Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon and welcome to Pittsburgh County Board of Supervisors Joint Meeting of Planning Commission Tuesday, June 16, 2026. It is now 1.33 p.m. Board Meeting Room 39 Bank Street, Southeast Chatham, Virginia 24531. Madam Clerk, would you call the roll, please?

Yes, sir. Mr. Bowman?

Here.

Mr. Brown?

Here.

Mr. Dalton? Here. Mr. Dudley? Present. Mr. Whittle? Here. Mr. Ingram? Here. Mr. Tucker? Here.

Here, Mr. Webb, would you have your clerk call the roll? Please call the roll.

Mr. Oaks? Ms. Meese? Mr. Webb?

Here.

Ms. Henderson? Here. Mr. Shelton? Mr. Bart? Mr. Fares?

Thank you. All right, let's see, any items to be added to the agenda? Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda.

I'll make that motion, Mr. Chairman, to approve the agenda.

Thank you, Mr. Dalton.

I'll second that motion, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dudley. Any discussion on the motion? Not vote electronically. Motion passes unanimously. That takes us down to Agenda Item 5A, Comprehensive Plan Project Update. Mr. Arnold. Good afternoon. Welcome.

Good afternoon, everybody. Today we're going to, we have Lyon and Gray, our consultants on the Comprehensive Plan Update Project here on hand to give us an update. This is going to be the first update given to the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors, formally anyway, since the project got started late 25. So the project's moving along with a full head of steam. And with that, I'm going to introduce Rachel Falkenstein. And she's got a couple of others with the line and grade team. And I'll let her take it from there. Thank you all so much. RACHEL FALKENSTEIN Thank you. Good afternoon, Ms. Falkenstein.

Good afternoon, members of the Board and Planning Commission. Thank you for having us today. We're excited to share what we've been working on these past several months on the comprehensive plan update. As Dave said, my name is Rachel Falkenstein. I'm a project manager with the firm Line and Grade. And we've been hired by the county to help support the comprehensive plan update. And I'm joined this afternoon by my colleagues, Vlad Gavrilovic and Anna Lou Bernstein. They'll share some portions of the presentation so they'll get a chance to introduce themselves as well. But I have some slides for you this afternoon if we could pull those up. But the purpose of today is really to share what we've been working on so far, some content we've pulled together for your initial reaction and feedback, and then an opportunity for you all to kind of share where your head's at as we begin to get into the finer details of this project and start to talk about the future land use plan for the county. So I'm gonna start with just kind of an overview of the project and what we've been working on. Here's who we are. Line and Grade, we're a planning and civil engineering firm out of Charlottesville and Chapel Hill, and we're partnered with New Paradigm Planning, that's Vlad's firm, and he has quite a bit of land use planning experience in the state of Virginia. So we're excited to be here working with Pennsylvania County. So our agenda for today will be to talk through some project background, just a refresher on what the scope of the project is and kind of how we're going to go about the update. And then we're going to talk through the work we've done in two phases of this project so far, phase one, which we've already wrapped up, and phase two, which is where we are right now, and we're kind of in the midst of it. So we'll share what we've been doing so far in that phase of the project. But to start us off, Vlad's going to give a little bit of background on the comp plan itself and kind of why the county is taking this on at this moment.

Afternoon, Mr.

Chair, members of the Board of Planning Commission, Vlad Gavrilic, New Paradigm Planning, part of the consultant team. I just want to give you a little intro. I know you know what a comprehensive plan is and you work with it, but just some big picture points. And then I'll come back around after Rachel and Ann and Lou have presented the guts of it with some questions for you all about get your input. So we'll go through this fairly briskly, but please feel free to stop us at any point and ask any questions. As you know, a comprehensive plan is advisory in nature. It is the big picture, 30,000 foot view of the county for the next 20 years. So it's long term. That's why we call it Pennsylvania 2047. One of the key features of a comprehensive plan is the future land use plan, which shows the vision for growth and development in the county in the next 20 years. But it also shows the implementation steps. So if you think it's long-term and advisory, why do we worry about it, as some people say? But one of the key things of the comprehensive plan is a future land use plan. And as the state code says, if you make a zoning decision, it should be based on the comprehensive plan, as well as other infrastructure and other kind of large policy decisions. They should all be based on the comprehensive plan. So it really is. Kind of the playbook for the county. It doesn't mean that the team can't make calls as the game goes on, but if you want to know what the playbook is, look at the comprehensive plan. As I mentioned, the state code has a requirement. Believe it or not, Virginia doesn't require zoning everywhere, but it does require a comprehensive plan. And it does require a five-year update, but that can include any general review of a comprehensive plan, which counties do periodically. So the last one you had was adopted in 2010, and it's a good time to be reviewing it. There'll be a background, and we'll go through some of the inventory and emerging needs and priorities, but there's going to be, as I say, a key feature of this is the implementation plan at the end, and that is specifically to help you all, Planning Commission and Board, make strategic decisions, how to guide and shape expected growth, and most importantly, how to protect your resources, financial and otherwise. I'll turn it back to Rachel and Anna Lou to go through the guts of the plan and the process.

