1

Minutes

                             PLANNING COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING
                                    November 10, 2020 – 5:30 P.M.
                                         Virtual Meeting



 I.      COMMISSION PRE-MEETING (Agenda discussion(s))
       Beginning: 5:00 PM
       Location: Virtual/Electronic
       Members Present: Chairman Mitchell, Commissioner Solla-Yates, Commissioner Stolzenberg,
       Commissioner Russell, Commissioner Lahendro, Commissioner Dowell, Commissioner Palmer,
       Commissioner Heaton
       Staff Present: Patrick Cory, Missy Creasy, Joe Rice, Lisa Robertson, Alex Ikefuna, Matt Alfele

Chair Mitchell called the meeting to order at 5:00pm and began review of the agenda. He provided
Commissioner Stolzenberg the opportunity to provide an overview of the parking garage RFP. Chair
Mitchell then provided the following: 1. There is a commitment to Albemarle County for parking 2, This
is an action that would need to occur from City Council, 3. Planning Commission recommended less
parking as part of the CIP last year and 4. PC recommended spending less on the parking garage.
Commissioner Lahendro asked if staff has reviewed this and it was noted that this information only came
up an hour before the meeting. Commissioner Stolzenberg noted that any zoning change to allow by right
should be done before the RFP goes out.
Commissioner Solla-Yates noted that he had a question for the Nassau applicant. Commissioner
Stolzenberg moved back to the parking garage and brought Commissioner Dowell up to speed when she
entered the meeting.
Chair Mitchell noted the process for this evening’s meeting.



 II.    COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING – Meeting called to order at 5:30 PM by the
        Chairman at 5:30 PM
       Beginning: 5:30 PM
       Location: Virtual/Electronic


A. COMMISSIONER’S REPORT

Commissioner Russell – I have a report from the Fontaine Avenue Smart Scale Streetscape Steering
Committee. We met on October 20th. The last time the Planning Commission saw this proposal for bike
and pedestrian improvements on Fontaine was in December, 2019. The Planning Commission voted to
recommend approval of this project and noted its compliance with the Comprehensive Plan. In January,
Council accepted recommendations. In these past months, they were at 30% development of the plans. It’s
now at 60% design development. One thing I noted and it was discussed is that the project is scaled back
to within the city limits only. It stopped at the county. There is about 40 feet of no bike lane. We all noted
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that. Helen Wilson from UVA also voiced her concerns. I would propose to the group if we have any way
to resolve or mitigate this or set aside funds in the future. Working with the county is what we may need
to do. In December, there is a design public hearing planned so that might happen before the City-County
meeting. Some other design elements were discussed. We talked about the aesthetics of a retaining wall at
Mimosa. We talked about some parking being impacted. The impact to parking is not of concern. The
plan does call for increasing overall tree canopy. The project engineers are planning to purchase
stormwater credits offsetting stormwater requirements. I wish that was not the case. That seems to be the
restriction in the site. They were originally considering bio-retention. That’s not possible given the site
constraints. That’s why stormwater credits are being pursued. There is a December design public hearing.
It is scheduled to go to City Council for design approval early next year.

Commissioner Stolzenberg – I have had only one meeting in the last month. We had a TJPDC meeting
last Thursday evening. The big interesting things are the regional housing partnership rolling out an
affordable housing search tool where rent restricted affordable housing will be listed. That will be rolling
out in the coming months. They will be doing a bunch of outreach to affordable housing developers to list
their apartments on it to potential tenants and users. The rent relief program got some more funding for
that. Anyone, who needs rent relief, should go tjdpc.org and try to sign up there. There was a mention of a
proposal from the Executive Director about a potential rename for TJPDC. Both the TJ part and the PDC
part are up for change. No action was taken last Thursday. Councilor Payne is following up on that. The
City is going to ask staff pursue new name options. We would have had a PLACE meeting on Thursday. I
believe that it was not noticed. It is now a staff designated committee and not a Council committee. It
technically doesn’t need to meet. Admirably, the City is planning on noticing those. That has been
delayed until it can properly be noticed.

