Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James Featherby voiceGood evening, welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, September 23rd. Our first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me as you are able. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic through which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Our first order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda. The agenda was posted ahead of the meeting. Are there any changes or additions? Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamMr. Chairman, I move the agenda be adopted as presented. Second.

James Featherby voiceIt moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. We do have to admit Mr. Coleman. Do we have a motion? A resolution for that? let me hmm you got one previous i

Naptystaffcan pull one up in just a minute sorry

James Featherby voicei

Naptystaffcan pull one

James Featherby voiceokay uh bear with us mr coleman is going to be participating remotely um but this was kind of a late game time decision so we're not quite all together at this point yes we always have paper copies up here we go our vice chair will Thank you.

Kirsten LockhartMs. Lockhart. Ms. Chair, I move in in accordance with the Planning Commission's adopted policy that is permitted by Code of Virginia Section 2.2-3708.3 to approve the request from Planning Commissioner Anthony Coleman, properly submitted in writing prior to tonight's meeting, for remote participation subject to the requirements outlined in the Planning Commission adopted adopted policy and applicable in all portions of the planning commission meeting of today September 24th or 3rd 2024.

James Featherby voiceSecond. Second moved and seconded. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed passes unanimously welcome officially Mr. Coleman. Next order of business is presentations by the public on any matter not calling for a public hearing. we do have one public hearing this evening which is on the amendments to the city of Fairfax comprehensive plan so there will be an opportunity to speak to that in a little while is there anybody present who would like to speak to the commission at this time? have we had any earlier sign ups? no sign ups anybody in the room would like to address the commission at this time? seeing none we will move on to consideration of the minutes for September 9th 2024 they were issued again

James Featherby voiceto the meeting.

Kirsten LockhartMr. Chair, I move that we adopt the meeting minutes from the September 9th, 2024 regular meeting of the Planning Commission as presented.

James Featherby voiceSecond. Second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Next item of the agenda is items not requiring a public hearing. evening so we move to our public hearing which is public hearing on final recommendation to the City Council for amendments to the City of Fairfax 2035 comprehensive plan based on the five-year read of review conducted in accordance with code of Virginia section 1 5.2 dash 2 2 3 0 staff report from mr. napty

Naptystaffthank you mr. chair and members of the planning Commission this is again the hearing for the comprehensive plan review amendments that have come out of the five-year review and according to a state code a quick review of our schedule we began this back in the summer of 2023 and began with outreach to various city boards and commissions as well as the community through public meetings and brought that information back in our compilation phase that worked on through the early part of this year and refined it over the course of the summer so we are now down here toward the end at our first red dot that is the tonight's public hearing the yellow circle before that was the work session we had with planning Commission on September 9 as the last time we

discussed this item and I was followed with a discussion on the same item with City Council on September 10 so we've made a few revisions based on those two meetings and tonight I will share with you what those revisions are and then following that we will go through and do a very quick summary of the key changes that are being made with these amendments kind of a review of everything we've been discussing over the past year and that way anybody who is joining in for the first time can get a kind of a quick catch-up to where we are and then we'll open up I'll turn it over to you to open the public hearing so first we have two changes that were proposed that are proposed to the text these are both

based on feedback that we got from city council the first is in the introduction as you may recall in the introduction section in the background we added a statement acknowledging past inequalities and the availability of different races and incomes to be able to move here as a lot of in the 1950s and 1960s. City Council asked us to add to that, that the city has recognized this and has begun taking steps to address this. And so we have some new language in two portions of the introduction that state that we are beginning to move forward on this. Second, in the Environment and Sustainability chapter, there is an action in the National Environment Guiding Principle that is shown here in the white

where it says, other comprehensive plan goals. Similar actions have been added to the transportation, the land use, and the economic vitality sections of the comprehensive plan. The purpose of this was to ensure that we are cross-coordinating as reviewing projects or coming up with ideas on what the city needs to do next. However, the city council recognized that environment sustainability is the city council's number two goal, and I wanted to emphasize that this has some priority to it. And so they asked us to add something that turns into the statement at the end of this, highlighted in yellow, that says, and ensure such protections are prioritized in the design and development of public and private projects.

So, again, we have a similar action in several of our guiding principles, but based on council feedback, we wanted to add a little bit more to emphasize the priority, particularly in this guiding principle. One staff change has been made since we last met. We added the proposed or anticipated costs for the transportation projects that are included on the transportation projects map. Staff is recommending that we remove three of these. These are really management and maintenance type projects. We did have these listed in the previous comprehensive plan, but they aren't what is requested by the state code, and they aren't shown on our transportation projects map. So removing them doesn't mean that the city would not be doing them.

It's just that the comprehensive plan is intended to focus really on capital projects as opposed to maintenance projects. And so to keep that consistent, we recommend removing these three from

Matthew Ricethis chart.

NaptystaffAnd then lastly, as you may recall, when we last met, we did not have amendments to our appendices or index at that time. So I'll go through and quickly identify what is proposed to change in those two sections. The first appendix is the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Plan. As we mentioned last time, there are no proposed changes to the actions or guidance from the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Plan because that is done through a separate effort. But there are some updates to some of the data and the figures that are in there. And so these are the three maps that are proposed to be updated. The first is a floodplain map. As the Planning Commission may recall, last year FEMA completed updated analysis of the floodplains in the city and made some revisions.

And so now the new floodplain map reflects those revisions. We have changes to impervious cover that have occurred since the last comprehensive plan was adopted. So those are shown in the new impervious cover map. And then lastly, storage tanks. This includes above ground and underground storage tanks. The actual locations has not changed for storage tanks, but the expiration date for permits has changed. I did want to note that that data comes from the state, which may not include all of our updates. So we have, for example, the WABA that was recently completed is not showing up on here yet, but we expect that will be in future years. the second appendix refers to what has additional information about transportation practices and

policies the only change here is that there's a section that talks about bike share and since we now have a operating bike share system in the city the statements have been changed to reflect that and then lastly the index the index provides a little more information about some of the terms the comprehensive plan so this includes things like our our land use place types or our transportation street types so one thing that is changed that remove the boulevard street type as you might recall from our previous discussion this is primarily merged with the commercial main street type so there's no longer definition for that and then there are several of the the terms in the index that refer to activity centers a lot of these had to be adjusted based on

the changes to the activity centers including the adoption of smaller year plans and other types of references so all of those have been changed to reflect their reference in the comprehensive plan correctly so those are the changes that are proposed since the Planning Commission last saw this two weeks ago now I'll go through and as I mentioned this will be a very quick summary I know planning commission has seen this quite a few times but we do want to give a quick summary of what the primary edits are proposed to be for anyone who might be following along for the first time so first the cover um the shown here the previous cover on the left the proposed cover on the right essentially it's staying the same we've shuffled the colors around and this is

intended to signify that it's essentially the same comprehensive plan but it is more of an update than a simple land use request would be. So this will help us make sure we're looking at the correct comprehensive plan over the next five years. The vision statement, the Planning Commission, we did not discuss this with you at your last meeting, though we did discuss it with you several months ago, and we did bring it up with the city council on the following night two weeks ago. The change to the vision statement, the terminology is proposed to remain the same. we're reordering the sentence so that the statement, oh, sorry, a vibrant 21st century community is the key statement, so that comes first,

and is supported by a strong, sustainable economy, which is what's supporting the vibrant 21st century community comes second. That's reversed from the order that's there now, and again, that was based on earlier discussions with the Planning Commission, and City Council supported this change. so going through the document starting with the land use chapter these are the changes proposed changes to the future land use map we are looking at changes to the american legion site based on a request from the property owner change to old town square to activity center change to the camp washington water tower on williams place change to the mathy property where the city purchased the property that was previously designated as townhouse to now be

space in several locations we are changing the designation of open space public to open space private this is in any location where a resource protection area overlaps with a single-family lot and this is to signify that the city wants that to remain as open space but not necessarily that it be publicly accessible and we've expanded the activity center the Fairfax Circle activity center boundary and the northwest quadrant of Fairfax Circle to match the area that was recommended by the Planning Commission City Council to be within the study area for the small area plan and was ultimately included through the adoption of the small area plan. Another big change regarding land use is the addition of the mixed-use place type. This place type is not mapped

anywhere. It is provided as an opportunity for certain sites to accommodate a mix of uses that are not located in activity centers and based on previous discussions with the Planning Commission this is low limited to only locations with a partial specific consideration in the comprehensive plan there are two such sites that are identified and we have design based criteria for this place type as shown in the chart here and these are the two sites that are recommended to to have the partial specific consideration to support a mixed-use place type again these are not mapped to the mixed-use place type the property owners would have to request that but that could be supported through the comprehensive plan. And just based on our previous discussion, we did not add

the property at 10655 Fairfax Boulevard. This is the Baskin-Ropkins property where the property owner sent a letter requesting they be considered. The Planning Commission at the last meeting supported the concept of allowing residential uses on the second floor of the existing building there, but didn't think it warranted an amendment to the comprehensive plan and believed that such an idea could move forward without such an amendment. In the transportation section, we are proposing changes to the street types. So first here is the street type map with the changes shown here. Some of the main changes, as previously mentioned, are the elimination of the boulevard street type and consolidating that with commercial mains.