Thanks, Vlad. So now I want to talk a little bit about the scope of work, kind of how we've organized ourselves to do the update with the county. So we've organized our work into four phases, and as I mentioned, right now we're We're in the midst of phase two. But if you think about each of these phases progressing onward, we'll be getting more detailed as we progress until we're to the point in phase four where we have a completed plan document. But phase one is the high-level vision. Phase two is getting a little bit more detailed and looking at some specific topics where we're setting policy. And then phase three, we'll get into those implementation steps and then pull it all together in that final phase. So we have a community engagement plan that we're in the midst of implementing, and the key here is that each phase will have opportunities for community engagement and try to make sure we vary these opportunities as best we can so that we can hear from a wide spectrum of the county. We'll have online content for folks to engage with with each phase, and we'll also have in-person opportunities. Um, we also have an advisory committee that we've set up that we'll meet throughout the project. Um, and then we're doing a series of kind of, uh, topic focused round table discussions, um, throughout as well. Um, and those are opportunities for us to hear from local experts on different topics, um, that we'll be focusing on in the plan. So I'm going to get into what we've been doing so far. We'll start with phase one, that visioning phase that I mentioned. So this is kind of our to-do list of the things we said we would do in phase one and what we've completed so far. So started off by setting up the project branding, the logo you saw. We set up a project website, pitcoplan.com. If you haven't looked at it yet, I encourage you to go take a look. That's where we pull content together and kind of direct members of the public who are interested in learning about the project to go take a look, and then they can engage in questionnaires and surveys as we put them out. I also mentioned we set up an advisory committee. That was an early step we took working with county staff to develop an application process and a selection process for that. And then we did some kind of data gathering and mapping to learn about this place, learn about what's going on with patterns of land use and with demographics, and we pulled content together. We'll be going through that in a little bit. And then we looked at some peer communities to see kind of how Pennsylvania County stacks up in a number of metrics against some of your peers and some of your neighbors. And then we ended this with a draft vision, which I'm gonna show you here shortly to give you an opportunity to kind of see where you are and share your feedback. So we're gonna go through some of the demographic and spatial data that we pulled together. This is just a sampling of what we've pulled and it will be used to inform the plan recommendations and kind of see where the county is today and maybe where it wants to be in the future. So I'm going to start with going through some information about the people of Pennsylvania County and then we have some maps that we'll go through. We're going to go through this pretty quickly, but if you have questions and want to pause anywhere, feel free to let us know or we can go back at the end and take a look. So starting with just looking at the population of Pennsylvania County, I find it really interesting to look at the population over time, and the county has been relatively stable since 1930, hovering around that 60,000 people, with a few dips and rises throughout, but staying within that similar number. The median age is also an interesting statistic that we pulled. You're about 10 years higher than the median age of the county and the state as a whole. So that's something kind of to be aware of as we plan for the future. This slide breaks that down a little bit more and you look at the age cohorts of the county and you can see, not surprisingly, knowing your median age, some of your larger age cohorts are 60 and above. It also looks at some, most of the county speaks English, but we do have a small Spanish speaking population as well. We looked at education and income. I think this is something interesting for the county to be aware of as you want to plan for future and opportunities for people to stay here and to find family-sustaining jobs. What is that median income and is that something that folks can afford to live here on? It's an interesting statistic to kind of be aware of and track over time. And we also looked at educational attainment as shown on the pie chart here. And then we looked at housing characteristics of the county. Not surprisingly, most houses in Pennsylvania County are single-family residents, mixed of mobile homes and stick-built homes. But about 3% of the county is multi-family housing. And most people own their homes. 79% homes in Pennsylvania County are owner-occupied. And we looked at employment and commuting. A number that sticks out to me on this slide is the percentage of folks who live in the county and work in the county at 26%. That might be something that the county wants to try and increase. But if you look at Pennsylvania and Danville together, it's a little bit higher at a little over 50%. And you can see what the commuting methods and commuting time statistics are as well. And then we looked, as I said, at some peer communities. This shows the peers that we looked at for this analysis, mostly focusing on your neighbors and Mecklenburg County as well. Here's the population statistics for those. It's helpful to keep in mind as we go through some of these numbers that Pennsylvania County is one of the largest among the peers, with the exception of Bedford County. But if you look at median age, this is one I pointed out, Pennsylvania County is not really an outlier in the region. This region as a whole is older than average for median age, with the exception of the city of Danville being slightly younger, but most counties are hovering in that upper 40s number for median age. And then median household income, again, you're similar to your peers, with some of the counties to the north being a little bit higher. And then we looked at home value and rent among your peers. And I think a statistic here that sticks out to me is that rent change. It's a pretty high number, 18% for the county. It's something to be aware of and maybe to dig in a little bit more and try and understand if there are some things that the county can do to kind of help those costs stabilize a little bit for folks who are renting in the county. Okay. And I'm going to turn it over to Anna Lou, who did our mapping work for us, and she's going to walk through a few of the spatial data sets that we looked at.

Thank you, Rachel. My name's Anna Lou Bernstein with Line and Grade. So I'm just going to walk briefly through these maps, but if you have any questions, again, please stop me and feel free to ask. So first we have forest conservation values and ecological cores. These are mapping essentially the central habitats for wildlife in the county. So where they're overlaid on each other, those are areas that we may want to protect. Here we have agricultural resources. The vast majority of land is farmland of statewide importance. And around 17% of your land is also prime farmland. And then historic and cultural resources, you can see this better in your packets. But these are sites that are identified in the National Register of Historic Places. And current land use, you can see it's around 70% is agricultural land use. And again, this is the biggest county in Virginia by land area. And zoning, much of the zoning is either Ag or rural or single family housing. And population density. Looking at this, the population is centered around that ring around the outside of Danville and up and down the 29 corridor. It's a little more sparsely populated in other areas of the county. And existing and projecting jobs, you see a similar trend with the population where the jobs are focused around that 29 corridor again and around Danville and then of course the industrial parks. And here I will mention that we've seen there's about 6,000 jobs announced recently with $3.5 billion in capital investment. And then this is a map of the average annual daily traffic. So again, you're seeing that 29 corridor, and 50A are the main through roads in the county. They see the most traffic on them. And then transportation crash data. This is a heat map that shows where there are more crashes, where there are more fatal crashes. Each dot on the map represents a fatal crash. And I'll hand it back to Rachel to talk through population growth forecasting.