Commissioner Heaton – No Report

Commissioner Dowell – I will be giving a report from the Ridge Street Task Force. One of the biggest
issues that arose during the meeting was the ease of access to downtown from the Ridge Street
neighborhood. It was noted that a large percentage of the Ridge Street neighborhood residents are
considered frontline workers. It would be nice to have programs and education for residents in the area.
Trying to see if jobs are approaching the actual residents here to help them create economic sustainability
and to see if we could use some funds from this task force to provide scholarships to residents to get skills
or trade certifications. LEAP let us know that they have some resources for people, who live in this
neighborhood and want to get certifications or may need childcare to help cover watching their children.
We also talked about increasing the number of Speed Limit signs as a visual more often to calm the
traffic. We talked about putting benches at the bus stops. A couple of the bus stops have been moved in
this area, but they do not have benches. A couple of things that we wanted to take into place before we
move forward. Staff is going to be reporting back to us about how the Elliott Streetscape Plan, the SIA,
the Old Ridge Street Plan, and the Fifth Street Plan will be tied into the recommendations of the task
force. From the public comment, we had issues about the crosswalks on Elliott Street and the importance
of continuing the engagement process. One thing that I took from the Planning Commission with the
Cherry Avenue Corridor was that I recommended that the task force walk the neighborhood. Everyone
can see exactly what angles we were talking about and how the cars are moving through the
neighborhood. I believe that we might have that coming up on Friday.
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Commissioner Solla-Yates – The Housing Advisory Committee met on October 21st. It was a roundtable
format. What struck me was a report that some landlords are potentially discriminating against rental
applicants on the basis of income asking for proof of income and that they have three times the income to
afford their rent, which is troubling. The City is investigating it as of October 21st. On the 28th of October,
there was a meeting of the Barracks Streetscape Steering Committee talking about the aesthetics of the
retaining walls. There are lots of good options. A lot of people had strong opinions. Brick ended up being
the favorite of the group, much to the dismay based on the feedback I got from the Commission. There
were some changes that I wasn’t expecting. There will be less space bicycle and pedestrians than
standard. They had to get a special request from VDOT to squeeze that tighter. To get that special
allowance, they had to eliminate the street lights that we saw on vertical poles. Those are gone. There will
be recessed lighting built into the retaining wall that will be lighting the walk and into the street. They are
still working on the canopy. There are going to be some issues moving utilities, which will wipe out a lot
of canopy. I asked if they had looked at burying utilities. They said it was too expensive. It is probably not
going to be possible with the budget.

Commissioner Lahendro – Over the last month, I attended a Board of Architectural Review meeting on
October 20th. We had three Certificates of Appropriateness approved. One was withdrawn prior to the
meeting. We did a preliminary discussion of one project on Oakhurst Circle. We also had a preliminary
presentation by the designers of the City/County Courthouse project, reviewing the kind of features and
phasing and the anticipated BAR reviews that are going to be needed. In support of the business activity
in the city during the pandemic and the upcoming cold weather, the BAR unanimously passed a motion
approving outdoor tents in architecture design districts for as long as the governor’s state of emergency is
in effect. We don’t have to go through that individually for every tent. I also attended a Tree Commission
meeting on October 28th. The real action and highlight of that meeting was a presentation by Crystal
Rittlegood, who is the city’s environmental sustainability facilities development manager. She presented
on the recently completed city green print 1.0 – Charlottesville Green Infrastructure Guide. It is a guide
on the city website that was put out two months ago. It was worked on for many years. It has links to the
green asset maps that provide searchable data. Green infrastructure encompasses the natural elements,
such as trees, rivers, and good soils, the building blocks of healthy communities and the natural assets
they support. As the city develops in the future, constructing buildings, roads, and utilities, the value of
Green Print 1.0 and the data it provides on the city’s existing natural systems. They can be preserved,
integrated, and enhanced with the new development. All developers and designers should be familiar with
this document and go to the website. The city did a fantastic job in getting it together.


B. UNIVERSITY REPORT

Commissioner Palmer – No Report

C. CHAIR’S REPORT

Chairman Mitchell – I had the honoring of representing the Commission in the process of picking the
new NDS Director. The people on my team included three developers, one past Planning Commission
chair, and one councilor. We all came to a unanimous consensus that Mr. Parag Agrawal was the right
person for Charlottesville. The slate was a great slate. We were picking from a great group of people. He
will be onboard soon.
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D. DEPARTMENT OF NDS

Ms. Creasy – You received a notification from the Clerk of Council concerning the updates to the FOIA
and some other public records documents. We are going to plan to have some at a future meeting to go
through those with you. As part of your role, it is important that you do take a look at those materials.
When you went through your orientation, we gave you some very basic background on that. It will be
helpful to provide some overview. We will be doing that. We do have a couple of items this evening. We
have a full agenda for December. We will continue to have full meetings. We are working with County on
the joint work session with their planning commission. We have that on the calendar for January 26th. The
topic will be housing. We have a lot of housing activities going on in both communities. We want to
frame that in a way that will allow both groups to have a good discussion about those activities and find
ways to work together. We are still continuing to function as the department. We have the new director
coming. We are in the process of working towards a new building official. Our building official retired in
August. We are also recruiting for an ADA Coordinator. We have no guidance on where we will be over
the next few months. We’re continuing on this path. We have an avenue for every application to make it
through our system. Any process we were doing before the pandemic, we are doing in a different way.
We are getting those things done. As you can see from the anticipated agendas, we are having a good
number of items come forward. In speaking with consultants, the Commission will want to determine
whether they want to have comments from the public following the affordable housing discussion.


