Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James FeatherGood evening. Welcome to the regular meeting and work session of the City of Fairfax Planning Commission for Monday, April 13th, 2026. Our first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join me as you're able.

Paul CunninghamPledge allegiance to the

James Featherflag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for

Nick Tricarichiall.

James FeatherThank you. Our next order of business is consideration for remote participation by our new planning commissioner, Nick Tricarchi, pursuant to Code of Virginia Section 2.2 3708.3. Motion.

Kirsten LockhartMr. Chair, I move that 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 Nick Tricarchi properly submitted in writing prior to tonight's meeting for remote participation subject to the requirements outlined in the Planning Commission adopted policy and applicable in all or portions of the Planning Commission regular meeting of April 13, 2026.

Matthew RiceSecond.

James FeatherMoved and seconded to admit Mr. Tricarchi. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Welcome, Mr. Tricarchi. Sorry you couldn't make your first meeting in person. We'll look forward to having you here live for the next one.

Nick TricarichiYeah, me too.

James FeatherThe next order of business is discussion and adoption of the agenda. meeting which was issued ahead of time as required.

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

Tassos McCarthySecond.

James FeatherMoved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstained. Passes unanimously. Next order of business is presentations by the public on any matter not calling for a public hearing. I see no one here to make a presentation. Give somebody five seconds to come in the door. Seeing none, we will move on to agenda item four. There are three parts to this consideration of our previous meeting minutes. Ms. Lockhart.

Kirsten LockhartMr. Chair, I move that we adopt the meeting minutes for the February 9th, meeting with the Economic Development Authority as presented.

James FeatherMoved and seconded to adopt the minutes, approve the minutes for our joint meeting with the EDA. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? Passes unanimously.

Paul CunninghamI'm sorry.

James FeatherMr. Tricotcha, you're free to abstain if you wish. You weren't present, but that doesn't mean you can't vote to approve them either. There's nothing that precludes you

Nick TricarichiSure. I'll abstain just because I wasn't there.

James FeatherOkay. Passes 5-0-1.

Kirsten LockhartNext up, Mr. Chair, I move that we adopt the meeting minutes from the February 9, 2026 regular meeting as presented.

James FeatherSecond. And those minutes were slightly updated from the first issuance of those to reflect the approval or the recommendation for approval that we set on to City Council. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstained.

Nick TricarichiAbstained.

James FeatherOkay. Passes 5-0 to 1.

Kirsten LockhartAnd lastly, I move that we adopt the meeting minutes from the March 9, 2026 regular meeting.

Matthew RiceSecond.

James FeatherMove and second to adopt the minutes from our March 9th meeting. Discussion, comments? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Abstained. 5-0-1. Thank you. Next order of business is items not requiring a public hearing. This is a motion to amend Chapter 86 related to subdivisions of the Code of the City of Fairfax, Virginia. We'll receive a staff report and recommendation from Mr. Foreman. Thank you.

Eric FormanstaffOkay, so this is a motion. This item is a motion to initiate made amendments to the subdivision ordinance. It's not very often that we amend the subdivision ordinance. The last time was about four years ago, and that time was in response to updated floodplain standards. What this initiation pertains to is a relatively minor update. We call it really a housekeeping update. It's in response to state legislation from 2025 that changed the timeframe for subdivision flat review. Now, similar to the zoning ordinance, there are some sections in the subdivision ordinance where state code is either repeated or is summarized, and this is one of those sections. So these subdivision plat review standards appear in the section of the subdivision ordinance

dealing with final plat approvals. And an amendment here would really ensure that our ordinance stays consistent with state code with these specific items. subdivision ordinance this can be done similarly to updating the zoning ordinance and one way to do that is for the planning commission to initiate an amendment and that's the purpose of this procedure today and we do have a sample motion here in your packets and and with that i'd be glad to answer any questions if there are any

James Featherany questions for mr foreman for the benefit of our newest planning commissioner the planning commission does take action to initiate changes to both the zoning ordinance and this ordinance for the benefit of city council since it involves land use and development in the city so it falls to us to formally introduce this to council. We will have our own public hearing in a few weeks on this and then pass it on to city council. Okay.

Kirsten LockhartMr. Chair, I move that the City of Fairfax Planning Commission initiate these amendments to Chapter 86 of the Code of the City of Fairfax, Virginia as part of the regular review and maintenance of the subdivision ordinance, articles and sections contained therein, including but not limited to administration. And I further move that a public hearing be scheduled for consideration of these amendments.

James FeatherIt's been moved and seconded to initiate these changes. Any further discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Passes unanimously. Thank you. Next order of business is items requiring a public hearing. hearing this evening so we'll recess our regular meeting and go into our work session we have two items this evening the first is a discussion on potential zoning text amendments regarding detached accessory dwelling units we welcome mr foreman back well

Eric Formanstaffthank you very much so tonight we are talking about potential zoning text amendments that would permit detached accessory dwelling units or ADUs in Fairfax City. We've held a few meetings on the topic of ADUs with various amounts of detail. Last year, we held work sessions with Planning Commission and with City Council where we discussed accessory dwelling units in general. And also where we focused on the topic of detached accessory dwelling units. At the conclusion of a City Council work session in the fall, Council asks staff to draft potential amendments to modify our existing ADU standards in order to permit detached units in the city. And that's what we're focusing on tonight, focusing specifically on potential amendment details for detached accessory dwelling units.

so that we're discussing that draft tonight you have the full amendment draft in your packets now accessory dwelling units didn't just pop up out of last year's work sessions the comprehensive plan references adus as a potential way to as it says to support a wide range of of housing types. And it recommends, like it says here, to research expanding ADUs, and this last phrase is important, while ensuring that they do not negatively impact the surrounding neighborhood. And again, that's an action from the comprehensive plan. And when reviewing options at those earlier work sessions, Both Planning Commission and City Council recognize the importance of guardrails to reduce these negative impacts to surrounding properties,

and particularly regarding height, regarding setbacks, and regarding parking. And like I mentioned, Council asked staff to bring back a draft ordinance with details that would put this all in motion. Now, as you may know, accessory dwelling units are currently allowed in the city under certain circumstances. Now, we won't go through them all in detail tonight, but it's helpful to look at some of the more significant standards, and this one at the top here is the big one. Accessory dwelling units currently need to be attached or within the home itself, so attached rather than detached, rather than standalone units. So there are also size standards, and in addition to that, there's some operational standards for accessory dwelling units in the zoning ordinance,

and standards that apply to all properties or to all accessory structures, so things like lot coverage and building coverage. And there's also a parking standard that you see down here, and we'll talk about that in a little bit more detail later tonight. and before we get into some of the details on things like height or measurements I think it's helpful just to have some quick visual examples of detached ad use and I know we've been over this before but I think it's helpful just to keep in mind what these kinds of structures can actually look like so most accessory dwelling units are a few hundred square feet now beyond be a great deal of variety so just looking at these examples here we see that some of them

clearly were built as ADUs some were converted or added onto some other kind of structure but the question here at the top what's needed to allow detached ADUs the answer to that is a zoning text amendment and that amendment would modify our existing ADU standards the existing and like I said, allow attached ADUs, we would modify that to allow detached ADUs as well. And the main characteristics of an amendment would really be these physical standards, standards for the structures themselves, so things like setbacks, height, square footage, things that you see here, but also some operational standards like parking and some others, some behind-the-scenes issues, like how to account for existing structures, and that was a big one that we talked about at our last work session.

But these physical standards are really the key to making this work, to reducing those kinds of negative externalities that the comprehensive plan mentioned and that were mentioned at the work sessions. So the challenge from a policy perspective is really that this is a balancing act. So trying to juggle flexibility for property owners and And juggle that with the neighborhood impact that that flexibility could bring. So with that out of the way, we can go over these physical standards and how the draft ordinance here addresses each one. We'll start with setbacks. Setbacks is probably the most detailed of all of these. So this probably has five or six slides here and And I'll pause for questions after setbacks and then move on to the rest of them.

But a setback, so from a zoning standpoint, a setback is the minimum distance that a type of structure is allowed to be from a lot line. And that dovetails here with what's called required yards in the zoning ordinance. And required yards are part of a lot that are required to be open and unobstructed. Now, of course, there are exceptions. There's lots of exceptions in the zoning ordinance, and there's a whole section of the ordinance called permitted encroachments, and that details what can actually be in these required yards. So some big things are allowed, so like accessory structures, sheds, garages, and so on. Lots of little things, so decks, mailboxes, walkways, and on and on. But the important thing is that a housing unit or a dwelling itself cannot encroach into the required yards.

So the reason that that is the case, the reason these smaller things can encroach into these required yards but a dwelling, a house, cannot is that the zoning ordinance considers a dwelling to be a more intensive use. So it's more intensive than a shed or a mailbox or a garage and so on. It's occupied regularly. live there, so that required yard is established as really one of the main elements that defines a neighborhood. So in our single family zoning districts, the required rear yard is 25 feet, so 25 feet from the rear property line, rear lot line. The required side yard varies a little bit by zoning districts. It's 10, 12, 15 feet. Now, these setbacks are what's called the general provisions, and this is in the zoning ordinance.