Thanks. So in addition to looking at kind of where we are today, we want to look to the future, since this is a forward-looking planning document. We spent a little bit of time thinking about population growth. As I mentioned in my first slide, the county's population has been relatively flat for the past 100 or so years. And so we want to think about, well, is it going to continue to be flat? Might it grow? Might it decline? And so we took a look at some different data sources for this. The graph on the slide here shows three different lines projecting forward to 2047. The dotted line, which has the steepest decline, that comes from Weldon Cooper Center. They're a group in Virginia who does population projections for every locality in the state. And they take historic trends. and statewide trends to try and project out what they think the population will be for each locality. After getting to know this place a little bit more and diving into the data, our analyst team looked at it and think that the trend actually will probably be different than what the Weldon Cooper Center is projecting. Knowing that the county has recently announced about 6,000 jobs over the next 15 or 20 years, it is more likely we think that the population will start to stabilize and then start to curve upward. And so that's those two other lines that are on that graph kind of showing what we think kind of the range of population is more likely to be based on those jobs announcements. If you anticipate half of those folks living in Pennsylvania County, you might add 3,000 or more people if they bring families along with them. So that's where those numbers come from. We don't have a crystal ball. We don't know how many people exactly will live in the county in 2047. But we do want to plan for the possibilities of what we think might be here in the county. So all of these are inputs that we'll use as we make forward-looking recommendations. We want to get a snapshot of where we are today. We want to think about what are the trends that might impact the future and make sure we're planning for that. So in phase one, we also did some community engagement. As I mentioned, we want to make sure we're hearing from folks who live here and understand what people want to see in their community looking ahead. And so our first open house was focused on kind of high level visioning. We asked for people to share their vision for the future of the county through a number of exercises. We also did this online and we went with the advisory committee and here's just a quick overview of what those participation opportunities looked like in phase one. Um, but that brings us to, um, some feedback themes and what we're starting to hear from the community, what folks said were important to them. We, uh, have, uh, pretty diligent notes of all of the feedback we've heard, but if we were to kind of, um, uh, aggregate it into a, a set of themes, this is, this is what we, we heard kind of most loudly among, among the community and the folks that we talked to. Um, and we, we turn these feedback themes into a draft vision for the county. Um, so that's on this slide. I'll pause and give you all a chance to read it. And then I'll talk a little bit more about what this vision means. So you'll see this vision has a couple of parts. There's the circle graphic. That's really what we're thinking is the high level vision. And then there are six focus area topics. And then off to the right is a growth framework. These are kind of the pieces we pulled together from doing our existing conditions analysis, hearing from members of the community what folks thought were important to them, and we thought would provide kind of a high level guide for our work in the future phases. that we hope captures what the community sees for itself in the future, and hopefully what you all vision for the community as well, but would love to hear your feedback after today's presentation. If you have thoughts for things maybe we didn't incorporate that you think are important that we mention, or if there are changes you would like to see from this vision. But we hope that it captures the feedback we heard. We hope that it gives us a guide for future work and gives you all a guide that you can use for future decision making in the county. These focus areas will be topics that we're diving deeper into in our phase two work, and you'll see that here shortly. That's where we'll start to identify goals and action steps that the county can take to begin to implement this vision. So moving on to phase two, I mentioned this phase of work is where we are right now. So we're kind of in the midst of it and don't have fully formed content for you to look at. But we can kind of share where we are and give you a chance to provide any direction or ideas or thoughts you have on these topics. But the topics we'll cover here are goal setting for those six focus areas that I just showed. And we'll be drafting a future land use plan and a future transportation plan. And again, we'll have plenty of opportunities for engagement. We kind of just finished up a round of engagement with the community last week, and I'll share some of what we heard from that. But I want to start with these focus areas and the draft goals that we've pulled together. So if you think about how the plan will be structured, we like to think of the vision as the overarching umbrella of the plan. Each of the six focus areas will have goals. Goals should be measurable objectives that the county sets for itself. that you can see progress towards. You can say whether or not you're making progress towards a goal or not. So it should be measurable. And then goals will be supported by action steps, which are smaller, more tangible steps that you can sort of check the box and say, yes, we've done that, or no, we haven't done that yet. That's something we need to get to. So if you think about the plan, it has the vision over top, goals kind of as the middle piece, and then the action steps will come next. So that's where we are right now. We're drafting goals. We've had the opportunity to share these out with the community, have not had the chance to synthesize the feedback yet because we just had the meeting last week, and we also have these online for community input. So we're gathering input as we go, but this is a chance for you all to take a look and share any input as well. So for each of the six topics, we have a number of goals. These were informed again by that engagement we did in the first phase. We've had two meetings with the advisory committee so far and gotten their input and direction on these. And we've also kind of synthesized what we've seen in the existing conditions and things that the county might want to identify as steps to take. So the first topic of the focus areas is infrastructure facilities and services. The draft goals are here. I will go through these relatively quickly this evening, but during the discussion, I'd be happy to bring these back up for you all to take a closer look and provide any thoughts. The next topic is employment and economic growth. Again, kind of identifying those measurable things that the county wants to try and pursue. One thing we heard quite a bit of in that first round of engagement and from folks on the advisory committee was retention of local high school students. People are concerned that young folks are moving out because they can't find a job here, they can't find a place to live and a job here, so they're going elsewhere to find those jobs. So that was something that really rose to the top in terms of importance for people on this topic. Rural environmental resources, again, I think that was one of the top themes we heard. in the community engagement was that people really value the rural nature of the county and want to protect that. They don't want to see it turn into a suburban place or an urban place, but keep those rural aspects of the county that they love so much. That's what drew them here in the first place or why they love it so much and why they stay. So that was an important topic for the community. Governance and civic engagement. Again, this is something that came out of the first community meeting. People kind of looking for more transparency or a better understanding of how decisions get made in the county. And so that was the topic that we identified for a focus area and a couple of goals around that. Local amenities and quality of life. This is kind of a large bucket that can incorporate things like access to health care, access to parks, things that make it a good place to live, things that make people want to stay here and live here, having access to things to do and services that they need. And then lastly, housing and neighborhoods. This is a topic I think that we hear a lot of in places where we work, is that finding a house that... Kind of fits people at different stages of life can be difficult especially in a rural place where most of your housing stock is single-family but trying to find opportunities for Maybe different housing types that are more affordable to different people in different stages of life Senior housing is one that has come up a lot especially given the age of your population People are concerned that they might not be able to stay in their homes forever and want a place to continue to live in the county in a different type of home So now I'm going to pivot a little bit to the future land use plan. We have not drafted the future land use plan, but we've started gathering input on it. As Vlad mentioned early on, the future land use plan is one of the key pieces of the comprehensive plan. It is a countywide map that you all will use as a vision. Again, it's forward-looking. It's aspirational of where you might like to see yourself in 20 years. But it is used by you all to make decisions around requests to change a zoning map or when you do updates to your zoning ordinance. It can help you all guide your decisions when these requests come before you. You can also use it to make decisions about where infrastructure should go. Where should we extend a water and sewer line? Because we say we want housing or commercial in this area. So it's an important map. We are, like I said, we don't have a draft before you this evening, but we anticipate next time we come back to talk to you all, we will have a draft. But we did get a chance to talk to the community about the future land use plan. And Vlad's going to talk through that a little bit before we wrap up.

Thank you. Just real quick and then want to turn it back to you all and get your input. We've had a couple of advisory committee meetings last month. And I have to say, I've worked for 40 years in Virginia. This is one of the best advisory committee membership that I've worked with. We have Mr. Brown, Mr. Webb on it, representation for you all. But just everyone has a... politeness and a spirit that is just wonderful to work with and a deep concern with the county some whose folks have been here family members for generations and really understand the county and the issues we're dealing with we just had on Thursday the second community meeting and we had it says here 65 attendees some people counted 80 or so and But really a deep input, spirited input. What we heard we have not yet digested into all the summary. I know in the group I facilitated a lot of concerns about the character of future growth and protecting the character of the farmland and the environment in the county. But one of the things we did was look at these maps of where you'd like to see growth in the future. And these are just some samples of them. But we're going to put these together and use the input from the community, the advisory committees, and then all the inventory and existing conditions we've done. And as Rachel says, come up with a draft future land use plan to come back to you all with for your input. There's a community survey that's still online that mirrors what we had in the meeting. AND WE'LL BE BASICALLY HAVING AN ENGAGEMENT THIS FALL WITH THE COMMUNITY AND WITH YOU ALL ON LAND USE TRANSPORTATION AND THEN MOVE ON TO IMPLEMENTATION. SO AT THE CLOSE OF THIS WE JUST WANT TO TURN IT BACK TO YOU ALL A couple of questions. First of all, obviously, if you have any questions about the process so far, but as you all look at this from a big picture perspective, the vision and the goals, and we can certainly go back to those boards, do they start to reflect some of what you see as the key issues and the direction you'd like to see for the county in the future? And do you have any input or suggestions that we start looking at the land uses for the future? So I'll turn it back to you all, and we're happy to answer any questions you have.

Thank you, sir. Questions, comments from the board? Let's hear it, Mr. Bolton.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the presentation. It's very good. It's a very comprehensive overview of what we're looking for, I think. And also, you've hit most of the high-level button items. I'm really focused on one of the things that popped out in the beginning. I didn't make notes on this, so I can't go back and review every one of them. But the transportation piece, the roadways, and things like that. Are you working with VDOT, our local engineer, on that to make sure that some of these, not only the main roads, like 29, 41, 57, things like that, are getting the attention, but secondary roads also, are you working on that to kind of see what the long-range plan is for those? Because that helps when it comes to whether we're doing housing or economic development on how we identify those nodes within the, within the comp plan to say these are going to be our areas that we're going to build on 10 years from now or, you know, the commercial or whatever.