Again, this is because the typical cross section for those two street types was similar. The only difference was related to the uses outside of the public right-of-way and having them both on the street map just led to confusion. There are also other changes based on what is recommended to individual smaller area plans, as well as changes to the neighborhood circulator locations to match the locations shown in the bicycle master plan for neighborways. the transportation projects map as previously discussed a lot of the projects on the current transportation projects map are underway and so those have been removed and replaced with these newer projects as we mentioned last time many of these projects are smaller in scale than what we

saw in the previous comprehensive plan and the total estimated cost is about one-third of what we saw in the previous comprehensive plan but we do have an upcoming fairly major transportation planning project that is recommended in the proposed comprehensive plan as a combination pedestrian master plan safeties for all action plan and old town circulation study and we expect some larger scale projects to be recommended through that effort and those could be incorporated through future amendments into the comprehensive plan in the environment chapter the major changes we're looking at are incorporating the some of the actions of the Chesapeake Bay preservation plan directly into the comprehensive plan even though this is an appendix we found that it wasn't

always properly referenced and so we wanted to include some of those key actions these include actions such as conducting watershed management plans identifying and conserving and protecting natural resources and developing a sustainable landscaping policy and establishing an evasives management program. There are recommendations to strengthen the resiliency goal that was existing in the comprehensive plan, but this would add some additional detail to that based on work that the Environmental Sustainability Committee has been doing over the past several years. this includes new actions to limit development in floodplains to to develop projections for future floodplains based on climate change to conduct climate

risk assessments of city infrastructure to reduce urban heat island effect and increase infrastructure resiliency this could be through things such as undergrounding utilities there are new actions for green infrastructure and sustainable landscaping as well as to develop an electric vehicle readiness associated with the EV Readiness Plan and we expect this may change when that plan is completed. And then lastly there are additional actions to support healthy food access and urban

Matthew Riceagriculture.

NaptystaffIn the economic vitality chapter, the first item here is not necessarily a change. The question came up about whether the cities should still strive to increase the commercial tax base given the challenges in the current economy. It was suggested that we do continue to do that based on our current market. We actually had a comprehensive plan implementation meeting this past week, and somebody threw out the idea of saying maintain and increase as opposed to maintain or increase the commercial tax base. We're certainly open to doing that if the planning Commission directs us to do so. There is a new action to monitor codes for new business types. This is based on what we have been experiencing over the past couple of years with kind of

ingenuity of business types that do not necessarily fit within our existing codes. And so the suggestion here is that we be proactive to try to identify what those are and accommodate them with our codes where appropriate so we don't hold up the ability of businesses to locate in the city. Revising actions to market small area plans as opposed to develop them with a focus on Old Town and Northfax as a priority. And then we are removing the goal to pursue a single zip code for the city. And then lastly in the community services chapter there are a lot of changes here but some of the primary ones are to monitor school capacity we do this we analyze school impact form from new development based on development applications but

the suggestion here is that we look more long term at the capacity of our existing schools there are new actions to support affordable child care that came from both the Human Services Committee and the school board new actions or expanded actions for physical and mental health and the parks and recreation guiding principle that were moved from the sustainability initiatives guiding principle recommendations and cultural arts to strengthen visual arts as opposed to just performing arts which was the focus in the previous comprehensive plan new actions for establishing green infrastructure and to establish level of service standards for all of city services so that is again a very quick summary of the changes that are proposed with this comprehensive plan amendment.

In the materials that are posted for this meeting, the full proposed comprehensive plan is provided in attachment one, and a markup of all of the text in the comprehensive plan showing those changes is provided in attachment two. As far as next steps are concerned, if we receive approval from the Planning Commission tonight, we will proceed to a public hearing with the City Council on October 8. And then if the City Council adopts the comprehensive plan, then we will move forward with an implementation plan. We have an implementation plan for the current comprehensive plan, but as we have discussed with the Planning Commission recently, we will look at different ways to set up the structure of that to make our discussions on that more efficient.

Our next review of the implementation plan would be in January 2025, and so we'll try to work that out with the Planning Commission in the months leading up to that. We will identify Planning Commission efforts, things that the Planning Commission would take the lead on that are new in the comprehensive plan that will help us develop our work plan over the next couple of years. And as the comprehensive plan is adopted, we will continue to reference it in project reviews for private development projects as well as city projects, and it will be used as a reference in the capital improvement program. And so that is what we have for today. answer any questions.

James Featherby voiceThank you Mr. Napty. Any comments or questions? I'll remind you Mr. Napty did raise one question about the commercial tax base which came up in a different forum about maintaining or increasing versus maintaining and increasing if you have comments on that particular that would answer that question. My perspective is grammatically that doesn't make sense because if you increase you're not maintaining. If you want to maintain existing and increase That could be something, but then the market's dynamic. I don't know how you can maintain existing. Markets will change and so forth. I'm personally happy with maintain or increase, but looking for comments on that and any other questions or comments you might have.

Mr. Galliard, Mr. Dettman, Ms. Briggs, Mr. Rice.

Matthew RiceYeah, just a quick question on the above-ground storage tank graphic Page 174. Okay, so what is the nature of the green versus yellow categories? I'm having a hard time discerning the legend there. And yeah, and the point symbols over on Pickett for the Tank Farm, collection of four point symbols to represent specific tanks or are they just generally standing in for you know a large tank facility

Naptystaffso first with the symbols the colors any color symbol whether it's a circle or triangle means that is inactive still there's still something stored in the tank and all the hollow ones mean that the tank is inactive it's still there but not being used the green triangles are UST stands for underground storage tank so this would be the type of things you see at gas stations yep and then the ASTs are above-ground storage tanks so regardless above-ground storage I don't know the answer to your question about the tank farm I do believe that the symbols indicate multiple at the same location because it's only there and up off of old picket road where that type of symbol is shown

Matthew Riceokay it's such a large facility and notable enough i know generally cartographically we're not going to pepper the map with additional circles to represent tanks um but uh so i guess um just let me maybe make a comment another way when i moved to the city, I happen to be fortunate enough to move next door to a former fire chief. And the fire chief, Mr. Gary Maceres, had some very difficult episodes at the tank farm with underground releases. This was a really difficult series of events for the city and the county, regulatory in nature and we're light years ahead of where we were in terms of safety and monitoring and a whole bunch of things but I think more generally than focusing on picket and the tank farm a general theme which I'd like to have captured in

some way maybe closer to the beginning of the comp plan perhaps in conjunction with the vision statement or the background for the plan would be some pointers of some sort that we may be able to insert into the comp plan that would Help set context for areas where the city has made a lot of progress So we're going to redo this process every five years. It's part of The way we operate as an independent city. We're required to update the comp plan every five years What I'd like to make sure we have next time this happens, which will be 2029, I'd really hope that we can start at a place without having to reconstruct anything. Let me provide some additional context. Some of the people I respect the most, like Chief Maceres, like my colleagues here on

the planning commission like mr. de la stina involved in multiple boards and commissions hard to think of the city without having some of those people in my mind those people are no longer active on boards and commissions and some of the great things they did in the last 20 years are only communicated vicariously through other folks who say oh yeah uh 10 years ago we did this So I think if there's something that we could do inside the original version of the comp plan, or at least the initial part of it, to maybe provide some context for important things that have happened in the city. in areas of housing. If we go back 60 years in my neighborhood, there was active redlining and really significant problems with equity and justice

and even people being forced out of housing within that south side of the city. And we are way beyond that. We're investing money through housing programs to get people to renovate homes. We no longer have the problems we did 60 years ago helpful given all the other things that you know the past two decades have allowed me to see in the city we've made great progress and I think it would be helpful in thinking about a revision five years in the future if we had some way of pointing to things done in the city that were helpful and I don't know if that puts me in a place of exception amongst my colleagues but it would be nice to have just a little bit more in that initial section. That's it. Thank you. Ms. Lockhart.