But there are actually separate provisions for affordable dwelling units. And you see this here on the right. So this section was added as part of the Affordable Dwelling Unit Ordinance back in 2020. And as you can see here, these affordable dwelling provisions provide for slightly reduced setbacks. And the rationale here is to provide some extra flexibility, but still without overly impacting the surrounding neighborhood. And the reason I'm showing this here is that for this accessory dwelling unit draft, what staff recommends here is using setbacks that correspond to these affordable dwelling unit provisions. And really for the same reason. It's that balancing. It's a way to balance that flexibility to give some preference to accessory dwelling units,

but still recognizing the guardrails that are in place to prevent those negative externalities on neighbors' properties. So like it shows here, those setbacks are 20 feet in the rear, so that's 20 feet as opposed to 25 feet. and about a 20% reduction, so two or three feet from the side lot lines. So it helps, I think, to show this visually. So we've got a number of slides that will make this a little bit easier to understand. This shows a sample lot. This is in the RH district, and this shows the same lot with three different examples of side and rear yard setbacks. On the left is the setback for the dwelling itself. So if this house's owners, if the house's owners were to build an addition or if the house is torn down and a new house is built here,

the house itself could not extend into the green shaded area. Those are the required yards. That's the setback for a dwelling. Now in the middle here, this middle image, this shows the side and rear setbacks for accessory structures so these are things like garages and other bigger structures like that now like it says down here at the bottom these are less intense uses than a dwelling there's no one living in a garage there's no one living in a gazebo so these structures are permitted to be closer to the lot lines than the dwelling itself so in this case there's a minimum of five feet from the rear and from the side lot lines that's the minimum setback for accessory structures this one in the middle here now on the right this is the

draft recommendation for detached accessory dwelling units for adus and again this mirrors the existing standard in the ordinance for affordable dwelling unit setbacks for single And again, this recognizes that accessory dwelling units have similar levels of intensity as other dwellings. It's a dwelling. Somebody lives there. Somebody occupies it during the night and so on. But it provides more flexibility by permitting these structures to be closer to the lot line than the main house. So trying to balance that, trying to balance a little bit extra flexibility with, again, preserving the neighborhood character. So we can see what that means when it comes to ADU placements. We can see it in these kind of charts again.

This is the same sample house. So in this hypothetical scenario, so based on the draft setbacks that we had just talked about, an accessory dwelling unit could go anywhere within this unshaded area. So it could go here or here or here or a bunch of other locations as long as it's within this unshaded area, that setback zone that's in green here. This little box here, this indicates a 450 square foot ADU. That's not an uncommon size for an accessory dwelling unit. And like it says at the bottom here, the intent here, again, is balance. It's to balance that balance between property owner flexibility and neighborhood impact. At the fall work session, City Council had mentioned that detached accessory dwelling units,

that these units can really be thought of as offering an alternative of sorts to building very large houses. And the advantage along this line of thinking is that that alternative might fit better, might fit more appropriately into neighborhoods than building very large houses. So these draft standards really view ADUs as that kind of alternative. And importantly, this standard here, and we'll show this in a few slides, this avoids maximizing both the house footprint and having detached ADUs on the same lot. And we'll get to a representation of that in just a little bit. But now, setbacks are really a significant issue regarding the effect of ADUs on neighboring properties. So we've got a few different examples from different zoning districts, from different lot configurations, and so on,

really just so the commission can get a better handle on what this means. So we've got one slide for each zoning district. We can start with RH. So RH is residential high. So the example on the left is in Daniels Run Woods, and this is the house that we looked at in the previous slide. The example on the right shows a house at Westmore. So both are standard size houses and standard size lots for their neighborhoods. And what this shows is how an ADU could fit into these lots with the setbacks that are shown in the draft ordinance. So this is RH and we can come back to these. RM, residential medium zoning district tends to be a bit more spacious. The lot on the left for instance, we can see that there's ample room for

accessory dwelling unit and again this is 450 square foot ADU. But, and this is an important point, really no matter how much setbacks or other permissions are sliced fitting an accessory structure of any kind on some lots can be a challenge country Club Hills is a neighborhood where this is sometimes the case due to unusual lot configurations and that's a neighborhood that has a lot of unusual lot configurations so the example on the right here this shows a house with a very shallow rear yard and and this is something that's common in in Country Club Hills and in some other And in this particular case, I mean, really, there may be room to squeeze that accessory structure into the side yard.

But really, the point here is that there are just some lots where either due to dimensions or due to topography or due to other considerations that a detached ADU won't necessarily be the best option. So we don't want to present this as being something that every lot in the city can achieve. I believe there are certainly some lots that for a whole number of reasons would not be able to. And that would be the case no matter what kind of regulations you come

Kirsten Lockhartup

Eric Formanstaffwith. But that's the purpose of showing this here. Now we do have a residential low or RL slide. RL is the lowest density residential district. And as you'd imagine, there's typically plentiful room on these lots. Now, the side setbacks in RL are slightly wider than in other districts, but in this context it really doesn't make too much of a difference. I mean, there's typically ample room

Paul Nabtistaffhere.

Eric FormanstaffSo just one more slide on setbacks. A few slides ago I mentioned that these draft standards really view the ADUs or detached detached ADUs as an alternative to something like a residential addition or to a large footprint new house. And it's really drafted to avoid cases of property owners maximizing, like I said, both the house size and a detached ADU on the same lot. So this is an example of that. These are two houses that are side by side on identical lots. The house on the left is a newer house, and it doesn't completely maximize the buildable area here, but it comes somewhat close. The house on the right overall has a smaller footprint. Due to that, it has more open area on the lot. So these draft standards would enable that house on the right to build a detached accessory dwelling unit,

or for that matter, it could build an addition as well. But for the house on the left, these standards basically say that the square footage that could have been used for a detached dwelling, for a detached accessory dwelling, really has already been used up by the house itself. So this is another case kind of like with unusual lot configurations that sometimes the house's footprint uses up so much room that it wouldn't necessarily be beneficial to create a large house like this and a detached ADU as well. So that is setbacks. It might be a good time to stop and see if the Commission has any questions on this before we move on to the other items, since, like I said, this is probably the most detailed single item that we have.

So I'd be happy to answer any setback questions.

James FeatherAny questions, comments? Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamNo, I'll let Dr. Wright. Thank you, sir. I find the example you have in front of us momentarily exceptionally instructive. When we look at ADUs and setbacks, there are two things that come to mind immediately with the picture you have in front of you. One, the house on the right does not appear to have a curb cut. So from my sense there, there's no requirement for that house to have anything but on-street parking, which means that if you're going to have an ADU and have no parking requirement, there's also no requirement to park any of those vehicles on the lot. So with ADUs in this kind of a configuration, the burden for parking can be removed from the property owner totally. Is that an acceptable means of approaching this?

Eric FormanstaffWell, it's interesting that you brought this up. I searched long and hard for two lots that represented this footprint, that were right next to each other and were exactly the same. The downside is that one of them doesn't have a driveway, and of course, you all notice that. Keep that in mind for our parking discussion because what the draft parking standard says is that a house with a detached accessory dwelling unit would need to meet the minimum requirements for parking. Which would be two off street parking spaces. So if this was real life, we would have that detached ADU and we would also have a driveway that could fit two cars.

Paul CunninghamSo we're going to require also in addition to that that we bring it up to standard and meet the

Eric Formanstaffparking. Bring it up to standard and we'll get into the parking discussion a little bit later on, but not adding an additional standard to houses with ADUs, but saying with an ADU that it would need to be brought up to minimum standards.

Paul CunninghamOkay, my next question I guess comes in looking at some of the other standards that we have put in place in the last couple of years. you're talking about an ADU being 450 square feet. In this case, if we were going to have to add a parking standard and you're going to put in a driveway along with an ADU, I presume that the Chesapeake Bay regulation that says if you're going to disturb more than 2,500 square feet of property, you have to now go out and get professional engineering requirements to certify that what you're doing will not impact the Chesapeake Bay. So a house like this that looks like it's a fairly level lot, probably far removed from the Chesapeake Bay or anything else, would drive additional requirements then in the construction of this kind of lot

so that you have to meet the extra engineering standards and all the things along that line?

Eric FormanstaffWe are not proposing to change either those standards or to change lot and building coverage standards as well. So this proposal has all of that remaining as is. And so the same requirements would come into play for a detached ADU in this case, as would come into play for a residential addition or new construction. So it would not change one way or another under these draft standards.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Your house on the left is a good example. It is a large house with a large footprint. Part of our requirement is to not exceed 50% of the main house's footprint in building your ADU. If I move that to one of your earlier slides and say that I have a large house on a fairly large lot, a large house on a fairly large lot. Is there any reason that I could not build two 450 square foot ADUs in my backyard if they met all the setback requirements and did not exceed the size of the main house? Or perhaps three, depending on the size of a very large house. if I were putting 1,200 square feet of ADU, I only need, what, 2,400, 2,500 square feet of house for footprint in order to do something like that.

Is there any limitation when we're looking at setback in the rest of this that if I can't fit it in within the boundaries, I couldn't build multiple units?

Eric FormanstaffThere's one ADU permitted per lot.

Paul CunninghamOkay.

Eric Formanstaffand we

James Featherhave not gotten to the lot and building coverage part of his discussion yet so okay

Paul Cunninghamso for setback uh my other question when you're looking at the side of many of the houses and many of the lots uh does running a driveway beside a house to the property line have any setback issues That would not change. So that as long as I've got eight feet, nine feet for clearance of a vehicle, I can run it right to the property line in order to move past the houses to get to backyard or other structure. Correct. And I guess my other for setback is that corner lots, I presume are considered to have have two front yards, which is why there are some on a later map you're going to show us where you have significant size lots, but apparently they would not qualify for having an accessory dwelling unit constructed on the.

Eric FormanstaffCorrect, so corner lots as it is now, like you said, technically have two front lots or really a side street lot, you know, as per the zoning ordinance. these draft standards say that an accessory dwelling unit cannot be built between the house and the street. So even if the setback exceeds minimum requirements, that there would not be a detached accessory dwelling unit permitted in that area between the house and the street, whether it's the front of the house or the side of the house. All

Paul Cunninghamright. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Matthew RiceThank you. Others? Mr. Rice. So it's awfully hard to pull my mind away from the debacle in Greenbrier neighborhood that we discussed last time this came up. I think that setback distances are appropriate. I would like to at least consider the side setback distances to be set back further from the face of the property the front of the property facing the front yard so they continue all the way to the front face of the house and I'd prefer for instance if we bisected the front and back of the house and set that as the most possible forward encroaching limit of an ADU to allow a little bit of differentiation of the front of the structure and then to prevent the sort to problems visually that existed with the Greenbrier problem.

Eric FormanstaffSo what you're recommending, and I'm going to see if this works here, this example on the right, so this has an ADU built in a side yard. And we're not really sure if this specific ADU could fit in this specific side yard, but let's pretend that it does. So what you're saying is that we shouldn't have, there we go. we should not have ADUs permitted in side yards like that, that they should be permitted only in rear yards. Is that?

Matthew RiceNo, it's not quite all the way to the rear yard.

Eric FormanstaffOkay.

