Planning Commission Regular Meeting/Work Session

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.

Anna StaffordstaffI would say on the technical side for city policy usually the trees and like pots and those sort of containerized aren't getting counted towards zoning requirements because they aren't providing the full amount of benefit that we're looking for but I agree they provide potentially other benefits that we are looking for out of our small area plans in terms of you know activating the streetscape and the obviously like urban heat island and so i think there is a balance i think trying to communicate what's being counted towards our actual canopy requirements in a code perspective versus benefits on a larger scale again going to that macro versus micro is potentially needing to be improved as to what we're looking for yeah

James Featherlooking forward to the final product the next order of business on our agenda is the work session which is the presentation and of updates of the implementation guides related to our comprehensive plan and the small area plans welcome miss Denny

Ms. DennystaffGood evening, Chair Feather and members of the Commission. This presentation will cover the implementation guides for the comprehensive plan as well as the four adopted small area plans, Old Town, Northfax, Camp Washington, and Fairfax Circle. So, 129 of the 339 total actions were updated since the last round of review in January. 32 of the 70 total land use actions were updated. This includes several projects related to the small area plans that are underway including a project to develop public improvement plans and level of service standards, reviewing the design guidelines for discrepancies and the ongoing zoning ordinance update. The affordable housing and homelessness strategic plan is underway and expected to be complete

develop level of service standards in the activity centers is underway and lastly the emergency operations plan update is complete and was adopted by city council in june so moving to our small area plans in Old Town 14 of the 41 action items were updated as I mentioned earlier several projects and analyses regarding the small area plans are underway the Old Town parking study is complete now this did not identify a future need for an additional parking structure in Old Town but rather future demand should be accommodated through shared parking construction of the University Drive bike lanes north of Old Town is expected to begin this year and the Old Town circulation study which is part of the move Fairfax City plan is

Mr. NapteestaffSome upcoming Discussions with the City Council there is some feedback from them at the end of the meeting About having some kind of an introduction to the planning process Looking at things like how they should be reviewing the small area plans getting some additional thoughts on discrepancies between the smaller your plans and public opinion and those types of things and so we'll be preparing a presentation for them on that we we don't know exactly when that will be but depending on what comes out of it we may have a similar presentation to the planning commission just so you see what they what is presented to them and see if you have any additional feedback on it in addition we'll be having a discussion with them is currently scheduled for september 9th

mentioned the citywide level service standards and public approval plans related to small area plans. We have a consultant on board for that and that will be digging into impacts to development and potentially setting up some more organized proffer systems for us. So that's all we have for the staff report tonight. As a reminder we are on recess in August and so your next meeting isn't until September so I hope everybody has a good recess.