Kirsten LockhartIf we can revisit the city council comment that you mentioned in your first introduction update. It says the changes are indicated in yellow, but I'm afraid I didn't see any explicit text there pertaining to what they're asking. Could you explain that a little bit more?

NaptystaffYes. Give me just a minute and I will read it to you. Okay, there are two statements, and this should be highlighted in attachment 2 on page A2-2. and then the first change is there was a sentence that was added when we last talked to you that said homeownership opportunities well it starts with federal housing programs following world war ii catalyzed suburban development in the city attracting veterans and their families and spurred rapid population growth the added sentence was homeownership opportunities were not equally available to all races however as most of the single family homes in the city were developed prior to the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The proposed revision is that the sentence be read as,

while homeownership opportunities were not equally available to all races, as most of the single-family homes in the city were developed prior to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the city has recently begun efforts to help address this inequity. And then further down, there is a statement that discusses the population growth in the city. says the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments forecast population increase of 3,400 people in the city by 2035, as shown in figure one. And then it's proposed to add a statement that says as diverse housing opportunities become available. And then the following sentence is all broken up. I'll just read it as it is proposed now. It says the city strives to maintain its

unique charm while being accessible and inclusive for all and guiding growth and development the metropolitan area

Kirsten Lockhartokay yeah thanks sorry i was still looking at the original introduction and i didn't see the addition um if we're going to say that we've begun efforts should we be explicit about what those efforts are or point to them in the document

Naptystaffuh this might be what mr rice was was getting at um it's we didn't do that because the this background section is very broad city so getting into specific efforts really takes it off track of what this is so it didn't seem to fit but it sounds like what mr. rice is suggesting is that we include some kind of external reference to where more information can be found whether it be here or or somewhere in this introduction section and that would help get to that point

Kirsten Lockhartyou know or even if the language should be tied into the actual comprehensive plan itself rather than explicit actions as we're trying to get to. Maybe the verbiage could be the city is committed to addressing this iniquity, reference, you know, outcomes X, Y, and Z, if we want to make these statements tie into the plan itself.

NaptystaffCould you say that one more time?

Kirsten LockhartSure. Rather than say the city has recently begun efforts and sort of leave it vague, say the city is committed to addressing this iniquity reference action outcome whatever it might be

Matthew Ricethat is more concrete that's i think something i i like the wording yeah

James Featherby voiceIs committed and has already committed it's they've already done things so to say it is committed suggests Maybe nothing's happened yet. So there's maybe some hybrid of the two But I think the idea of a pointer it's kind of a conversation I had with City Council member as well to point to something because You know what's happened over the last five years is now background for the next update So it's okay to not just leave the background static. We can update the background as well and point to a couple of things I think it was a good suggestion from council and

Kirsten Lockhartsome of the goals in here are still holdovers from the previous oh yeah and there's some

James Featherby voicespecific references throughout the plan to some things but mr. Cunningham

Paul Cunninghamthank you in reference to mr. Rice's comments if we can go back to page 174 when when I look at that and we're talking about above-ground storage tanks what is the range of fluids or solutions that are stored when I look at Blenheim Boulevard for instance going down and see five six white triangles and recognize that's an entirely residential street what are indicating in terms of storage?

NaptystaffI don't know what they would have been, but since they're not colored, it means they're no longer active.

Paul CunninghamOkay, and that's an indication they're still there but empty? Correct. Then or to be dealt with in a future time? Yes.

Matthew RiceOkay, thank you.

James Featherby voiceDo I carry with it suggestions there could be ground contamination because they're still there, I presume? we keep track of them?

NaptystaffYes I think it's to know that it's there or to know that we need to take precautions if work is being done at those locations to properly take care of the tank and any potential leakage in the soil.

James Featherby voiceWould those include things like heating oil tanks?

NaptystaffI don't think so because there are a lot more of those than I showed on this map.

James Featherby voiceOthers? Mr. Coleman, anything from you?

Anthony ColemanI was just going to echo, Chairman, that I do agree with your maintain or increase. I don't think you can do both. That was really kind of the one comment I did want to echo out of the presentation.

James Featherby voiceThank you. there's anything else do we want to try to work on some language here to address the concerns about pointing to some of the things that have been made um are we comfortable leaving it up to staff to maybe work with the chair and a couple of the commissioners

Paul Cunninghamwould

James Featherby voicethat be amenable I

Paul Cunninghamwould minimize

Kevin Dentonthe amount of work being produced tonight

Paul Cunninghambefore it has to go to city council for adoption unless you want to delay the process I

James Featherby voicedon't think it will I think it's a minor edit actually honestly okay so if it's okay with the commission a couple of us will work with you I'll certainly volunteer. One or both of you? Okay. Mr. Rice, Ms. Lockhart. Okay.

NaptystaffIf I could just say, and I'm sure you will do this, when you get to the motions, if you could still read into the motion saying subject to further amendments to be determined.

James Featherby voiceCan you capture that, Ms. Lockhart? Thank you. Okay. So this is a public hearing. The matter up for comments from the public. Have there been any sign-ups ahead of time, Madam Clerk? No sign-ups. No sign-ups. Is there anybody in the room who would like to speak to the Commission to address the update to the comprehensive plan? Please come forward, state your name, and it rests for the record. You'll have three minutes, please. Okay.

Evan Remypublic commentHi. My name is

NaptystaffEvan Ramey.

Evan Remypublic commentI'm a GMU student, and I took a look over the proposed comprehensive plan. I think it would be a fantastic thing for the city as is. I love the idea of activity centers and having some more urban density, urban prosperity in the city. Even if it is clustered in the little spots, they're also along the Q bus. I think it's a great idea. I want this to go to the city council as is, as strong as it can be. I wasn't admittedly here for the very beginning, so I will ask. I noticed there's the mixed-use place type earlier on in the document, but I don't actually zoned anywhere on the proposed land use map is that just for clarifying when it is included in an activity center but not explicitly placed I'm not sure about

that but I really like the ideas I want to see as much of this as it can be sent to the council so I'll be back thank you

James Featherby voicethank you mr. napty would you maybe re-describe the mixed-use place type?

NaptystaffYes. Thank you. A little bit of background. The the purpose of the mixed-use place type was to try to be more accommodating to conversion of commercial to mixed-use development outside of the activity centers since such development is not supported anywhere in the city through the comprehensive plan outside of activity centers. However through feedback we receive from the economic development office as well as economic Development Authority and conversations among the Planning Commission, there was a concern about opening this up to broadly. And so the idea is that we would introduce this new mixed-use place type, but not map it yet, just have it prepared to be able to accommodate such uses in the future, and reference

where it could be supported through another section of the comprehensive plan where two specific sites are identified for now. So that's the reason that the mixed-use place type is not mapped at this time. Either of those two property owners could request to be mapped to it, and through future amendments, the city could initiate expansion of that. But it would have to be city-initiated if we want to expand it beyond those two sites.

James Featherby voiceOkay. Thank you. Otherwise, we would like to address the Commission on the comprehensive plan update. Please come forward, state your name and address for the record, please.

Tayjapublic commentHi, my name is Tasia. I'm also a GMU student and I just wanted to give my support of the plan generally. I think it's quite good. One of my largest concerns is climate change because I'm kind of young and so I will be facing the brunt of the consequences of it. And so, you know, I think it's very good that you guys have tied the, you know, the environmental needs of the community with the transportation needs, because I think those two definitely need to go hand in hand. I also think the focus on the Chesapeake Bay is quite good and making sure that, you know, runoff is treated appropriately and making sure that, you know, things that, you know, will affect our water basin are minimized as much as they can be, at least.

So I definitely agree with my other student here that mixed use is quite good, and I like that that is being given a priority and given an option that I think, as far as I know, wasn't really a thing back before this, or at least not as big of a deal. I know that R1 zoning used to be kind of the dominant thing, and luckily it no longer is in this area. and I guess I just have like one question at the end because I don't fully understand how the the process at the the local level works but I'm kind of curious about like if they're like how much collaboration there's going to be between like Fairfax County and other counties if that's something that like you know instead of having this what I think is a quite an amazing plan

just be here if it's something that you can discuss with other people in the in the area have it be more of like a kind of starting off centralized in like the D.C., Arlington area and then expand out as much as we can try and get it and have the benefits be available to people who are just kind of born in like some of the more rural areas. And so, yeah.