Matthew RiceOn the right side, I would, there's a tree canopy. I wouldn't want the ADU to have its forward edge, even with the front of the house, which does have kind of multiple different front faces. Right. But to have it present, you know, at the curb as, you know, equivalent in terms of architectural weight to the front of the existing structure for me is problematic.

Eric FormanstaffSo you mean the height?

Matthew RiceIt's not the mass, but it's more I would prefer in the case of the right one, according to the rules the front face of that adu could come all the way up to the front of the existing house

Eric Formanstaffright that we we could yes have an adu and that looks absolutely terrible

Matthew Ricewell you you know you know what i'm trying to do i do i i do and so i would right there yeah i would prefer to see it um this placement that you've shown here is acceptable to my aesthetic sense And the left side's fine. It's just when the ADUs start to present from the curb like the original structure itself in terms of how they're seen and how they present in front, to me that just seems problematic. But at the same time, I admit my only argument here is aesthetics and bad examples that I've seen. Right. It's not a rule-based kind of logical conclusion. It's just a hunch that that doesn't seem right. I

Eric Formanstaffknow exactly what you're saying, and this is something that we had debated on staff. And where we run into challenges with that is if we say that a detached accessory dwelling unit has to be built towards the rear half of the side yard, let's say. but the same house could build an actual attached addition on that front portion. So it runs into kind of a roadblock. And I absolutely understand what you're saying, and if it's the commission's desire to have these more towards the back, we can come up with wording to do just that. But just wanted to make that known that that's kind of a stumbling block with these. Yeah,

Matthew Riceand it's undoubtedly the conversation's been had about this issue and the things. build an extension to a home I think having an ADU instead of the extension itself is different I think likely the age differences and the aesthetic difference between the ADU and its materials and presentation will be different than the home right my hunch would be to take the rear facing wall of the home the front facing while the home bisect those and then the ADU can't that halfway point right that would be my that's just an idea again um not something that i would um carry very far in a discussion with someone with better ideas

Eric Formanstaffyeah and and certainly if it's the commission's desire to go along with that we can figure out a way i mean we'll transmit that to city council but we can figure out a way to get that in into the ordinance

James Featherothers mr mccarthy you mentioned uh

Tassos McCarthyhomeowner flexibility this being a tool several times um i'm just as we think about this conceptually for myself is that like purely the intent of this or is there some hope to have like a meaningful increase in housing supply and i'm not saying one's right or wrong i'm just trying to understand the intent.

Eric FormanstaffTrying to make it easier for homeowners to create a meaningful increase in housing supply, I'd say would be the balance.

Tassos McCarthyOkay, so with that, and I don't know if we've gotten this far. I'd looked earlier, but it's on setbacks. You have that map that says 85% of the lots theoretically could support it, but we've already talked so much about how important the setbacks are and it's a major piece in it have we done any homework to then like further look into how many of that 85 percent are actually feasible

Eric Formanstaffwe we have so so the the map i don't know if all of the commissioners have looked forward to the the map that's at the end of this presentation i'll i'll jump ahead to that since it uh since it relates to setbacks yep this map this is something the planning commission had had asked for at the last So this analyzes how many properties would be eligible for a detached ADU under these standards. Analyze, this was obviously done in GIS, analyzes it on footprint, building coverage, and lot coverage. Now, that comes up, like Mr. McCarthy said, 85% of the homes here would be eligible based on those. It does not include setbacks. Now, the reason for that is in doing the GIS analysis, we can build a buffer around the lot lines.

But we can't, our GIS doesn't have the ability to distinguish what's a rear lot line versus a side lot line. So the homework that we did to get to the next level was we took a sample of houses from each of the zoning districts and from all around the city and we manually checked it out based on the recommended setbacks of 20 feet on the rear lot line. What we found is that over 90% of the houses that we checked and we checked over 100 of them, were still able to build a detached ADU based on those setbacks. Now, like you said, that was homework. That's different than doing a GIS analysis on 5,000 housing units. It does show that the vast majority would still be able to construct an ADU, theoretically.

I mean, really the big, that bottom issue there of topography and preferred placement is important because that's something that we really can't factor into. Topography, floodplain, preferred placement being if a homeowner really wants to build something on one side of the property versus the other and can't because of some other consideration if there's a tree in the way that they don't want to get rid of. I mean that kind of thing. But just on the setbacks, the setbacks I'd say would be above 90% of this already 85%.

Tassos McCarthyOkay. And then lastly, like with that, have we looked at what other municipalities have done and what like the take rate has been on that? And I guess That is, you know, balancing the neighborhood compatibility. Certainly don't want to be putting abominations into people's neighborhood, but with, like, actual deliverability. Because it would be, to me, a shame if you went through all this and then it really didn't, nothing came of it.

Eric FormanstaffRight. We have looked at other jurisdictions. jurisdictions, so you all have an Excel sheet of, I think, five other jurisdictions in the Washington area that compares them. The two jurisdictions around here that have had detached ADUs for the longest are Arlington and Alexandria, and I have looked at all of the permitted detached units from those jurisdictions. Really, the thing that jumped out at me with those the most is the proportion of new housing units that are built with accessory dwelling units. And that gets to that issue of whether we want to maximize, like I said, maximize that new house footprint plus an ADU or not. So that is a real issue and that's one of the reasons for the 20-foot rear setback.

James FeatherGot it. Others are Mr. Tukarchi anything from you?

Nick TricarichiYes, I do have a few questions. So you talked about balance being the key to all of this. Yeah, setbacks. They have more room someplace in ADU. What's the balance at the other end of the spectrum? Like what have we heard from neighbors concerns that you've taken into

Eric FormanstaffWe had a community meeting last year in 2025, I believe. Unfortunately, not very well attended. We've had some positive and some negative feedback. We've had this on the Engage page for a while. So there's definitely been a mix of feedback. Some people are eager to get these built on their own properties. We've had other people saying that they absolutely do not like it at all. So it is something that really begs for that kind of balance. And again, that kind of balance is what we're trying to achieve to satisfy both of these, to not make it onerous to those neighborhood properties, but still to make it available to homeowners and really not that much. you know a little bit more generous than a residential edition but really not blowing

the books wide open for it

Nick Tricarichiokay and on that point you know i think we've talked a couple times about how these are viewed as a an alternative to building a bigger house but it seems like we're imposing different setback requirements depending on which path someone chooses meaning i forget which slide it was but the person with the big house you know they're precluded from they'd be precluded from building into that 20 foot setback if they were to go that route right they'd be subject to 25 feet if i remember correctly however if they were to build a smaller primary and you know, a bigger ADU, they could, you know, use more of that, that setback and get closer to their neighbor's line. I guess, how did we think about that, that we have these two sets of alternatives,

but we're going to impose different setbacks for each one?

Eric FormanstaffYeah, and that's really the question for a planning commission right now, is, you know, whether that variable setback, you know, would really be in the best interest. You know, the reason we're recommending that is there seems Commission and among city council for going forward with these detached accessory dwelling units and for really promoting them as an alternative. But really recognizing that those guardrails are important. So we are giving a little bit more flexibility to this, but not extremely so. So another factor is that the height regulations do stipulate that accessory dwelling units cannot be, in these draft regulations, cannot be as tall as houses typically are. So it might be a little bit closer to the lot line, but

there would not be the possibility of a full two story or a three story detached accessory dwelling unit. where there would be the possibility of a two or three-story addition to a house. So that's another justification for having a slightly different setback for accessory dwelling units as opposed to the main house.

Kirsten LockhartI don't want to step over my fellow commissioner, but I have sort of a follow-up question. Most of my questions are going to fall under the enforcement category, but this is relevant, I think, in terms of that affordable dwelling unit provision that you mentioned, which is the source for these variable setbacks. Does that only apply to new construction designated affordable, or would it apply to organically incurring current affordable housing? No, that

Eric Formanstaffwould be new construction.

Kirsten LockhartOkay. Yeah. So somebody putting an addition on a home in green acres would still be subject to the 25 versus the 20?

Eric FormanstaffCorrect. Okay.

Kirsten LockhartBut not an ADO?

Eric FormanstaffYes. Potentially. Correct. And I should note that we're pegging this in the draft standard to those affordable dwelling unit regulations, but it's in different location. So it winds up being the same, but it's not in the same section of the code as that. So they can.

Kirsten LockhartBecause I can't think of any single family designated affordable housing that's been built since that. No, we haven't had any. Yeah. There's no real life example of this yet.

James FeatherAnything else, Mr. Tricardi?

Nick TricarichiYeah, just one last question. And the height point that you made was very helpful. So I appreciate that. what have we heard is the primary like use case for these ADUs? Are people truly looking at it as an alternative to building a larger primary or is this being used for like rentals?

Eric FormanstaffI don't know what

Nick Tricarichithe restrictions are on rentals like

Eric Formanstafflong

Nick Tricarichi-term, short-term, but

Eric Formanstaffnot short-term rentals because short-term rentals are not permitted in the city. But as far as who the and short-term rentals being like airbnbs for instance but as far as who it is who is actually living in detached accessory dwelling units whether the people who are interested in it in the city or elsewhere in the region we just don't know you know you hear a lot about having family members live in there you know whether an elderly relative or an elderly person's adult children or whatever out these units as additional income for the homeowner. We have no way of knowing where the chips fall as far as what ends up being the most popular tenancy.

James FeatherBut we're not restricting who can rent or occupy one of these. In fact, we made some changes not long ago to open up who can occupy an accessory dwelling unit.

Eric FormanstaffYeah, the only restriction that's still in place is that the property has to be owner occupied. so either the house or the accessory unit would be occupied by the homeowner

James Featheranything else mr. rice sort of hit on one of the things I was concerned about about how far forward on the lot one of these should sit so you captured that as a concern I certainly get that they can't be permitted they won't be permitted in the front yard, but how far from the front plane of the house, we probably want to come up with some standard or number for that. It kind of falls in the setback area. Maybe it's related to the side yard setback number or something. I don't know. But you've got the concern that we've expressed, and I echo that concern.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Anything

James Featherelse on setbacks? We can move on then to other dimensional standards.

