity? That that was a 2025 decision to get us through again. And I think people may have opinions on that. Uh, from a staff's perspective, yeah, budgets have kind of an annual timeline. Well,

it's interesting to hear from the staff perspective. I get and I I I understand the budget constraints that probably led to that decision when you know when it's always easier to deal with a vacant position than something that's has a person in it but um so it was interesting to hear staff's perspective that you know you're finding that that you know the lack of coordination maybe that that not having someone in that role. I mean I was on the understanding that some of the deputy city managers or maybe at least one of the deputy city managers was trying to fill that a little bit. Is that happening or is that part of their responsibility or Maybe not officially, but some of it I think is not clearly defined. But we're also simply just responding to an incredibly busy year.

2025 alone with all the capital projects and everything else that uh I think key individuals in the city were either responsible for or were asked to solve. There's only so many hours in the week. Um, and I and I think the experiment that we're living through is that we're going to pretty quickly figure out if other people that have full-time jobs of their own, can they absorb the responsibilities that the director had or does that position actually need to have a full body in there 40 hours a week to do that work? Um, so I I think we're actively living to that.

It's just I mean it's interesting to hear your stats perspective. I mean it's still relatively fresh change. you know, the transition is hard, but I mean, I certainly, you know, obviously budgets aside, I think there was merit in having somebody, you know, who's involved in all the sort of building related stuff. Um, which is common in most a lot of jurisdictions. You do have someone that tries to bring those disparate kind of professions or disciplines together so that you do have like a shared mission and you sort of are on the same page. So, I hear you on that. It is hard. Um, and then some some of it just to give you a flavor is I'm not sure if there's actually any project that is able to avoid this, but as they get close to their finish line, you either have town homes that are getting ready to occupy their units before have expected move in dates. You know, they they've set up their lives to get in there. Um, or you have, you know, the commercial spaces that have grand openings in mind that they've made commitments to in every jurisdiction. We're not unique to this. There's going to be natural obstacles and challenges to get you there. The way to do that, somebody needs to be a liaison that can understand some of the zoning parameters, some of the DPW engineering issues, building safety,

some planning background, how did this issue even come about? Um, so that that takes a very special DNA. Uh, and also a resource piece. Uh I don't think it's a matter of time, but time is something we clearly don't have. I mean, if you look at some of the folks schedules, um you know, people are doing a lot more than 40 hours a week, right? Uh and there's just so many things going on in the city. Um you know, at some point something's going to have to get We'd like to point out that there's also projects beyond the city that you guys get involved with, right? Regional. Yeah.

And also even like True Hock is Fairfax is running it, but it's we care about that one. Yeah. Resources. Um I know you said clarifying questions, but I did have I don't know if it's a substantive question, but I was I was kind of surprised to see the environment. Any background on that or is that something we're going to get into later?

I can clarify it. Um, so one thing we've learned in the fall of last year is that there was a very technical update that is required of that chapter because it's currently missing a couple technical maps. Uh, some narrative that comes into jurisdiction by this year. So as a way to fulfill that because we're required to do so planning staff and DW staff are coordinating on you know which maps are they can we do them in house and somebody else for us then strategically and surgically how do we update that chapter just to meet that requirement we're not opening up the entire document really just to meet the chapter

the environment chapter which um was passed 2020 that That helps. Yeah.

Okay. All right.

All right. It was ready for work. Uh so what we wanted to do for the interactive portion of this um is actually kind of close to the time. Um break out into three groups. Um it's up to you how you want to separate. um myself, Gary, and Jack will join each other of the groups. Uh we can help take some notes, but it would be helpful and preferred if one of the commission members will be the spokesperson. And what we're going to do, as you can see in the handout, spend 10 minutes on one question, and another 10 minutes on another question, and then have five minutes to have somebody recap of what that group came up with. Uh and the purpose is really to obviously inform staff. We're really looking for your feedback here, but also kind of educate ourselves because some of these questions we may have very different perspectives on and highlighting that is actually very healthy particularly if we get to some of the scoping questions and the direction we want to take with the work program. So, uh there's that's my way of saying there's no wrong answer. Uh right, so no stress, we can enjoy this. And then finally, uh, at the end, uh, in response to some requests we received, we actually carved out some time for, um, but we're considering a housing ready audit. So using uh a couple principles from the strong towns organization, we're posing some critical questions about um potentially what could happen in the following subsequent work program where if we believe there are some specific zoning or policy issues that maybe are getting in the way of housing production, um could we start to take a closer look at those? Uh so this is kind of our way of synthesizing some of the principles but uh doing it in a productive way that actually relates back to our work program. So hopefully we're uh accomplishing both things with one exercise. Um any questions on that?

Um I don't have any questions but I think we also did I think in this meeting want to discuss the two council questions on that survey. Sorry. Okay. Can we make some time for that too? Sure.

At some point. And just from a process perspective, and I I'll defer to everybody else, but it seems like taking seven people and splitting them into three groups might be I I actually feel as though I kind of like to hear what everybody else is saying. And I I'm I mean two groups might be a better fit, but I I actually would prefer to have a broader discussion with the whole group. Now, that's but I'm going to defer everybody else. I think that the logic behind three groups was um it allows us to split into more than just two camps, but I think it gives everybody more air time. Um cuz I I I think there's so much time only so much time we can spend on this. It's already 7. Um I think if we go with two groups which again it's your call um will be probably less time for everybody to have a opportunity to share their two cents.

Threading a needle. Stick to that 10 minutes and then let's have more time at the end when we're presenting. I'm just going to see what everybody else thinks and comment on that. 10 minutes per exercise.

Uh so I I'll use the exercise one as an example. The under sub bullet a in three words please describe your outlook on the upcoming work program. So first three words that come to mind. We'll have 10 minutes for that. Next question is can you identify any gaps in the work program by surfacing emerging trends or neighborhood concerns that may require proactive planning this year? 10 minutes for that question and then we have a report out where we get to hear each other. So we can maybe expand the report out a little bit more air time for sharing of the ideas outside your group. That could be one way of three words really fast.

Um I don't know what preferences I'm I'm kind of with you actually that I sort of value hearing from a broader group but I don't want to bog us down. Um, I think I'm with the I'd rather split into smaller groups. You'd rather split sort of do what Phil is saying? Go faster in the smaller groups and bring it back then have a broader discussion so that we've got So then how how big should they everybody else feel that way? I'm good with the smaller groups. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. That's fine. Kind of ambig you know ambivalent but um small groups is fine. So is it like three people? It's 3 three two and two.

Uh oh. 3 three and two. Yeah, we are kind of an odd number, aren't we? Oh, yeah. Three, three, and two. That was bad at math. We're counting you in there. No, it's wander between there. We're not assigning any names. How about we compromise on two groups? Would that work? That might be better. Sure. Yeah. All right. So that's uh three and four. Split it down the table this way. Or who should I who should I join this lovely crew decide? I guess I don't have over here. Oh, well boss is going to join. It's about 50/50. You're out.

Straight down. Okay. All right. I think if everybody's going to talk, it's probably half there instead of across the table. I don't know. I thought we were I think it's going to be these three here. Okay. And then down the middle four. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That works. That's how I understand. That's the same. Same thing. I was saying you be the time keeper then. Yeah. Keep us honest. All right. All right. Ready? On three, two, go. See if I can go get Okay. We're going to do a 5m minute water break. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Duncan's getting Yeah. Take take your time, Phil. No. Like, go get it. I'll look on the We just ready to have at it. I've always thought it's ambitious for sure. I mean, it's, you know, it is amazing with a small staff how much we take on and how much we accomplish. I do wonder, you know, we're on video and audio initiatives and all these different fronts knowing small size of our staff and how you know and that said I mean

we demonstrated a record of being able to do a lot of this stuff but you do wonder like you can only spread yourself so thin we want to use the two a little bit more confident in doing currently on the job. We can certainly do that. So, a lot of it comes down to our second exercise because might be easier to do. As I've been observing since I got here, there was a certain level of uh anxiety and almost on the land use chapter. Big monster. Oh my god. When will we ever be able to handle it? Uh when should we start it? I think other things are starting to kind of surface instead of that. Let's just keep pushing it off.

Were there cups back there? The way we're asking these questions for exercise. What did you say? Sorry. Um basically I think it's the questions are geared to are we sure the scope needs to be this

not that. So first of all um so the group is three three of you with me and he's going to hang out but he's he's not going to participate. So we need one person to scribe and then report out um and then I can kind question that might take some time without consultants but that's not the case

and therefore it's somebody has taken a backseat to this I mean in my you know observation just being here for town the last years for the last eight on the commission so tag your yeah I've noticed that I mean some of it's around the importance of then from there um gone by that you know we have plan

you know things along lines of the vision set forth in the comprehensive plan so it's the long range which is the even though we are from the left with it because you can see those there if you look at the bottom you can see you know the blue I agree that a big lift because it's mandated best practices operating kind of things and the council work plan is the purple so you can you know it's nice the color you can kind of jump around by each of the work program columns and see what's being generated out of the out of the to the council work plan and then you have the community policy decision of like right how much do we want to emphasize um I mean is council directed you know made any

plan items uh in the Then you have some community generated requests that boiled up, you know, came up. Tener Hill is a good example of one. And so then you have collaboration. Those flags on there mean that it may be a DPW, Department of Public Works lead on a transportation, maybe improvements to a street and so forth, but we have some piece of it as a planning element maybe with some of the public outreach or the transportation pieces. And so so that's what the flags are. It shows that we're collaborating with another major department and we may or may not be the lead on those.

You've seen too many issues that are anyway. So that's kind of the the context that and you recognize and agree then you see this basically we're program aims to balance the available staff resources um constrain budget and then carefully consider the trade-offs of the council's previously defined priorities which they'll be resetting at the end of the month. start the discussion on that. So we see that impacting this you know in a positive way. We'll be making some interim changes to this as we go along this year. But this is a calendar year work program just so you know. So the the first question we have is in three words. was the conversation about

please describe your outlook on the upcoming work program and you know some it's kind of like you know do you see this as ambitious or another of having a right verb or adjective or so including any maybe we just go around the table and kind of what looking at this no by then having that brought up are kind of three words that best describe your outlook on this program it's coming saw what I mean we devolved into this very difficult ownerous process backwards. I think I said that a couple times on record and we can use those for the not included in the small area plans and maybe that's how you

okay ambitious you know for the neighborhoods for you know zones or areas that were not focused in you know like an economic development play what the sort of were focusing on the commercial corridors um you know for the most part you know that's maybe where it fits it's still it's still very important that's The way you make it more manageable is you don't have a lot of focuses on the ten. So just to get back to exercise one the clock started three words. I think you were closest to us uh in terms of reaction. Three words. It has a word. So from a from a discretionary standpoint it's not in that we've taken the grant. Help narrow it down. I think you seconded ambitious.

I would agree with that. Uh do you have the staff like there's a there's a staff to do? Yes. Yeah. We have one full-time environmental plan. My my deputy manager Andy used to be in that role and then we were the way that this has been prioritized. It's being paid for by on our budget. It's coming out of the city manager still. So it's actually not funded at CPADs at the moment. kind of a carryover from upstairs,

but there is some funding for it through the grants and then of course the community energy project is bigger than just one grant. It has some grand aspects of figuring out or some of the other green. So anyway, um so how about another word regulations or something like that? The second community vertically in this in this case your second word was community. the idea of being the staff members who are going to be the leads on these happen. Not that there isn't. Yeah, I guess that would be my question and just lack of knowledge on my part

is the word to describe work on environment if we all decided that Virginia village I'm making these up but like that was the most important I don't I don't know if can people work on that or is it like you can't work on that because that's not really where you're kind your outlook on where we're going with this program. I mean, we're saying it's ambitious. It's a lot, you know, he's he's he's noting potentially, and you don't have to stay with that, that there's, you know, some community request. Not a lot, but that is an additional thing to all the other work we normally do. So, that has some impact. Almost seems like that's what it's uh I don't want to say.

It did. Oh well actually actually was going on a relative basis that almost seems like it's giving I'm sorry more of an opportunity we can go responsible plan only because I'm looking at the both your points we've been including footnotes that saying and it needs a major file so it's intentionally aggressive maybe also but in recognition of that we don't have an Yeah, that's a good point. We are we are it is a little quieter than it was last year. All that were long range seven years for sure and that may continue for the next year too

given the overall economy and certain know the community administration tax rates. I mean a lot of the you know we all know the real estate market real estate market is heavily affected by both that uncertainty but also interest rates that have got redevelopment projects. So well I think developers they kind of assess you know what's what's the composition of your council right now what's the likelihood that's in terms of entitlement through this particular resource maybe they don't perceive as being finance yeah that makes perfect sense just to comment on that they get the financing

the mixed use projects kind of at a little window here where we're on a lull and so this is a good chance to work on other aspects the long range and to do some you know standard operating procedure process improvements. So his plan clearly tries to take advantage of that window knowing it could close at any point with a big and all sudden we're we're now devoting those are going gang busters. I think it's an ambitious thing. I think maybe with silo be good to prioritize you know within that and so you could whittle it down so you could focus a little more on a few of the top choices in there.

Okay. Yeah, I I thought that was my thought was doing the prioritization heavy but needs to be recommendation going forward. We're going to start the council council responsiveness to community request. So we're making we're using this format to this is the short list right next slide is sort of like start next slide is really what we already know has to wait until 2026

that's the final um plus things like land use chapter stand that's not going to the words we have so far we have five words not prioritized because we use them for ambitious use of a hyphen amounts of uh unaccomplishable, quiet, ambitious. There are other ways that anybody would describe the 2026 plan, the current plans. Well, I think it is it is prioritized. I mean, like in that like these are the things it's prioritized because in our opinion, we've made the case for how these relate to the 2024 priorities. I would say nobody's seeing the 2026 27 priorities, the whole tax.

