Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

NaptystaffShe went over new projects that are introduced in this CIP. We'll go over those later in the presentation. Also went over projects that are specifically identified in the small year plans. It's a typical component of the CIP presentation. We'll also go over that again. And she stepped through a couple of the major projects that are listed in there, including Fire Station 3, the Van Dyke Park Master Plan implementation, and the redevelopment of the property yard. So as you begin your deliberations tonight, a couple things to consider about what the Planning Commission's role is. Primarily, the Planning Commission's review of the CIP is based on requirements of the Code of Virginia, which state that the Planning Commission should determine conformance of proposed projects with a comprehensive plan

However, we did want to point out that there are a couple big projects in there that will result in new facilities if they move forward, and so they should go through this review at some point. And namely, that is the property yard feasibility study or the property yard redevelopment and the fire station three redevelopment. For the property yard, we haven't identified where a new site would be yet. And one of the criteria is the public facilities review is determining if the location is going to conform with a comprehensive plan. And we can't do that without knowing the location. For fire station three, we also recommend waiting on this one while location has been selected. Another criteria is the extent and character of that.

Without knowing more about the scale and design, we recommend waiting to do the public facilities review of this as well. The last major project that the Planning Commission reviewed through this process was the Wilder-Shilbert Community Center. And that was one that I think we could have waited a little longer on because the Planning Commission really knew the location, but we didn't have a whole lot of detail about the design at that point. and I think that your feedback could have been more beneficial if you had some more information. So that's our recommendation is to wait on these other two. If you want to move forward, particularly with Fire Station 3 at this time, we could do that. So that's all we have for our presentation.

Kirsten Lockharthave sort of a hybrid question comment. it. So for things like what you just mentioned, the fire station and the property yard, as we heard at the last discussion, there's some numbers in here that represent, I don't want to say like worst case scenario, but they're very large numbers that sort of encompass a lot of different planning scenarios. Is it appropriate for the planning commission to advocate for spending planning money but not budgeting yet? Or like how do we emphasize that our take is that there are a lot of alignment discussions that need to happen with both of those properties or facilities or whatever you want to call them that could very significantly change the out your costs of the project and just kind of making that clear that we we want to stress

Matthew RiceMr. Rice. I think I agree wholeheartedly with Ms. Lockhart on her statements. I think that the property art and fire station three are in different categories in terms of what we know about their location and their nature it seems that having input on the fire station would be useful and I think that if we do make statements guided by the SMARI a plan and guided by planning for things which are coming that would be worthwhile I know it's not feasible for us to have the scope of our CIP review be like the previous ones it was getting really large are we undershooting what we're looking at, and will we find ourselves not having given feedback on things that do emerge at a later time to require a review?

NaptystaffSo are you talking about the public facilities review or the CIP itself? Both. Okay. The public facilities review I think is up for, particularly at the fire station, it's really up to the planning commission how you want to proceed. I think if you think now is the right time to make a statement about it through that review, then that's certainly fine. Your ability to comment on specifics, I think, will be more limited than if you did it later. That being said, that could be outweighed by a stronger need to make your statements now as opposed to a year or two from now. And then the second part of your question?

James FeatherThe fire station three is interesting. There was some tours, I think the city council took, of fire stations recently, and they sort of opened it up to others who wanted to participate. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do that, so it's only kind of hearsay of some of the things that I learned from comments about the need. It would have been convenient if one or more of us were able to do that firsthand for ourselves. I'm guessing the need is there, but we don't quite have the full story or a full report from this, but it's got to stay on our radar screen from the sounds of it, from the nature of the facilities and how firefighters interact and live in those places and so forth.

Kirsten LockhartYeah, I'm still hung up on what happens to the property yard being really a linchpin to a lot of these other conversations because if there are functions like emergency management or parks and rec headquarters that are going to be by necessity bifurcated out of the single space and they move into other facilities that could impact you know the police station renovations or modernization it could impact the design of the fire station it could impact the um you know what ends up having to move to west drive and what still needs to find another location like it's to me that that needs a plan so front-loading the planning for that and then pushing back some of these other renovations that could be impacted by the property yard plan

Paul CunninghamI could enjoy for my half of the population, the 70% of the population or more that does not have children in the school system that would appreciate a senior center and a community center and things like that to do other things should probably be an equal priority because when we look at the budget dollar as it's in the budget and 37 cents of every dollar goes to the education program and the remainder goes to the rest of all of the city's programs then it's got to be a balance where we meet everybody's needs. And I think we've done that well and we continue to when we advocate for new fire stations, when we advocate for new libraries, new police stations, additions to city hall, moving the

James FeatherOne observation on your slide seven, it's called small area plan CIP projects. These are projects in the activity centers, some of which I'm not sure. Multimum or transportation externally funded except for fire station three. Is that? We're highlighted in the small area plan or in the comp plan. Transportation ones generally come up in the context of the small area plans, so we want to create networks and

NaptystaffYeah, that is a good point. Some of these do just happen to be in the activity center, and the fire station 3 is a perfect example. It is specifically identified in the small area plan, but it was already identified that that was going to be a project. plan was developed. So the context of the fire station, other things were planned around it and that type of thing. Some of the transportation projects, and yes, most of them are transportation projects because as we've said, those tend to be the more expensive projects that we can get external funding for and so we're able to move forward with those. There are other improvements in the activity centers that are recommended, particularly related to open space. It's not as easy to get funding

James FeatherYes, and again, when you look at where that growth occurs, it's just a few specific projects. The property yard is the elephant in the room. The fire station is not far behind. But is it a want or a need? Right. Okay. Ms. Lockhart.

NaptystaffAnd maybe you can have your conversation first. But I am wondering, I heard some questions tonight, particularly about the fire station, about the property yard. Of course, those are two of our bigger projects. And of course, there's a questions about that we'll need to direct our finance department. So we'll try to get those and get them back to you. If there are any specific questions that I should direct to city staff, whether it be finance or representatives of these other larger projects or smaller projects, if that's what you're interested in, then please let me know. I'm happy to do that. And if needed, we can invite some of them to come to your future meetings over the next either December or January.

Matthew Ricethat's right I agree with the proposed path that you articulated and we'll come back and list some of our priorities it would be quite useful perhaps because two of the projects would sure would in the KJ field it would be useful to have Stacy's Summerfield at some point give us a little briefing and again if there are projects like that the need for fire station 3 it might be useful to have chief O'Neill come in as well so I we used to do a little bit of that or that might have been mixed with sort of a joint City Council Planning Commission meeting over CIP but at some point that the level of detail underneath might might be helpful in determining what we recommend I I'm not sure it'll change the recommendations I have because I feel pretty well informed about those

Paul Cunninghamno and i think that's a city budget uh priority anyway because we are merely recommending projects that are good for the city uh it happens that we're we're recommending them in the financial playing field of the current time and when it comes time to implement those they're frequently seven years down the road and so the costs that we thought we were dealing with at the time may be significantly different as we're seeing on any number of these projects but that comes into funding things like the major projects such as schools such as property yards such as fire stations those kinds of things where we can look at them and support them, but I know the city council and staff has got a lot of work to do in the implementation process,