Eric FormanstaffOkay. Moving on to height. Height is really the other very significant physical standard. So there was a good amount of discussion on height standards at the work sessions, both the Planning Commission and City Council. That Greenbrier example, of course, comes up. The main issue really being the implication for neighboring properties, and specifically regarding privacy, regarding looming. There seemed to be a sensitivity at the work sessions, both from the Commission and from City Council, regarding tall structures. Again, some examples from the city, some examples from nearby. Without any specific standards in the ADU ordinance, detached accessory dwelling units could be as tall as the zoning district allows.

So without anything saying otherwise, it could be three stories or 35 feet, which is a maximum height could be. That seems excessive. of really one or two stories. You see the image here. You can see how that seems to be a much different looking structure being one story or two stories. So these draft standards set a limit of 20 feet or like it says down here, the height of the main house. So if the main house is measured at less than 20 feet, then the height of a detached accessory dwelling unit would be capped of whatever that height of the main house is. If the main house is over 20 feet, then the accessory dwelling unit could be 20 feet. 20 feet is really about one and a half stories. So the intent here, again, it's more balanced.

I know I feel like I'm overusing that term, but to ensure that the detached ADUs don't overwhelm the lot that they're on, don't overwhelm neighboring properties, not negatively impacting the neighbor's properties, but that one and a half stories still provides flexibility regarding the placement, regarding layout, regarding design of the structure. So again, that recommendation on height is, like it says up here, the detached accessory dwelling unit shall not exceed 20 feet or the height of the principal dwelling, whichever is less. I guess I only have one slide on height or two slides on height, but since that's really tied to setbacks, we can pause and see if we have any.

James FeatherThe 20 feet is to the midpoint of how we define measuring height.

Eric FormanstaffThat's correct. I had that baffling slide in the last work session on how height is measured. It's not to

James Featherthe peak of the

Eric Formanstaffroof. It's not to the peak of the house. It's from the midpoint of the sloped roof, from the midpoint of the ground, and the main house would be measured the same way.

James FeatherAnything from planning commissioners? Mr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamMany or some houses in this city set on relatively level lots, so that this would seem to have reasonable in its application. On the other hand, many houses in the city do not sit on level lots. How is slope taken into account in this kind of assessment? In other words, if I've got a significantly sloped lot and my house sits at the midpoint with the front yard being lower than the main part of the house, but the backyard is significantly higher and you say it can't be more than 20 feet or the height of the house well if the height of the house is 35 you know it's 20 feet and i'm starting 15 feet above that 20 feet for the height of my house do i get 20 feet or do i get five feet When I look at that, is this trying to keep visibility down and not have the one structure

be higher than the other? If the slope goes in the opposite direction and my house is 20 feet or essentially two stories, but in effect the level in the backyard is much lower so that if I went to 25 feet or more i still would be up not up to the midpoint of the house does it make a sense the need to to push the size of that down as opposed to letting it come up how does slope impact so

Eric Formanstaffso the two structures so the main house and the detached accessory dwelling unit would be measured independently so we would get one measurement for the main house and if the main house is on a slope it would be measured that way and the detached ADU would be measured independently as well so slope or topography would be taken into consideration with each of them not necessarily in relation to each other so if you have a vastly sloped lot let's say where the rear yard is much higher than the front yard you still could have a detached accessory dwelling unit that appears, as a bird flies, would appear above the peak of the other house just because of topography. This just tries to minimize that impact and any other kind of impact as much as possible.

Paul CunninghamOkay, and by the same token then, if the backyard is in a hole, so to speak, you're not going to give extra height even though it impacts nothing. Correct.

Eric FormanstaffAnd again, you know, you can view it as if it was an addition to the main house itself, you would have the same topographical kind of considerations, but the addition could actually be three stories or 35 feet. So, again, this is trying to minimize the visual impact of a detached ADU.

James FeatherSo the separate reference point for each of the structures?

Eric FormanstaffYes.

James FeatherBasically. Yes. Mr. McCarthy.

Tassos McCarthyso thinking about minimizing impact right is there risk that a height limit of 20 feet could like ultimately push people towards less attractive designs that don't fit flat roofs compressed small windows trying to stack a unit on top of a garage have we thought about that at all is i feel like that's something that would probably end up with board of zoning appeals all

Paul NabtistaffYou know what I mean?

Tassos McCarthyJust trying to stack it in there type thing?

Eric FormanstaffUndoubtedly, there might be some kind of instance somewhere where you get, let's say, a flat roof trying to maximize height. With 20 feet, I'd be surprised if it's something that you would see very much because that leaves enough flexibility for a one-story unit in virtually any kind of topography. In most topographies would leave enough room for a one-and-a-half-story unit, so giving pretty good flexibility with that 20 feet. If it was less than 20 feet, you know, if it was 12 or 14 feet, the story of, you know, a one-story unit, I think I'd be a lot more concerned about that.

James FeatherI think the example of a unit, a second story, as it were, on a garage is a good one to use as a thought exercise, though.

Eric FormanstaffRight. So the second story on a garage, a full second story on a garage, would not be under that 20-feet

Paul Nabtistafflimit.

Eric FormanstaffSo like you said, something like that would have to go to the board of, you know, would not be allowed if it was something that was an existing garage with a living, with an occupiable space overhead. That would go to the BZA if somebody wanted to convert that into a living quarter.

James FeatherMr. Rice?

Matthew RiceI may have missed it, and I apologize if I did. can a structure in this context also include something subterranean

Eric Formanstaffit it could the that that that's where the uh square footage limitation would come in into play so it's just like a an attached accessory dwelling unit could be in a basement so a detached adu could also include a basement but it couldn't be so big that it would get within 35 percent of the house's gross square gross floor area

Matthew Ricethat could still be pretty big

Eric Formanstaffyeah it could still be big

Matthew Riceyeah right 20 foot high plus a basement yes um I somehow think from the perspective of the visual presentation and the, you know, wanting to minimize impact that maybe the rules for what's underground should be a little bit more lenient.

Eric FormanstaffSo were you thinking of no subterranean living spaces for detached accessory dwelling units?

Matthew Ricei think as far as i'm concerned it would be okay to have living space subterranean um and obviously the the boundaries in terms of the you know eight foot setback and 20 foot setback would still apply But anyway, I guess with a size limit generally, specifying an above-ground size limit I think would be helpful, and then a below-ground size limit that might be more permissive. But anyway, I'm not hearing any quick agreement, so again, maybe not important.

Eric FormanstaffThere are a few other things that kind of go into the measurements of trying to keep accessory dwelling units accessory to the main house, which means much smaller than the main house. So there's the footprint regulation. There's the square footage standard, where the square footage can't exceed 35% of the house's square footage, and there's a maximum of two bedrooms. so all of those things combined try to keep that as accessory as as possible

James Featherand subterranean space would have to meet whatever required ingress egress requirements as well for right for safety so yeah

Paul Cunninghamnot

James Feathergoing to have a not going to be permitted to have a somebody living in a totally underground cave anyway so so as my students may wish to

Matthew RiceMr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamOn that thread of construction that I know of, and this is not an ADU, but a senior citizen planning for grandparents has constructed a bedroom that is capable of sleeping all 10 of his grandchildren when they visit. Is that one bedroom or is that? In other words, it's a small dormitory. How does that fit with what Mr. Rice was just talking about? When we limit them to two bedrooms, we've limited the number until they build two dorm rooms and can sleep 20

James Featherpeople

Paul Cunninghamthere. Which one? Then we cross other lines, yes. And is this enforceable is one of the major issues. if you're going to do something and it's not enforceable

Kirsten Lockhartthat's my whole litany of questions for the end

Eric Formanstaffnot not everything is enforceable i mean there would always be the the case of some somebody planning a you know a big bedroom and then later splitting it up themselves without getting building permits and whatnot and that that is certainly a possibility you know our Our staff does look at things that seem unusual like that, but I think there's always the chance of some oddball scenario happening just like that.

James FeatherMr. Tricarchi, anything from you on this subject?

Nick TricarichiYeah, maybe just two quick questions. One, I'll show my naivete, but is a 20-foot structure tall enough to put a window on the second story?

Eric FormanstaffYes.

Nick TricarichiAnd if so, are we going to talk about guardrails on where those windows can be, you know, to protect privacy for neighbors?

Eric FormanstaffRight. So 20 feet would really be, and I'm going to forward on, this is the baffling slide that I had mentioned that we had talked about at the last session. So that 20 feet is measured to, like you see here on this image to the right, it's measured from in between the eaves to the ridge, the midpoint between the eaves and the ridge of a sloped roof. And then it's measured at the midpoint of the ground on sloping ground. This shows a 12-foot height. 12 feet essentially is one story when it comes to this kind of measuring. 20 feet is really one and a half stories. So 20 feet would be enough to have windows on the second floor, but not a full second story. so you wouldn't have windows on all four sides, for instance,

like you would on a two-story colonial house. Okay. Does that make sense? It winds up being very complicated.

Nick TricarichiYeah, I'm not an architect, clearly, but are there going to be restrictions on where those windows can be placed on these ADUs? Like if you can peer into your neighbor's backyard or the back of their house, restrict a window on that side of the ADU?

Eric FormanstaffRight now, there is not in these draft standards. Now, that is something, if you look at a lot of accessory dwelling unit ordinances, that is something that I've seen in ordinances, that you might not be able to have a window facing a property or facing a property if it's a certain distance away from the property line and whatnot. What we feel with this is the recommended setbacks are far enough away That we wouldn't really get into fenestration regulation, regulating windows. If it was much closer, if it was five feet or if it was two feet, I think that would be much more of a concern. With eight feet on the side and 20 feet on the back, might not be a concern. But if the planning commission thinks that it is,

we can certainly wind up forwarding that recommendation along.

James FeatherI think of where I live in 11 Oaks, new subdivision, very small lot lines. There are windows on all sides of the house, some looking toward neighbor's windows. We have window coverings, and

Paul Cunninghamthey

James Featherhave window coverings. So even though we know where their bathroom is, we're not peering into it, and we have our own window covering, so we're not peering into our bedroom. So we have structures like this today with small lot lines, relative close proximity with windows. You had a couple of questions, Mr. Tukarchi.

