Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

James Featheris items not requiring a public hearing. We have none of those this evening, nor do we have any public hearings. So we will recess our regular meeting and go into our work session. We have two items this evening. First is an update on the Urban Forest Master Plan project. Welcome to Stafford. Excuse me, am I allowed to stay for this? You may stay for sure. Open meeting. Open meeting, correct.

Anna StaffordstaffGood evening, Planning Commission. So today we're presenting an update on our Urban Forest Master Plan project. I'm going to hand it over to dr. Garrett wolf our consultant for the stakeholder engagement portion of this project

Dr Garrett WolfThank you Anna as Anna mentioned dr. Garrett wolf on the engagement lead for the master plan supporting the Davie resource group Who is the prime developing a master plan for the city of Fairfax? I'm gonna go to the agenda slide So before we get into the meat of the presentation, I'm gonna give a quick overview for tonight's meeting We'll start off with a brief overview of the project, where we're at in the process. It's been a busy few months, and we have a lot of updates, as well as some key takeaways to highlight. Anna will then present on findings from the State of the Urban Forest Review from Phase 1 of this project. Then we'll share preliminary goals and recommendations, which have come out of Phase 1 and being in Phase 2.

as you're likely well aware this effort will create the first ever urban forest master plan for the city of fairfax phase one of this project kicked off in the early summer of 2024 during the approximately nine months of that phase the team was highly involved in engaging community conducting analyses and understanding the state of Fairfax's urban forest. We're now working through phase two during which we'll continue community engagement and develop the urban forest master plan in full. Phase two is targeted to wrap up by the end of this year when the final master plan is complete. Various outreach activities and assessments have all aimed at creating an actionable and well-informed plan for the management of Fairfax's urban forest over the next 20

years the master plans success in part depends on its ability to address the needs of stakeholders and for this reason the plan includes many outreach and engagement opportunities through both phases the team continues to synthesize the input comments and questions received to ensure that the master plan is well thought out and responsive to the conditions in Fairfax

phase one placed an emphasis on this information gathering and outreach which forms the basis for the master plans goals and objectives over the roughly nine months of phase one we held a variety of events these include meeting with over a hundred individuals and stakeholders and the project project engage page had approximately 2,000 unique individual visits the first public meeting occurred in July and function last July and functioned as a public kickoff for the project and informed attendees about the project and its purpose the second public meeting which took place in October of last year was a visioning session where attendees discussed challenges opportunities and community involvement related to the urban forest the project team also

Anna Staffordstafffive to ten percent of their time on trees all the other part of their positions focus on leaf collection mowing city event support and other tasks unrelated to trees so approximately one fte of that time they spend or that time is equivalent to about about one fte then we have community development planning within the planning division which includes my position as well as our stewardship About half my time is spent on land development review and city project support, as well as tree removal permits. The other half is long-range planning and policy, such as the Urban Forest Master Plan. We've initiated non-native invasive management on city property. We're the lead on the Sprout Initiative.

you all are very familiar with our comprehensive plan has numerous goals and actions related to tree canopy and urban forestry mostly in our chapter 4 environmental and sustainability but then also in our Chesapeake Bay Act staff follow best management practices within the International Society of Arboriculture. We have three ISA certified arborists on staff, one in each department, and we've been, the city has been a Tree City USA for 39 years, and then hopefully coming soon would be the Urban Forest Master Plan, which would be a large program driver for urban forestry. Diving a little bit more into the tree preservation and landscaping guide, like I said, this was a new addition to our public facilities manual. Previously, we didn't have separate standards

Other components of this tree preservation and landscaping guide have added standards for soil volume, diversity as well as resource protection area planting densities this guide again is a very technical document and it's available on the city's website next the urban forest master plan looked at our tree canopy studies and so I thought I would overview those briefly on this chart here you have four studies three of which are highlighted in blue those three studies use the same data as well as analysis and so those three studies can be looked at to when you're looking at change over time the fourth study that's highlighted in gray was done by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in partnership with COG through that

We recognize we can't just be planting trees. We also need to be providing the space for them to grow. These are just examples of how you can use canopy data to inform policy and operation actions. Our Urban Forest Master Plan is continuing to use this to guide the recommendations. With that, I'll pass it back to Garrett.