I'm kind of monitoring when they show up in the council agenda. enrichment and some of us are invited to the countless retreat at the end of the month that may influence this and evolve further. We needed to kind of have a start and reality something has to come off. So it looks No, no, no. I also think I would be open to or be interested in prioritization against what's in here. Meaning like prioritizing zoning updates versus like are there do we want to swarm on something try and solve it within this calendar year do a lot a lot have it carry over the next year. Yeah, we're we're already in I would anticipate part of the

once the general assembly is finished with it session there would be things that I understand we want to do it all but right now um part of the the challenge in particular there are some natural funnels in the review process of these efforts uh and I think okay staggering them touched on some items and bees we'll get back to that in a moment so

the one actually because of the funnel that it's created That's as far as but like if we said we think the most complete streets have this up again like we picked complete streets like this absolutely has to be done this year land chapter updates could go until I mean another architect next year but like we should push that out to next year like we should prioritize within the horizontal and prioritize and more of it ends up in transportation planning and we don't have as much long may be the right answer

and and sometimes this is very helpful because it forces you to think about if I had to go to assess every single building that's been put up. So we have to be prepared cuz who knows when next week next month probably points like the delivery question and hard um sorry are there other words back to back to it's a very broad try doing work in a lot of different areas buildings around the expectation I know not all of these projects are created equal in terms of their level of effort or number of staff involved the car park in the garage. We're we're making progress in a lot of different areas. So, sort of emphasis on

because it's ongoing, right? I mean, it's just assessing built and it's goods and bad. Are we at our 10 minutes? We all agree we're think I don't think anybody believes. Are we at time? Yeah. New developments coming at some point. I would steer away from love. Can you identify any gaps in the work program by surfacing emerging trends or neighborhood concerns that may require no for a new 16story building? We've just redirected and you know we're able to do a little more online versus current, but we're still doing a lot on current. Well, parking specifically in my neighborhood, but also um so we're at uh any final thoughts. Yeah. You want to move on to exercise.

We need to rename a portable dwelling. Sorry, the fire alarm went off in our house at 4 in the morning. So, a little but the accessory um there's the different happened tonight. I was I was walked over here west flipping pizza to pick up a pizza and just stop on Broad Streets on Washington that are just like picking up people and that causes a lot of traffic and and there's a lot of the things I hear from people are pedestrian concerns of like

the cars are stopped so people are swerving and they're getting more aggressive to get around those cars. Okay. It is a risk when people are trying to that's one of the ones I've heard about that's not what is the planning solution to that though is it like an enforcement can we I don't know I mean we think the west Washington had those collaps on is there can it fall in a planning standpoint say that there's no off pickup and that it has to be accounted for in a park in an off street a lot there's a lot blocks pick up situation. Most of those places have parking lots. Yeah. But I don't know if that's any new development.

So, but to me it's just like an enforcement issue. Even if it's not on the work program and parking does show up there, but I'll mention why it's hard to categorize. There is already ongoing conversation because I know the council's aware's office aware I would imag

okay far right column the purple parking requirements that one there which we'll have more information in the Um that's addressing I think an earlier request that I think may have shown up in previous work programs, but that is the minimum parking requirement. That was more getting to not getting rid of them, but you know, making them a lot less restrictive. They are now considering waiverss and modifications for 20 30%. Right? Over and over again that we learned about in our planning commission school, right? Chatter, right? Right. We have some mods. You should change. What do you have? That's very true. Yeah. So, it's a conversation to have what level if any we would need for that.

Parking has always been tricky because like again, we kind of have this like split personality. We're urbanizing, but we're not quite urban. You know, a majority of people, you know, many people walk, but it's still a good people that drive. And so, you saw what happened like when, you know, like when certain things have opened and much opened a few years back and we had that parking crunch over. That's a good phrase. Say that again. land north side north side social yeah that was a great example of like where did a very significant waiver they basically had like well I think it's going to be a heavy lift and uh but the point is you know then they wound up having to come in afterwards and do the bandaids some luxury parking got a deal with the apartments

but it's stabilizes it out and same thing with langa yeah same you're right it does initially something's popular people Would you extend that to you know what we might have to I mean my expectation/wor process is going to those that have been asking us to study that desires that some people might have about something that just do not connect with market reality academically they believe that this is a simple matter of just reducing return I think it's going to identify I don't think you can do that effectively without taking the human element equation where character the folks that are surrounding these multif family buildings this tree. We're not going to just accept the lower ratio cuz they already know some feel already the impacts of that.

So I don't think you can touch that without touching the park when we know that the land use and when those two things have to come together you just extending your timeline. I think it might less predictable outcome what the thought process was in ordering is I I think the streetscape because we just updated that in the spring. Great for job security. This is like the implementation part of it where it gets correlated to the other things.

It's pretty trendy implementation because it's already been done as a policy piece and so we have to then take that and and integrate it into everything and so it takes some effort and some staff time. It's not a heavy lift but it it is a something necessary since we've adopted that policy. A lot of spillover of like on street parking you know on public streets. Yeah. I I've been a critic that's overboard actually you know in certain areas I always point to the area near me neon grove you know where like in advance of found one there was so much fear this is obviously shows how we evolve there was so much fear oh okay no I'm sorry that that is the actual comp plan chapter that part

cuz there's another one on there all this crazy parking space no that's that's compl all the way up Grove up West Street and I never see you know like first little enforcement of it but I never came so I was wrong out people didn't land that far away didn't happen reaction

my mistake my mistake the elephant in that room the last thing I'll mention on that is I think the commission landed on talking about doing the vision character chapter bundling right and then the land because we don't control that we didn't force anything there that approach that's fair I I was human nature is that a lot of renters are going to continue to take their chances the vision and the because they don't like the price But I think we have to it's not included in their rent.

And when as long as that keeps happening, we're going to have parking debates. There's only so much that we can impact. If we don't address it or address it effectively, there's al the perception that we're ignoring the problem. Huge national debate. So at least it has to be acknowledged. I'm interested to see when these town houses all come online how much spill over parking there is up in the neighborhoods because, you know, people the garages were so tight. Yeah, it's interesting. I've been thinking about bundling things sort of is like a planning best practice, right? Like recommending that new buildings do that to sort of expose that priority. But you're right that the way that they do it like maybe it's more you

and you get a discount if you don't know like maybe there is some sort of like psychology to it where advertising. Yes. I mean it'll be able multi-year. They are unbundled effort. I mean most of our comp plan updates take most of a year bundled and it's 10 to 12 months and the streetscape standards is part of the community character chapter that also has the vision would integrate the tree canopy that's that's in progress now. And so it would all get kind of wrapped into that and that was the chapter.

It's actually a whole chapter update then. And so that was kind of what was scheduled next cuz we've been doing these internally because we were able to with our staffing levels, but the land use one is probably four chapters in one. So that one's a heavy lift. So we've got to figure out the scoping on that and then do we need consulting help? Are we going to try and staff it? And what are we not going to do? And so it's yes that's why it's more in the second half because the effort just to figure out what we need to do and what the prerequisites are to go and do and so letting pick up drop off and we're teeing it up. That's a good point.

If you look at a lot of the development FR2 is not as big a deal but like FR1 and Washington there's so much stuff comes out from the building and you don't have as much walkway like thank you deck and fishco and like tails and um I mean I think it I think it I mean this is just generic. So yes that would be one of many things we're looking at you know as part of this I mean you've mentioned that consistently so it it falls in that bubble it's just we haven't defined it here. So, but yes,

the first question I think we talked about too aggressive would need to come off question or even if it was topics like that and I'm curious if there are any sort of closer dealing with projects is there something that not showing up there but should no 85% completion and I mean I think some of the pedestrian safety stuff and complete streets under Sarah a long time I will be making sometimes for good reason. Yep. Sometimes just because somebody is from the very top saying you know we can make anything you guys were advocating for this time last year that project

housing certainly but even simple things like I think we got that. Yeah, I saw the the one of the questions to get it license. The reason we move cottage housing in 27 birding first we got cottage housing should be done in a silo in advance of the land chapter. There might be some things from that kind of staggering cottage housing to second half and that still happens but

well we we we're trying to step up to fill that's a gap for us to be frank with you. because he was very good at that and he doesn't know and then say no we're going to have the big discussion now or is it that we'll be the council can get involved reasoning would have the fight steer clear of that not that fight maybe everybody no there'll be some fights that's a third rail I think right now I think that's very contentious for my selfish perspective if there are things that live in in the small area plan that fight already took place

and we're simply reconciling the land use what we believe is the current vision. So there may be some additional fights where if we make that happen the zoning ordinance because I think in many cases before natural there are plan as a way to basically stop or reject certain applications. It's very convenient and very smart, but that was never the

year later caught upifications when they filed the LC. That's where we get into everything. Let's go back a year 18 months. This works guidelines come up in your discussions. Yes. Yeah, that was so council in the code that was approved council included a note that said they would review dwelling ordinance one year after it passed. So that would be that'd be in April. Yeah. So that's something that's already prepared and like will happen the architecture or the streetscape.

Well, so that that'll be more of a report. So then what comes out of that discussion sort of determine you know council's discussion on it how they kind of want what they want to do with the data and the report that they're given an advocate for that you know if they don't want to if you know move or do anything with it then we'll have to see where the priorities are staffing and then schedule it. So I think that one's sort of a question mark right now is the next benchmark is scheduled but then what comes after that is what's so again in the gap we have between projects let's you know there are questions that touch on that negotiate for some of the

accessory dwellings and some of the other we're noticing challenges with so it's it's being tracked and it's going to be benchmarked and assessed and then from there we'll provide that information and where it goes from there some major key on After that if it becomes involved but smaller things like that building they kind of fall in the blue area one of those achieve baseline that detail moving forward on many other projects um but I think I think I'm hearing that do that more consistently it's own we specifically built it into that one

or if we can get to some type of an agreement or update I mean like streetscape we just approved a new policy for that there's nothing built in to revisit that somebody could ask and say okay let's take a look at that it's been through that and I worry as I look at other examples including that folks that wear that hat really well advocated almost in a silo bar so price restrictive and likely causes a lot of developments to be

how what are the procedures how do we do Whenever we get to that question, it has to be done in the context of housing affordability, transportation, park space, everything else costs. Good job. Some impact on state legislation too if if the general assembly passes legislation permits localities to really have more flexibility on their building codes than what they currently get that could generate. And speaking of that, that's govern 27 um tracking state legislation this session is going to be particularly important now with the new governor. I've already seen.

Yeah, I'm not sure I've heard so far any missing, but there was some timeline. commercial make it easier to allow them to build housing on their affordable housing a land mine because it's it's causing a lot of communities essentially and they have right to view it this way

the fact that it's a retail religious institution that wants to repurpose their land and kind of meet their broader vision through housing supportive housing um and the value placed on that and the importance it has in the states potentially opinion greater than any kind of public process to verify if it's actually it's like a blank check to as long as you're a church and you want to do housing could I make my house at a church spaghetti monster and just like put as many houses as I want

you approve some of that between seven corners on set from our border there's like the last three years scientist church's there's a church along that stretch that came in and got approval to do an expectation I don't know what's going to happen. Um but any sitting out there

a couple other things that came up I think last year was the um city sign ordinance. Yeah the BCA Oh yeah they've requested some changes. I think it's in they got a lot of sign variances sign code is pretty. So we parked that one for 2027. Long list of things that need to be done urgent services. It's going to start cranking up a long Yeah. I mean we the last one was the west small discussion on today and we'll be reporting out in the spring on some scoping so that's happening let's see if yeah maybe okay so let's just call that a gap that we don't I mean

it's true somewhere Virginia is up there on 27 the question is village there we have not made the leap to simply this area. Yeah, we had the uli before we have the conversation and I think at the local level and we're working on that now as a team that show up. Well, yeah. So, let's make sure it makes it on there cuz we're

depending on how frequent they are. We had a meeting talking about it today. Staff internally got started. We are we're scoping it now and reporting to the manager. You guys ready for report out? Yeah. And then you noticed like you also talked Yeah. close the role and then you talked about more on housing

as a gap more. They're talking about I won't tell you in DC New York City is it's just a resource discussion. All right. You guys want to go first?

We certainly want to get ahead of that perspective. Sure. In case I fall over, I'll have distinguished gentleman from Virginia because I can't sitting so low. I feel like I'm late post showed this green, you know, grand opening shirt. So, our three-word uh exercise yielded uh heavy and needs to be sometimes the the offerings are more than one word,

ambitious uh but we should try to tackle uh well balanced u and uh that pretty well sums it up. I think it's a good start. Uh the missing if do we want to do? Yeah. Do we want to go back and ping? Go back. Would that be easier from a note takingaking perspective? Which which was Let's go back. We'll go back. We'll go back. Okay. Well, that's what I got for the early part. I'm also feel the need to stand, but I don't also don't want to.

So, we'll just do the three words. So, we we had a lot of words, but they all sort of landed on the same themes. Uh very similar themes to m Mr. Dunin was just saying, but ambitious uh balanced across uh all the towers with a full backlog and ongoing meaning that this is work that is unlikely to be 2026 only work like this is work that's going to have to keep going. It's very am I think falls sort of under ambitious as well. There's a lot to do here. All right, question two. Okay, question two is what's missing, right? Mhm.