Yes, sir. I'll let Rachel speak to the specifics but, yeah, we definitely need to do that. We've heard from community members some of the roads that are not only congestion nowadays but keys to your future economic growth so that you can get to these activity centers and employment centers. And as you know, VDOT has to review the comprehensive plan, so we've definitely talked to them.

Yeah, as Vlad said, we'll definitely be working with staff from VDOT. We also are aware that, at least for the MPO, the portion of the county adjacent to Danville, you all are in the process of updating your long-range transportation plan. So we'll make sure we'll be coordinating with the recommendations from that as well. I think of a comprehensive plan as kind of an opportunity to pull together all the other plans that have been done because there are several transportation plans. There's a rural transportation plan, a long-range transportation plan. There's a bike ped plan. Kind of pulling all that together in one place and looking at it comprehensively and saying, well, what else are our needs and what are our top priorities from these other plans? And then making sure it aligns with the future land use plan as well. If there's a new area where you're identifying where you want to see more growth, making sure that there's transportation infrastructure to support that growth.

Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Bullard. Yes, sir, Mr. Dudley.

Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. And thank you all for a good presentation. Do you have a question? Is there anything, not sure if you're keeping up with, but is there anything maybe coming out of Richmond that's going to affect any of our comprehensive plans or where we're at and where we're heading to?

I believe the second part of today's discussion is a bit about some zoning changes that will be needed. Yes. But we have been talking with your staff and thinking There are some changes to your zoning ordinance that will need to be done, which will require you all to maybe take a look at solar again. So that's a topic we could look at in the comprehensive plan and provide guidance for how you might review solar projects. That's an example. There are also some other bills that I think don't pertain as much to Pennsylvania County As things you could look at like public health impacts But those are more advisory recommendations and not requirements So so yes, there there are a few things that we'll be looking at but nothing that strikes me is Significant changes to kind of how you're already doing things.

Thank you. Thank you. Miss chairman. Yes, sir

I've got one, Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir, Mr. Brent.

I want to commend the planning commission and Dave and Kelly and the board. I think we did a great job picking this company and the layout in which they've done. I've been at these events. I missed the one last week, but I've been at all of the other ones. It has been a phenomenal group. I think it's 18 or 20 of us. of all diversities of walk, you know, when it comes to age, race, the types of jobs we all have, the different districts of the county that we live in and we all come together for these meetings and it really is, it's impressive to watch This wide range of citizens come in one room, and they do a great job on the format with these tables and these charts, and just as simple as a color dotted sticker. And you would not believe how our interest is quite the same. The similarity is there, which is good. That means we're a like-minded community to the most part. You don't always see that when you read our news, but we are more than we realize we are. But I think they've done a good job facilitating this comp plan, I've got full trust in where this thing is going. And it's going to be interesting. Housing is definitely one of those major topics, along with the infrastructure, the roads, amongst the group of 18 or 20 of us. And entertainment was another one, a big thing that keeps coming up at the athletic centers, and why this county doesn't have one yet today. It's been interesting to see how we're going to keep it rural and how we're going to be able to grow, but I want to commend this company. They're very good. Lionel Gray.

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

Mr. Webb. Any of my fellow commissioners got any questions?

I don't really have a question. I just want to praise you for your good work. And I'm always interested in the young people staying in Pennsylvania County because they are our future, and I appreciate that being one of your top concerns. Also, I'm a senior citizen, and I'm interested in what's going to happen to the senior citizens in years to come, the availability, the AI coming. Are we going to be prepared, or how can senior citizens be exposed to that area? Is there any thought on that?

One thing I would say, I appreciate all the good words you've given us for our effort, but this is the perfect time to be dealing with those long-term uncertain future issues like AI, like the changes in demographics in the population when you're updating a comprehensive plan. There's no other document that looks ahead to the future like this than the comprehensive plan. I think housing is a key thing because it's such a long term between the time you put a policy in place and when you see it come to fruition. So whether it's senior housing or starter homes so that people can stay in the county and then getting them good jobs. Definitely issues top of mind that we've heard from the public and from the advisory committee to date.

Thank you all for your time and your expertise. You did make a great decision bringing you all in. I do have a question. I did hear you mention that there did seem to be kind of an overwhelming interest in retaining the character of the county as it is, farmland and the like. My concern is, is the onus going to be on the board or boards going forward? to kind of make a decision as to the product that you all present to us? Or is that something that's going to kind of be guided by you all, especially with economic growth? And I do see you have a bullet point of balanced economic growth. So kind of what metrics are you all using to determine what is balanced versus what the desire of the overwhelming Georgia county is? So just kind of want to know how that's going to be taken care of.

so the first part of your question the board will be the one who adopts the comprehensive plan with a recommendation from you all in the planning commission so go through public hearing process but we as the consultant team in partnership with your staff will be making a recommendation and that recommendation will pull in the community input but will also pull in input from stakeholders from the local development community, from folks on economic development boards, local businesses. So we hope that we'll strike the right balance, but we don't have a crystal ball to know exactly what that right balance is, but we'll do our best to kind of balance those two perspectives as best we can. I think in a rural place, especially as big as Pennsylvania County, there's space for both. If you're intentional about where you put things and especially thinking about infrastructure and the design of your growth and making sure that there's appropriate buffering between industrial growth and agricultural lands and rural spaces. So there are things you can do to make it have opportunities for job and economic growth, but still feel like a rural place. And we'll do our best to make a recommendation about how you can best do that.

Yeah, I would just add, totally agree with Rachel. Just to add that in Virginia, you can't stop growth. State legislation says you cannot stop it. You can shape it. You can guide it to where it's appropriate. And that's what the comprehensive plan does. There needs to be a vision for progress, whether you're in a growth area or in a rural area. You talk to rural communities, they don't want to be shellacked as a museum piece. They want to have progress and prosperity. And that's what good planning does, is it gives you a vision for protecting what's important and progress and prosperity for everyone.

Thank y'all. With our new governor, we need to get ahead of recreational marijuana as far as the dispensaries, dispensaries in districts who can have them, the tax revenue, where it goes. Y'all getting a handle on that?

Yeah, actually, I recently worked with another rural locality on zoning updates. To me, it is more of a zoning thing, but you can set some kind of high-level guidance in your comprehensive plan about where these uses are and aren't appropriate, and then your zoning can follow so that there are regulations on the ground about... how these are cited, what the kind of parameters are around hours and things like that that you want to regulate here in the county.

And where the tax revenue would go as far as keeping it in the districts, the dispensaries are in?

That's not something I've seen addressed in a comprehensive plan before, but certainly something we can talk with your staff about and see how we might best approach that. Usually that's something that's kind of addressed outside of a land use planning document, but we can certainly kind of help staff think about how to navigate that.

So I guess my concern is and question is with this plan here, are you looking at water usage? So I went to the meeting here last Thursday, and the water usage came up, especially with the drought and everything going on, which we've had droughts in the past. But as we try to grow, and bring in some more development. Of course, there's more water usage. Are we going to look at what water usage has been in the past, what past companies have been here that's gone out of business to what we're actually anticipating? That's my first question. The second question is, with this, do we look at the towns, say Chatham, Gratna, Hurt, how we can work with them to build infrastructure. And as far as pricing for their water as well, some localities are paying extremely more than what some other localities are as far as tanks. So that's one of my concerns.