James Featherby voiceThank you. Before any further discussion, are there any other comments from the public? Seeing none, we'll close the public hearing. Put this matter back in the hands of the commission. Commissioners, any other questions or comments you'd like to make before we go to a motion? Or Mr. Napty? Okay. As far as collaboration with adjacent jurisdictions, I think that's a good question.

NaptystaffI'd say collaboration happens in a number of ways. Through this process, through the review, Fairfax County staff was aware that this was happening. We didn't coordinate with them necessarily throughout the process. However, we do coordinate with them on individual issues as well as with the region. So depending on what the topic might be, for example, with transportation, we coordinate with not just Fairfax County staff, but also the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, and those types of things. From a sustainability perspective, similar, we coordinate with different entities on regional goals. And a lot of that is what drives our comprehensive plan.

and so I guess to sum it up I would say each topic in here has its own coordination method with not just Ferris County but the region and the state and they all happen in their own ways

James Featherby voicethank you anything else we have a motion Ms. Lockhart Mr.

Kirsten LockhartChair I move that the Planning Commission adopt resolution number PC-24-03 approving amendments to the City of Fairfax Comprehensive Plan and recommending approval and adoption to City Council in the draft dated September 18th 2024 subject to the following subject to modifications discussed this evening regarding incorporation of City Council feedback clarification and confirmation of updated map graphics and related inline text edits as put forth by the chair and designated commissioners

James Featherby voiceyour second second moved and seconded are there any further discussion all those in favor say aye aye

Paul Cunninghamroll call I think you want for you

James Featherby voiceyou want a roll call

Paul Cunninghamup your typically

James Featherby voicenot necessary for your

Paul Cunninghamplanning commission resolution has a roll call listing

James Featherby voiceokay we'll do a roll call vote

Paul Cunninghamso we

James Featherby voiceshall do a roll call vote mr. Coleman

Anthony Colemanaye this time one time

James Featherby voicemiss Briggs mr. Denton

Anthony Colemanmr.

James Featherby voiceCunningham aye

Anthony Colemanmiss

James Featherby voiceLockhart aye mr. Rice aye and I I passes unanimously. Thank you very much. This is the culmination of 15 or 16 months of diligent effort on the part of the Commission, but probably more importantly the staff, Mr. Napty, Ms. Denny, Mr. Hardin and your crew and all the departments, the collaborations with the boards and commissions who've been with us along the way as well, and the City Council. So I just I want to thank you all, congratulate you all for getting to this point. We had a very positive review, I think, with the city council two weeks ago at the public hearing. I was there, not the public hearing, the work session. I was there and spoke along with Mr. Napty, and we had relatively positive feedback and support.

They were encouraged to hear the updates, as we talked about doing, was emphasizing equity throughout the plan in a better way, the additional expansions in the areas of environmental sustainability were well supported including current initiatives that we're working on now such as urban agriculture and so forth all well thought of so just want to thank you all congratulations thank you mr. napty okay we will recess our regular meeting and go into a work session we have one work session this evening the housing and strategic plan work session we'll discuss and we welcome Ms. Abashian and your cadre.

Leslie AbashianstaffReally appreciate you guys allowing us to come tonight my name is Leslie Abashian I'm the director of Human Services for the City of Fairfax don't get to hang out with y'all much so it's nice to be here tonight and I was just Paul said I bet it might be good for me to tell you just quickly what I do I do a lot of cradle-to-grave kind of things under human services and what I mean by that is that I oversee the health and human services for the city of Fairfax a lot of that has been provided through the general services agreement with Fairfax County I also oversee the community response team which is a behavioral health crisis response team that we started a year ago and also the Fairfax Village in the city, which is a program that supports people that are aging in place with volunteers.

Another thing that I do is I think about housing. I do. I think about housing a lot. The last year and a half, the unhoused population and some of the concerns of the community and those of staff, we had a homelessness task force and I was one of the staff members for that based on that I don't know if you haven't seen it we did a report and it had 38 recommendations ten of them are prioritized that we're starting to work on and one of the things we're doing is we're looking at affordable housing and homelessness strategic plan so tonight I have Tom Thomas P Miller at associates are going to talk to you a little bit about the affordable housing piece of it because i think it's really important obviously to have you as a planning commission as a part of these conversations

not just tonight when they're telling you a little bit about what we're trying to do with the strategic plan but as we work on the strategic plan um because it is a part of you know our community and and what we need to move forward and i know you guys do a lot of work around planning and making sure the right things happen in our community for all our residents so i really appreciate it and I'm going to turn you over to the TPMA thank you good

Melanie Thompsonevening my name is Melanie Thompson and I am a senior consultant for TP TM TPMA and I have my colleagues with me this evening to give you an overview of the affordable housing and homelessness strategic plan I have Miguel Garcia and Ashley Sharp TPMA is a national consulting firm that provides both solutions to empower communities delivering transparent insight to complete the work force education and economic development ecosystem we had of working with the city of Fairfax with their housing plan in 2023. This plan will include the staff, myself acting as the project lead. Aaron Finley will act as the project advisor. Miguel Garcia will be the project support. Ashley Sharpley will be the engagement specialist and Erin Brown she will be

the research specialist just to provide an overview of the project in 2023 the information included the rising housing costs and the unhoused population that information will be considered as we move forward with the strategic plan and in 2023 the homeless task force did an amazing job with making recommendations that will be considered also as we move forward the scope of work is very important because this strategic plan will be different it will analyze affordable housing the affordable housing market and the homeless situation we will engage community stakeholders such as city officials advisory boards and commissioners city and county agencies and service providers non-profit organization businesses and community groups

and the unhoused population experience housing insecurities in the vulnerable individuals also an inventory and assessment of current programs and services that include gaps in addition we will present best practices short medium and learn long-term planning and provide a toolkit for success the timeline for this project will include in January 2024 the project was launched we had a launch call August through December of 2024 will be the discovery period. September through December 2024, we will hold stakeholder engagements that will include focus groups. October through December 2024, there will be a program service inventory and assessment from January through March 2025, the best practice, research, and recommendations will occur.

from April to May 2025 there will be an evaluations and revisions and then in June the final report and presentation will be done so at this time we'll have Ashley just give an overview of the meaning and definition of affordable

Ashley Sharphousing so at this point basically what we want to do is just kind of walk through when we talk about affordable housing what we mean and and be specific about it and who we're talking about and kind of what that situation looks like for them so I'm sure most of y'all are very familiar with affordable housing its definitions and how we how we talk about it but if nothing else Let's just consider this a bit of a refresher and a little bit of the context is how we're looking at the affordable housing ecosystem in the city of Fairfax. So first and foremost, one of the things that we come across a lot is the kind of misconception that affordable housing is a nebulous idea that doesn't have a firm definition.

Luckily, it very much does. And it's very straightforward. housing is considered affordable if a household is spending less than 30 percent sometimes up to 30 of their monthly income on housing costs once they exceed that 30 threshold a household is considered cost burdened and their housing is no longer considered affordable so what you're seeing there on the left is a breakdown of what cost structure looks like for the standard family Fairfax and specifically a family with two adults and two children who are in child care. This is an example that's used by the Alice Foundation. For anyone that's not familiar, Alice is an asset-limited, income-constrained, and employed household. They're specifically looking at individuals that come in

income above the poverty level, but below what's considered the kind of baseline needs to attain or to afford a cost of living in a community. According to their 2022 report for specifically the city of Fairfax, while approximately 7% of the city falls below that poverty line, an additional 23% of households are fallen to that Alice category. So that's nearly a quarter up a significant portion of the community. But we're, yeah, so we can go ahead and go forward there. So when we talk about affordable housing, the most kind of consistent baseline to focus on is through HUD affordable housing brackets. It's important to recognize that these are slightly different than if you just plugged into a calculator, the median household income for Fairfax.

But they fall into three or essentially four main categories. So you have that low income limit, and that's at 80% of AMI. The very low income, which is at 50%, and then extremely low income limit. And that can vary because it combines a few different thresholds. But you can see on that chart the bracket, the percentage of area median income, which is essentially the same as median household income, and then what that income looks like in Fairfax. So a lot of times I think that when we talk about affordable housing or low-income housing, it draws to mind a very specific picture or idea of who that's serving. but in Fairfax the HUD income limit for low income is nearly six figures and that's a little bit lower technically than you know that median household

income calculation but again those have additional limits so the question is right who needs affordable housing and the answer is that everyone needs affordable housing. The chart that you're looking at on the left is the percentage of households that are cost burdened broken down by income brackets. So you can see all the way on the left that very, very low income is essentially at 100%. But even at individuals who are in households who are making, not individuals, households that are making $75,000 or more, you still have 13% of households in the city that are spending greater than 30% of their income on housing costs. And that number gets bigger and bigger the lower you get in those brackets.