Okay, so bullet points were uh council's probably going to have to do something about a cannabis dispensary policy depending on what the general assembly does this spring. Uh the Gordon Road triangle is being worked on. Everybody knows, but didn't see it sort of splashed up here in a way that hooks it to, you know, a timetable for this year and certainly obviously carrying into many future years. Uh tackle the land use chapter in the comp plan in 26. Uh the thinking is that it's sort of pushed a little beyond that. we need to get to that sooner. And um housing generally uh Virginia Village is on there, but you know, really getting it's not just last year we've sort of spent getting ready to do it. We've been spending many years trying to get ready to do it. So, let's try to get really doing it this year and finishing up hopefully next year, not only Virginia Village, but also just housing policy generally. But again, whatever the legislature does with tax credits or LITC or whatever, that old package of affordable housing, um what Matt brought up about what we call the closer role, uh somebody on staff whose job it is to when a project reaches 85% or 90% completion, getting that last 10% done seems to be extremely challenging. And usually the big projects involve Jim Snyder, you know, having to go up and walk around with the inspectors and get a temporary CO and, you know, somebody whose job it is to get her done in the closing chapter so you can have your grand opening, have your ribbon cutting, get the business

operating and generating revenue and and go backs function of reviewing council's actions on uh major initiatives like like uh the cottages and anything else that we do that we accessory dwellings anything else that we're doing that we want to see a year later how it turned out and what do we learn from that and do we need to make changes we need to be more ambitious were we too ambitious that go back function needs to be sort of built into any significant thing that we do

okay I think is that is that fair enough I had I had just one addition to what Phil said. Um Kinsky had had said that um if we're working on the land use chapter, if we do it right, we're going to find gaps. We're going to find broken links. We're going to find the need to work on some zoning, work on some land use. So gaps are going to emerge from that exercise. That was very instructive. I'm sorry. Yeah, I missed that. Good point. I wrote it. I wrote it down. I forgot to talk. I wrote it down, too. We all had it. So, I mean, cannabis is much more important than that, but

I was immediately drawn by the shiny object. Yes. But anyway, thank you. The the gentleman from Virginia. Yes. That's the old guy from West Street. I'll use that again. Just the cannabis is going to be public comment. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It'll be hugely timeconuming entertaining public hearing. Doesn't that get once the state decides it then does false church have to add it? What I heard until they craft the law bipartisan thing does not include an opt out option that they're looking at. So we may have to

we may have to do something or we make it done for to us for us. I don't know. We don't have all the answers right now just for we'll go after the general session.

Um so for our group things that were coming up were parking requirements for new developments and parking in general and how that impacts um pedestrian safety um both at the new developments and then at existing developments especially on major thorough affairs. Um Mr. Stevens brought in a last update of the design guidelines, a hard copy of the last update of the design guidelines from 2001

um as a thing that might be an opportunity. Uh I think we've seen that a lot especially with the last three town home developments and T-zones looking very similar uh and not looking as modern as we might like them or as unique as we might like them. Um there were some also some discussions around reviewing the uh previous decision. So, le e either leveraging this the land use chapter update um or somehow corresponding conversations around updates that have previously happened in small area plans that never made it to zoning amendments or zoning changes so that um the current zoning reflects what um each each of the small area plans also um is int intending for them to be uh accounted for. Um, and then we had a follow-up conversation or we had a conversation about where multif family zoning would live on pre reszoning items to multif family uh for duplexes and things like that on single family housing. Uh, that that was a point of interest but seemed like it was better suited for a 2027 or 2028 timeline after we had the land use chapter updates and uh some of the broader conversations that would go on there. I think that's everything. You mean like uponing from single family

to multi family duplex trip black something like that? But the stopping at commercial uh deliverers stop. Yes. And um uh the first the first thing I brought up that we I forgot about. So the concept of um ride share delivery uh pickup blocking traffic on major thorough affairs and how that is both a pedestrian concern and a traffic concern. Um we have it could be an enforcement issue, could be a zoning issue, could be a something. It's a design issue. I mean be a design issue

design of future build. We we have that too thanks to Hart and being in our group. I will tell you the CAC had was addressing that for the last four or five years in the comments back from the CAC that was raised. Yeah, it was always very challenging to get developers to go that extra mile to accommodate you know ambulance drop offs and deliveries and you know if they don't their pretty pictures get goofed up when there's a truck in front of their building. really we shouldn't improve anything without the answer to the question is where the truck where's the Uber and lift and the truck and the ambulance go

like even if you've got things like the Stratford or new buildings like um not even just like a Founders Row or Broad Washington which have attempted to but forcing Broad um Founders Row to like make the pickup in the parking garage and that's where you that's where the address directs a separate conversation. Oh dear. That was their response is they would have spaces in the garage and there are spaces there are but there's no signage to and and the address says park here on West Street or park here on Broad Street. I had one question about one of your comments. So

um what did you say about the uh the multiuse uh the multif family zoning not being part of the land use chapter? So, as opposed to bringing up a specific conversation in 26 with the prompt being what what is missing from the work program, we had brought up the conversation around should multif family housing or upzoning from single family housing to multif family housing be on this list and the answer was no. Let's we should wait for the land use chapter to be up. I think that's the same point we were making which is that land use chapter is going to drive a lot of additional decision making and potential additional

and I think so like looking at the small area plans uh the thing that would be in this year is looking at the small area plans and seeing where changes have happened on the small area plans but not been reflected in the code so that the there's opportunities to um correct those things and make them aligned. Got it.

All right. So, moving on cuz we're at 7:50 almost. Uh, let's do exercise two starting with the first question. Um, I'll read the intro. One of the largest and most resource inensive items potentially on the work program is the update to the 2005 land use and economic development chapter. As staff continues to prepare for this effort, it would be helpful to verify perceptions about what this is and what it isn't. So the first question to help us with that is what are the musthaves this update cannot afford to ignore. So we'll start now for the next 10 minutes and then at 8:00 shift to the second question just to see where we're going. Um, so if we're going to pull from what we were just discussing, it feels like also has to start on that will be part of that thing or not start on that. But

I think a conversation around should be part of that, but it's got to be again has to be so careful. We have to be careful about how that's approached. I mean, you know, it's going to be so fraud with different opinions very strong both sides needs to be approached. Not even the slightest inkling that there's any preconceived end result. You know, the end result may be we don't want that. Maybe that Yeah. Maybe that, you know, we study that idea. The community evaluates it and and determines that that's not what they want. I mean, you're especially right at a time like now when certainly nobody's ready to have a fight, right? And you can learn. We see what happened in in Arlington and I mean, it would be a little different here, but not that much. I mean,

I don't think I think we'd see some of the same arguments on both sides. and you know our population is a little bit different you know I think you know there folks who are probably a little more cautious about opening that up you know um so I don't know I just think it's something that if we're going to include it in the land use plan I think it has to be a topic that's that's offered for study but you know it's not in any way portrayed as something that's being advocated at least not by the PC and maybe there are council members individually who want to be out there advocating for Do you think I don't know if that would be certainly staff shouldn't do that. Our role shouldn't be to do that necessarily. I suspect one of the initial work sessions when that scoping discussion happens.

Here's the list of things we think heard need to be addressed through this process. Right. But we need to know now before we go any further if that is on the list. If it's not and we don't think we want to even entertain it, let us know now cuz this is already a hefty list. This is going to overshadow everything else. chapter. I might also say like we're seeing it now with the South Lee Street thing that kind of fizzled out again like a disconnect now that I think might have been covered by small area plan. I think that's maybe I'm wrong but like again people seeing trying to reszone

but without the right comp plan guidance to sort of steer it where it should be shouldn't be. I mean you see like you know so I think obviously areas that already zone t that's a different story but for things that are that you know were sort of identified in earlier versions of the plan has potential to be reszoned but now yeah now you know primarily we kind of want to guide that use the comp plan use the language chapter to now maybe more surgically and with better recommendations about how that might look things it should need to provide you know I think it's just not there now so you see what happened in that maybe particular, you know, case where people saw potential, maybe I could get in on this thing, you know, um but without the comp plan guidance, you know, obviously like the knee-jerk reaction was this is not right,

you know, what they're trying the way they're trying to go about it. Um so again, it's just like if we have, you know, so I think that anything that was identified as potential to be reszoned adjacent to dealing with, you know, the the main corridors as Tu, I think we just need to be careful because it's going to become townous. So in order to provide form we want to take one question. You basically have Yeah. I think the last time we discussed this process, you talked about like there being a very hard edge.

And so to me, I like I'd love to have more of a like cohesive look at the way that these different zones are interacting and what it feels like when you're going from one to the next and what we want to have happening in those areas. I think there's an inter support future but the meaning of the key zones change schools it's you know now with that in light of that and in light of like what we've done with cottage housing like we need to have a bigger conversation I don't square miles and to me like you're right of the land that we have it feels

don't see that and just focusing on the business areas where we already have small area plans in a world where they know if we had the conversation is around sitting around being used the neighborhoods but also just kind of how the whole everything that we are doing has to be done those things should something that's already there usually a building and one of the things I I've seem to be missing I guess we have to figure out how to there needs to be a revisit to the transition land use as an example maybe but if you go back sounds We only gone as far as to look at the way Madera back transitions the convenience of a street creating an edge

that you build off of and everything looks a certain way to the other side of it. What about all the sites that No, go ahead. are generally anticipating a similar transition street. So you're coming up to a lot line

new development getting a sense of unique. I think the debate that we need to raise is would you rather be looking at a bulky parking structure likely or some house operations tied to a much bigger front that's kind of what Lee was saying is like the people that didn't like the project but I know what the alternative is right consolidation is that what you have I do see economic development as well but al and again the comp plan could help to decide okay we support townhouse development you form needs to be a certain way. they need to, you know, maybe we look at the density, you know, range and whether or not they can achieve the high end of the range if they can meet certain other criterion, you know, saying that they get it by right, you know, like they get the full density that you get guarantee because now you see what we we have now people will max out and go a third kind of a driver of how an awkward location which is what we've seen services

sense of place and uniqueness and park and lee I mean you know I forget which one I don't I like I dislike like more, but they're they both have that third stick that really isn't great. You know, we're getting units, but layout perspective, a design perspective, it's those comments in response to not great design and and they're only able to achieve that because

decoupling the two. So for reasoning though where we would have some say you know and whether or not they get to fully achieve that max density you know the comp plan can help to guide that lay out you know the criteria by which we should evaluate the driver of the other project the principles that should be incorporated into that. So whether it's you know there was concern on the southly also about how they were oriented they were going to be opposite from 180 degrees or 90 degrees opposite rather from you know the houses on the existing frontage of the the single family detached things like that I mean I don't have the you know but yeah I think that would be a key part of that because we're seeing that now you know I think the land use plan needs to look at you know where have there been the conflicts you know like where have there been the land use conflicts in the last 5 to 10 years that that the current plan doesn't properly doesn't adequately address and I think that's really what we need to drill down on. Um, you know, and and obviously the outreach is important. I mean, you know, I think we talk about the neighborhoods R1 A and B.

I mean, that's where the outreach to is important. People feel like they generally like their neighborhoods or they feel like, you know, there are things about it they don't like. I mean that's the difficult difficult thing about introducing up zoning is that you know a lot of suburban areas real estate values in town would argue that people you know are paying a lot you know the neighborhoods and so if you introduce a change potentially you know kind of that same discussion again how it's done is to be really carefully yeah there's definitely

you don't totally you know that and that's what gets people that's what gets people upset they don't picture the form in a way It's compatible with their single family detach. There are a lot of ways where it can be compatible properly. We don't you know really dive into the details and plan steer towards that chapter into like multiple chapters like planning multiuse by the way never materialize. I've not seen one site here. I would love to have the town do a study where if you live across the street or next to a townhouse project or multif family once it came online your property values went down and it never happened in the history of earth it just never happened. So that plus

the realities of economics. You guys asked a great question with the we had the top house project here last week. Um, if they haven't said that yet, they will soon. Kind of the comparison. We're going from $30,000 I think it was, right? One site. It's not even a big site. Um, so that argument maybe not not the right time, but at some point we're going to get to a point where only focus on the only way to run the city and pay for everything is either we accept more sites to do this or your single family homeowner assessment is going to go up by this much of the neighborhood. Which pain do you want to live with?

I'm not suggesting the sight of the neighborhood by you here. We had these old in the structure as part of zone replaced by looking at how all the different zones and how are we

easy to put in chargers there's a lot of benefits these things that uh don't don't be a mustave but uh being able to get a broader discussion of what development permits and then there's our commercial other musthaves in this update. Uh I'm wondering about and I may be misplaced here but this whole concept of balance between residential and commercial they have their own yeah we've had historically in the city this notion that we want as much commercial as we have sidewalks issues

but that's not where the market is and so a lot of times it results in you know not much gets uh done um does that make sense to my it's very difficult to get like an all resial building, but I'm not Yeah, I don't think that in certain places that if you put it if you keep it in a chapter, it's going to we're going to chapter only direct fully resial multif family buildings are appropriate. That's what I just kind of taking over the chapter. I see it as being part of it because we have in L of a 12th ger can we consider a zoned areas that are business that are all you know for economic development. We have industrial areas, right? like it's going to all I think you have to have

I think we're at time a component of the chapter. I'm not saying that it is going to be the chapter. Uh which topics or past guidance do you consider no longer appropriate to include in this chapter? Okay. No this conversation I understand where you're question Yeah. What's uh what what are you thinking of the big picture? We kind of touched on it before like it I think. So the next one is uh B. Which topics or past guidance do you consider no longer appropriate to include in this chapter? However counterintuitive it may seem counterintuitive. I think we mentioned it earlier but theom

he's not going to walk the plank again. Maybe that details about what our neighbors are especially if it's going to create just contradictions like at the peripheral edges. Maybe it's better served to address mention that it's hard to predict the future know what's going to happen. It's just basically saying we're surrounded by two different jurisdictions. But I think it's important to kind of tie into what they're doing at our borders and what we're working on together. That was the biggest working. cuz I know Virginia Village is like between two monitor benefits. Yeah, I know. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. I would I would drop that.