And you all have a water and sewer master plan. You have an authority. We need to dig into that as we're doing the infrastructure planning. But one of the great things about doing this comprehensive plan is you're looking ahead to 20 years of growth. And not only the total growth, but the locations of that growth. So we need to bring that in sync with the water and sewer master plan where you have utilities, where they can be projected to be in the future. And then as you get a lot of your utilities from the towns right now, that needs close coordination with the towns and, you know, how that growth can be accommodated with not just water but sewer. But I understand water is your most pressing need right now.

All right, I will echo what Mr. Brown said as far as you guys and what you've done so far. I've attended all the meetings. I want to give kudos for the public, especially last week in Gretna. I was shocked at the turnout that we had. We had a packed house at the fire station. A little contentious at times, but a good roundtable discussion. The only comment I will make so far is based on the conversation I had last week that a lot of what we were looking at as far as putting some heavy industry or big industrial park development, what we've been looking at so far really looks good for like a five to 10 year period. But do we need to look at some fresh locations for the 10 to 20 year period beyond what we've looked at so far? to expand it out. One of the concerns that the person I spoke to had was overly congesting Route 29 and the future potential of that becoming 785 and trying to focus everything kind of in that central part of the county.

Rachel, you may want to add, but two great points. One, I think we need to look at the 20-year vision for growth and kind of the pace of that growth and if we can accommodate it with current zoned or master-planned areas, we need to look at where it can be accommodated. And that's what the analysis mapping does for you. It shows where it's appropriate from an environmental or traffic standpoint or other things. And then 29, yeah, we've been thinking about that a lot. It's kind of your main street, but it's this interstate and intercounty through corridor too. I think it begs for a master plan for that corridor. And the comprehensive plan can go somewhat towards that direction. but you may need in the future to look at how you're going to accommodate through traffic, but also have it be kind of these communities like the towns that are right on 29, how you develop parallel connectivity and kind of a system where if there's congestion or an incident on 29, you've got some parallel roads that go around it.

Yeah, Vlad kind of stole what I was going to say, that last part. That's where I think the transportation plan is really important. I don't think you should continue to rely on Route 29 as both your main street and your through highway, because that's where you end up with the 785s, the congestions, the just bumper-to-bumper traffic situations. Think about, like Vlad said, parallel networks, interconnectivity, so that local trips don't always have to rely on 29, and that can be more of the through traffic through the county.

Mr. Tucker.

Thank you, sir. Let me just wrap up to say we appreciate you all partnering with Pennsylvania County as we plan our future. The only comment I'll make is I'm excited with recent announcement of jobs over the next year. We'll call it five to ten years. Now, the comp plan will build a foundation so that we can kind of take into account the housing to support that, the infrastructure. So there are a myriad of things at play here, so I really appreciate the work that you're doing. Don't want to really get down into the weeds today, but I appreciate the 30,000-foot view that you presented us. And I like the direction, and I appreciate everyone's hard work. Thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you all.

All right. Let's take a five-minute pause, and we'll come right back. All right, 60 seconds. We'll get started. All right. That takes us down to agenda item 6A. which is a zoning-related General Assembly legislation effective July 1, 2026. Ms. Kelly Smith, good afternoon and welcome.

Good afternoon, thank you. So last month, I presented seven pieces of legislation that impact the zoning ordinance, and that was a lot of information. The good news is we're only going to talk about two of those today, but the bad news is there's still a lot of information. My plan going forward, depending on kind of the direction today, What I'd like to do is talk about these two pieces of legislation, come back to both the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors in July with presentations of draft ordinance language for all seven bills. And then we would hold the public hearings in August, Planning Commission for recommendation and then the Board of Supervisors for the formal adoption. I'm going to start with the solar bill. There is opportunity for some flexibility in the implementation, although I will be making a little bit more of a recommendation on this one for how to proceed with changes that need to be made to the zoning ordinance. So just a refresher, House Bill 711, Senate Bill 347 is local regulation of solar energy facilities. It applies to utility scale solar. And the zoning ordinance must provide a special use permit application process for projects greater than one megawatt. And the locality must submit all decisions to the state corporation commission within 60 days. There's three components of how we can implement these changes in the zoning ordinance. And the changes in the zoning ordinance include ADDING DEFINITIONS AND ENSURING THAT ALL OF THE STATE MANDATED CRITERIA ARE INCLUDED. THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY IS TO UPDATE THE STRUCTURE OF THE ZONING ORDINANCE. CURRENTLY THE ZONING ORDINANCE RELATING SOLAR IS A LITTLE LACKING TO BE QUITE HONEST. WE DON'T HAVE DEFINITIONS OF SMALL SCALE, LARGE SCALE AND UTILITY SCALE SOLAR AND THEN WE HAVE A SEPARATE SECTION OF THE SOLAR OF THE ZONING ORDINANCE FOR SOLAR THAT YOU DON'T REALLY KNOW WHERE TO LOOK FOR ALL OF THE INFORMATION YOU MIGHT NOT FIND IT. SO A LITTLE BIT OF A REORGANIZATION IS PART OF THE RECOMMENDATION ALONG WITH ADDING THE DEFINITIONS. And then moving the uses to the permitted, or in this case, the special use permitted lists within the appropriate zoning districts, not making the use section a standalone portion of the solar criteria. So as I mentioned, specifically adding definitions of the small scale, large scale, and utility scale solar energy facility These are just some thoughts on a draft. The definitions would be added to the general definition section of the zoning ordinance. And these are fairly consistent with the existing solar regulations and the new legislation. One of the other things that we need to do in the zoning ordinance amendment is remove the current language around the 2% cap and the five mile separation rule. But as I discussed last month those are things that we can move to the comprehensive plan and as you as you've Heard from lining grade today. Those are really appropriate place for the those guiding policies to be located So I would recommend that we do a standalone comprehensive plan amendment specifically relating to those criteria, moving them from the zoning ordinance to the comprehensive plan, and we can certainly discuss that further. And then lastly, these are some additional items where we may also again look at future discussion. Some of this would be included with the draft language next month, specifically number one about whether or not what's included in the state language for minimum requirements meets what the county wants and what is currently in our ordinance. Or if there's any additional optional or expanded requirements that the county would like to see that we have the ability to implement in that legislation. So now, if there's any questions on the solar bill, I would like to take those now, and then we'll move into manufactured housing.

Any questions from the board? Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. Mr. Bowman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Kelly, I look on the second page here. Key requirements, mandatory decommissioning plan with cost estimate updated every five years. Who's going to do that? Is that the locality that's going to do it? And that would be the number one. And then who's going to follow up with all of these projects and make sure there's money, I'm going to say lack of a better word, in escrow to do the decommissioning?

So this would apply to new projects, not to existing projects. Okay. I'm looking to find...

my notes on the solar to see if it tells me quickly what that.

So it says a locality shall require an applicant to enter into a written agreement to decommission equipment facilities or devices. I'll have to look into the question of... And that's fine.