So we have a few examples. And noted here, these are median salaries or income ranges for individual occupations. So lots of households are not just a single income. but we kind of use this as a benchmark. And you can see kind of where these key, these people we consider essential workers, people we, you know, occupations and people we want to ensure are able to, are, you know, staples for the community and kind of what their median income looks like in the Fairfax area. So, you know, the very top of this list here, you have, you know, in this, like, social workers and police officers. But retail workers and home health care and personal care aides are making less than $40,000 a year. These people are overwhelmingly, in terms of those residents, in a cost burden situation.

So, again, the last thing that I wanted to kind of just share with you all, something that I'm sure you're all very familiar with, And these are just point-in-time counts, looking at the homelessness situation in the county. Again, oftentimes a kind of dilemma and something we're very much looking at how to overcome is that county counts and city counts are not the same thing, obviously. But it's difficult to attain that data on a smaller level. We can see that on the whole, homelessness has increased over the past several years, although the county is reporting that it's stayed relatively stable and potentially decreased just a bit in the last year. But on the left, you're looking at people who fall into that general, like that normal definition of unhoused.

And so those are people in emergency shelters and similar situations. On the right, though, you're seeing the capacity count for supportive housing. Those individuals are not counted in those general point in time counts. people who are in that transition or supportive housing, so they're not considered unhoused at that time. Notably, people that are not counted in either of these include people that are what we call couch surfing or in unstable housing. So they're not going to be counted either on the left or the right, but they are unhoused, the people who are not in stable housing. They're either staying with friends or family or sometimes are in like hotels and motels and things like that they're not calculated in the in

these counts but they are an incredibly important demographic of individuals oftentimes people that are kind of backsliding into consider being unhoused are the ones that are ideally easiest to catch at this point I'm gonna hand it off to Miguel he's gonna talk a little bit more about what affordable housing can look like and the people that you know we're targeting. Thank

Miguel Garciayou Ashley. In a prior life I was assistant director of the planning department in Houston, Texas so I appreciate the great work that you're doing here with the general plan and with a sharp interest I paid a lot of attention to your presentation so congratulations on getting it through this far at this point. Why are we talking to you today the planning commission because planning commissions typically regulate or inform uses, physical uses. We have to remember that as stewards of a community well-being, we have to address both places and people. And so very often we invest in people or we invest in place. Sometimes that's a tradeoff that's not equitable, but it's an important tradeoff from a public policy standpoint

that you all as a commission and you as staff have to always wrestle with day to day. So we tend to talk about people in place, so the two go together. So some of the types of housing, of your housing stock, that are plausible, that we see exist today and might have potential for future inclusions into your general plans, for instance, might be mixed use and mixed income. We heard from some of the students back here about plotting mixed-use developments as part of the next wave of general plans, and that's something we'll be looking at in our study and our plan. Mixed income, this is where you have different incomes in the housing configuration, where you try to develop quality housing stock that supports the needs and opportunities for people at different socioeconomic levels on the same property.

Next slide. We see small homes and cottage communities. This seems to be a very important feature of your original founding fathers and mothers of this community as far as subdivision plots and development plots where you have large properties and small cottages attached to them. That's an inherent opportunity perhaps that we'd be looking at as well to see if that might be part of your affordable housing inventory in the future or to be supported or bolstered. Duplexes and townhomes. This is getting to be higher density. I know densities sometimes could be a mixed word when it comes to planning commissions. Some people like density, some people don't like density. But nonetheless, density is a tool in trying to get more units available for an affordable

housing kind of stock to grow or to respond to the marketplace. Next slide, please. Apartments and accessory dwelling units. Again, there is always going to be a segment of a marketplace in the housing market where apartments and renters are going to be needed to be supported. And so even though there's always been battles between homeowners and renters in most communities that I've worked in most of my life, there are ways to hopefully make them coexist and make them see the value that each of them bring to the table in a local economy. Because sometimes, as you'll see in my final slide, I think next one, There are ladders of opportunities in the housing stock that you have here. And no one is ever necessarily going to be static in that housing ladder.

You can have folks at one end of the ladder that are trying to exit homelessness, always up to homeowners. And in between, you may have different stages where you have renters, would-be townhome leases. And in some cases you might have some apartment cottages or you might have some accessory dwelling units as well. The point here is that you have a ladder, any given housing market laid out here, going from just above and including those that are the unhoused, supportive housing, shelters, SROs, going always up to home ownership. But there's some key ladders along the way, some key kind of, let's say, rungs along that ladder. and along those those rungs you have enablers stabilizers and sliders you're

hopefully trying to create an upper mobility path through your housing stock for those that want to be increasingly mobile you also have stabilizers those that are there already and are happy to be there in that particular rung of the ladder you don't want them to backslide to go down market as you start going down market then you start putting pressure on human services and social our colleague here, that creates more caseloads for them and more burdensome. So I urge you to think about this as a planning commission, as a fellow planner, to say, how does our housing sector perform? How does it perform along a ladder such as this? Those that want to be upperly mobile, can we get ahead of the market?

Can we work with the market to provide that opportunity? Those that are happy, can we help them stay there? In economic conditions like ones we're being now that are a little bit hot market, we don't back downwards and those that do go down market can we quickly identify them and catch them before they fall into a situation which becomes very cost ineffective let's just say to work with them at the end of the day these are people and this is housing and people go together with housing and as long as we remember that you'll look at housing hopefully in a way that says it's not just a zoning map it's not just an inventory of units it's also a place where people can thrive that people can actually be stabilized and a place where people can

be hopefully prevented from falling slipping into homelessness at this point so with that I'll just wrap it up and say thank you for your time and thank you for accommodating us as we depart on this particular planning effort of our own for your affordable housing sector thank you

James Featherby voicethank you Ms. Sebastian, did you want to wrap up any comments yourself? Happy to, would you have any comments or questions from the commission? Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamThank you, yes. By way of questions when we look at it, there are issues in housing that we talk about that get out of just a single family in a house. Affordable dwelling units is one of those kinds of issues where we're talking about providing additional housing. But when we get into this scale and what we're talking about, are there any areas that we should be talking about more when you're talking about this end of the housing spectrum? When you have shelters and SROs down there listed, not everyone who is homeless is equal, so to speak, in either bad luck or mental health and crisis aspects of it. So shelters are things that we don't specifically make provision for in neighborhoods. Are there types of housing or aspects of housing that we should be considering when you're looking at this kind of a program?

And if so, how would we handle that from a comp plan standpoint in looking at handling this portion of the population?

Miguel GarciaI would say that, first of all, you have to be

Anthony Colemanhumane.

Miguel GarciaFirst of all, you have to be humane when you address this because you're talking about lives that are probably being shattered. Most of the homeless literature suggests that by the time someone ends up on the streets or deep into difficulty, they've had a cascade downward of events that have led them to that point. So they're very sensitive. They're very vulnerable. Also, they can be very aggressive of not wanting help as well and wanting their independence because they're trying to maintain some level of pride. I think as far as trying to prepare yourselves as a commission or as local stewards of a policy making process, I think it's important that you try to signal to the marketplace that siting or permitting or reviewing such facilities does not necessarily mean it's going to be an eyesore.

There are very good facilities around the country and in your own state, not too far away, that are actually very well run, very well maintained, and very well operated that don't create this kind of nexus of negativity, so to speak, right? That's the first thing. The second thing I would put to our colleague, you know, from kind of the social worker perspective, these particular individuals need a lot of help from a human development standpoint. right they need a place to live and stay and to to thrive and stabilize themselves but they also need perhaps some workforce training they also need perhaps soft skills they also probably have some mental health challenges they have to deal with so get counseling maybe some medication they also

have to be looked at from a perspective of you know can you reunite with your family or not in many cases. And so there is the whole human dimension to this work that goes on inside of these buildings that perhaps might be cited as part of the housing inventory. And the final piece is that be ready for them, for some of them to actually go up the socioeconomic ladder, which I showed, and be ready for some of them not to take advantage of it or have challenges with that. They might need a little bit more work and more time because none of us are the same. We all bring our own baggage to the housing sector. And so we may react differently at different times to help at this point. So in some, I would say compassion,

number one. Number two, be smart about how you plan your facilities and your units through your comp planning processes. And number three, engage a good coalition of human social development, social service providers to be kind of your backstop to helping these individuals or families stabilize and or once again get back on the path of upper mobility.