But it's things like that. And I think what I also heard I think commercial we want to keep the chapter uh introduces and outlines economic development. It's even okay. So your city assets, new construction, the commercial rent gives you the average commercial rent and regional market trends. It is uh that was a recommendation I think that we got from the Virginia Tech largest businesses student report. I can see what you're saying.

Staff have anything. We need to add we need to add stuff about the moving just from the title to make sure that we're including other I don't know I just came or we had the three words listed thought there was some more stuff that it was kind of the early edit version is what I was saying I'd have to go back and pick up that report you have it right somebody sent it to me a while ago skimmed in our neighborhoods in place since the um that's when the codes

it's time throw the cards in the air say everything's appropriate right and diversity and things like that we don't want to throw the quite yeah it's interesting there's I mean there's a lot in this chapter like there's this whole section on personal income It's almost like largest businesses located. So yeah, there is a lot I think could be done incredible job. And then these are really all the weather from uh where you guys sit and you've been here. You know, you're more involved maybe than an average reserve utilities in the neighborhood.

You feel like you understand the city's economic development strategy? Well, um, would you know where to find I think, you know, we probably do maybe more than the average person. I think we we scrolling through and thinking it's starting to change a little bit now, but it's been maximizing, you know, development on our commercial corridors, right, to subsidize both our schools and as Tim said, offset the residential tax burden. Yeah, we have a whole for a while that we were kind of even against that density. I mean, that's going to change as a comp, you know, we were sort of kind of It's a link like maybe sort of earthquakes that happened here was

it was the court decision early that said we have a picture revenue from the foster department to pay and I think our housing's been that was a huge cash you're all three talking about housing issues and I think this is one where you know if you're looking at no longer appropate to include But you could do the Supreme Court of Virginia appropate to include something like I think the emphasis wasn't on affordable housing the earthquake over the years and maybe we flipped this and kind of say we need more emphasis on how that revenue stream it was where it's no longer appropriate to include we said let's go

it gets back to the gap but still you could flip this and say heyens I kind of heard that frombody right we had expenses and we had the revenue But just in general I mean Jim also I think you know helped maintain existing dense more dense development along broad and Washington right you know the trajectory was status quo see I'm telling you in terms of like when the question of economic development comes up if you really want to be if I just got here what would you point me towards finding is it written out anywhere or are we basically left to study any recent actions by the council.

It's a good question. Consider revising any kind of documents that they you know vision or mission they just want they just want to like is anybody looking at this chapter to get to the principles for creating already somewhere else. Yeah. I don't personally know where it was. We've already established if it doesn't if nobody's referencing this chapter McMansions, but they're not also referencing something else and it's vibes. Oh, we do have goal eight is neighborhoods from the impact development.

Where's the chicken and the egg here? Like do do we make the ch do we like really focus and put a lot of effort into building this chapter and this information to information that is now the guiding principles. Those are the goals that it was just or we can make this chapter and spend all this effort put all this time and everything to return to question about must not and makes it sound like people are not serious require ask like specifically about the chapter. Everything is changing every day. Folks are reading every every night before bed. So if it's easier to talk about a lot of people got laid off and like there's a lot of change and folks have more thoughts maybe for years in the chapter more what you'd like to see in the chapter than what you That's a great point because

and what you want to take out the reality of those forces the way that economic development strategy has to react to them up higher pretty much should take that decision and the home of that strategy away from a static document that we may not revisit again for however many years not decades. Right. So that's part of the answer. The other answer is how quickly are we evolving and adapting.

I want to sound like a broken record, but this is where the department director steps. Part of a lot of what Jim wants to do is economic development. Set the strategy in 2026. This is the challenges we're facing and that's the role of what character means to them. Go out take the static document take the vibes like a department director. somebody else can go door to door and say that's the end of the world and then we have an election and somebody chooses one path of the other and we but I think we're at least hearing the same thing like this is probably not the deal whichever should be something else something we can update more regularly in a way I guess I forgot that's in the way economic development so isn't always the case right it's kind of interesting that we come up I mean obviously we can

intrinsically linked rather but it it it uh that's what you said there's a very long vision statement on chap page what we've accomplished in false starts with the city will continue to be a well balanced community of res. So they really did the world shaking, but it's good progress.

Triplexes, duplexes, and residential neighborhoods. Yeah, I mean, I'd love to have a discussion on these goals, but mostly litigation. There was strategies and actions. Are these still the goals that we would prioritize in our land use? Right. What are we trying to accomplish? Are we purely just trying to lower the residential, you know, tax rate? Um, or are we trying to encourage, you know, certain types of businesses here, certain types of e economic activity? I mean, I think, yeah, the market obviously has been, you know, squeezing certain kinds of retail, other kinds of retail, restaurants and experiences are doing well, but very little else. We're kind of like a city of grocery stores and restaurants. I mean, which is true in the Northern Virginia retail generally,

you know, like what do you feel like we're missing? Great question. And the things we probably well the things we are missing would probably be difficult to locate here substantive way by what do you market for shirt and false church right clothes shoes best intention you got running shoes I guess we have that I think that the missing link is and we don't have any guidance that I think even starts to like nudge people in that direction which is something equivalent to like a retail plan where if you look at the linear nature of broad and even Washington to a degree because it has its own issues Yeah, right now in the absence of that guidance, we're saying commercial use everywhere, but mainly restaurants, grocerers,

take money from we have that revenue generating what leave it up to the marketplace and tell us what you want to build except that I think there's pieces in the ordinance that for whatever reason that currently prohibits some uses, daycare operators, veterary offices, beyond the permission, I think there's also a lack of strategy where to your point, what are we missing as a community and kind of going back to the clustering of retail and then also do we really have a destination you know and some of the things that people highlight as destinations not destinations 700,000 I think there's some historic sites destination doesn't count and I think clustering key

complimentary uses that help the restaurants I mean any any type of performing art space an escape room uh something you can do on the weekend build around scramble right like uh what we building around like these parents next to where these kids are playing like discussions they need it's like a complete view but that we have to get past the obstacles as necessary and helpful since uses are they don't generate the same thing as a restaurant right create a great place that people want to spend time right also we should build a bean I mean like some artistic item that is a touchstone of some sort. People want to come take pictures.

The bean in and of itself like it's it's amazing. People just travel just to get a selfart. I mean it's in Grant Park so it's in like a place where people are going anyway sort of like Jim Snider. It was always golf carts that concept. I'd love for us to think about that as especially as we if if and when we ever get around to Mason Square or we figure. No, I have no idea. All right. Think we're ready for reporting. Bob did a nice job. Need some help. I took some notes, but I didn't really get anything on that last. We'll let you uh start this time.

All right. We will we will start. Um uh so uh we talked about the um what are the musthaves uh that we can't afford to ignore. Um we started off initially talking about upzoning and then backtracked a little bit on whether that needs to be in this particular conversation considering what a touchstone that particular conversation is going to be. And I believe our thought process and these are my halfhazard notes. Please correct me if I'm uh not reporting this accurately. Um was around getting some guidance on whether that's even a conversation we want to have before putting that in putting the work into the land putting that into the work that's going into the land use chapter update.

Is upzoning a conversation we even want to have? We as false church want to have. Right.

Right. Um I mean some of the conversation we had had was that it is both a lot of people think it's very important. A lot of people would like to very much not have it. And if we're going to go through um it's not the same community as Arlington, but if we're going to go through that whole situation, we've probably got to really want it from a leadership conversation all the way down before we start to touch it. Um I believe we the phrase was used the third rail of uh housing conversations. Um so that's where we started and then we came back to the thought of maybe that's not really the area unless all of Paul's church or council on down is committed to pushing through on that particular conversation. Um there's also um a conversation around inclusion of our commercial versus residential um zoning approach. Um where much of the focus is on uh the res the commercial aspect of things which only really accounts for about 30% of the area within uh Paul's church. Um and then that leaves out the 70% of the area that is residential. and what are our best uses for that and leaving that out uh felt like a mistake or a missed opportunity uh in those in this around in this conversation. Um we additionally wanted to talk about the broader discussion of what development permits uh development permits. Sorry those two words don't go together. Uh what development would allow us to take advantage of the benefits of um rebuilding housing and like replacing older stock housing with newer housing in terms of the advantages of electrification, charger availability, solar availability,

uh reduced cost, reduced um uh environmental damage by having newer, more efficient housing. um even though that is a thing that has been generally um looked down upon over the last couple years. Um and then uh looking at the difference between um or the previous balance of residential and commercial where we've looked at residential housing that is inclusive of commercial aspects and are there opportunities to have residential only sol multif family apartment or bigger than town home style multif family housing. Uh the concept of an all residential building that had no commercial on it. um and is that from a financial standpoint, from a tax base standpoint, an opportunity for us? And then we got to the topics of the do we want to leave out and we got into a sort of a tangent conversation. Uh there was nothing anybody wanted to leave out. Um it's all important was basically I think where we landed unless

I think there were some things we wanted to leave out or put I didn't take any I didn't take notes on that one very effectively. Maybe do you guys want to report out on your musthaves first and then we can go on to the Yeah. Uh and

well, we actually uh Yeah, sure. Uh the they're very hard uh to separate out these two questions. So, we actually I think maybe them together. Um and quite frankly we were not as familiar enough with the land use chapter to say what should be left out. So uh but we did have it's amazing we had very similar conversations as you had uh terms of uh you were talking about the uh commercial versus the residential. We had a a very similar conversation with regard to and and my perspective was that uh if you focus too much on the economic de development piece lens of this chapter, you're going to focus on the commercial corridors. You're going to focus on things that are going to make money for the city. And as you point out, there is 70% of the land in this city is R1A and R1B type of zoning, not necessarily part of the commercial corridor. So I think we didn't necessarily want to break this into two separate chapters, but we there was a recognition that you don't want to view the land use chapter strictly through the lens of economic development. And actually as we were thumbming through the chapter, the existing chapter does focus on the commercial corers and economic development and it does not focus on our neighborhoods as much. So I think we came to a very similar uh conclusion.

Um, we also uh talked about in terms of the neighborhoods that should we in fact address some of these big issues that have gotten Arlington County sued. Uh, and do we want to go down that path or not? The missing middle path. Uh, and I think the general consensus was probably do want to go down that path. Uh just to see where it leads. Um the consensus here. You mean the consensus here? I think that was a I don't think it was back and forth. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't think I don't think Yeah. It was a conversation. I don't think it was a It was a It was a directive kind of thing.

Yeah. Um and then uh from my perspective and I think there was consensus on this that this we really need to do this on a deliberate way by looking at this from a have a serious conversation before we put pen to paper on the chapter about what are the left and right limits of this chapter and do we want to include I'm sorry, do we want to include some of the more challenging conversations? Uh, and maybe we don't, but we probably need to have a study regarding what could go into that chapter and what we should leave out. you know, how did it

Yeah, I think to to summarize, do we want to have a conversation about upzoning? Yes, we would like to do it in a way that acknowledges that neighborhoods, especially the more suburban neighborhoods, Broadmont and the far reaches of the West End and elsewhere have uh a different notion about, you know, land use and zoning and, you know, acknowledge that in the chapter and try to make the chapter reflect the fact that there needs to be a conversation about this if we're going to reach the council's aspirations to have housing opportunities for all.

Can I ask an annoying question to that because we kind of covered that as well. If not for upzoning issue, right? The theme is that the land use chapter does not need to speak for the commercial areas because they're well defined in the small area plans and instead the land use chapter should focus more on the residential neighborhoods which don't quite have a vision better balanced right as we rebalance that and we look into the residential neighborhoods if not up for the upzoning content. Let's say the contor says don't touch it. Is there anything else that really the residential neighborhoods are asking for, could benefit from, or was that always the only issue that

did? No, there are other issues. I mean, the debate about uh sidewalks. I mean, going back to 1986, you know, Lou didn't want a sidewalk in front of his house on pop. And we fought about that then, and we we'd still fight about it now. If you try to roll sidewalks into the Broadmont, they'll be hell to pay land, you know, storm water runoff, uh, tree canopy,

you know, in some of the residential areas, purchasing of lots that we've done to, you know, deal with trouble spots. That's that ought to fall into land use in a more significant way. There probably ought to be more houses that we buy. There probably there are houses here that should never been built. we ought to have the resources to take them offline. So yeah, there's other things to talk about, but um I don't I don't think we're suggest we are suggesting that we not engage on the upounting question. In fact, maybe just the opposite. Instead of that question being discussed only in connection to a specific development like I don't like those town houses and boot you know you guys are trying to upzone the entire city like deconnect decouple that conversation and try to have a okay what kind of a whole community do we want? Do we want to provide any housing opportunities for people who can not afford anything over a million dollars anywhere that's zoned R1 A or B? Yes or no? Uh if the answer is no, we don't want to help those people, then we've got to do it on the major corridors in vertical buildings.

I don't know how the conversation would turn out, but there'd be a good turnout for us. That's for sure. But I think if you look at that third exercise, there's at least six recommendations on that third exercise that one of them is in fact upon, but there's also five other recommendations that could potentially be, you know, may not be right for the city, but we'll get into those in a few. uh high recommendation

also I wanted to Yes. And another thing of the residential area is like environmental the environmental advantages of renewing your housing stock even if you love it. You know it's like my house got to love it. Been around 75 years probably time for it to go. Um you know the way it's built environmental aspects of it could be much improved. Not to mention the most important issue uh for many people who say they want to live here till they die which is accessibility.

I mean a lot of people need to be living in places that are one level or have one level access and there very little opportunity for that now. You have to go to a high-rise building. So if the neighborhood discussion were more around that's what we saw in the discussion about accessory dwellings. a surprising number of people coming forward saying, "I'd love to have one of those in my backyard for my mother-in-law or my, you know, disabled grown child or whatever." The whole accessibility opportunity is something that you can get people behind that you might not have thought would have been on the same page. Okay. Do we want to go

wrap up the comments? Um, yeah. stuff we want to keep no longer go ahead.