That was not to trip you up. No, no, no. I'm just looking at the verbiage here.

Yes.

And I want to make sure that we understand also, we are also, from what I understand now, the county is within that 2% cap now. So I'm going to... You know, I know it's come up a lot. We are not there at this point in time, but we're approaching it closer and closer of having solar farms that have been out there 20 plus years. And so when these folks, if they decide to walk away from there, whose responsibility is it? Is it going to be the state that's going to require us to do it, or are they going to give us guidance? Are they going to provide any funds to help us decommission this? I'm just asking those questions because I think it's something we need to look at. And early on, this was not an issue. It was only after a certain amount of solar farms became relevant, not only in this locality but everywhere else, that decommissioning was actually an issue. And so I just want to make sure that we're covered on that.

Certainly. And I'm happy to put together some additional information on that.

Good. Thank you. That's all I've got, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Ingram. Yes, sir, Chairman. Thank you so much. Kelly, page 8 describes the categories. And House Bill 711, Senate Bill 347, it says it applies to utility-scale solar projects, which is the largest. So are we saying that the smaller two are not affected by this? That's the way I read it. That's correct. Okay. So that brings back the question. Years ago, because of the complaints, we dropped the mileage back. Well, it was a mistake, but it went to one mile. Then I promoted seven to ten miles, and we agreed on five. So it went back to where it was, but it was dropped to one mile for a specific purpose at the time. Okay. And that was a bad move. But the 2% in any specific zoning district, last I heard, we had exceeded that. So I guess my question is what's the logic of the state putting this criteria in there with a larger project, which I guess what I'm asking, are they talking about extending the mileage or decreasing the mileage and the percentage?

So the state actually doesn't have a percentage or a mileage standard. What the state is saying is that at a zoning level, you can't use those as criteria in determining whether or not a special use permit should be granted. You can in your comprehensive plan as a policy guidance. And again, just because you have to allow a special use permit application which would happen because of the cap and the radius being removed, doesn't mean you have to approve everyone. It just means you have to have the appropriate guidance in making that decision, and you have to now report that to the state.

Okay, good. Thank you. Mr. Dudley.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I believe, I may be wrong, correct me if I am, but When we first started out with this solar, each company was required to get a bond in order to have that to, when the decommissioning came around, or say the bottom fell out of everything, that that would at least cover the cleaning up of that. Is this correct? Is it not? You tell me. You or our county minister or somebody can, do you know? Mr. Evans.

Yes, sir. The decommissioning bond is a protection to the locality. Yes. It's a protection to the, as additional layer of protection. That is correct. What's being codified in this new ordinance, as my understanding, is a requirement that actually in order to benefit the locality of, They can't say, I'm not going to do a decommissioning bond. It's part of the protection. It's kind of a quid pro quo of saying, you've got to take a look at each application. They have to have a decommissioning bond. You have to have an agreement in place. It is... We can anticipate that the language of this statute will be refined over time as it relates to these decommissioning agreements and the bonds that may be required because that is a major concern of localities is what do you do on the back end if this project is halfway through or abandoned after a certain number of years. So the decommissioning bond is a financial assurance that there's a cleanup in place.

Basically, I think that decommissioning bond was to, you know, Put it back like you found it, basically.

It depends on the language of the specific agreement. Yes. So it can be and probably should be to that level, but it's not always the case. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Yes, sir.

Mr. Chairman.

Yes, sir. If I could have one alibi, a follow-up. This may be for the... folks that are doing our comp plan. So on page seven here it says keep the zoning ordinance focused on clear enforceable standards with siting guidance focused, I mean housed in the comp plan. The comp plans for twenty years, things change over twenty years. Can we go in to the comp plan as a board and change those requirements if we need to?

Yes, you can make amendments to the comprehensive plan and you are also required to at least review the comprehensive plan every five years and decide whether or not any further updates are needed.

Okay, good. I just want that for clarification. Thank you.

Thank you. Before we leave solar real quick, the only thing I'm going to say is I want to make sure that if we, you know, I guess place in our ordinance or make any changes or The comp plan, I want to make sure that our siting agreement has some teeth in it and we actually negotiate any revenue up front as opposed to stringing it out over a 20-year period. So I just wouldn't like to see us continue down that road because we can do that. Okay? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm sorry. Yes, sir.

Do they have it where they have to send these, when they decommission these things, they don't want to send them to our landfills. We don't want that filling our landfill up with their junk. Is there anything we can do to keep that from happening? Anything we can do to keep that from happening?

That's a question I might have to get some more information for you.

Thank you. Mr. Evans. You can always contract out of that. You can always contract for the specifics of how that decommissioning functionally happens. So it's something if the board is concerned about, you can contract for specifics.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Ingram?

Yes, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. That was my question. If we could prohibit what goes in the landfill and require it in that bond to contract them out and get them out of here because you hear all the stories about different panels, where they come from, what's inside, et cetera. But I did have a quick follow-up question because when I go back to these two bills here, the House and the Senate, it says remove countywide caps or separation distances. So I'm reading this as though the state law says that we have to remove that.

You have to remove that regarding utility-scale solar.

Right, but it says they're telling us to remove that, right?

Correct. You can't have language in your zoning ordinance that would PROVIDE LIMITATIONS LIKE THOSE THAT WE CURRENTLY HAVE.

I MIGHT BE MISSING SOMETHING, BUT IF YOU HAVE A LARGE MAJOR FARM AND IF YOU REMOVE THIS, SOMEBODY CAN PUT ANOTHER LARGE MAJOR FARM RIGHT NEXT TO IT WITHOUT ANY CONSIDERATION FOR THE 2% OR THE FIVE MILES.

AND THAT'S WHY IT'S IMPORTANT THAT WE DO CONSIDER AN AMENDMENT TO THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN BEFORE WE LOOK AT ADOPTING THE PLAN THAT'S BEING UPDATED SO THAT WE HAVE GUIDANCE

language in our comprehensive plan that can be used for criteria in determining whether or not a special use permit should be final follow-up mr evans but would that circumvent what the state law says that we're to do for the criteria as listed here no in fact what what ms smith is is is clarifying is it allows applications to come before this board and then this board in order to be non-arbitrary looks at the comprehensive plan that's been approved and if you follow the comprehensive plan, then individual applicants can't say, hey, you're treating me differently because, you know, I'm in a certain location or a certain type of applicant. So if the comprehensive plan has an idea that's been approved by the board, recommended by the planning commission as it relates to solar in very specific ways, then the board can rely on that and say this is not this individual board, but it has been approved that this is how we deal with solar generally in the comprehensive plan. It's a protection for the board against an applicant saying you're treating me arbitrarily.

Mr. Webb, your people have questions.

So they should not wind up in a landfill.

Questions, comments?

I just had one question as it relates to the bond. And if we already have facilities that are pushing 20 years old with a bond, it costs a lot more to decommission now than it did 20 years ago. Does the bond keep up?

I don't believe it does, and I think that's why the state law says you have to recalculate that decommissioning value every five years. I would think that the decommissioning, the bond was based on the length of time that it was going to be in use, and so therefore would take into account changes in the economy. But this will specifically require that they re-look at those numbers every five years.