Nick TricarichiYeah, my other one was just on the 20-foot. You said you looked at other jurisdictions who have done this. Did they also impose that same height limit, or what did you find there?

Eric FormanstaffThere are some other jurisdictions that have a 20-foot height limit. I'm looking at this. Alexandria has the same as that we are recommending, 20 feet or the height of the main house. Falls Church, now Falls Church just passed their detached ADU ordinance last year, has 20 feet or one and a half stories. Montgomery County, Maryland has 20 feet in their typical single family zones. It tends to vary between zoning ordinances, zoning districts, I'm sorry. Herndon has less, has 15 feet as a maximum. Arlington County has more, has 25 or 1 1⁄2 stories, whichever is less. So 20 feet is kind of within the range of others. Got it. Thank you.

Nick TricarichiYeah.

James FeatherI was thinking about the question on windows. How do dormers come into play?

Eric FormanstaffAs far as measuring the height, a dormer wouldn't affect the height. It's another way

James Featherto get some height in the room and some more window, but it doesn't factor in or further limit the height or something. Okay, anything else on height? Okay. Next dimensional standard is square footage.

Eric FormanstaffOkay, we're moving on through the dimensional standards. So there are some other physical standards and these are currently in place and I think I'd mentioned this before. The draft here recommends keeping these standards. So one of them is the standard for square footage. So when it comes to the current standards for all accessory structures, we do have a limitation on footprint. So an accessory structure, so like a garage, right now must be under 50% of the main house footprint. So the top image here kind of illustrates that in a simple way. So that is footprint, and we're recommending that that stay the same as it is now. This is an existing standard for accessory structures. Now, size standards are common in ADU ordinances because, again,

this is what helps prevent accessory structures from overwhelming the lot or overwhelming the main house. So we do have standards regarding the size of ADUs right now. And keep in mind that we do permit attached accessory dwelling units. So that's what these standards refer to. So that's the 35% that I had mentioned a little bit earlier that an ADU must say under 35% of the house's square footage. And again, that's to maintain that accessory nature of accessory dwellings. Same thing can be applied to detached accessory dwelling units. So the example on the right, and I do realize that in this example that the ADU seems a little bit taller than the house. But again, this is like that early image without a driveway.

We'll just kind of look past that. But this is a large lot, setback standpoint a house with a large footprint so that floor areas area standard can ensure that an accessory dwelling unit in this kind of scenario again keeps to being accessory in size so like it says at the bottom here these standards really are intended to work together can account for different size lots different size houses multiple stories in this case one and a half story 80 use and and so on

Kirsten Lockhartso I assume by gross floor area that would include multiple stories right

Eric Formanstaffour gross floor area would include multiple stories of the house

Kirsten Lockhartso thinking of the green buyer debacle right the three-story four-story edition

Eric Formanstaffyeah uh so the the zoning ordinance also has standards on lot and building coverage and we had talked about these kind of briefly so this is both for accessory structures and for lots in general so So like it says here, for accessory structures, the total lot coverage for those structures, and this is a current standard, must be under 30% of the combined area of the required rear and side yards. So this really begs a visual representation. So what it means in real life, if you see the image here, you see the required side and rear yards, and those are in green. this is the area where the house can can be or cannot be so let's say you have an ADU in the yard let's also say that you have a shed in the yard the combined

coverage the combined footprint of these structures can't exceed 30% of the combined area of that green overlay so that that is that that's what that means and a visual representation. The reason for this is to help maintain, again, that neighborhood character of having backyards that are largely open and unobstructed, like it says in the zoning ordinance. There are also general building coverage and lot coverage standards. You see these down here on the chart in the bottom. So these apply to all properties, not just with accessory dwelling units, not just with accessory structures. tell these again are all interrelated each addresses a specific issue this draft ordinance proposes keeping all of these standards intact so we can move on

to parking so parking I mean this tends to be a visible issue can

Tassos McCarthyI ask you one question yeah yeah

Eric FormanstaffI'm

Tassos McCarthyjust thinking about like the smaller houses right and of it and I understand you know you could create maybe some odd layouts in people's yards but by tying the ADU sizing to like the primary dwelling are we like unintentionally limiting the tool for like basically making it for larger homes to be more productive whereas like I'm thinking over like Fairchester Woods right you have a 1950s hundred and something square foot house you want your grandkids or whoever to live there they're gonna be it's gonna be punitive to them because of the size of their house I don't know it should there be I don't know it's a tough question but I'm just thinking about like

Eric Formanstaffright now I just punitive

Tassos McCarthyto people that might actually really

Eric Formanstaffneed the ADU so so really the smallest footprint houses that we have in the city are about 900 square feet. So the original houses in Fairview for instance, original houses in Westmore, those houses that have not had additions. So this house in the upper, the middle image here is roughly that size. Half of 900 square feet would be 450 square feet and that's really the size of a typical accessory dwelling unit. so a house of that size of under a thousand square feet wouldn't be able to have let's say a 600 square foot accessory dwelling unit but but still would be able to have one you know a more common smaller accessory dwelling unit which is not unheard of as far as ADU sizes but

Kirsten Lockhartit could potentially have a 600 square foot addition right on the same lot so there's if you're considering construction

Tassos McCarthyfor

Kirsten Lockhartit for a truly detached unit but not necessary for the attached

Paul Cunninghamokay

Tassos McCarthyif you're telling me about there there's almost nothing under 900 that quells it more but if someone has 800 or 750 okay

Eric FormanstaffI'm I'm not aware there may be one or two houses in the city that are 700 square feet I'm not not sure that any any of them still exist but okay I'll get I'll get you that information but

Kirsten Lockhartif they do they're likely sitting on significantly large lots though right right yeah

James Featheranything from you mr. carchy oh okay thank you okay parking

Eric Formanstaffokay parking so it parking tends to be a visible issue in communities with accessory dwelling units neighbors tend to be concerned about without excess parking loads from ADUs. And if you recall from our work session, our zoning ordinance does have a current standard for accessory dwelling unit parking, and you see it here. It says that an ADU, the foreign ADU, no more than two vehicles used by those residents are allowed. The way this is written, I mean, this is challenging to enforce, and that's being generous. I mean, this is unenforceable, really. write a parking standard. In our work sessions, the planning commission and city council were interested in exploring a different approach to ADU parking.

It's really, you know, it's one of these issues like threading a needle shouldn't be like our current standards but also shouldn't be too restrictive. So the standard proposed in this draft takes a different approach to what we have now. So like it says here, and we touched on this a little bit earlier, a lot with an accessory dwelling unit must meet at a minimum the parking ratio requirements that are in section 4.2, and that's the parking section. That means for houses, for detached houses, for single family houses, the minimum requirement is two off street parking spaces. What this says is that a lot with an ADU must have at least two off-street parking spaces. The reason for this is not to trigger a parking shortage, you know, with a new accessory dwelling unit in most cases,

but still to guard against parking shortfalls where they could be problematic. So you can think of that image we showed earlier where we have a house that does not have any off-street parking. of house were to have an accessory dwelling unit then that house would have to be brought up to to standards so um not and and i i should mention that this is not requiring dedicated adu spaces this is just parking spaces in general so one more detailed issue here and we had talked about this at our last work session about how to potentially deal with the conversion of existing structures to accessory dwelling units and particularly existing structures that do not meet whatever standards are in place for adus

themselves so that means that they would be considered non-conforming so for instance you know garages that were built very close to lot lines structures that are too tall and and so on and you see some examples here these examples are not from the city but you know we can imagine they are there's numerous structures like this that fit this description in Fairfax really and anywhere I mean this is not something unusual and and and really in in fact there's so many different could be considered a non-conforming structure, that this kind of issue really isn't ideally met through rigid standards of saying that this, this, and this can be built, while this, this, and this can't. So under these draft amendments, what would happen if a property owner were to wish to

convert an existing non-conforming structure to an ADU is that that would go through the Board of Zoning Appeals process. The BZA is really set up just to handle this kind of situation. So special exceptions that could be handled on a case by case basis. And it's really the case by case adjudication of this that we would really need because there are so many variables. And this is really the default set up with our zoning ordinance for special exceptions to go to the Board of Zoning Appeals. and staff feels that it's really the most equitable avenue for judging non-conforming structures with this issue. Again, just that great amount of variety, different things that could be considered non-conforming.

So, yes, we can go back to...

James FeatherAny questions on parking or the existing structures? Mr. Tkachy, anything from you?

Nick TricarichiI guess what constitutes an off-street parking space? Is it just room in a driveway to park a car?

Eric FormanstaffRight. Room on the driveway of a certain size, of a certain square footage, I don't have that offhand, but car space. So it does not have to have its own dedicated access to the street. Some ADU ordinances do have that to say that, you know, there has to be at least two spaces that have direct access to a street. In our ordinance, it doesn't say that, so it's just space for two cars.

Nick TricarichiIs there anything in the code around maximum cars? Like, could you get into a situation where you've got six cars side-by-side, back-to-back in a driveway, and, like, how have we thought about that?

Eric FormanstaffNo, there's no maximum

Nick Tricarichifor driving.

Eric FormanstaffThere's no maximum for driveway size. There is a maximum for impervious area. So somebody couldn't pave their entire yard, for instance. But there is no maximum driveway size.

Kirsten LockhartFor those neighborhoods that have city-permitted parking on the streets, basically to prevent George Mason parking, is there a limit to how many spaces or permits can be assigned to any one home?

Eric FormanstaffI don't know. I'll look into that for you.

Matthew RiceI know the treasurer's office has dealt with that issue repeatedly, and the person has to show evidence of occupancy in order to get a permit. And it is a difficult issue, but, yeah, treasurer would be able to sort that out very quickly for you. Okay.

James FeatherOne question for you on existing structures and a BZA process. Yes. Is there a public notice, public hearing aspect to any of these kind of things? So neighbors who may be affected by somebody wanting to build up on their garage that may not be conforming would have to be notified.

Eric FormanstaffYes, there is. I'm not sure how broad the public notice is. We do have Mr.

James FeatherHardin in the room, too. He may address that, but

Eric Formanstaffhe's not taking the exception to that. But there is a public notification from BZA.