Well, I think I mean I heard a lot of discussion. So, just to remind the group that we had a presentation from the Virginia Tech students, they came it was resurfaced for us in May of last year and they also flagged the kind of um strong emphasis on economic development feeling a little misplaced in this chapter. And so rightsizing that, not removing it all together because it is part of our land use, but sort of rightsizing the focus on economic development in this chapter, I think was one thing that maybe is not something that's not in it, but that we're putting less of an emphasis on. Uh and then the other thing that I heard was um you know rather than sort of having the the plans and the small area plans for each of these specific areas and then also sort of some competing ideas in the land use chapter. Let's just have the land use chapter kind of refer to those small area plans. Maybe there's some kind of broad guidance. I think I heard that general support for that idea. Rather than sort of ping-ponging updates back and forth between the two and then having differing recommendations for the same area within the city, let's let's refer to these more um specific plans. Um and then I think yeah, like just structurally it's it's quite a long document. There's a lot of sort of excess material. Um, I'd love to revisit the goals uh and strategies that were identified. Is there anything else that we wanted to dump?

There were some other conversations we had about the broader usefulness of this document and how it lives as the guiding either is this the guiding principle for what false church wants to do around land use or is it the council's directive? Are they the same thing? Are they different? And how do we keep them in in line? Um, and is the value of this document um or the value of this work informing the council's priorities? Is it reflecting the council's priorities? Or is it supposed to live separately? I described it with a more off-handed comment, but like is is it worth it to keep I'm boiling this down to a thing that's probably not a true statement, but like is it worth it to keep doing this document, putting this much effort into it if it is not the thing that is being referenced and leveraged to make a lot of these decisions? I think it I think it is and I think it should be I mean my own personal opinion and I I would say it's like the community's vision for our land use not the council is going to change every every two years right and so this should be the community's vision for how we will use the 2.2 two square miles that we have and we have a lot of other plans that we need to kind of incorporate and bring together into some sort of more cohesive vision, right? We have now accessory dwelling units. We have cottage housing. What other areas in the city do we want to have cottage housing? Have the small area plans. So, how do all of these different plans that we have interface? Like I see this document as kind of the home, like a home that is maybe referencing those things, but also kind of bringing them together in a way that they make sense together. Is that

how how do you all um in light of that square or try to eliminate to people what you do when the market wants to do something that is completely or significantly different from what the comp plan says. do we need or do other jurisdictions have a sort of wild card like hey we're going to leave a wild card down on that one because we've never really thought about that being a I don't know you know a aerial drone landing pad that's when the comp plan you know people usually remind you the comp plan is a guide and the comp plan

jurisdictions have like structures like okay we all can agree at the very outset this is not what we had in mind but we're still going to we want to pursue it there is a staff analysis for you know any anytime any comes in, right? Staff like assesses that project against the wholly incompatible with the comp. Yeah. And then it's a choice presumably that our council can make to do. There's usually ways I mean it depends. I mean people can be creative if there's overarching policies in other chapters. I'm thinking data centers out no data centers trying to look ahead money we can get. I think I don't know what it is. Find a way. You know

the trouble is the way it is. If the staff report says, "Well, this is not anything anybody ever thought about." Then that sort of kills it and there may be things that we don't want to kill. Yeah. Or it's a uh a nudge that maybe we need to update the comprehensive plan, right? Well, that's my question. Should the comprehens comprehensive plan include a call it what you will, you know, an emergency button that you push that sends you down on a different track of things that we had not thought might happen.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I don't know what it would be, but 30 years ago, would we have a notioned that, you know, Park Avenue was going to be lined with million2 million dollar town houses? Maybe we would have, maybe we would have thought that was fine. Or maybe we wouldn't have. I mean, when Court was built in the '60s, that was like, "Oh my god, it's the end of the world. Town houses. Those are the wrong kind of people. We don't want those people." And now, of course, it's, you know, embedded in the fabric of the city. I think the trick here is the level of detail. Right now, what we're for those that require ammunition to kill an idea or a proposal, there's plenty of ammunition in that plan because it's so specific.

Yes. And that creates in itself opportunities to show, well, you didn't meet that or this is way out of line with whatever we were thinking in 2005. So by the simple nature of elevating the level of detail to a more grant to more general estate, you eliminate some of those opportunities. But then it's the whole shift of if we have small area plans, if we have the zoning ordinance, what purposes this document serving? And maybe it's flying at an altitude that makes it very difficult to use as ammunition for future cases. And maybe future proof it at least for a decade or two, um, knowing that there's no document out there that solved it. It's It's not possible, but just minimizing it.

It's good to have a conversation, I think, wherever wherever it goes. All right. So, it is 8:30. Uh, if we do 30 minutes as envisioned for the next exercise that gets us to 9:00. Slightly behind schedule, but that's okay. Okay. We also want to talk those two city council questions. Correct. Yeah. Most important issues and why. Do you want to do that first or the exercise? I just don't want to forget about it. We can do the exercise now.

All right. So, for this one, we're going to actually go through all six, five minutes each, and then we're going to each group will report out on what they did, how they scored each category. So, one through five. And this is basically kind of just going through the six principles and generally figuring out how are we doing in terms of is this something that should be addressed because it's actually causing an issue in terms of housing uh objectives or perhaps we already tackled this. it's not as big of an issue. So, between one to five and then we can tally up and compare scores. Is each one one to five or is it can you only use each number once? Uh, each one is one to five.

And if we've already done the thing like we've done it backyard cottages check, then it's uh it would be a one cuz it's least significant cuz we've already done it, right? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Zero. I don't know. And do we want to just rate them as is or do we want to suggest our approach might be slightly different?

Um I don't think approaches or recommendations are embedded in these questions. It's simply getting at does this topic require a revisit or update because we think it's really significant or has the potential to significantly update and improve our ability to reach housing goals. So, if you have time, you can consider options, but uh 5 minutes per is not going to give us too much time. Try and get to 9:00 p.m. before we get to the survey questions. And by the way, just we did mention this. Does anybody want to do any further context background on Strong Towns?

I would like some. Yes. Well, I I don't I'm not going to hold myself out as having the final answer, but I've been following uh this group for about five years, I guess, maybe six. Uh, and the way they got started is because they were concerned that the postWorld War II nondense suburban sprawl was not producing enough tax revenue to finance or pay for the infrastructure that was needed to sustain that development. And so a lot of these things were kind of, you know, they were developed to help create more density. and that density was was related to producing enough tax revenue to support the infrastructure that was needed to to to build all that stuff. So that's just that's kind of like my interpretation when I when I get the literature today that comes out of strong towns and there's a lot of it. I always try to you know filter it with that thought in mind. It it applies to some extent to false church but by no means entirely.

It started with like cities that were ailing or you know a little economically depressed. Yeah. you know, and we're like looking, right? So, it it was not necessarily that's kind of how it was the generation of it. Hence the name like strong towns, how to make your town stronger, you know, kind of economically, right? It was about the infrastructure. They couldn't pay for their water and sewer systems and things that have been built out in the 50s and 60s that were now their life cycle was coming due and they couldn't pay for it anymore. Well, and there was this thought that there was kind of a Ponzi scheme because uh developers would come in and they would pay for the initial infrastructure. So, it just looked great. you know, the tax revenues were fantastic. You know, he's on the hook for

Yeah. But the 20, 30 years down the road, then all of a sudden, you know, the bill comes due and it's like, "Oops, we got a problem here." So, so that's just background, my my sense of why they came up with these things. All right, we ready? Five minutes. Why are we discussing hotels in reference to foster? I think I was from Minnesota. Well, I think I'm just remembering like how that started. Yeah, right. It was about like so I felt as though has a lot to do with the end use.

All right. So, one to five least to most significant allow duplex or triplex. Go through these questions. So, in order to meet our housing goals, I guess it depends on like which goals we're talking about in terms of housing production. is they're pretty good, right? Do we have the diversity of unit types that we're after? No, go ahead. But I do I do think one bedroom, studios, some two bedrooms, a lot of family maybe an element of that, but I think they're going after the question. So I think I viewed it as um some of the online introductions that we pulled into this was a lot of

traditional approaches rely on the big multif family buildings to make up and deliver the housing supply putting pressure on all the commercial areas and conveniently or politically ignoring the other parts of the jurisdiction that could be delivering the duplexes and triplexes. Maybe. So I think from a first row, the question becomes um could this tackling this issue the ability for the city to allow support duplexes and truck is that something that could significantly change the game in false church or not so much? I think it depends on that or so compared to other or do I put it as a

question of demand? Right. It would be well yeah now there is a consensus to do that you're giving people it's sort of just looking at you know compared to other housing forms so only in consideration to other like tools in the tool box to address the city's housing goals I mean obviously right achieve those goals do you think that would be that one you know as far as tool is a town, two town houses.

We kind of have a handful scattered around the city just because we quirk a lot or a little false circumstances. There's like a handful. Yeah, there's a couple I know just from driving by. Yeah, but um policy. I mean, I don't know. I just think as the accessory dwelling unit thing showed us, I don't know. I'm still a little skeptical of sort of opening the floodgates and seeing I mean, it was developed for taking it by right. So, like I, you know, I haven't fully drunk the Strong Towns Kool-Aid, you know, like I I get it.

Um, but I do think that, you know, I don't know. I I do, like I said, often get weary of like South. So, these are like recommended tools again. Yeah. live there now like I have a vested interest in and so it's really just you know seeing what it's like about each one see if it applies maybe it doesn't apply to false church in your view and that's that's fine too there could be an NA option

I think waiting I think is just a realistic way to allow more density or we lower some of the price by increasing the supply yeah so so each one individually you can score it completely against that I that you have to do it though in a deliberate way. So I think we're rating this least significant to most significant. He said that is prohibited and possible finance legal easy number one to me. I don't know what I'm agreeing to. I think that would be a huge change. I think something dramatic policy that getting it approved say zero on all of them

and we you know I mean everybody can have their opinion on it. Um especially like but I understand what you're saying. And then but I also understand what Mr. Kinsky is saying is there's some housing types that you know would be worthwhile to consider. And to what extent is what this is talking about really came and talked to us like you don't achieve that affordability until you get by right

like a sixlex that's when you actually see more affordable and so that was the reason that correct but the reality is I would rate that as a see what happen better than three just because the lawsuits and everything but I I expect that if They had just stopped by still fairly been a lot of grumbling. Would it would it have accomplished the goal? I guess well not all at once. There would have been you know left to accomplish but that would have got more realistic cuz right now they got stopped right and I just think like you know we are

like Arlington in some ways but in other ways we're not. I always joke that we're like we're sandwiched between Fairfax and Arlington and and sort of like politically, culturally, we're sort of like also kind of split a little bit to slightly, you know, some days we're a little more urban, some days we're a little more suburban. And I think the people that live here, at least in the R1A and R1B neighborhoods, you know, still have a mindset that's generally literally I'm having a lot of Arlington is like that too. A lot of North Arlington's like that of all like that, but I think you know, you know, there's there's there's a big baked in in here.

Yeah, exactly. And they have a population that's more heavily slam towards renters and more, you know, apartment dwellers and condo and townhouse dwellers and people that were, you know, maybe advocating to be able to options, you know, whereas here we have some of that and we've changed now where percentage of people is much higher than it ever it's ever been. It's approaching 5050. But um but still I think you know the difference well you see though at sort of at the sort of level of who sort of is involved city politics and who's involved it's still you know it's mostly R1 A and B residents which is interesting you know um so I don't know I just think that that number one is difficulty

you know so if we're rating it based on this scale to me I think it's you know it's very difficult to just to make it by right with the way it's worded here I just getting I think it's a two at best um in Fost Church in today's climate and you know

I know I mean I know me and I know all my neighbors and I just know none of them are everyone contradiction I think almost everyone you know it's pretty liberal and progressive but also affluent and you know generally you know like like certain big picture things but you bring it down to your block And it starts to get a little real and a little sticky and a little bit like that's just me though. I mean I like that interior but maybe not numbers. Everybody has their own number. Like I want more people to be able to buy houses and live places but you're telling me the house next to me is going to turn into a triplex.

I don't know about that. You know I I just I mean I familiar with that little we can point to to show what that might be. There are great I mean listen there are examples region and nationally that you can that are very well done you know and just you know but obviously that's why I'm saying if you make it by right there's no guarantee it will be well done you could have a developer coming any of those assumptions no I know I'm just going by what is the recommendation right is the buyer right so that's what so I I that's why I ran that may not so where are you like Austin Texas well I'm going to take the same thing I mean personally I'd be happy to see it happen but I know that if we tried to go out council went out with a proposal to do this. It would just

be tart and feather impossible to easy scale that we have. You feel like it's I think we have to take smaller steps should move towards that goal. We should address these issues. Yeah. No, I've throughout all issues many people would look at all these choices and say I don't want to do any of those things. I want have nothing to do with anything you're even talking about. Don't even put a piece of paper. It's a four or five from an effectiveness standpoint. But a So what about actually like how much how much value are we going to get on your scale? That's five because based on the amount of effort it's Yeah, I think that's in terms of like moving the needle on. Well, I wouldn't give it four because we compromised,

right? Like our neighbors are rebuilding the house, right? They decided to move and sell their house and they sell it for whatever the value of the land is whatever it is these days. But I mean but in terms of the million dollar to build a duplex then I mean we're not talking about the accessory units at this point really backyard. Yeah, backyard cottages are doing well. I assume that you're operating from today going back and making further improved on supply of different kinds of That's right. I mean nothing they might be able to but there's also the affordability

and it's the other question is it any new even if let's say it's a luxury town home that does create older town homes or older homes would have value like it doesn't have to be that these new homes are super affordable but if they're so unaffordable that it like people aren't moving out. So what you're saying is none of these are going to move the needle or they're increasing or what you're saying is this is not our context at all. I would say out of context concept of like leaving tonight. I do say that it's I would I two sounds right. You're also a two.