E. MATTERS TO BE PRESENTED BY THE PUBLIC NOT ON THE FORMAL AGENDA
No Public Comments


F. CONSENT AGENDA
   1. Minutes – August 11, 2020 – Pre-Meeting and Regular Meeting

Commissioner Stolzenberg moved to approve the Consent Agenda (Second by Commissioner
Lahendro). Motion passed 7-0.

Meeting was recessed for two minutes.

(Items removed from the consent agenda will be considered at the end of the regular agenda)

 III.    JOINT MEETING OF COMMISSION AND COUNCIL

        Vice Mayor Magill called Council to order.

        Beginning: 6:00 PM
        Continuing: Until all public hearings are complete
        Format: (i) Staff Report, (ii) Applicant, (iii) Hearing, (iv) Discussion and Motion


1. ZM20-00004 - 817 Nassau Street –Hulett Management Services Inc., landowner, has submitted a
   Rezoning Application for 817 Nassau Street, identified within the City’s Real Estate Tax records by
   Parcel Identification No. 610084000 (Subject Property). Pursuant to City Code Sec. 34-41, the
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purpose of the application is to change the zoning district classification of the Subject Property from
R-1S (Residential Small Lot) to R-2 (Residential Two-Family). The Subject Property contains
approximately 0.19 acre with frontage on Nassau Street. In 2019 a single family residence was
demolished on this site, and the Subject Property is currently vacant. The Comprehensive Land Use
Map for this area calls for Low Density Residential. Information pertaining to this application may be
viewed online at www.charlottesville.gov/agenda. Persons interested in this Rezoning may contact
NDS Planner Matt Alfele by e-mail (alfele@charlottesville.gov).

i.     Staff Report
       Matt Alfele, City Planner – You are holding a public hearing for a rezoning at 817 Naasau
       Street from R-1s to R-2. Justin Shimp is representing the owner, Hulett Management Services,
       which owns the property. There are no proffers or development plan. They are basically
       requesting rezoning to build a duplex. In the staff report, there is a comparison of R-1S zoning
       district to R-2. One of the interesting things out of this is you can get a single family attached
       or a two family dwelling. The number of units you would get out of this rezoning is going to
       be similar to what you would get in R-1S because of accessory dwelling units. We have not
       had any public outreach, except one citizen did reach out in support. There has not been any
       emails of phone calls outside of that I have received. The applicant did hold their community
       engagement meeting. Nobody showed up for that.

ii.    Applicant

       Vice-Mayor Magill – I wanted to know what kind of community engagement process was
       enacted.

       Mr. Alfele – We do have a process for that. It involves mailing the explanation of what you
       are doing, when you’re holding the meeting, a self-addressed envelope to mail comments back
       if you can’t attend the meeting within all residents within 500 feet. The applicant did do that.
       The Zoom meeting was held September 23rd by the applicant at 6:30 PM. That meeting stayed
       open until yesterday, which was a 30 day window to receive any comments that would have
       been mailed back from the packets.

       Vice-Mayor Magill – Do we know how many citizens live within 500 feet of the property?

       Kelsey Schlein, Applicant – I recall it being several hundred. All of the ones that we mailed
       out with city COVID process were several hundred. It is typically quite a few people.

       Commissioner Solla-Yates – What is the reason for this? I don’t see a reason.

       Mr. Shimp – You could do the little accessory unit trick on this. There are restrictions to size
       of the unit based on the primary dwelling unit. R-2 is two full family units on the property
       instead of one. That’s just better in our opinion. That’s the only justification that we need.

       Commissioner Stolzenberg – Is the intent to subdivide them into two single family attached?
       Or is it to build a combined duplex on one parcel?
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         Mr. Shimp – I think it will mostly likely be a combined family dwelling.

         Commissioner Stolzenberg – I do have a question for staff in relation to the community
         meeting. For the site plan review community meetings, they are now all posted on the city
         website so that the videos can be reviewed. I really like that. I am wondering why this one is
         only available through the developer.