Dr Garrett WolfThank you. Now we're going to get into Phase 2, the timeline and preliminary recommendations. Next slide. As mentioned, Phase 2 is currently in progress. preliminary objectives for the plan and a phase two the preliminary objectives and strategies are being refined and adjusted based on feedback from the steering committee as well and served as the basis for public meeting number three held in May and its voting activity an outline of the master plan was developed in February continues to be refined to best capture the needs and desires affair for Fairfax's urban forest the outline serves as the basis for several several which will then undergo review by the project team and the steering committee.

The master plan's implementation plan is also currently undergoing edits in close coordination with Anna. Similar to Phase 1, public outreach continues throughout Phase 2. This includes tabling at public events, two public meetings, and continued steering committee meetings. The team tabled at History Day and is exploring additional dates throughout the fall. Public meeting number 3 was held June 11th at the Sherwood Center, meeting will be on the upcoming slides and public meeting number four the last public meeting will serve as the presentation of the master plan report to the public with an opportunity for question and answers at the end it's anticipated that this event will take place in the late fall next

and the community would benefit from clearer ways to be involved in urban forest stewardship. While there are many threats to the urban forest, a few recurring concerns arose during our assessments, namely development, planting and management practices, and invasive species. Addressing these concerns will require a variety of strategies, including policy considerations, organizational changes, volunteer involvement, and others. Currently, urban forestry functions are shared across several cities' divisions, again, as Anna mentioned, Efficiency and more targeted tree care can be realized by centralizing the forest management responsibilities. Together with other findings from Phase 1, these takeaways inform the master plan's preliminary goals, objectives, and strategies.

Our outreach and analysis efforts so far have guided the team to develop the goals, objectives, and strategies for Fairfax's urban forest master plan. Right now, this includes three preliminary goals and six preliminary objectives. Each objective is supported by a number of strategies and additional supporting actions that will assist in the implementation. As mentioned, these were used as the basis for public meeting number three, which requested public feedback and voting to rank strategies by priority. During this meeting, we'll review the goals and objectives, which have been updated from public meeting number three's feedback, and we'll dive into the strategies and objectives that we thought most applicable to the planning commission,

The second goal seeks to increase the city of Fairfax's capacity to care for public trees This goal helps to ensure that the city's investment in its urban forest is maximized through adequate and appropriate tree care. It also focuses on shifting from reactive management to proactive maintenance. The third goal aims to strengthen the community's support and involvement in the urban forest. Fairfax residents are passionate about the urban forest, but we've heard from the public often that they don't know where to find information or how to get involved. The urban forest master plan also aims to identify ways to improve the public's perception and the city's communication with residents to strengthen the

Each of these strategies will have corresponding actions in the master plans implementation plan that further detail how to implement them in short medium and long term planning horizons we have some additional detail on objective number two regulate because we would especially like feedback from you all on that particular objective so you can see the four strategies up there I'll briefly cover them so strategy 2.1 focuses on the policy content and urban forestry staffs mechanism to review and enforce tree removal in the city it recommends adopting allowable state code to increase public tree protections and and identify best practices practice processes for reviewing tree removal and tree risk

As I mentioned public meeting number three focused on on voting for what strategies would be the highest priority For the city of Fairfax when implementing the urban forest master plan Project team offered an in-person meeting as well as online voting Opened one week prior and one week after one week after the in-person meeting As I mentioned approximately 100 people voted and a summary of those results as well as the objective strategies presented at the meeting are available on the engage page but key takeaways included emphasis on improving urban forest related management planning and decision-making support for protection and expansion of the urban forests and native species and a need for clearer and more easily

public meeting will be included in this phase as we near the final draft and before presenting it to council for proposed city adoption before the end of the year we anticipate coming back to the Planning Commission in November or early December with a final draft for your endorsement as we prepare to present it to City Council next slide and on this slide is just a timeline of basically the process for phase two of this year as I mentioned we're currently revising drafts of the master plan in particular with the steering committee and hope to come back to you all in November or December so thank you again for this opportunity this evening we have time for questions and discussion I know that was a lot of material, but thank you for your patience.