Melanie ThompsonAlso, too, one point that we have just reviewed the data here, 30% of the unhoused here in the city of Fairfax, 30% are working. So when you address workforce housing, you're going to also simultaneously address homelessness. And in this study, in this plan, we plan to find out the gaps of your service providers. Because once those gaps are addressed, they will be able to help

Tayjapublic commentpeople

Melanie Thompsonmove to some form of stability based on their want and need. so it's a pleasure to be able to work with the city of Fairfax because this is a very difficult and challenging conversation it's progressive it's based on the pulse of the community was palpable what's going to be received so progress can be made

Kirsten LockhartI just had a quick question about how your methodology addresses the proportion or population of college students in the city I think we're sort of unique compared to the broader county in that there is a there is a substantial sizable population of college students some of whom are I would consider you know in the constrained resource environment for housing but many of whom are able to represent themselves as such while also being very well supported you know anecdotally I had a colleague who was fortunate enough to be able to put their starter home on the market. They were committed to providing an affordable housing option in the city, and all of their applicants were college students right out of the gate.

So just sort of, you know, in a population that could very well be in need of supportive housing, but many who are not. I know Charlottesville is another use case in that regard. Like when they upzoned, they ended up seeing a lot of college students renting the ADUs, et cetera.

Ashley SharpI can take that. Yeah, so that's a great question. actually something we've been discussing earlier in our discussions today. I think there's a couple ways that we're seeing that kind of play out, a couple of ways that can be approached. One of them is exactly what you're saying, where we look at what we refer to as naturally occurring affordable housing. That's the housing that needs the most preservation, that needs to be protected so that individuals are able to maintain that affordable rate. it does seem like a lot of those affordable rental units are being taken up by students. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but one of the ways that we've seen that kind of approached or responded to is by

expanding dedicated student housing so that housing can open up for non-students to access that affordable housing. On the flip side, something we're always interested in is the rate that communities are able to retain recent graduates. And so a lot of times when we're talking about affordable housing, the thing that comes to mind is that their children can't afford to go to college and come back or stay in this case stay in the area because their potential salary is coming coming directly out of college won't allow them to to afford to stay in the area so you know you have definitely both ends of the spectrum there where current students and recent graduates are struggling to you know afford housing

costs but also that when students are taking up a considerable amount of that naturally occurring affordable housing that means that it's not available for Like I said, there's a couple of ways to approach it, but it's definitely something that we're taking into consideration. And ideally, we're looking to involve that demographic in part of our direct outreach and engagement.

Kirsten LockhartThanks. That actually leads me to my follow-up question, which was, in terms of stakeholder outreach, are property owners part of your outreach? So there are several landlords, non-local, that own a large proportion of rental housing, for example, immediately surrounding George Mason. I know they can be hard to reach anecdotally, but is that a target of the study as well?

Ashley SharpIt's certainly a target. In an ideal world, we're able to, you know, directly, you know, have that outreach with as many landlords as possible, with as many property owners as possible. Like you said, they've historically been a challenging group to kind of nail down. But in addition to those property owners, we're really concerned with being able to reach individuals, renters, and people in that current affordable housing, as well as the unhoused population. So we're trying to make sure that we can be as broad as possible. But, you know, part of, you know, what we spoke about earlier is the difference between the housing assessment that, you know, we did a year ago and this is that in addition to those developers and, you know, city staff and elected officials, we want to ensure that we're reaching individuals and families and households that historically haven't had a voice in these kinds of studies and assessments and strategies.

so definitely but we want to ensure first and foremost that those what Melanie versus like the voice of the voiceless are being heard and assessed in the process

James Featherby voiceothers and mr. Coleman anything from you

Anthony Colemannothing for me at the time thank you

James Featherby voicethank you mr. Cunningham thank you

Paul Cunninghamwill this study also get into the dynamics of economic competition and when i say that housing is a competitive marketplace one of the reasons that the city doesn't have affordable housing any longer and years ago it was considered the most affordable place in the county is the economics of the change in the area and when you have housing that falls into that end of the spectrum that would make it affordable. It frequently is economically attractive to other interests who will come in and consolidate, then tear down and put up new housing, which does not address affordability for the most part. But that is part of the marketplace that we end up having to deal with in that. And so how do we address that as a planning standpoint to make it a worthwhile avenue to pursue?

Melanie ThompsonOne of the compelling concepts is to consider your workforce. Companies consider when they consider moving to a municipality. They want to be able to house their entry-level workers to their CEO. So housing does address the economic development part in the ecosystem. One of the things that TPA has done is made it a point to associate housing in the economic development department Because you have to consider that in the growth, in the futuristic financial stability of a municipality. So that's a point that affordable housing, workforce housing will address.

Miguel GarciaCommissioner Cunningham, let me also add, from an economist standpoint, what is that incentive for developers? We work a lot with developers for them to think about not tearing down and starting from scratch, right, and going at high density. And so we had a discussion with the mayor this afternoon about, are there ways of incentivizing some more progressive, more patient developers to think about preservation of units as opposed to demolition and construction of new higher density units for market rate housing? I think we were just coming down from a hotel, and we saw, I think, one of your projects here starting $900,000 townhomes. And that's a reality check for all of us, right? I can imagine you live with that every day, right?

So are there ways to get to some of those developer property owners, even they may be absentee, to say, wait a minute, before you think about this, there might be some incentive packages we may be able to stitch together through grant funds, through tax subsidies, and through other sources of incentives that might make you think about at least securing part of your property for this purpose, not necessarily all of it, because we're not trying to meddle with the market so much. We're just trying to basically slice off a piece of the onion, so to speak, because I'm a believer in that markets do dictate trends, but at the same time we can't just have fully free markets all the time because they don't always work for the poor at this point.

That's where affordable housing has to be strategic and thoughtful and clever of finding those little pressure points with developers and property owners that are seeking highest and best use, highest yield rates of return. Is there a way to kind of like make them think a little differently? And part of our work through this plan is to give you some messaging, some ways of talking about that effectively to your property owners at this point. Hope that answers your question, sir.

Paul Cunninghamanswers my question and I'm looking forward to seeing some of that language and thought because as you have described we have we have dealt with every one of these situations in the city over the last few years and finding constructive ways to move it forward I think is still a challenge and that's something that if we're serious about this that needs to be addressed in moving forward and there are projects that had a lot of the creativity you suggested that have not proceeded there are projects which had affordable housing overtaken by redevelopment there are areas in the city that we're trying to maintain and through trying to maintain and upgrade the aging housing stock what in effect you're doing is making it less affordable although it's more

livable being updated so it's it's a challenging process and I'm looking forward to seeing what what suggestions you can bring out of it thank you

James Featherby voiceothers mr. Denton

Kevin Dentonbeing a very small jurisdiction with a very small population but a relatively high area median income makes it extremely challenging because you don't have things like housing authorities or a ton of money coming from HUD you might not even have staff how many housing staff members that are dedicated to housing do we have at the city

Leslie Abashianstaffwell

Kevin Dentonthat's that's a step in the right direction so if you come up with great ideas and best practices and and and an outlook for the city of how to take steps in the right direction for affordable housing you have to have at least one staff member right to to work on those things or or half of a staff member or one and a half depending on all these things do we currently have any in the city do we currently have any programs that are funded by HUD or Virginia housing money

Leslie Abashianstaffwe're a part of the Fairfax County continuum of care do you know the continue of care is what HUD uses and look in communities for the money to come down like for the permanent support housing like for instance the the lamb centers project that's where the money comes down and right now David Meyer is our is the chair the county um i guess he he left us as a mayor and then they got him he's like the chair of the um the coc right now so there are pro programs and projects that are in the city there are you know the permanent support of housing um the you know some where folks are just getting some support you know through funding so it is it's there but i think one of the things that's really hard sometimes even with um choice housing choice vouchers you know because a there's never

enough and they're always capped and if you always hear that a lot of times they're not even giving new ones out but sometimes those are the lifelines for families to be able to pay for their housing right um but sometimes it's because the market even if you have it in your hand you have the landlord that will take it. I know when we were doing the Homelessness Task Force and we had our community event, I had a female come up to me and she said, you know, I serve in the Army and I came back and I have four children and I needed assistance and I got a, you know, a waiver. And I forgot it was a staggering amount of properties that she'd looked at. that nobody would take it, right? Nobody would take it.