Good deal.

Mr. Tucker. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Whitt. All right, Ms. Smith, let's move forward.

Okay, so now we move on to the manufactured housing legislation. And as a reminder, this legislation requires that manufactured homes be permitted by right in any zoning district where single-family homes are permitted as long as the manufactured home is converted to real property and receives a certificate of occupancy within five years of the HUD data plate manufacturer date, and is placed on an individual lot. You also cannot apply any development standards that are more restrictive for manufactured homes than you can for site-built homes. So whatever you require for a manufactured home, you have to require for a single-family site-built home. With regard to the Pennsylvania County Zoning Ordinance, we have several residential zoning districts. Some will have no impact and some will have significant impact. So our RC1 and the mobile home park, the MHP, those zoning districts currently allow manufactured homes by rights. So we don't have to make any changes to those zoning districts. The RE, which is the residential estates, RPD, which is residential plan development, and RMF, which is our multifamily residential zoning district, those do not currently allow manufactured homes as a permitted use or a special use. So we'll have to change those use codes. R1 is the last residential zoning district. That currently allows manufactured homes after a special use permit approval, and we will obviously have to change that to be a permitted use. So again, the required zoning ordinance updates mirror the previous slide with regard to what the law requires. And then I want to bring up a few things to think about and then we'll stop for a little bit of discussion and then I do have some additional information to then have some more discussion about to get really what I would like to get today is your feedback and your thoughts on how you would like to see this implemented. We have a few different ways to implement it but I think Starting with this key policy question of how do we balance neighborhood compatibility with long-term housing affordability? Because housing affordability is really where this legislation stems from. So within, when we're looking at that question, there's a few different elements. The first is housing options. Obviously, manufactured homes offer an affordable housing option that is not available necessarily with a site-built home. And I will just state one example. At one of the most recent special use permit hearings, the applicants specifically stated that they were seeking a special use permit approval for a manufactured home because that was what fit in their price range and that was what was going to allow them to become homeowners.

We also then have to look at balancing standards and affordability.

Development or architectural standards influence both cost and availability, and the goal should be to maintain balance, not create new barriers. Today's manufactured homes have significantly improved in safety, appearance, and construction standards. We can also then think about the role of design standards. If you are interested in design standards, what level is appropriate? and how could unintentionally slow reviews or delay housing delivery? And then also with architectural review standards, what are the unintended consequences that we might need to think about? Having a minimum square footage as an example would limit smaller, more affordable home options, but not having minimum square footage rules may unintentionally allow tiny homes without any accompanying standards. And then lastly, I do think there is an opportunity for a phased approach to this issue. And future refinements to residential districts, especially within the R1 zoning district, can follow the comprehensive plan adoption. And after we kind of stop for a discussion at this point, I do have some data that Dave Arnold put together that I think IS ACTUALLY A REALLY INTERESTING LOOK AT THE ZONING DISTRICTS AND THE RESIDENTIAL USES WITHIN PENNSYLVANIA COUNTY.

COMMENTS, QUESTIONS FROM THE BOARD? I'VE GOT A QUESTION. YES, SIR.

CAN YOU SPEAK IN THE MIC? THEY CALL THEM THOSE BARN DOMINIUMS NOW. IS THAT A MANUFACTURED HOME? WHAT KIND OF HOME IS THAT?

SO A MANUFACTURED HOME IS GOING TO COME TO THE SITE COMPLETELY BUILT FROM THE SHELL.

ON WHEELS.

Yes, generally on wheels. And then removing the wheels is part of converting it to real property. You also have modular homes, which typically come in pieces. So instead of building each wall segment on site, you're going to just install the wall panels. Modular homes are already considered site-built homes. So the barn dominium would depend on how it arrives to the property.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Kelly, I brought this up earlier, and I don't remember what the form was of the venue, but I brought this up. This is something that I do not want to see, is manufacturing homes going into established neighborhoods. I'm glad. I don't know if Dave put this photo collage in here or not, but it actually shows two very nice stick-built homes there. And actually... with a vacant lot there and actually positioning different types of homes, manufacturing homes in between, I can't see where this does anything except create dissension, if you will, among the neighbors that are already in there. My real question is, if these folks that have these neighborhoods, established neighborhoods, if they have homeowners associations there, can they object to this? I mean, does their objection carry any weight? Because I can see there are a few, especially in my district and Chatham-Blair's district, where folks would not want to have this on those vacant lots that are there in those neighborhoods.

So I think for the purposes of continuing the discussion, I am going to go ahead and show the other slides. But before I do that, I will answer your question. The legislation does not have any impact on deed restrictions. So if you have a neighborhood that has deed restrictions, Those are not enforced by the county. They're not enforced by the state. Those are civil agreements and enforced by the homeowners association. And so those would still apply. So if you live in a neighborhood with a homeowners association or with covenant restrictions that say no manufactured homes, just because the county could now theoretically issue a building permit for that doesn't mean that you as the property owner are entitled to do that. I do know of at least one subdivision where their deed restrictions say you can't have a single wide manufactured home but you can have a double wide manufactured home and that came up at a special use permit hearing. Applicants were seeking a double-wide manufactured home, but they didn't specifically state that. They just said manufactured home, and there was a discussion about whether or not the deed restrictions could be included in the special use permit. Those are a civil matter, and so those would stay. The legislation has nothing, makes no changes to those.

Ms. Smith, before you move forward. Yes. Mr. Webb. Thank you. Ms. Smith.

So this is some of the information that Mr. Bowman was referencing. So we took a look at the data on the residential zoning districts through the county's GIS. And one of the things that I find really interesting is that 86% of the county's residential zoning districts are made up of one zoning district. Residential properties are made up of one zoning district, and that's the R1 zoning district. That means that 86% of the largest county in the Commonwealth of Virginia has one set of standards that apply to residential single-family zoning. And I think that is where I reference earlier an opportunity after the comprehensive plan is adopted and we really work through the land use priorities that's an opportunity i think to say okay there are differences in character there are differences in community throughout the county and where do different types of development make more sense and then this chart IS A BREAKDOWN OF THE DIFFERENT CONSTRUCTION STYLE. SHOWS THAT WITHIN THE R1 ZONING DISTRICT, THERE ARE CURRENTLY ABOUT 1400 DOUBLE WIDE MANUFACTURED HOMES. JUST KIND OF GIVE YOU SOME DATA ON THAT. THESE ARE THE POSSIBLE SCENARIOS. And I think my slides are not. So this shows what that vacant lot in the middle would look like with a standard stick-built house. Then another scenario if they had a standard manufactured home. And then the last would be if that property owner decided to install a tiny home. And then we did also include a few different neighborhoods. Included all of them that we're aware of that have deed restrictions But just to give you again some some information as we think about how to implement this into the zoning ordinance Cross Creek subdivision Is all zoned are one with one parcel being zoned multifamily and they do have existing deed restrictions that would restrict the manufactured homes in that community and And then another example is the Eagle Point Shores subdivision. And this is a RPD, a residential plan development community. They also have deed restrictions that limit mobile homes. And then lastly, this is Dry Fork Road. This is another standard R1. This is not a neighborhood per se, but just an example of where we would have typically single family residential uses in different types of home styles. I'm gonna go back to this one. And I'll open it up for discussion. What would be helpful for staff is to have an understanding of what standards, if any, discussion on how to best implement this with the balance, but also in protecting the character of Pennsylvania County.