It's a practicality. Yeah. from the fully legal EDI. I would be a three, but I will go with 2.5. I can't guess fractions per making it up as we go. So, you know, so and then backyard cottages like fully legal easy. It was not easy, but now in the city. So, did a good job. Yeah, I thought so. conversation a lot easier to do or something like that, but it's right the drill. We got one in August. Um, when I suggested this

and it kind of along the lines of the spirit of is the juice to squeeze, not this when you get these delicate and politically challenging items. What ends up happening is all the negotiations that happened behind the scenes that led to an approval initially sound really appealing. But what you've really done is make them so difficult to attain that they begin to lose their marketability because which is a consequence of the grand compromise that was out of place. He almost had one in my neighborhood corner of Walnut and Lincoln. Joey did one actually walk.

I don't know. I mean it still might happen. He sold the property to, you know, person, but there's a lot of room in the back to do an ALU, ADU. Um, owners may do it at some point, but it hasn't put something. All right. So, how how do you want to rate this one? Feels like a one because we just did it and the additional work on it wouldn't drive any Well, I think it's done. It's done. Yes. So maybe it's more like I don't think we have to feel more like how effective we feel like it was the amount of work that we put into it when you when you start putting buy right on I don't disagree with this. Well, this is I mean this is getting back to where you were talking about the land use scoping ital across the whole

limit on the right, what's the limit on the left and so this discussion if if this is something you want to talk about in community, you've got to establish like like you say the the the limits on that and and if you even want to zero on that how do it is we basically did it. Yeah, for those of us who are I was going to say a four legal right, but it's also not been all that effective city housing to have a range.

All right, I'm going to make it a four. Um, legalized starter homes. How accommodating would you say current regulations are towards building new starter homes? So, I I was trying to find this strong case for what they mean by legaliz. It is about smaller lots. I think that's how minimum these localities have minimum house size requirements instead of excessive setbacks to allow it's part of our problem is the land values are so high we have starter homes they're the older original the prices are skewed like you know you think of the smaller like post world war ii homes that still exist

you know the two and three bedroom two bath homes that are still in the city but they the prices got so crazy land values are so high that some that those were getting torn down is dead on earth. No, no, maybe it's just anecdotal. I feel like in the last you're scoring this whole thing fewer being well maybe the whole thing of like existing housing stuff back I feel like it used to be like you know difficult immedately torn down you know now some of the things are being saved that they're like GFA square footage which makes the place a little bit

there's the smaller size house but I was wondering if part of this was what they allow down in Houston. Houston allows change your your code 3,000 ft accommodate your code and our minimum is fabricated. Yeah. So obviously that would be a heavy work even on small lots here that we build a very big expensive home lots are tiny and you're building one million. So I don't know it's all about square footage. If you can build a lot of square footage on the lot and that's what realtors will tell you like a big yard is great. It helps but it's all about square footage. with a lot of square footage of living space. It's going to make the price go way up. When I lived in Arlington, we lived near, we called it skinny house cuz it was on this very narrow lot and it was you're going to spend 700 12 ft wide.

Yeah. 12 ft wide for a lot. Yeah, they do allow some of those. You're not going to put a starter. Yeah. So, I think you just have to be That's where the market forces come in. You have to allow somebody lot size, but then you also I'm put that decision building three as something that and we saw we could have we could have a conversation about it without the room blowing up. Without Sharon threatening to start is

I guess you got to be relative like what's a starter house in this Virginia? I don't know market and so you look at the med home typically for first time home buyers however you sort of enision whether that's pre whether that's newly built bricky tricky like what we would need I would say we're not doing a great job at producing those detached house it's never going to happen it's a struggle because we allow on a every time I bring this up, it just it's a it's a mood killer. It's not just the

for certainly that's what they tried in Charlesville trying to solve something to a degree is never very solvable in a capital have a pretty good chance of being nobody goes into housing on this. It's all an investment and at the end of the day that's what people are you know they have to recoup their investment return on. What about anonymized question? Don't worry. We're going to put an ad in the paper trail. Don't bring out

without them on the table. I I can't do anything from scratch. So we bureaucracy and the regulation that goes along with it which adds to the cost financing to do it work. Yeah. It's actually very very difficult. Um but I think the land value problem is in Northern Virginia as long as like the demand to live in the region is still so high current administration who the heck knows what's going to happen people will want to leave. But you know the demand is so high. So to live close in you know false church we're so well located in the region that our the land here is so valuable. our school system.

It's hard to produce cheaper homes without right government subsidy and there's only there's very small limit of what we can do. It's hard. I would say we're it's very difficult. I don't it's not impossible, but it's very difficult to provide starter homes. We can provide affordable units, but you're talking about like producing like small single family homes that aren't town houses. I know. Or maybe they're town. It's 11,25 R1. They weren't affordable though, right? 7500 relative R1B 850. I mean, and duplex, I guess, goes down for 850 or did they sell? I think the one just went on the market for like 875,000 or something railroad. Oh, yeah. How many bedrooms are those? Three, I think.

Maybe two. Yeah, there was like one that I tore that had an upstairs bedroom. I think it depended on the I don't know. I would say two or three. Well, I think uh number three, you know, there's some lots still around. Wow. I mean, there's there's some lots I was hearing a two out of you. What what other people that if you reduced it, you could create an additional lot out of it based on the conversation. So, how many we we did a survey remember when when they had those

split lots and then we Yeah, we went discussed that, analyzed that, then we passed an ordinance and had all those multiple lots combined. All of these things I'm not discounting them allow they are good ideas to continue. I don't know how impractical they are with the cost of housing. Yeah. In this area you could argue that. Yeah. But at the same time I mean I I know some cases where you know people are short minimum leT or something. They could get a second lot, you know, and then sell off. Yeah. Get some money, you know, and somebody else could build a house next. I mean, there's a bunch of those around the city.

I don't know. I mean, could, you know, a little smaller lot size could actually do that. I think this is getting more in towns that have like system half acre acres only. We don't have I mean, you know, is what acre I mean, you know, R&B is like quarter acre. I don't know. infrastructure small you know I mean I don't know but I think we're moving minimum size I mean again it's a legislative or politically it be probably it's a it becomes very difficult

because then you're inducing all kinds of subdivisions for more you know gone but by removing the lot sizes now you're inducing a bunch of you know subdivisions with this you know new lots I don't know it's not so simple for us I don't because we're so built willingact what can we do? Most of our houses take up a lot of area remove minimum neighborhood eliminate minimum lot size requirements. No, that would mean like there's no minimum lot size. So like now the minimum lot size is right is whatever

I want to spin off 7500 square ft. So now you can do anything you want. You can carve out 3 4,000 foot lot you know. Um we have other regulations again we have other bulk regulations that might help to control what would happen you know would induce some people to subdivide like an R1A especially where you would see people subdivide people with older houses like you know they would tear down the old house and subdivide on the two lots very valuable you can make a lot of money taking what was once your one house on one lot now

two that happened a lot where you live Yeah. Yeah. Cuz it was already platted that way. So you saw values got high enough years. I know. Yeah. They weren't even built and they don't want to get out of the street either. They don't want them to be narrow, right? I go there every day. Pick up my wife. They could have been that way in the 50s, but they weren't at the one house too and was right. And then by the 90s

I put three for impactful and one for super valuable two houses. So yeah, I don't know. I just don't think again that's politically very feasible. I think I'm numbering is definitely not feasible. Maybe right now our parking mandates even the R1 Arlington's minimum smallest minimum lot size looks like it's 5,000. Yeah. According to Chachi that's significant at least 50% face a lot strong town so it's all or nothing it's like

yeah I think it would face a lot of opposition I think politically speaking it'd be very very difficult I wouldn't I mean this could be single family or the multif family the city council person knocking on doors explaining yeah we're really we're looking to do this multi family what is that going to mean because you know you know we think about this stuff all the time you know the average person as we know like our friends and neighbors who are involved other professions, they're not usually thinking about this kind, right? And then you tell them this could happen on their street and like, you know, it's going to get a lot of no puzzled looks, a lot of like what's that going to mean, right? Why would we want to do that on my street and all this debating? I'm

scoring it low. I'm scoring it like two one or two near to impossible stakes. Again, I I don't know where we're going to get a fives on any of these. Oh, we're getting there. And the challenge is that it approvals. Number six, we might be got to get the higher score. State legislators doing it for us. Truthfully, the impact. All right. Five. Repeal parking mandates compared to other regulations. How significantly minimum challenge the city? Well, we only require one parking spot, don't we? For for our single family detached. Yeah. But and then I guess are we wrapping in multif family in this too? Yeah, we are. That's true. That's true.

Yeah, I feel like we've been pretty flexible on that. That's more doable. Like we've have there's been an appetite to attack that you know parking. I think we've been out front of that more so than on other things. But how much is it impacting like I mean I think it has an impact absolutely on this can is feasible to be built right people have to dig. Let me ask you what instead of one house one They're not going to do that, right? The market is still going to provide housing for the for the change instead of repeal and the amenities and commercial spaces. People need to be able

it's very doable. You know, we're already doing it some ways too much, you know. We are we are much more wedded to our maybe in his neighborhood. I don't know. It's not on Ellison Street. Sounds like things are a little dicey over there with the pizza deliveries. I don't know. Yeah, I I like there's no push back on that until there's bakery people. You going to abstain from that vote? They keep parking in front of my house and their croissants blocking your house. Yes. Please offer you a croissant when they I know back of donuts. Um no, I think like you come back to the north side social conversation all the

and it was a fight in Russ. I don't know that it lasted that long and they were right across the street from the like sea of city to our parking and we had a parking on the street. So some of the surrounding commercials were 25 years. Yeah, it was I found that again like it's not the end of the world but it's stabilized like the market but it doesn't I don't know that I'm a four because I don't think it comes with all of the I don't think it will be as easy for things. Let's say there's a like let's say econ was actually a restaurant and we decided or a mixed use type of thing.

We said minimum we're going to reduce all the minimum parking needs and you got people parking approval. Oh, this is the permit. I forget what they think about this. Um, I don't know. We got people partying on spring the whole time and then you got a bunch of people angry process or they're thinking of public because of the I think it will be a sideways on that continual discussion after the thing is done that will take up people's time but the question doesn't really say compared to other regulations how significantly permit approval processes and time has talking about Oh, public street people get local.

Yeah. And we can sign it observing that they are a challenge to the city. Parking like there are ways that you can parking. There's something going on process makes it harder to do. I'm not a fan. I don't know if it's the only residents who park. There's more parking here and there are it is more crowded and there are it is safe to walk. We had to jump through to before we did the cottage. That is the argument, right? And it's a fair argument. dwelling even if it's not enormous. It was practically impossible or let's say you so I was going to vote for like five on this but but this is so compromis I could say I've got permits approve your renovation for

really all right that's all right I'm I'm writing down I wrote I wrote for oh you've got it okay process all right streamline approvals I feel like this is not necessarily our area as much as the age of our house, you know, basement height wasn't up to standard and basically this guy had to duck a little and exactly the state took it out of our hands. We just streamlined it big time. We did like as far as like periph it's funny because I think publicity assigned to that simple step. What is much bigger process?

I don't think so. And how if you you impose a question streamlining to everything else that has to happen before and after the site plans approved these questions were meant to be vague to bring out these different perspectives and depending on you know what area of focus question in the city I was I don't know they're not that we're small so like I feel like there can only be bureaucratic to a point I mean I feel like developers you know like they have a direct line to like all the people that are actually making the decisions here you know it's like in a big bureaucracy like where I work where things can get bogged down, you know, layers and disagreeing departments here like everyone think that they're going to

and our process seems to be I don't know maybe you know I mean a developer I don't hear a lot of developers complaining about our process I mean you know I feel like as you said we're pretty like solutionsoriented like things come up like we've gotten like all these developments online West falls I mean you know I feel like we're generally solutionsoriented when things come up like even this thing with the fish taco I mean I have my opinions on it, but the bottom line is it came up and I seem like you guys kind of worked it out in a relatively short period of time and now they're open. So, I don't know. That's pretty streamlined to me. I I will use this opportunity to highlight the airport that's traffic. Okay. So, I don't think we're in agreement. Look at our processes. Yeah. I'm just going to give you my thing. Was that

I mean, how much of an impact do you think? You don't put your name on it, but it turns. Well, that's fine, too. Inspection. I agree with Bob on everything. There you go. It's It's really just meant to be an exercise. It's not It's not going anywhere. It's just internal informing to us. Does this include one or two? I said it was a three, but the middle of the road. I feel like that right now if a business comes in, they want a new business wants to take over.

They have a different use. They've got to, you know, go out to streamlining the the site plan process now. 40 days where we're denying everything. such request didn't go anywhere because the mere fact that they tried to build relative building code is very specific about both sides of the coin. It's like they live in a different world how they classify you.

I see the worst from where I'm so I'm always on the lookout for like how am I going to find a loophole in here so I can do my other and so that's kind of the lens that I'm looking there's only so much interpretation there. If you want to have a kitchen safety stuff

and a lot of times we're dealing with legacy buildings that already maintain the corners. judging want to make well I guess we're not well

we are strong working our way there organizations interesting but they have their advantage they're an advocacy organization organizations are different and I think that's what that's what maybe have a buzz small actually but they get a lot outside they have about 6,500 members. Yeah. I mean that has a group there but they as far as sort of runs it like it's a small group of people. Is that big? 6500 it's been growing the last couple years. That's different than eliminating attached to it kind of like they're kind of like trendy you know they came

but then you know there have been other groups like them before you know. So there's two council sessions. Well, the appeals report out and then we'll do the same. You have the number. No, we didn't come to agreement on a lot of Yeah, we were like averaged ours. We could have been much earlier than we have numbers, but we didn't average our position. Can't believe that's their big issue. Oh, no. We can move forward. Yeah, it's all good. All right. Well, do you guys want to just generally report out then or uh what are we reporting? It's it's it's desirable and difficult I think is the takeaway on our end for all of them. Yeah. What are your numbers?