I mean, for that particular example, there aren't a lot of other clear options, lot of other regulatory and policy potential changes that can not just address that particular issue, but look sort of holistically at what are opportunities to prevent loss of trees in certain circumstances or regain, preserve, all these types of things. And I think looking at that holistically is really what the master plan tries to do. But yeah, I mean, in terms of that particular example, I mean, I think the fines and with the max, mins and maxes set by the state are the best, the most, certainly the most common and probably the best, the most straightforward for any particular incident to recoup.

Yeah, I mean, excellent comments and great questions. I'm not sure I can hit on all of them right now. But in terms of balancing the micro and the macro, I mean, frankly, that is really what the goal of any master plan is, even a comprehensive plan. And kind of touching on something Mr. Rice said, as well as you, Mr. Cunningham, how does this master plan end up being implemented or have teeth? And ultimately, that is its coordination and adoption kind of into the comprehensive plan over a period of time, which I'm sure someday you'll be reading the updates about. But in terms of efficiency, we've talked about data quite a lot. It's obviously good data and good methodology to help make better decisions faster, move things through pipelines faster,

James Feathera couple things from my perspective questions mr. Cunningham particularly touched on a couple of things have been on my mind how we use plan, policy document to balance tree protection, preservation, and so forth with development. We anticipate it. We call for it in some of our planning documents. So it's going to be important for the Urban Forest Master Plan to help guide us in that realm, help guide the Planning Commission, as well as the Board of Architectural Review, who reviews landscaping, and City Council's ultimate decision makers. One of the things I was wondering about as well as we're facing and looking at changes to zoning ordinance to better align our small area plans with the zoning ordinance because they haven't kept up.

Correct. Dr. Wolf, I appreciate your mentioning the Urban Forest Master Plan in the context of the Comprehensive Plan as well, because one of my questions is, and I'm sure you're going to address this, where some changes to the Comprehensive Plan are appropriate, the drive at a different level of policy. These are both kind of policy documents, but at the Comprehensive Plan level, which addresses land use in many respects, as well as other things in the city, including, you know, public facilities and parks and so forth. So I think it will be important to get something more from that that will help us. Sorry? Yeah, but I don't know what's coming out of this. We're calling for the plan, and now let's see what the plan does and how it feeds back.

But, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it has been pointed out. The other thing that Planning Commission has some oversight and recommendation authority for the city is the capital improvement program. I don't know if you see things coming out of this policy that would drive, and the city uses the term capital improvement, capital funds in different respects or things that are maintenance related that are included in the CIP, just to make sure that if there's something that comes out of this master plan that should be captured in the CIP, that we look for opportunities to do that as well. And one other thing, since we talk about regulation, being a Dillon Rule state, are there things that you see that we would like to be able to do that we can't because the state doesn't say so?

Paul Cunninghamyou. One observation I had, especially from the slides that you put in here, When you look at the five small areas that we have developed plans for, you see a dearth of trees. The bulk of the trees are in residential areas or public areas along streams and things along that line. There's discussion as we're approving larger projects going into these areas that include a significant amount of residential grading about putting trees in smaller places and others trees in pots trees and things how does that fit into this master plan and what size trees are we hoping to get out of it or is this something that's just decorative to put something green there and is it really improving our urban forest or is

Ms. Dennystaffunderline and or strikethrough in the implementation guides. So 30 of the 64 total actions were updated, including the Forest Rescuers Program, which began this spring. In the six months since its launch, the program has logged over 415 volunteer hours certified 11 forest rescuers. And as you just heard, the urban forest master plan is underway with adoption expected by the end of the year. The solid waste management plan update is also underway. The plan was last updated in 2021 and per state code must be updated every five years. The city was selected as a recipient for an energy efficiency community grant, which will provide free energy audits to homeowners and several updates to the city's noise ordinance are under

review in economic vitality 10 of the 21 total actions were updated the economic strategic economic development strategic plan was updated this spring to add a tourism pillar and additional strategies to focus on tourism the Old Town Fairfax Business Association has completed a rebranding effort with support from economic development and the new mural on the Sunbury building was unveiled in June in community services 24 of the 86 total actions were updated parks and recreation strategic master plan update and the commission on the arts strategic master plan are underway and are both expected to be complete by spring 2026 a mural was added at draper dive park using revenue from the plastic bags tax as previously mentioned a project to