So I think that in some ways, us being in the area we are, there's a lot more resources. The farther you go out, the less resources. And I think Fairfax County, since we work so closely with them, they're fairly progressive on some of the ways they're using even some of the properties they own where they're doing some co-locations and they're building the affordable housing units. have enough and i think that that's one of the things that we're going to be really looking at with the strategic plan is who's not living here because they can't afford the housing i mean is it your son is it your grandmother you know is it your your mother who retired and can't afford to you know to live here so those will be some of the things we're looking at um and we're

also hoping with this house I'm so excited about this house this housing person because being in the role that I've been in I do a lot of little little bit of a lot of stuff right and I really think for something like housing policy and working on housing you need somebody that lives in that you know and lives in that and it can come here and talk to you guys or go uh you know when planning when the when the somebody's coming to the plant uh planners to talk about doing a new project or something like somebody that really lives in that that policy environment not just for us but for the whole region and so i think that that's going to help us a lot but we're a little bit behind the eight ball you know because a lot of the

jurisdiction around jurisdictions around us already have housing staff right and have been working on this so when when this person starts you'll hear me yell at excited yell because i do think that that's a good opportunity for us starting forward but that's not what we have to keep moving and i do appreciate you guys being willing to listen to us tonight and answer you know ask questions and be thoughtful because i think this is if this was an easy situation y'all would have solved it long time ago right right and then you would you know begin noble peace prizes and and all those good things but but we just got to do it together as a community so i do appreciate it i

Kevin Dentonthink the the you're you're correct if the other jurisdictions have staff and have been involved in programs and their low income housing tax credits are coming due and they're um you know refinancing these properties they are but they're also going to be the people that want to see you succeed more than anyone else and they'll want you to hey here's our policy like some things aren't going to be applicable but uh you know they're going to want to help uh whether it's the you know housing northern virginia housing expo or uh the city of falls church would be a great example they have housing programs they have dedicated housing staff they have a very high area median income of a very small population so they get very little funding but they do apply for additional funding

for home and community development block grant money that funds rental assistance programs that they've had for years and like down payment closing cost assistance programs so they have everything from you know something helping someone at 120 percent of the area median income down to they're um you know they're probably least served people that have no income or homeless uh working homeless uh but that would be a great jurisdiction to get a lot of information from and and just mirror some of the things they have just to like you said get up to speed um the i haven't looked probably in a long time but the accessory dwelling unit policy for the city of uh fairfax is very restrictive um age limits uh percentage of your home you know when you get in

bed with the government people that's negative already okay now they have to be 55 or older why do i want to go through this nightmare uh i'm sure some people just rent portions of their homes and aren't meeting this criteria but if if there was sensible regulation in that people would want to join in to take advantage of maybe empty nesters that now have room there's george mason students or or maybe a dedicated uh non-profit that wants to lease a portion of their home for someone to live there uh there's like you said you're trying to find landlords or developers that already own properties to incentivize them so that they're not building, say, maybe higher density or more premium units or whatever the case may be.

I bet if you find most of the rental housing that's already here, it's already above that 80% AMI. So I'm not saying that it's not less, it's not more affordable than brand new market rate unit that has a new pool and lots of amenities. But those will already be people in the higher AMIs that, unless you have rental assistance and unlike down payment closing cost assistance, when you pay 25 grand once, if you have someone that has an affordability gap of $800 a month, that $800 a month usually never goes away.

Miguel GarciaIt

Kevin Dentoncan sometimes get bigger. so you know it's a struggle for such small jurisdiction with such a high AMI but we will have dedicated staff it sounds like so we'll have someone that can implement the things so

Miguel GarciaCommissioner Denton that you bring up a good point that is if the markets this hot stays hot you got to find ways either to like I said before slice off a piece of it and work with those that are willing to work with you to keep it a little cooler or as it gets hot try to Those are the two ways that I've seen with an ascending market. And the other point is, yes, you're getting a staff person for housing, which is great. You have jurisdictions around you that perhaps have left the starting gate ahead of us. But at the same time, part of our plan is to look at the capacity building opportunities for your staff, right, to meet you where they're going to be at. So we hope that through the course of this study and this plan that we identify low-hanging fruit, something we can go after sooner than later.

Still identify those longer-term opportunities, but be realistic to say not just plan, but plan and do, right? That way we see some feedback in the medium term as opposed to saying that was a bunch of great ideas that never came to fruition. And the consultants went back to Indianapolis and never heard from them again. So we don't want to be that team. We want to have some singles and doubles before we hit home runs here, so to speak.

Kevin DentonAnd just one last thing from me. Fairfax County being larger, some of the ways they got larger percentages of new apartment buildings or mixed-use buildings is something that they weren't seeing when they were building normal-height buildings, five-story buildings. When they gave more density around Tyson's Corner and Halstead Square near Metro stations, When they gave that density to developers, increasing the value of potential projects, that's when they were able to get larger quantities of ADUs and affordable housing. So there's that piece of if you have restrictions of five stories and you have a minimum of, say, 6% ADUs in new apartment buildings, sometimes the only way to make the deal pencil out for on the developer side is

to increase the density and then it helps solve that six if you're only getting the minimum so that's something that's always a struggle because a lot of people don't want really tall buildings but one way to get affordable housing is to allow the buildings to be a little more dense so

Miguel Garciathank you for your counseling thank

Kevin Dentonyou

James Featherby voicemr coleman

Anthony Colemanthank you mr chair um really enjoying the presentation so far you guys brought up a good point about waivers and vouchers and in my day job i get asked regularly from my agents waivers vouchers pros cons give it to me straight i definitely think one and if real estate agents are asking those questions and that is supposed to be their knowledge base and they don't know, I think we can make a general assumption that the landlords have absolutely zero clue what the perception of this waiver or voucher is, handout, however the public wants to look at it. So I think there's a lot of potential about the education, about the pros of that and what it ultimately does because there is an affordability issue within the county, within

The second kind of question that I have for you guys, obviously whether or not you guys are planning on looking into that education, is going to be something that I say constantly is words matter. And we've alluded to workforce housing. And affordable housing generally always gets slumped in. That's the big broad swath that everybody just kind of paints the broad brush with. But I've always felt that if you use workforce housing, and you guys even alluded to it in your presentation, teachers, social workers, police officers, firefighters, healthcare professionals, and you lump that with workforce housing, people go, I can really get behind this. You use affordable housing and people go, I'm not sure how I feel.

So is there a delineation that you guys plan on going down between workforce housing and affordable housing? Or kind of how have you seen this play out in your previous work?

Ashley SharpSo to answer your second question first, yes, there is. There's a couple of different ways, right? So there's the colloquial way we approach that situation. And then there's the, like, definitional way. So, definitionally, affordable housing is that big umbrella term that refers to, it just means for any household, for any income, that they're spending less than 30% on housing costs. When we talk about workforce housing, most of the time what we're talking about is that 80% to 120% of area median income. That's where most affordable, I'm sorry, workforce housing programs are targeted. When we're talking about people below that 80% mark, that's when we are using terms like low income, very low income, extremely low income, and of course, those refer to those

different brackets. Colloquially, right, we've found that it's best to just be flexible. There are some communities that are very averse to the idea of, you know, talking about affordable housing. Sometimes we call it attainable housing. refer to the whole thing as workforce housing. But at the end of the day, whatever makes people the most comfortable and the most willing to approach the subject, to engage with it, and to maybe adopt it into their own understanding is the best word to use. That being said, when we're talking in terms of policy, when we're talking in terms of practical steps, it is important to understand and be specific, to be accurate. in the terminology that we're using and exactly what we're referring to so it's it's definitely

a balancing act you know when we when we speak to people at large sometimes they're more comfortable with you know referring to things with different terminology but when we're making these plans and you know writing out these strategies and reports and things like that if we're not accurate and specific sometimes things get lost in translation um but i hope that answers to say that

