Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James Feathersecond moved and seconded to adopt the minutes as issued all those in favor say aye aye opposed passes unanimously and one abstention almost unanimously you abstain you also you can still approve them even if you weren't here if you like them but on the customary is for the city is to for extensions all right items not requiring a public hearing we have none this evening we have no public hearing so we will recess the regular meeting and go into a work session we have two items this evening first is an update and discussion of the city of Fairfax green building policy

Stefanie KupkastaffGood evening planning commissioners thank you for having us here tonight we're here to discuss an important step forward for the City of Fairfax the development of a green building policy that will improve the sustainability and resilience of our city during this presentation we'll give you some background information on the green building policy we'll provide an overview of this extensive research and collaboration that was that was conducted we'll review the key elements of the policy including the and private buildings operating procedures incentives designed to encourage broad participation and then we'll discuss next steps and at the end we'll open it up to a Q&A session the green building policy will establish

green building standards and incentives for both the public and private sectors helping the city to make measurable goal measurable progress towards its goals development of the policy began over a year ago in July 2023 we hired Cadmus group a strategic consulting firm to support the development of the policy the green building policy will play a crucial role in achieving our sustainability goals we've committed to adopt sorry committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent from 2005 levels by 2050 and also to achieve 100 renewable electricity for government operations by 2035 and community-wide by 2050 on the right you'll see a chart that shows our current reduction in greenhouse gas emissions so we're making progress but we

Vicky KiechelAnd the benefits, next slide please, are along these lines. This is the triple bottom line, as it's called, of environment, equity, and economy, bringing ecological well-being, social well-being, human health, and the health of other species, and of course economic vitality. Next, please. We hope for the city that in creating a green building policy, we're emphasizing improving building performance through green building practices, certainly meeting your sustainability goals for carbon, climate mitigation and adaptation strategies are essential there, and then encouraging investment in the building sector in energy efficient buildings, renewable energy and other technologies that are part of what the green building definition

please, Stephanie. Stakeholder engagement has been manifold, and here are some of the key parts of it. Over the last year, you are the planning commission in green. Most recently, we had a community members session in which we invited the public to give their feedback. And we've met with all these folks. Next, please, Stephanie. For incentive options, these were the ones considered for various reasons. So tax incentives at the top to receive a reduction in property taxes for your building if you participate in the voluntary part of the green building policy. We looked at bonus density as an incentive. This is a strategy employed by neighboring Arlington County where you can add extra square footage or extra height.

And you could do that twice. It's through ENERGY STAR for building certification and score. Next, please, Stephanie. We took the tack of taking a kind of straw man development. We used the Moxley. This was recently constructed. We took its characteristics, its square footage, its assessed building value, not building and land, just building. So assuming that the Moxley was constructed under this potential new green building policy, gold and the fairfax city specific requirements that we've been talking about this is the math if they had a 25 tax abatement for one year that would be an avoided uh you know tax intake revenue intake of 369 000 plus thousand dollars if it was 50 tax abatement for one year it's twice that

Stefanie Kupkastaffguys we would like your feedback on the green building policy so we can make improvements to make it sure that it meets the needs of our community and since the Planning Commission is involved with land use decisions and green buildings are a part of that we would like to make sure that your opinions are heard and that we can incorporate any improvements to the plan and policy and

Because this policy also includes public buildings. Yes. So the utility data management system we were talking about, they would be using that system on a monthly basis to assess the energy use of our buildings, but not only energy, but also water as well and as we do energy efficiency projects they to improve our public building sector to meet the green building policy to assess that to ensure we're meeting those standards so it's ongoing work especially with our public buildings to identify those projects implement them track our usage and also report it and the reporting is required by hb 2001 for all new buildings so we will be required to report that on an annual basis so the public side will be regular operating procedures that we would have to do to

let you know we're not just focusing on buildings we're actually going to be developing a climate action plan this year which we'll be looking at all these sectors to identify long-term strategies for how we're going to reduce emissions sector wide so in all these areas and transportation as you can see is about 50% of our emissions as well so in order to meet our our goal we're gonna have to make transformational changes in a variety of areas so this green building policy is our first step in taking actions towards reducing our emissions associated with buildings so this is this policy focused on buildings but other initiatives the city will be taking will be in the other sectors

James Featherokay from my perspective just a couple things dr. Rice did mention the GIS day at university but preceding that on at the City Council meeting on the 12th November the mayor read a proclamation recognizing the 20th as GIS day in the city of Fairfax and I had a fun part in helping put that together to kind of raise awareness about that it's well represented and as the mayor said we really geeked out when Dr. Rice talked a little bit about what it's about it's kind of a new a new thing for people I attended the green policy a green building policy public meeting that occurred in early November as well as the small area plan zoning meeting on the 14th and the accessory dwelling unit public meeting last week as