Paul CunninghamMr. Connagam. Thank you. With regard to parking, and it also ties into your next slide, comes, I guess, or the slide after this, the map, comes the practicality of parking in various of our neighborhoods. I can't think of any standard over the time I've been on the Planning Commission that hasn't been put in place and had a number of grandfathered instances. that were put in place and seemed perfectly reasonable at the time that we now feel have outlived their usefulness, but can't be changed because this is the way it was when they were put in place. One of these is the size of streets when we start talking about parking. And when I look at all the green we have on the map, the one example I'm going to use is the east side of University Drive on Stratford Avenue.

I believe it's non-standard street. It's 26 feet wide instead of the standard width. In theory, since I have lived here, parking should only have been allowed on one side of the street. That has never been enforced. And so you now have a street that is fairly long, has a number of houses that is, in effect, a one-way Bob and Weave street for a car at a time, even though traffic goes in both directions, to move out of the way so that traffic can actually pass because it has been street parked for as long as I can remember, and that's since moving here. When we look at most of the houses on that street, most of them were built in the 50s and 60s. Most of them have a small ribbon that is essentially one card wide, and they can park two cars nose to tail on their property.

Most of them have slightly bigger yards in the backyard that would allow for an accessory dwelling unit to be put in the backyard, and they back up to commercial space for all of the ones on the north side of the street. When we look and talk about the practicality of all of those houses or the bulk of those houses being eligible to put in an ADU, I don't see where the practicality of that fits. I mean, we're writing a very nice rule, but the implementation of that rule, when people have it as the right to do it is going to create additional chaos in a neighborhood that with extra vehicles would not do well. And is that the intent of writing our rules when we look at all of the streets that are

viable here? When I think of, I believe it's Sideburn that goes down past Green Acres, and when I go to the senior center i note that people park on both sides of the street on sideburn it's a little wider but it is a bob and weave process around the cars as you're trying to maneuver the street because with cars parked on both sides or staggered in that way you can't get two cars comfortably passing in a travel lane. So for the most part, actual behavior is to modify how you go through the street. When I think of other streets in the city, I see essentially the same issue arising. So practically speaking, with every house being eligible to put an ADU in, is this a feasible thing to do? Is it an enforceable thing to do?

Is it a community thing to do for neighborhood cohesiveness?

Eric FormanstaffWell, one of the things that we're trying to balance here is, again, And the fact that any of these houses could build an addition, and sometimes an addition that might double the size of the house. And not install any new parking for that. And that's the case like on Stratford Avenue, I think the vast majority of homes have been added onto from their original 1950s design. And that generates the increased parking load as well. So the intent with this is really to take care of the egregious situations where a house really doesn't have the minimum required parking at all, but not to trigger additional parking requirements where there wouldn't be a parking requirement for adding the same amount of square footage

or the same bedrooms or the same kind of arrangement if it was just attached to the house as opposed to being detached. So, again, just trying to thread the needle there, come up with a way to take care of some of the concerns as far as parking, but not to trigger something that might be onerous to the point of discouraging detached accessory dwelling units in favor of something else just to evade a parking requirement.

Paul CunninghamOkay. That sounds reasonable. until I get to the house on the corner of Stratford and Tolston on the west side of University Drive, which is a fairly large house, but because it has, so to speak, two front yards, the fact that it does have a large tennis court in what would be considered the front yard, in other words, it has the space to build an affordable dwelling unit. It's a 1960s, 50s, or 60s house. And as it were to turn over, it has the space. But because of the current layout of the house, we now have some very large lots that don't qualify, or we've made very small lots in unworkable situations qualify. And do our rules then need to be looked at for form-fitting function? As a previous mayor has stated publicly, you can't legislate taste.

And to Dr. Rice's point, many of these are now going to be individual situations in which taste goes with the homeowner. And who knows what the thought and the variety is going to be that's going to come out of this. won't all be solid agreement. But as we're looking at various areas where large lots or other issues come into play that could accommodate this, they're excluded. So is that something that should be looked at further? My question.

Eric Formanstafflarge lot is excluded? I'm not following how the large lot in this instance is excluded from, are you saying it's excluded from? It's on your map, it's in white, which means it's not eligible. Oh, okay. The chances are it's the tennis court that's throwing it off. So the tennis court being The tennis

Paul Cunninghamcourt

Eric Formanstaffis part of the large single family lot.

Paul CunninghamRight,

Eric Formanstaffbut the tennis court has been there since the house was built, which is probably grandfathered. So my guess is because this takes into account lot coverage, that that tennis court is a lot of lot coverage that bumps up against the maximum. And it would be the same thing for a house that has a very large detached garage, for instance. that I mean this this is the the downside of using a GIS analysis for 5,000 housing units so it it might not be colored on this map but that doesn't mean that there's no way that it would be able to this is

James Feathernot

Eric Formanstaffthe

Paul Cunninghamright definitive

James Feathersort of

Paul Cunninghamyeah so but an answer to our question at the last meeting of which houses reasonably could be expected to have this fit, to see that all of these houses essentially would have this fit in one form or another, even in the very dense neighborhoods, would beg the question, is this just an open amendment that if you want to build something on your lot that's additional, you can, and is that in keeping with the structure? And I will leave it there because I'm going to ask the question as it ties into our next briefing when we get into a population slide. Thank you.

James FeatherOther questions, comments? Mr. Tukarchi, anything?

Nick TricarichiNothing further.

James FeatherOkay.

Eric FormanstaffOkay. I think we've talked about the map. and I can always go back to the map, but we've gotten some good feedback tonight. That's exactly what we're hoping. Lockhart's not

James Featherdone yet as well.

Eric FormanstaffRight. No, I mean, you know, we'd love to get more feedback, more guidance. I mean, that's the reason for holding this work session. So we do have a work session scheduled with city council next month, and obviously if planning commission, if city council are interested in pursuing amendments, about detached accessory dwelling units there'll be additional meetings as we go along as well so glad to take I don't I don't mean to wrap it up early I'm glad to take more more guidance and more discussion and we can go back to any of these slides as well so

Kirsten Lockhartthis is a question slash a recommendation because there's a very good chance that you all already have this because you're so well prepared but I'm missing from this what is staff's perspective on the implementation and enforcement of this should it go forward. Because I think that workload and that degree to which you feel you can be proactive will be empowered to be proactive, to which you anticipate that people will follow the process versus not follow and it'll be retroactive, is very important when you consider actually moving forward with something like this. Just look, you know, thinking about a walk through Green Acres, I can think of a whole lot of structures that exist in various states of

legality, I'm sure, you know, sheds with questionable purpose, a garage with a second story, a garage with a very deep basement, for some reason, I don't know why, that sat as an open pit in the ground for 18 months, which is his own safety issue, right? And then I also talked to folks who tried to have plumbing added to a garage for a dog wash, and were told that they would now need to meet the threshold for an accessory dwelling unit, even though they just want a bath, a powder room, and a dog wash, you know. So what does it really look like to put this in place in the city and then to go out and try to get ahead of potential blight, potential eyesores, potential misapplication of these standards?

Eric FormanstaffFrom a detached accessory dwelling unit standpoint, this is as enforceable as it could be. And really the issue is any new structure that's built will need a building permit. But converting an existing structure, it's the utilities. As you know, that's the big issue, but that's usually not something that can be done that a homeowner could do themselves. So very few people are going to add water and sewer to a shed without the city knowing. So from a detached standpoint, this is enforceable. the attached ADUs a little bit less so because that's those are changes that can always happen within a house and undoubtedly our city has a whole lot of attached accessory dwelling units that are not known for that exact reason the

detached units we're fairly confident that as this is set up I mean this this is something that would be enforceable in a real-world application

Kirsten Lockhartand I think another thing that we had talked about when this first came up was have we seen any trend shifts yet with the loosening of the rental requirements or the occupancy requirements for attached ADUs yet no not not yet right okay

Tassos McCarthyand I have one more question in the vein of enforceability certainly I think all of her points are very warranted and valid I think very much about the that and is there anything, at least as I read it, as long as it's owner occupied, you can lease out the ADU. Once it's no longer owner occupied, it has to revert away from that. Is that correct?

Nick TricarichiYes, that's correct. So is there any kind of ongoing

Tassos McCarthyinspection, anything to verify that? Because if the answer is no, boy, do I have an idea for a side business.

Eric FormanstaffRight, and that's something that we'll have to work up with zoning and with code administration to deal with that as we move

Kirsten Lockhartforward. I mean, it assumes that they're following the rule to get a business license to be renting out a property, right? Right. Which is, that's already the proposition.

James FeatherBut we'll know if the unit is built, and we'll know if the unit, the primary unit is sold. Right. Presumably those pieces will come together in a, well, constructed database that would flag some kind of...

Kirsten LockhartI mean, there's a gut remodel that apparently was unpermitted in a neighborhood adjacent to us on the signage affixed to the door. But, I mean, after it happened, right, and once the house went up for sale. So I understand that our inspectors have their ways, but do they have the bandwidth to get ahead of this if it does cause a construction boom?

James FeatherMr. Cunningham.

Paul CunninghamOn the basis of one of my earlier questions in terms of disturbance in that, in another hat I wear with Fairfax Renaissance Housing Corporation, It has been more than a year and a half for one of the applicants under that program to work through getting the engineering done and through zoning permitting in order for a project to move forward. And this is an excessive time and has excessive cost implications, one for the engineering on small properties, two for the cost of construction in a period such as this where inflation is impacting construction costs. So that if these kind of programs drive very long delays, there is a tremendous need for additional professional staff to stay on top to try to keep programs moving.

and that staff that is costly and I don't believe we have at the moment based on the experiences that I'm seeing. So that isn't a point in how all of this gets implemented.

Kirsten LockhartYeah, my feedback isn't intended to lambast any current inspection processes. It's to make sure that the city is prepared to actually implement this in a no hiring freeze environment.

James FeatherIt doesn't affect the ordinance that the Planning Commission will act on, but the City Council should be certainly made aware of our concern for how this is going to play out. Mr. Karchi, anything further from you?

Nick TricarichiNo, nothing further on that.

James FeatherThank you. Are we ready to move on? Okay. Okay. We have one more work session item update on discussion of the citywide level of service study. Is this Mr. Foreman hat trick tonight?