Miguel Garciato answer the commissioner's question about language on one of our colleagues aaron finley who's not with us but he was referenced in one of our slides his notion of workforce housing is where jobs go to go to sleep at night right and he finds that to be very helpful that those people that are working during the day where do they sleep they have to go somewhere to go to bed they have to go somewhere to live and that's where the the workforce housing simplicity of a description sometimes breaks through some of these nimby isms that we talk about right some of these issues where those people work here they have to go somewhere to go to sleep at night and have a life with their family and so that that tends to get a little bit of traction in some communities that we will see

if it does here or not anyone

James Featherby voiceelse thank you a lot of questions i had or comments have been made you've unpacked a lot for us this evening um i know you're not we're just getting into the discovery phase but um as you dig into things that the planning commission has some influence and oversight on of course eager to be in dialogue with you and maybe some updates and conversations along the way the comprehensive plan the zoning ordinance and so forth there are a couple of comments made one by miss lockhart about some of the houses near the university that have been bought up and used for students references to apartments you'll if you haven't already heard There was a development in the city within the last couple years where

what we call naturally occurring affordable housing apartments are being redeveloped for very high income, relatively high income. A developer comes in, it's hard to compete with them, despite language in our comprehensive plan that calls for preservation of affordable housing. Any insight helps or whatever you can provide us along the way, language we would welcome that as we look at our comp plan and things like that but there's a lot more to learn mr denton referred to the county they do have a lot of resources they also have land we are land constrained so again another challenge for us is probably incentivizing a developer in some way rather than trying to take advantage of what little land the city owns

to do something with but eager to hear the outcome and be in conversation along the way

Miguel Garciawe'll put our thinking caps on thank

James Featherby voiceyou anything else thank you very much looking forward to your work as you go on thank you mr. Badger okay we will reconvene our regular meeting and move to our staff report

Naptystaffthank you mr chair members of the planning commission going back to the september 10 city council meeting aside from their discussion on the comprehensive plan they had a presentation on the 2025 legislative program a couple of things that are being suggested that the city submit that relate to planning and the planning commission one is about local authority for the city to be able to accomplish certain things, one of which is accessory, regulate our own accessory dwelling units. As you might recall during our earlier conversations on potential amendments to zoning orders related to accessory dwelling units, the city council is anxious to have our own policies in place because there is pressure from the state and potential for the state to develop their own

regulations that would require us to follow their suit. not as much of an interest but still related a request to require that our advertising for our public hearings be on our website as opposed to in a newspaper so for example tonight's public hearing on the conference of plan had to be advertised in a newspaper I guess the thought is that not as many people refer to those anymore and then during that conversation and as what came up partially during the comprehensive plan discussion. It was suggested that we add a measure about the concern about digital price fixing. This was one of the things that the city council asked us to include some kind of language on the comprehensive plan. As you might recall, we added language about cooperating with other entities, outside entities,

to help resolve issues that are making affordable housing more complicated and so not addressing specifically but how we approach those types of issues so but that is something that now through the legislative program city is taking an effort towards taking the next step on that for tomorrow's city council meeting they will have a public hearing on the urban agriculture zoning text amendments that the planning commission had a public hearing on on september 9. they'll also have a work session on the proposed redevelopment of courthouse plaza As a reminder, that application is only requesting a special use permit and special exceptions, no rezoning, and so the Planning Commission is not subject to review by the Planning Commission.

And then, as I mentioned, going ahead to October 8th is when we are planning on having our public hearing with them on the comprehensive plan review. upcoming planning commission meetings our next meeting is not until october 14. this is indigenous people's day it is not a city holiday but we want to throw it out there to see if the planning commission wanted to cancel that meeting if you have any other plans or anything like that otherwise we will be here we have one potential item request from the proposed project to develop townhomes at the Tant Mantua Professional Center to have a work session. That is not concrete yet. They could potentially move that to another date. So I'll stop there and see if anybody has any thoughts about

or anybody prefers not to meet on October 14th. Okay.

James Featherby voiceOthers? You okay with meeting on a regular date? Mr. Coleman?

Anthony ColemanShould be fine with me.

James Featherby voiceOkay. If we have a topic, we can meet.

Tayjapublic commentOkay.

NaptystaffThen later in the month, you should be receiving a presentation regarding green building policy. This is a project that's been underway for a while, but this is a quick reminder that the way that the city can incentivize things like green building under state code is that we have to have a question. have some kind of offset for it. We have to incentivize property owners as opposed to require it. The initial thought was that, or the initial recommendation from the consultant is that we rely on tax abatements. Through early conversations with the city council, that was not seen as an appropriate way to go. So now they're looking at potential bonus density or other types of incentives we can receive through the zoning ordinance, which makes it more of a planning

commission issue. So they're coming to you now to share where they are with that project. You will be receiving an introduction to the Capital Improvement Program from finance staff, likely on October 28th, not confirmed yet. Also there's been a request for a work session on the new application that has been received on 4131 Chambers Road, that's a Davies property. And then also we are in the process of scheduling a stakeholder interview with you on the urban forest management plan. This will likely just be a work session, but the consultant for that project is considering a stakeholder interview, but interviewing a lot of other stakeholders, other boards of commissions, as well as members of the community and that kind of thing.

So that will be coming up likely before the end of October. November 11, Veterans Day is a city holiday that must be canceled or rescheduled. We have no agendas at this time, but we often have CIP discussions around that time. We don't have enough information, I think, to tell you if we would actually have agenda items. So, just wanted to throw that out there and we can bring it up at one of our next meetings to see if we want to reschedule that or not. Lastly, I want to mention that on the urban forest management plan, the second public meeting will be held on October 17 at the Sherwood Center. And that's all we have for our staff report tonight.

James Featherby voiceQuestions for staff? All right. Commission comments? Anything, Mr. Briggs? Mr. Denton?

Kevin DentonJust thanks

Paul Cunninghamfor all the work on the comp plan. I

Kevin Dentonknow it takes forever and you're near the finish line, so that's great.

James Featherby voiceMr. Cunningham. No comment. Mr. Bloggart.

Kirsten LockhartJust an observation, I've seen an uptick in property owners holding outreach sessions with the public about major development proposals. So if that has been at the urging of planning staff, I want to thank you all for having them do that. That's been a definite change, I would say, in the last few months. So hopefully those are successful in getting a good turnout and are resulting in better applications.

Matthew RiceMr. Rice.

NaptystaffI attended the Parks and Recreation

Matthew RiceAdvisory Board meeting, and they've provided some updates to us on a number of projects that are in various phases. Their meeting minutes were online and probably a better survey of those projects available through the meeting minutes. um tice park has a kind of financial gap between the development plans and the things we've discussed repeatedly and the um prices coming in from contractors and so it's maybe not a surprise and typically the city builds in kind of escalators and things to accommodate that but there's still a gap and so they'll have to make some decisions on either scaling back or finding additional funding for that. It really is the only park in that corner of the city, and it's under relatively high demand for baseball. And some of the very attractive

infrastructure in the park, ADA compliant play lot, walking track around the exterior, additions to the kind of lighting that would be kind of friendly to the neighborhood. A lot of Those features will now be looked at relatively closely. We had a little bit longer discussion about Old Town Hall. As you're probably aware, that will close for renovation. And there's been a perpetual discussion about paint and color. And we've seen some additional renderings with PRAB for those. And I suppose at some point we may see something. but the closing will be approximately year long from February 25 to a year past that. Retirements and some transitions in staff on PREB, and generally they're pushing forward with their plans and various projects throughout the city.

They're always appreciative to hear what the Planning Commission is doing. always a little curious and questions given and answered during that segment i do always invite them to attend our meetings and participate and there's always enthusiasm on the spot but i think when it's monday at 6 45 p.m they find other things to do it was great to see two mason students here one of the two has been to several meetings including a proud meeting and that's great the more we can do to get Mason students that are impacted by what we do to show up and give comments the better off we're going to be as a city and that's all I have thanks

James Featherby voicespeaking of old town all colors that also comes before the the bar have there been any meetings you've been able to attend recently anything new

Kevin Dentonspecial session and they haven't had any other meeting

James Featherby voiceokay mr. Coleman

Anthony ColemanI appreciate the remote participation so thank you guys

James Featherby voicethank you for being willing to come in remotely the only thing for me mr. napty mentioned the work session of our evening on Courthouse Plaza it does not come before the Planning Commission to do the nature of the application special exceptions that didn't prevent me from sending comments to the mayor council to remind them of some of our objectives what they've been related to particularly as small area plan around this and the particular concern i expressed was around the i will call minuscule amount of commercial space on the ground floor if any place can support more commercial it should be the old town activity center with all the residences there so i provided those comments from my perspective so you're aware otherwise i have nothing else so at this point we are

No, early next month, sorry. Mid-month. We're adjourned. Thank you.