Read the numbers. They didn't kind of scale low. They're like one to three on average. Let's call it that. There's some variation among feasibility and

so we we broke it up into two categories. degree of difficulty of doing these things, these six things and the impact. So something can be extremely difficult like allowing duplexes or triplexes by right if it somehow happened it would be uh quite impactful. So on the significant scale it would be a three. Not like the solution to everything but and the only one that that did not have a really high degree of difficulty was permitting backyard cottages cuz to some degree we've already done that.

And the impact of that we raised a three because despite the fact that we worked on it, we haven't had a lot of takers for it. But still we gave we gave in terms of significance that a three. Legalizing starter homes. I gave that a moderate level of difficulty and a high degree of impact. So three and four. Changing removing minimum lot sizes very challenging moderately impactful. Repeal parking mandates extremely difficult. extremely and pretty highly impactful and streamlining approvals like we're not really sure what that means but moderately difficult to do moderately impactful if we do it but not all that impactful anyway you know it's take take that as you So the only thing I would add is um the discussion we were having here is these recommendations were framed in terms of absolutes. So repeal uh parking mandates repealing mark parking mandates puts it in the category of extremely difficult. Modifying parking mandates,

reducing reducing parking mandates makes it, you know, duplexes and triplexes by right by right makes it very difficult. We had the same observation that these are absolutes. These are absolutes and there but there could be some variability in those recommendations that would make them more acceptable to the community. Uh so I will go through these quickly. Um allowing duplex or triplex by right. We score had a score of 2.5. We're going to just invent scoring uh rubrics

broke down 10 very precise here compromised minds. But basically it was the like the the concept of uh we think it would have a high impact but the cost or the effort cost involved in getting to uh people to buy in and getting these changes implemented would be very high. So the the may not be worth the squeeze on that one. Well and the impact might be sort of spread out over a long period of time. We have a lot of existing structures in the city that people have to choose to kind of like somebody redeveloping those houses would need to say, "Yeah, we we're going to put a duplex or a triplex in." Right. I'm not sure, right? The cost of housing and the cost of land here may not be it's sort of a market.

Yeah. Market would have to have Yeah. Right. Like market would have to have more impact. Um permitting backyard cottages, we scored a four because we just did this. Um, so it doesn't but doing additional work here probably doesn't have as huge an impact because of the changes that we might might but didn't see that um legalizing starter homes again we had a 2.5 uh similar concept with the cost of land and land prices in the area um not maybe not making like the value not making sense for the amount of or the effort not making sense for the value that we get out of that work. Um removing minimum lot sizes uh was scored a two. Um again uh to what Bob was saying like removing makes this a much harder uh cell. Uh repealing parking mandates we score to four. Um it is a philosophical basically philosophical differences about the purposes of the public streets. Public streets are for parking for the public uh and not necessarily for everybody residents of the neighborhood. So you guys gave that a

a look I almost abstained from this this conversation. So the four is is a measure of significance significant of the impact that it would have impact but what what it would make it on the on the difficulty of doing it uh I mean you could just say it's not I mean like I think we already kind of do it I mean anytime we do it in all the sort of we constantly reducing the special exception plans or we were when we had that ability you're repealing it repealing it here

our conversations in the context of just, you know, letting a developer build 60 apartments on Park Avenue instead of six town homes because we're not going to impose any parking requirements. Everybody parks on park um and it's just mass chaos and or doesn't have a car but or doesn't have a car or right transforming the nature of the city because people would actually live here without cars. It would be much denser and got a car. A lot of people do. Yeah. I don't know about a lot. I think it was like 6%. I mean, a lot. That's a lot out of out of 15 18,000.

So, I think that that would be it would be highly impactful. I don't know if that's the right answer. Again, the scoring does not equal like uh recommendation or endorsement. It's not That's why we came up with two two scores. Yeah. As we went with fractions, you guys went with two scores. Everybody's got their own independent scoring difficult people. What about streamlining improved? So we turned to the expert on the matter and the answer was it would be a five if it incorporated the entire life cycle of the project. Uh if it's just site planning it's a one.

Ah interesting. So the entire life cycle of the project means we would revise the permitting process from when you pull the first permit to start a project until you the last guy walks out from the permits office with the last CO the last CO well the question that we had was is there any development in false church that has not happened that has not happened because of the permitting process right I mean I think certain communities developers have walked away because it's been too difficult to build high speed rail or something like that.

But is is that the case in false church? Have we lost Gary would be the No, we haven't they're there. So I mean people will rattle their chains at points, you know, sitting up flares and that'll get our attention. I guess the question would be has anybody decided not to build something in false church because of the peritting process that somebody else had? Like I don't know if it's going to stop and that's where nobody has the data on because yeah right

what we do have cuz we have data and confirmation um however informal that a lot of experiences are um unsatisfactory. Yeah. And when that happens enough, the word spreads rather quickly between construction companies, land use attorneys, brokers, you name it. And you can't control that once it's out there. Reputation, right? And then and therefore, it's almost unquantifiable the impact that it has of how many lost opportunities we had once that type of message spreads. Yeah.

Why would we want to have bad like if that's the reputation? Like why would why wouldn't we want to fix it? Do we know that's the reputation? Well, I mean, a lot of anecdotal that I've seen over the years is is they love coming to false church versus the bigger jurisdictions because it takes so much longer and so much they they don't get a face to face.

They they can't get access to staff. They can't kind of finish, you know, what they're doing. And so, they they really prefer Falls Church over the big localities. You know, I've heard that consistently. I mean, they may be hiccups and there may be times, but I know our permit people, they their view of, you know, their lens is, what can I do to help you get done? I mean, when the inspectors and so forth, they don't just fail you and say, "Go figure it out." They fail you and say, "You need to do one, two, three. Come back when you're ready. I'll help you." Well, how that's that's exactly how what happened to the jewelry people.

I mean, there's an example of, you know, people who might be out complaining about our process who never managed to get anything in front of us that was actionable. Yeah. Well, that I mean that was I think that was that's a totally different issue. I think that was they their own team wasn't even coordinated. They didn't know from when they're going out discipline to the next. I think you're completely right that when they're going out into the community, they're not saying, you know what, we really didn't have a very good engineer on our project. They're saying that so and permits was difficult about our storm water runoff, right? I mean, that's what they say. Sure. And that's not there's there's there's two sides to every coin. That's not true.

I mean, find me an entrepreneur who says about a government official, you know, you've got a point there. I think we need to take more time. I mean the very nature of people who go into business is often you know not keen on the obstacles that bureaucracies are required to you know to uphold. I think the staff was trying to help them through that. We we've been over backwards. We made it our goal was to help them and they were just so dysfunctional on their side. I mean, I had a call that

um two months into it from Fairfax County Board of Supervisor's office where the owner lived there and had contacted the supervisor. His number two is calling me and he's grilling me for an hour on the phone all these questions and I'm just like it was just, you know, no, they need to do this and it's very simple. It's one, two, three. And you know, he was writing it all down. He kept asking me all I said you just need to do this and they know you know here's the checklist and but no it's you you guys saw it firsthand they were just dysfunctional on their side. Yeah. And believe me we we made a lot of effort to move them along and it's still not approved because they haven't posted their bonds.

But in terms of residential uh permitting, you do hear anecdotal and you know not madeup stories about people who are trying to make additions on their house or whatever. who feel like, you know, the permits counter could be open longer hours or not closed on Thursdays or whatever their routine is. And uh, you know, it doesn't take too many stories like that being passed around with PTA meetings before permits gets a reputation that, you know, gee, they're difficult to work with and dealing with that is a challenge.

Yeah. So, I'm hearing uh both groups identified some complexities and challenges, some of these recommendations. I thought it was a good exercise. Good to talk through these. Thank you for bringing it to us, Bob. I hope I hope that was a good um conversation that you all had. Um we did have one more conversation I think that we need to have. The council requested that we um answer two questions. There's a survey, so I think we're responding as a group. Uh the first question was what are the most important priorities for the city of false church? And then the second question is why are these priorities important to our community? A

little broad need to write a novel, but um what's top of mind? I think affordable housing continues to be a priority. Anything else on anybody's list? I think updating the comp plan, the land use chapter because that's going to and the vision chapter because that's going to guide I think I know it's already on the work plan, but I think that's the most important thing from a planning perspective. I'd put implementing the bike plan on the list personally

just implementation in general, right? because as we're in this kind of quiet period as far as new applications go, seems like this is the opportunity to focus on implementing the plans that we do have. So whether it's the bicycle plan, the energy plans are the ones that kind of have an interest to me, but there's obviously plenty of others. As opposed to coming up with a whole lot of new stuff.

Yeah. Yeah, the only thing I would add that I don't think we've talked about is uh effort on maintaining existing businesses. We've sort of been going so fast down the track of building new and opening new businesses. We need to spend some effort. You know, there used to be a program where we recognized businesses that had been here for pick a number 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. But, you know, it was not a big thing. You know, they get a plaque or whatever, but it was a way for the city to say we appreciate not only businesses that come here, but businesses that stay here. And I sense that there's some anxiety in some of the existing businesses that they don't get to do. They don't get the attention that the new shiny objects are getting. And I don't know how that translates into policy except I would like somebody chamber or somebody to take the responsibility for a recognition program

to keep existing businesses in the spotlight. I would add on top of that, and I don't know if it's a city council priority type of thing, but a a way to create community type events that bring people towards businesses and bring people towards uh locations that are having like watch nights got the big news, but like there's lots of things we could be doing around um high school events, around um make a block party on Broad Street, like you pup crawls, things like that that could bring people out, give give people a reason to coales, meet neighbors, build community, and support local businesses. And it doesn't always have to be abroad, right? Like it can be there are lots of places.

Um like especially over near where the Dunkin Donuts is, there's a bunch of restaurants over there. There's a bunch of restaurants down Washington. There's a lot of opportunities to bring people together. Um but community building, especially now and supporting and bringing people towards businesses feels like an opportunity. Yeah. There other um sort of like infrastructure things that we think are uh just getting back to your first comment which I think is a good one. I would break up affordable housing and affordability of housing

as two separate categories. One being sort of government run programs on based on AMI and the other one is general controlling market forces to make things work. Lots of discussions about uh like sewer capacities. I know sanitary sewer like master plan is on that. Do we see that as a big priority as a in that?

I do because it it ties into what how we want to grow and all the development that we're looking to do including if we're talking about upsizing single family residential areas. I don't think we have the infrastructure to do that and I would not want to create policy when we don't know if we can actually achieve it. So long-term infrastructure planning.

Yeah. I mean that goes to um sanitary, it goes to storm, it goes to tree canopy, right? Like when you're starting to talk about all these other policies to build more in areas that aren't as dense, I think we need to really think about all that other infrastructure that's there serving a purpose. Yeah. having an effective response to the persistent question, you know, how is this project going to pay for itself in terms of storm water management, sewers,

you know, that's as recently as our discussion about the Park Avenue town houses. you know, the media coverage of that is uh you know, Duncan supports it and has no way of paying for all the costs that are associated with it, which is, you know, that's a criticism that's out there to any project. And it's it does require I mean, the manager's response is usually, well, we've built an escalator into our utilities taxes to provide funds to boost our infrastructure. you know, that's good enough for me, but it's not good enough for the public or certain elements of the public. Certain elements of the public.

Well, the public also needs to understand, I mean, actually in Virginia, you know, you're we're not we're prohibited from having like an adequate public facilities ordinance. In some parts of the country, you know, developers have to show that they, you know, there's adequate infrastructure or they have to pay for it. You know, here it's not how it works. you know, we get contributions in some cases, but um yeah, I mean, it's up to the the local municipalities to to plan for that and, you know, use the revenue to help offset the extra cost, you know. So, but it's yeah, you're actually Yeah, we can't for example, you can't deny outright deny an application because um you know, there's it appears there there's not currently adequate you know,

sewer water capacity. That's a very important thing for the public to Yeah. to know, right? I mean, it's one thing if you're not in a sewer service area. That's not the case here. The whole city's in a sewer service area. We don't have any septic, but um and I presume the Dylan rule would prevent those from enacting.

I believe right. It's actually prohibited. Um planners, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm I'm almost certain that there's no you cannot have like what's called an adequate public facilities ordinance. In some parts of the country, that's common. Um but we were not allowed to do that. So we rely on other ways to offset that um whether it's through the voluntary concessions um or you know things of that nature or the or the ex or the revenue you get um to help offset that. I mean obviously if there's direct impacts on like road infrastructure you can require that but like not sewer and water. Um so and of course our sewer system we we're part of a regional obvious plant whatever we use and so it's like we're sharing that capacity and we pay for our gallonage a lotment and I don't know it's complicated that whole business but um any event yeah it is important that people know that that we're limiting what we can do.

All right so I've got six items um I want to check in on the sort of like ranking of these items. So we have affordable housing. Does everybody agree that that's kind of the the primary issue still? Is that like a number one for the group? I would agree with that. Yeah. No question. Uh we also have plan implementation. So whether it's the bicycle plan, the environmental plans that we energy plans,

energy plans, um ADA transition plans. Uh we also have the updates of the land use and vision chapter. Everybody on board with that being on the list? Well, there's a little bit of a one one is a sort of a an objective and the other one is a document towards that objective. Right. Do Yeah, I see. I don't know. I don't know if that's a big deal or not, but so kind of two different categories of things.