Pleasure of the board.

Kelly, I got a question. On the RPD zoning, with what's coming down the pipe, and I know this is one thing we discussed in the comprehensive plan meetings with Lyon and Gray, you know, we brought up the topic of tiny homes. With the influx of construction employees that's going to come here for a decade of years, they may not want to be in a hotel. What's the option of if a developer did an RPD, is that in the current comprehensive plan to where they could create a community of that? To create housing on a quicker aspect.

I don't know specifically if that concept is addressed in the comprehensive plan, but I can tell you from a zoning standpoint, in the RPD, you could do a tiny home. Really, the tiny home, the size of the home speaks almost more to density than to housing types. Right now The zoning ordinance says that in our one zoning district you can have one house per parcel Doesn't matter if you're half an acre or if you're ten acres so Changing anything in the zoning ordinance relating to density which does which does also was part of the comprehensive plan as far as where you determine the density of your residential zoning districts as a guidance policy. That would be those two items. And I do think that's certainly a conversation that's come up at the comprehensive plan meetings. It's a question that I get asked by especially campground operators who want to expand or have other people who have the opportunity to build new campsites. And I think there's also opportunity for discussion of temporary housing versus campground. Because I think, you know, are we losing recreational opportunities because we're providing housing? Both have a need.

Right. Exactly.

Yes, sir. Thank you, Kelly. You know, some time back, I ran across a little bit of opposition about a proposed housing development in my district. And because I was adamant to support the owners in building houses, which by right could have built 1,200, or have it rezoned from A1 to R1 to build 2,400, but because I opened my mouth and said, hey, we need a shopping center, it all broke loose. So in regards to that, are you saying that a specific neighborhood, whether we're talking about Bridgewood or Roy Younger's development off 58 West or Laurel Woods or Tuscarora, they could come together as a community and have a homeowner's agreement and sort of help regulate any future growth within their specific residences or residential areas? They could?

Yes, they could enact their own deed restrictions. I will tell you I don't honestly know how intensive that is, if that requires all of the property owners to agree or if there's a percentage. But that is an option.

Well, the homeowners agreement is, I think, good. And I would assume several of them already have it. But they could also go ahead and say, well, you know, if you want to live in this community, you have to have so much square footage or you wouldn't qualify.

Yes. Deed restrictions can include minimum housing square footage. Yes.

Okay.

And some of them do.

Because we want to be fair and surely respectful, but when you hear the term affordable housing, it really goes back to the lender. reeling somebody in and saying, hey, we're going to put you in a house, but you're going to end up paying on this for the next 30, 40, 50 years. And your payment's going to be low, but you're going to pay forever. And that would, in my opinion, would open the door for a lot of people to put whatever they want in whatever location. So I guess where I'm going with this is, and again, with all due respect, some of these established neighborhoods They want a certain type house, and I respect that. I live in a country. I don't have that problem. But, you know, I guess I'm trying to look at it with all respect and consideration on both sides.

And that's definitely the balance we need to strike, in my opinion.

I agree with you. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Webb.

I'm just kind of trying to look at the spirit of the letter that the General Assembly enacted this in the first place. And then, yes, respecting communities to say what they would like, but at the same time, to not restrict housing, especially looking at the economy and even looking forward. It does not look, it's not the Glossiest outlook, so to speak. And my field is real estate, so I'm speaking from that perspective. Is it possible, and this may be a question for that 30,000-foot view, is it possible to maybe create a carve-out, and I guess this is to the board, in our county that would kind of address that issue of, true affordable home ownership and it addressed some of those, I don't want to say less desirable, less square footage, you know, homes that could be placed in areas and I also agree with what Mr. Ingram said, you know, looking at that from both sides of the coin instead of building more barriers to protect what's established. Nothing wrong with that. I love my community. But at the same time, you know, it's a large county and it's very economic resources throughout.

So I see this as kind of a two-part scenario. One, you know, unfortunately we do have a time constraint because the law goes into effect July 1st regardless of whether or not the county takes any action. So I do think it's important to have an amendment to the zoning ordinance that can address the concerns or the desires of the board and the planning commission to the greatest extent possible. But I also think especially now that we see that, you know, again, 86% of the county's residential properties are in one zoning district. That's a longer term question and topic. And so I do think that that that is something that should at least be discussed in the future. Maybe it makes sense to have it all in R1 and we keep it the way it is, but maybe it makes sense to look at how the county has developed and where you have different characteristics of development. One of the other things that came up at the comprehensive plan meeting the other day is that we only have one zoning district that only includes 81 properties currently that allows duplexes or triplexes or quadplexes or any of those townhouses, you know, kind of the more of the starter home or, quite honestly, the downsizing opportunity for seniors. And so that's, I think, another discussion that will come up in the land use section of the comprehensive plan.

Anyone else? Thank you for mentioning, Kelly. The question I had was the multi-units and expanding that. So I think you kind of covered it, and we'll be looking at that.

Mr. Tucker. Thank you, Mr. Webb. All right. Ms. Smith, thank you so much. I agree with Mr. Ingram. So I guess your marching orders, we would like to see whatever staff can come up with to respect the dignity of a neighborhood, be it square footage or if there's some type of stair-step pricing. I don't want to get involved in that. Okay. But for example, If a neighborhood consists of the average price of a home being, we'll call it $300,000 upwards, whatever, they wouldn't want to have that. So those are opportunities. And then once we get through the initial phase of this, we will definitely be relying upon line and grade. And we're going to have to be creative. there are going to be some opportunity for you know townhouses and that sort of thing going forward and we're going to need all of the available space we can kind of get our hands on as we anticipate you know journeymen from your electricians your plumbers your brick masons, that sort of thing, when we start the actual construction process of some of these announced industries coming to our community. So that being said, that's kind of your marching orders.

If I could make one suggestion and kind of gauge the response. One of the things that we've looked at for A STANDARD THAT I THINK WOULD BE HELPFUL IN THAT BALANCE FOR THIS FIRST STEP WOULD BE A MINIMUM SQUARE FOOTAGE REQUIREMENT OF, YOU KNOW, SAY, 1,100 OR 1,200 SQUARE FEET. AND SO IF WE HAD THAT, IF SOMEBODY WANTED TO BUILD SOMETHING SMALLER, WE WOULD EITHER HAVE EITHER A SPECIAL USE PERMIT OPTION OR A VARIANCE OPTION. But that may be a way to implement a type of architectural standard that strikes that balance between affordable housing and neighborhood character.

Okay. Anything else? Thank you, Ms. Smith. Thank you. All right. Let's see. Matters from the commission, Mr. Webb. You can pull your people.

As far as I know, we have no matters to cover today.

Thank you, sir. Board, any discussion? Hearing none, we stand adjourned.