Eric FormanstaffYes, it is. I've just got to shuffle some papers around. Thank you. Open up a new file here.

James FeatherMr. Napty is getting off too easily this evening.

Eric FormanstaffThat's right. Okay, I think this is being shared. So if it's not, I can pause and see what I did wrong. But for our last work session, so we'll discuss a project that's ongoing. So it's a project, an analysis. It's called the Citywide Level of Service Study. And what that is, it's an analysis to assess the capital implications of new development on city services and city infrastructure. So the city is contracted with a consulting firm. The consulting firm is called Tischler-Bies to conduct this analysis. So Tischler-Bies has nationwide experience in economic analysis and fiscal analysis. And the main goal of this study is for them to develop what they call a dynamic capital impact model. So it's something that the city could use to estimate capital needs that result from new development,

and new development at the time of rezonings. So a lot of this pertains to the acceptance of cash proffers. A lot of Virginia jurisdictions accept cash proffers as part of major rezoning projects. Here in Fairfax we've done this in the past, but we don't have a policy. We don't have guidance on what kinds of proffers the city may need or how to calculate those proffers. So what this project does is this will establish a framework for doing just that. And that would potentially help the city recover some of the costs of new development and also set up a way to a consistent way to calculate it. Just

James Featherto interrupt, if

Eric Formanstaffyou go

James Featheralong and also frame it in the context of the Planning Commission's role in all of this. Right.

Eric FormanstaffWe

James Featherdo obviously review the capital improvement program. Yes. This is one key touch point, but there may be others. Right.

Eric FormanstaffSo it's kind of the intersection of these big capital projects and the big rezoning projects. So where those meet is where this project lies. And

James Featherthe Planning Commission doesn't play a role, though, in the cash proffer process.

Eric FormanstaffRight.

James FeatherJust the rezoning piece.

Eric FormanstaffYes.

James FeatherHelp focus our discussion on. Right. Thank you.

Eric FormanstaffSo as you can imagine, this is a very detailed project. It involves a great deal of analysis. So they are about halfway through this project right now. So what we'd like to do tonight is just brief the commission on the main goals of what this effort is. just to take a look at the consultant's methodology, to take a look at the framework for that capital impact model. That will be the main output. So the lead consultants themselves briefed city council on this project back in February, and tonight I'm using slides from their February presentation, and I'll walk the commission through the same kind of material. So why are we looking at capital needs? and really basically because of growth. And growth puts a strain on infrastructure, puts a strain on facilities,

and generally to maintain existing levels of service, a jurisdiction would need to expand those facilities as we move along as we grow. So part of this analysis is for the consultants to look at our city's current situation, our current state of affairs for our facilities and really what would be needed to serve growth. And now typically the general fund, when we look at the budget, the general fund funds routine operations. The capital fund is for extra stuff, so things like new facilities, and it's really the capital fund that this analysis is primarily looking at. So cash proffers, cash proffers are at the heart of this study. These are governed by Virginia law. There are many requirements to this, so these proffers need to meet certain standards.

They need to be reasonable. They need to be proportionate to who's providing the facilities. Cash proffers need to provide a benefit regarding the improvements. They need to add additional capacity. They need to represent a fair share of the cost of the given development, the cost of what the development is incurring on the city. some of the requirements up here on the screen. Now pay attention to the bottom item. So any cash proffer funds that are collected need to actually be spent, and they need to be spent within 12 years. And this is important because if funds are collected but are not spent for an actual capacity-enhancing project within 12 years, the city would have to give that money up. So this

bottom part is very important. Now, one of the big rules around cash proffers is that localities can't require an unreasonable proffer. So this is its own slide here because it's really an essential part of state law. So what does this mean to be a reasonable proffer? Basically, it means that any proffer has to be proportional, so that there's a benefit received to the development that's being rezoned that's offering up this proper and that the developers are paying for their fair share of what's being improved and not more than their fair share so specifically state code says that a project that's funded by proffers has to be attributable somehow to the new development so it can't just be a random project somewhere in the city there has

what's being funded and the project that's being rezoned. And also a project, a proffer has to be dedicated for capacity improvements for an offsite facility. So think of things like fire station or for apparatus, those kind of things that improve capacity. So not just replacing what's already there, but actually adding to the city's capacity to provide a service. and also that there's an actual benefit received to that development and that there's a need for whatever's been identified. So what a need means is a need that goes in excess of what the city's capacity for whatever it is is at the time of rezoning. And it's an important threshold. It's a threshold that's unique to Virginia law. While most other states don't have this kind of complexity in these arrangements.

So one approach for localities to deal with that and to quantify these requirements is to use capital impact models, which is what this project is leading up to. The consultant that's working on this or Tishler Buys, they build these kind of models. And, you know, this assists city staff or county staff in making these kind of connections. And model here really means a very detailed Excel worksheet. So this is the kind of thing that's intended just to identify what is a reasonable connection between the land use and whatever capital infrastructure is needed. And as you can see here, this firm has done work in other Virginia localities. so they're familiar with all of these complexities of Virginia law.

Now part of the process is to identify both the current state of affairs in the city and where the city is headed in terms of growth. This is just a snapshot of base year information and growth projections. These might change over the course of the project and obviously will change consistently as we go along. Now, with school capacity needs, we're in obviously a unique situation in Fairfax City that we have non-city residents attending city schools and vice versa, and that analysis is built into the model as well. Now, again, I mentioned at the beginning that the consultants are building what they call a dynamic model, and that's to allow the city to identify capital impacts in an actual dollar amount.

And this also includes what they call a static report. The static report identifies that cost per housing unit in general that reflects each unit's share of total costs, but not necessarily just the costs that are attributable to proffers. And then the third part of this is to use that model in determining what kind of infrastructure would be needed to support the small area plans. And these plans have already been adopted, so they're incorporating the small area plans into their forecasting as well. So we're looking at these kinds of infrastructure categories, so things like schools, things like parks and recreation, infrastructure, fire facilities, apparatus, possibly transportation. Now some other government functions might be analyzed in the process in what they call

the static model, but wouldn't necessarily be eligible for cash proffers. So operational things like general government for instance. But we can look at those as just some extra information. It's just not something that gets built into a cash proffer kind

Paul Nabtistaffof situation.

Eric FormanstaffSo on a high level basis, I mean, this project is looking at the current city levels of service, what it costs to continue to provide that same level of service under a growth scenario, and then make that connection between the land use, residential units, and the demand for infrastructure as well. So a good example is parks. How many park acres do we have today? What does it cost to improve an acre of park land? translate into a cost per unit. So if we have a rezoning project that's proposing 500 units, how much does each unit correspond to a needed increase in park facilities or in park capacity? So the consultants are using capital improvement plans and master plans to build on current inventories.

So think of the parks and recreation master plan for instance. everything is formula driven everything is quantitative lots of numbers equations and so on they'll look specifically at schools for instance look at schools by level where those potential capacity needs may be where they may not be and again this will consider the balance between city resident students and county resident students as well another consultants will ultimately develop like I said a model for the city to use this year is a model and again this is Excel based there's a user input area and an output that shows what the capital impact would be in dollar amounts and this would also provide the universe of impacts and and then what could potentially be again

that reasonable cash proffer so the consultants again Tischler buys they're working with the city on how to operate this model or they they will do that when you know, becomes available. Here you see another view of what the model could look like. And really the ultimate goal is, you know, providing this information back to planning commission, back to city council as part of rezoning applications. So the consultants are continuing on their analysis right now. Like I said, the project's about halfway through on this model building, looking at the capital improvement plans, currently. They will finish the model, they'll review it with staff. Ultimately, this level of service study will conclude with a report, with a presentation to city council, and then

ultimately with a working model that can then be used to craft city policy on cash proffers to be used consistently. So a lot of detailed information kind of summed up in a handful of slides. Hopefully that makes sense, but I'm happy to answer any questions on cash proffers or on the model project to begin with. Ms. Lockhart.

Kirsten LockhartIs the intent of this model to also drive budgeting? Full disclosure, I built a levels of service model for the Marine Corps installations, and it was about what service can we provide given our budget. So is there any discussion of that?

Eric FormanstaffReally it's the other way around because it's taking a look at the budget or at the CIP and saying what's needed from a growth standpoint. So it's not necessarily intended to guide budget. It might be able to back into some kind of budget guidance with it, but the intent is really the other way around.

Kirsten Lockhartbenchmarking current level of service.

Eric FormanstaffYes.

Kirsten LockhartAnd where that is in the grand spectrum of levels of service, like we're providing that level service here, we could be here. Yes. But then which one do you use for determining the proffer, the ideal or the current state?

Eric FormanstaffSo for a cash proffer situation, you would use the current level of service at the time of rezoning. So for instance, if there's an item in the capital improvements plan to build capacity in a function of the city, that project, if it's in the CIP, could be eligible for cash proffers, even though it's already been identified as a capacity need, as long as it's above that level of service that's currently in effect at the time of rezoning.

Kirsten LockhartOkay, sure. I understand the qualification of projects, but in terms of impact to the level, to providing services. So for example, we get a lot of development projects on already congested streets, and by their analysis they're not impacting our level of service from a traffic management standpoint because it's already bad. So being able to stratify that, yes, we know we're code red, to get us to yellow or orange, your contribution would be X more.

Eric FormanstaffRight. So transportation is a – and I had said that this may include transportation. The reason that that's not certain is that most transportation-related projects rezonings are negotiated outside of the cash proffer situation. So, you know, for example, adding a, you know, a necessary turn lane or some kind of intersection improvement or that kind of thing is typically negotiated just directly

Paul Nabtistaffrather

Eric Formanstaffthan being cash proffer related. So cash proffer related, you know, would say, you know, for an intersection, let's say down the street uh and i'm trying to think of a transportation a capacity enhancing transportation project right now i mean it might might be i'm not too up on

Kirsten Lockhartyeah i mean i just put it as it let's say warwick avenue it's hard to find somewhere where the city is not providing high quality services because they are um maybe an example would be we've already pushed our fire response times to the limit but now we're being asked to cover a high-rise building just outside the jurisdiction can we communicate to them that they're without a proffer or with no change we're going to drop down a level of service our response time is going to go from three minutes to six because we've we've gone above the capacity threshold so

Eric Formanstaffyou said outside of the jurisdiction that that

Kirsten Lockhartyeah we

Eric Formanstaffcan't quite do that and and the the other thing with cash proffers is that they have to be voluntary so so the city the city can't say you know you're you're proposing a high-rise apartment complex where we're going to need to increase our fire services as a result of that therefore we need you to pay a certain amount of money towards fire services that that that can't be the case so

Kirsten Lockhartthat's communicate the risk right yeah we accept this additional capacity we will drop down from level four at the highest level three provision of fire services because of the capacity right right okay got it thank you I guess the reason I bring Council working on their budget has been talking about where they can take trade-offs. And so if you're able to communicate what the risk is of those trade-offs based on a budget allocation, that's another benefit of this type of modeling.