Uh I think if one gets touched, I think inevitably we have one or two others that we need to revisit. there's some redundancy between plans and I think if you update the land use chapter you're inev inevitably creating a new vision and therefore you wouldn't be able to just maintain the old document as is. So I think the minute we're touching the land use chapter we likely would be obligated to update the vision chapter as well. So he wants I know but we're saying like there's a there's an affordability housing affordability issue that's within that you're within that umbrella. I got you. And then there is a writing of a document. They're they're two different in my mind. They're two different beasts, you know.

So, is it sort of like a modernizing the comprehensive plan or updating the comprehensive plan chapter, something broader like that? Okay. Well, maybe I'm I don't know that it's like a community. Maybe it's not maybe it's a big deal for us, but is it I think the question is about like what are the issues facing the community? So, I think questions about land use might be You know, I think there's community involvement in that and people are going to want to have a say in that this year, but so but it's not really like an issue challenging the community. Yeah. It's a it's a big conversation we're going to have. Yeah. I I don't Maybe I'll

maybe put it put it like midway down the list. I mean, maybe it's not the most important, but I think it is pretty No, it's definitely an important conversation. I think it's very important, but it's like an apples and oranges thing. I think I think it's an apples and orange thing and maybe maybe I'm reading too much into this. Yeah, that's okay. Uh and then I also heard supporting existing businesses from Phil. Yeah, I think that's pretty important. Okay. Uh community events. I think that's pretty important. Supporting that's part of it part of it and that those maybe we can combine those two. So then we got five. Uh and then the last is sort of uh long-term infrastructure planning

stand sewer master plan tree canopy roads and paving. I think that's pretty important plan. Yeah. Okay. That's like close to the top. Yes. Oh, I thought you were raising your hand. Sorry. Sorry. No, please ignore. Okay. Does the which one of those includes the discussion about zoning for permitting daycare as a allowed use? That would be too like commercial. Is that does that nest in? Well, I think that's in the land use. Okay. I was going to say might call that out particularly just because I think that's a community need that we should try to meet.

All right. And then part two of this question is why are these things important? I don't know if we want to ask about we're going through each one of these uh um and justifying why we think it's important or if it's sort of like a comprehensive why any insight from you are on the origin of these questions together taken together they all help fulfill the 2040 vision articulated by the city council. So these questions kind of originated from a consultant I see some degree

the uh the city hired a consultant who facilitates these sorts of meetings so it's very helpful and they're coming in I think I'm a source of that also I can't give you complete background on it because this all originated before I joined the council I I keep hitting those but um that'll happen

in fact I just got an email said cuz the ne one of their next steps is the consultant wants to talk to each of the council members if they are which is all very useful and they're going to take all of the input they're getting from all the boards and commissions and kind of consolidate it and merge it and you know I some of the the feedback I'm hearing here I think I I may have heard from some of the other boards and commissions as well I think there's some common themes that will pop up and um so they'll bring that and help facilitate paid us working through it all. We're going to get a document this big of read aheads. Yeah. Oh, and a heck of a Saturday that you'll spend.

I don't think they scheduled it on. Um Jack, can you remind me how we are submitting this? There's a survey like are we is there an actual like survey form that we're supposed to be filling out? I don't I haven't seen I actually haven't seen the survey. I know the mayor was here talking about it. So, um, these questions, you just reading it, that was the second time now that I've seen them heard them. Um, so I took notes. So, I think this discussion is really going to help inform, you know, in the So, we don't need to do any take any formal action to like submit.

Uh, no, I mean, not for not for the questionnaire. I think I think um, you know, again, these conversations are what, you know, I was looking for to fill in the blanks for the annual report in terms of what the planning commission is going to recommend for the council's work plan. Mhm. Um so we can we can either shore those up if we want to make more specific recommendations for council's work plan or when we get to the annual report part um I've put all the notes I've taken those six points um that were talked about here um that we we can take some off if they're too broad for the annual report or make them more specific if

I think we were going to combine um supporting existing businesses and community events of um hosting or planning community events. Not sure what the verb there is. And then I would I would vote so we're kind of at five. I would vote to elevate the um long-term infrastructure planning maybe to number two after affordable housing. Yeah. And then three plan implementation.

Again, in this apples and or should you call it long-term infrastructure resilience? like it's we're that's the goal that we're shooting for. We're not shooting. Not just resilience though because that implies it's just related to climate change or you know I think it's really to accommodate we should grow plan for growth that that we're not overt taxing our aging infrastructure

right so that because I mean there are neighborhoods that are tapped out um on their infrastructure I'm absolutely positive of that um and I think the city needs to to to really study that to understand how do we how do we prioritize what we're going to do? Is are there voluntary concessions for um projects that are coming up that we could tie that into, right? So that at least we're more focused about those voluntary concessions asks. All right, so Jack has our list. Um I see we're like an hour behind schedule. I'm sorry, y'all. Uh, so ambitious. It's worth it.

It was worth I hope it was worth it for everyone. Allow me to get back to die. Um, we do have a few action items tonight. So, one of them I think is approving the annual report to council. So, you're going to incorporate these priorities recommendations. Jack and I think we reviewed the annual report in work session. So, do we need to take a vote to sort of approve that document with with these additions of these priorities? Yeah, I can bring it up real quick.

Okay, so the table report uh there there were a couple Yeah. amendments uh edits that were mentioned at the last work session. So um those have been made particularly the speaker series paragraph uh was removed since there there were none and then um a paragraph was added uh describing the changes to the state or to the Virginia um legislation around uh site plan authority and subdivisions. Um, and so that that was a good note that uh context was added as a major development for the planning commission this year. And then let me pull up the um um word version of the uh annual report if there's any kind of real time changes to the recommendations because yeah, again that would be the last thing I just want to capture. How many layers do you have together?

It's elaborate. Yeah. What's impressive is that your brain is that he knows it's exactly that can follow the crumbs. You got your own page. Oh god. Stop. It's all the pictures down. At least the kids will know where I was when I was there. Your alibi is good. You don't want to know where when I got my whole one picture of me um awful. It was awful. That's fine. Your pictures are good. They're good pictures. College yearbook contest.

Oh, that one. Oh, that's different. Yeah. No, I've got a picture of me in 1979. That's I look like Charles Manson. It was bad. Scary. I can't even visualize that. This was the

list of things that I heard uh discussed in the council questionnaire. Um again, those were um you know what what the city's what the planning commission was talking about was um what the what the city council's priorities might be or in the commission's view what what those were. But I don't know if that um I think now the discussion is are is that what you want to include for in your annual report as recommendations to the city council to include in their um work plans for calendar years 2026 to 2027. Um or do you want to be more specific or less?

I think we we were bumping up like are you doing that in order of priority? We can we can uh specify that there's a priority listify that or I think Virginia Village is already on the um road map. So I don't know. Do we want to do affordable housing and housing affordability? Uh I think Bob rightly flagged those two different things. They could be on the same Yeah, there you go.

I think it's fine. Do we want to make it a little broader though? like the the title recommendations for next council for uh priorities for next council work plans. I mean like we don't I don't know that we need to recommend specific concrete projects in this list. If we want to make a jive with the the sort of survey question discussion that we just had. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I was thinking that was the survey response. Um can we make it recommended priorities for next council work plan? uh the title sorry or the uh that just recommendations for just make it recommended priorities just to be clear that it's not like specific products or projects

and then I think uh I think the second one was uh uh long-term uh after affordability is sort of long-term infrastructure planning sanitary sewer I You know, if we want to include things in Pren like sanitary sewer master plan, storm water projects, tree canopy, that's already on the agenda, paving plan. Those are examples of the kinds of things master plan storm

water manage water management. planned or just just like that. We already have a storm water management plan, don't we? I think more like survey maybe a little old. Yeah, let's Yeah, we can or update plan old is relative. So, so is the sources uh tree canopy and um tree canopy ordinance and uh paving plan six seven years old. or paving plan. Does that paving plan include sidewalks? Might be missing links. Yeah, missing links. Yeah,

want to shout that out? Yeah, sidewalks is one of those question mark because it's very fragmented. Uh, and then I I think we could say updates to land use and vision community character comprehensive plan chapters. Um, I think we might prioritize the the idea of plan implementation above that. The bicycle master plan, the energy plans above this. Mhm. Implementation. Yeah.

Was sorry, was it bicycle master plan? Bicycle master plan. The what are the acronyms? energy plans and and energy plans if you want to put go eap and c e was it is it not ceep energy plan works for me energy plan everybody will know what you're talking about

uh and then you can delete the lower ped bite push bike Uh and then yeah, I think you combine that. Well, you can delete sanitary sewer that's captured in the long-term infrastructure planning just to quibble over existing businesses supporting the word hosting sounds a little strong. My impression is we're encouraging businesses, enabling facil, you know, the city will help facilitate, but we're not we're not trying to get encouraging. I'm not trying to get into theme park events, but more than we already are.

Yeah. And we're encouraging and helping businesses. You can cut that community energy line, too, Jack. Um and then uh you spelling baker uses is pretty uh over specific. It should be more generic on this list. Um yeah, but it still is. What do we say about that? Do we want more daycases? I think it's evaluate uses in B2 commercial districts. Burning issue. Well, yeah. I mean it's maybe I don't have kids in daycare but my impression is that in the in the demographic that needs that service

since the day that we voted for got uh there's some question there may be some limitations and things on there because of the transportation issues around pickup and drop off that there may need to be some special accommodations maybe. Yeah, pick up and drop off. Can we make it more generic like evaluate um B2 commercial uses such as dayare evaluate and update? I'm pushing for we're specific enough on some of the other things and I'm pushing what EG dayare seems a balance I mean daycare uses are not you know they don't really enliven sort of the public realm. I mean there's reasons why, you know, daycare uses aren't always great everywhere in a business district.

You want to put in Jack like right and again daycarees they provide they provide a service but a lot of things provide a service but doesn't always mean it's right in every spot. Okay. Is that limit that line to B2? Sorry. Do you want to limit that line to B2? Um, I think that that's sort of what what the discussion has been, but we if you want to make it more broad to commercial districts. Yeah. Um,

just evaluate Well, it's fine. I mean, I don't want to argue about it, but evaluate the list of like permitted uses and update, you know, if necessary to meet come to market. But, you know, it still makes sense. I mean, there's some uses that might locate there if they were allowed, but we might not like what that generates. That also kind of touches on your um on the cannabis potential vape shops. Uh sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. There kind of clinics and things. I I just never I'm just saying it's like it's different kind of use. Depends what we're going for.

Doesn't generate a lot of lively activity. It just kind of keeps going to daycare. What are we talking about here? You just trying to put places for kid parents to drop their kids off. We have a number daycare. I don't know. Dayare is more difficult than it is. We have a number daycare in the city and nearby. Distance between the two becomes. All right. That works. Thank you. I don't know what's going to come out. Uh, all right. Is this list look looking good? This is going to go to council. I'm presume I'll present to council.

Question. So, we just passed an affordable housing policy. Um, should we call it affordable housing and housing affordability implementation? Well, maybe that's in the implementation of the the plans, right? Bicycle master plan, energy plan, affordable housing policy. To get too policy, council hears the ideas. I think that's more important. They're not going to obsess about every phrase we use. I wish they would, but that's not like they'd happen. Wind cover. Delusions of grandeur here. All right. Are we happy?

Yeah, I think so. Uh, do we need a vote on this, Jack? Yeah. Um, if you if you would just to button it up and it could be an all in favor vote. Uh after makes a motion win with a second. Madam chair, I move to adopt the 2025 planning commission annual report city council as drafted. Second. All right. All in favor? I. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all your hard work on that, Jack.

Uh and then we also need to approve the rules of procedure remote participation policy. We reviewed these last time. Any other questions, changes? If not, motion to approve. So moved, Madam Chair. Second. Second. All in favor? I. All right. Thank you. All right. That brings us to information items. An hour, a little over an hour late. Sorry, guys. Uh, any commissioner reports? Everybody's too tired. Director's report. Ribbon cutting at Stratford. Great event. Oh, sorry. Bill's got something. Oh, well, Tim Martin ribbon cutting at Stratford. That was one of our last site plans, too.

Yeah, that's right. It was very uh in, you know, enriching to see that uh all the way through to the finish. I love all the bike parking. I've seen so many bikes there, too. Yes, great. Wait till the summer. It's going to be It's going to be great. In fact, I rode my bike. Except for those curb cuts, though. Watch out for those curb cuts. Curb cuts to nowhere. Parks. It's easy to bring your bike up out of I drove by with my wife and I said brand new restaurant here and she looks at the Stratford Motor Hotel sign and that's all it said. There's nothing about a restaurant. How long until the uh Broaddale Village puts up really stern where's the restaurant that's going to come any second when everybody's trying to get

people already were parking there for the I think last weekend people were parking in in Broadale. No, I know. But I'm saying that right now like along that frontage there's no specific signage warning you like it's easy to walk with that will happen if it hasn't already happened I've been out there a couple days we're all over the Christian Science reading that too science good old Christian science reading Zoya Park Zo uh any director's update

the only thing for your awareness um I understand that the city manager will provide a very brief update as part of his manager reports at the January 26th uh regular council meeting uh regarding like kind of where we are, where we're going with Virginia Village, one of several many discussions we'll have, but every now and then we get some questions about what what the updates are, the status. So, um late January is when we anticipate working with the NERS office to share what we've been doing since the November work session. Um and then the degree to to which we can highlight next steps and process. So thank you

putting a plug in for that. All right. Uh no correspondence. Okay. We are adjourned 1 hour late. Apologies again. You just got us back on track. I try. At least we started at 6:30. 6:30. Thanks for dinner. We appreciate that. Thank you very much.