James FeatherSir, is there anything from your... Mr. Gunningham.

Paul CunninghamThank you. If you go back a couple of slides, you've got a statistic slide about the city. That one. Yes. When we look at 2035 and a 10-year change and we start looking at the numbers that are in there, is the genesis of those numbers essentially what the city has done with the comprehensive plan, with the small area plans, and the other basis that the Planning Commission has been involved in establishing? Because those numbers look vaguely familiar from the number of housing units expected to be built in each one of the nodes, as they were called before they became small areas. Population and that, so that part of this is based on the projection we have for certain things to happen. And it is generated or based off of the work that the Planning Commission has done with the staff in the comprehensive plan world.

next when you begin talking facilities and other things along that line are things like a new community center something that would fit under that status under parks and rec or one of those groups because it's not exactly police or fire but a community center is a facility that is generated to meet the needs of an increasing population so that kind of thing fall under our ability to look at it and say this is a reasonable thing to put under a proper microscope.

Eric FormanstaffRight, that kind of project would qualify because it would add capacity. And that's the threshold that's important. So like you said, a new community facility, a new park for instance, these are things that would add capacity in one way or another to the city. So they would be, in theory, proper eligible projects.

Paul CunninghamSo many of the things in the capital improvement plan would fall under that, but probably not

Eric Formanstaffall. Not all. So, again, things in the CIP that would add capacity would be considered proper eligible. Things that would be maintenance, for instance, like putting a new roof on a building, would not add capacity, even though that might be a major capital out

Paul Cunninghamthere. Or replacing vehicles or things

Eric Formanstaffalong that line that we've dealt with for a long time.

Paul CunninghamOkay, so the Planning Commission does have a role in understanding what this process is and how it would be laid out and providing the data that is used to reach the conclusions that are going to be drawn. Correct. Okay, thank you.

James FeatherMr. McCarthy. And

Tassos McCarthyto that end, you know, I'm not, it's probably on the fringe of where our role is, but just to his point of getting to where we want to be, I just recommend you make sure that the model supports the implementation of the area plans, just being cognizant of, like, feasibility maybe being already marginal in some of those.

James FeatherMr. Tricarci, anything from you?

Nick TricarichiI guess just big picture. Why is this being done now? Like presumably we've been accepting cash profits for a long time. Is there concern that we've left money on the table or we don't have budget going forward to support what we need from a growth standpoint?

Eric FormanstaffYou know, really the concern is that we don't have a plan for coming up with this state, that it's really been kind of a scattershot approach on a project by project basis that a developer will offer up proffers for one form of city operations or another and uh you know we we can't really be sure if those profits are something that we actually need or not uh you know whether they're in excess of what we need whether they're insufficient for what we need so this this hopes to some kind of a framework and some kind of a recommendation for proffers to make these consistent to make it predictable and to make it align with the city's capital needs

James Featheranything else no mr cunningham

Paul Cunninghamthank you uh by way of background there was a period uh we'll call it the aughts when proffers were an acceptable means of getting projects approved and could be dealt with above board between the government agencies and the developers. It was felt that that became unbalanced in the early teens and the state prohibited the city from requesting proffers for a long time. So this is a period in which the term proffers is beginning to come back into acceptable use, it looks like. And for a significant period, the power rested with government bodies' ability to approve or disapprove, but not to demand. And as such, it was incumbent on developers to offer proffers in the hope that they would be accepted by the city, but the city could not comment on them.

They could either accept them or decline them and not approve a project. So it sounds like we're beginning to move somewhat back into an area where discussion of proffers is possible again. or is this not the case?

Eric FormanstaffYes and no. I mean, really tiptoeing into that, I think what this winds up being is recommended proffers. So, you know, this is still something that the developers, in the case of rezonings, would offer, but at least they would have something to base that offering on. And this is similar to what other jurisdictions do. You know, sometimes there's a, so the one that I'm most familiar with is Fairfax County Public Schools. Fairfax County Public Schools has a memo that they issue every few years and says, this is our recommended proffer contribution for a new housing unit of various kinds. So that's an example of a recommended proffer contribution.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Thank you.

James FeatherOthers?

Kirsten LockhartSo the city currently has a calculation of the economic impact of a new development that we see as part of the application. Does that also feed into this process?

Eric FormanstaffYou know, that's actually a separate process because that tends to look at operational costs, at the general fund as opposed to the capital fund. So two different impacts, both important, just different avenues of impact.

Kirsten LockhartOkay, so capacity, I guess that was my question, capacity and capital impacts don't play into that economic assessment?

Eric FormanstaffNot necessarily.

Kirsten LockhartOkay.

James FeatherJust a couple questions from my standpoint. Made it time of rezoning. Would this apply to any rezoning for ones that is adding population? you're talking about are residential growth. It's usually

Eric Formanstaffresidential rezonings. I don't think there's anything that prohibits commercial rezonings, but most of these costs are residential in nature, so they tend to be residential.

James FeatherIt's hard to imagine something that perhaps somebody wants to come and redevelop the industrial heavy district, turn it into a major commercial establishment that's going to require too much larger fire trucks or something. not outside the realm of stormwater and this example stormwater yeah yeah those kind of infrastructure now

Eric Formanstaffnow stormwater is its own fund so so storm water the Q buses for instance are enterprise funds so they're a little bit different than the capital fund as well

James Featherso it's not exclusive to residential rezoning you also mentioned small area plans for activity centers but there can redevelopment outside of activity centers. Correct. Presumably, they could drive something. Mr. Apte.

Paul NabtistaffThis is something we might need to clarify. It's not necessarily going to be part of this project, but per the changes that happened with the state in the 2010s, there was a period of time where we were restricted from receiving any kind of proffers, not just requesting them. We couldn't even receive them. As the state legislation started to evolve, we could accept proffers in certain situations that would exempt us from some of those restrictions and the smaller your plans exempt us from those restrictions there might be others areas of the city that are exempt for other reasons but those are the only areas that we have clearly defined that we are exempt and we can receive proffers in activity centers where there's a smaller your plan

as of now we don't have any plans or we are not accepting proffers in any areas where there's not a smaller plan. That could always change with changes in the code, though.

James FeatherRight.

Paul CunninghamOkay. Should be looking at Pickett and Main, then, the one area that we have not done a small area plan, or Roberts Road and Main Street, where a major redevelopment is likely to occur.

Paul NabtistaffYeah. If we wanted to have that benefit, then we had to go to that exercise, yes.

James FeatherOkay. Well, let me look at my other. Oh, my other question, I think, does the whole proffer discussion come up have to be driven by a rezoning as opposed to some other development that may not require rezoning? Yes. Okay. I think I knew the answer to that, but I wanted to ask. And I think that's all I had, too. all right good enough feedback from us i

Eric Formanstaffthink so

James Featherokay thank you for all the time you've spent with us this evening it's always interesting informative and and i appreciate the engagement of the commission on some of these things are they are important and hopefully provide some feedback that'll go to the council and stir some further thinking and let them know that we're thinking about it too. So

Paul Cunninghamthank you. Thanks.

James FeatherAll right. We will recess our work session and go reconvene our regular meeting. Move to Mr. Nefty's staff report, please.

Paul NabtistaffThank you, Chair Feather and members of the Planning Commission. Pretty short staff report today as council discussions have mainly focused on the budget and continue to focus on the budget. A few things to report at the March 24 meeting is when they received their initial presentation on the portion of the budget that included the capital improvement program. This planning commission recalls that you all sent recommendations to city council regarding the capital improvement program. Other than that, the April 27 planning commission meeting may be canceled. We are still looking at our agenda items for that date. We have two items that may or may not move forward, and we'll keep you posted about that.

A couple of larger-scale upcoming topics that will be coming to you before long. We're having an introduction work session with the Planning Commission on the potential to review and update our small area plans. Also, we'll be having a discussion on the process for partial-specific considerations amendments in the comprehensive plan. plan. This is the process that somebody would go through if they were to try to seek opportunity for mixed use development outside of our activity centers. This is a request of the planning commission several months ago. There are a couple of different ways we can handle this. Right now without a process such a change would have to be initiated by the planning commission or city council or it would have to wait for our five year review. Regarding

the smaller your plan zoning ordinance amendments effort that is underway uh city council had a work session on on this on march 10 uh the day after we last met and discussed it as well i also wanted to thank uh those planning commissioners who came to the community meeting we had for that project uh on march 26th uh we had pretty good attendance as well as good feedback and we are reviewing that with the consultant now um and sending them off to uh start making revisions and hope to come back in the next couple of months to discuss the second draft of that document with you so that's all we have for the staff report tonight thank

James Featheryou any questions for mr napty okay final item on our agenda commission comments uh anything for the good of the body mr mccarthy

Tassos McCarthynope thank you

James Feathermr cunningham

Tassos McCarthyno comment

James Featherlockhart nothing thank you mr rice Mr. Takarji, I presume not, but welcome to the Planning Commission. I look forward to connecting in person. From my perspective, there have been no bar meetings. A number of those have been canceled. So nothing to report from the Board of Architecture Review. And he's left now, but it was good to see Mr. Harden back with us after his assignment in the Economic Development Office. So back to community development and planning being reasonably fully staffed, at least from our perspective. So you can pass along our appreciation for his return. And thanks to Mr. Sutphin for filling in so capably while Brooke has been away. With that, we will adjourn our meeting.

Thank you. Thank you.