         Mr. Alfele – When you do a community meeting with how it was set up with the rezoning and
         special use, it put the onus on the applicant. Prior to the pandemic, they would hold a meeting
         so that the community was there at the beginning. Before they started to going through the
         process, they would have this community engagement meeting. The site plan conference
         meetings are the city’s responsibility. When you submit a site plan, you are in the process and
         the city is hosting that meeting.


 iii.    Public Hearing
         No Public Comments


 iv.     Discussion and Motion

         Motion: Commissioner Solla-Yates - I move to recommend approval of this application
         to rezone the Subject Property from R-1S, to R-2, on the basis that the proposal would
         service the interests of the general public and good zoning practice. (Second by
         Commissioner Lahendro). Motion passes 7-0.

IV.     Joint Council – Planning Commission Work Session – Cville Plans Together

        Jennifer Koch, RHI – We will provide a brief overview of the materials that are available right
        now. We are in a community engagement period. We will proceed into the bulk of the
        conversation, which is focused on the draft affordable housing plan. With the draft affordable
        housing plan, we will be going through that. We will stop at certain points to open up for
        discussion.

        Cville Plans Together is the name of a process for working to update the city’s comprehensive
        plan. As part of that update, we have drafted the affordable housing plan. It will feed into the
        comprehensive plan. Once the comprehensive plan revision is complete, we will be rewriting the
        zoning ordinance to ensure that reflects these goals and strategies that we are putting into the
        comprehensive plan. We want everyone in the community to understand what is going on. We
        have the draft affordable housing plan that is out for comments. That will be the focus of our
        discussion. We have also put up draft comprehensive plan revisions that includes guiding
        principles, our overarching priorities of the entire comprehensive plan, as well as some vision
        statements, which are priorities for each of those topics and specific chapters. Those are all
        available for review. For the comprehensive plan, this is the first starting point for revisions. We
        are about to get some community input on these statements before we move forward into the
        goals beneath these statements and the strategies to reach those goals. We want to make sure we
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have some conversation about that. We have all of this information on the website:
CvillePlansTogether.com/virtual-meeting/. You can also see what the website looks like. Those
three important sections of engagement summary, which leads you to a summary of what we
heard in May and June from all of the community input. That input went into the draft affordable
housing plan and the draft comprehensive plan revisions. It is important that we go through that
so that everyone knows what we heard. At the bottom of this page, there is a list of all of the
events and opportunities including this event and everything that is going on between now and
early December. We’re asking for comments back by December 2nd. There are several
opportunities between now and then for people to tune in and learn more. We have a series of
events coming up to share information and gather input. We have four webinars, two for the
draft affordable housing plan and two for the draft comprehensive plan revisions. The first
webinar for the housing plan is tomorrow evening. We also added in this phase some drop in
office hours, which will be a time for people to stop by in the virtual environment or on the
phone. That’s building on a concept we originally envisioned in a non-COVID environment. We
are suggesting this as an alternative. There is a toll free number people can call. We look
forward to discussions there. There is also a survey. It’s not the only way people can give their
input. People can send comments by the comment form or directly to the email address:
engage@cvilleplanstogether.com. You can also use the toll free phone line. You can call in and
listen to a brief message in English and Spanish and leave your comments. We have been
distributing fliers with all of this information. We will continue to do so. It has things like the
phone number to call in for these events. We have also been looking for opportunities for some
COVID safe popup events. We do want to be out in the community. We know that not everyone
is going to go to the website and look at this. I and Latoya were around Charlottesville this
weekend. We had a couple of different events and stopped and interacted with people. We’re
going to continue to look for opportunities there. We do have a couple of peer engagers on
board. We are working with them. These are people from the community, who are really
passionate about community engagement and making sure that people can be involved. We
started to work with them. We look forward to that partnership. We have also scheduled a
steering committee meeting on November 23rd from 4 PM to 5:30 PM. We have posted a link to
register.

Phillip Kash, HR&A – We are talking through our draft housing plan with you today. This is
the first time we are talking about the draft plan in a public setting. We’re pretty excited about
this. A lot of working went into putting this draft together. It reflects feedback from countless
parties within Charlottesville. We think we have done a good job reconciling those different
viewpoints. This is a draft. As you put things in writing, you get more feedback and have more
conversations. We’re already getting some of that feedback. We’re going to try to address some
of it that has come in the past few days during the presentation. We expect to get a lot more. We
are looking forward to the conversation here to refine and improve. We also acknowledge that
it’s a relatively long document. We’re going to try to break it into pieces. A lot of additional
time for conversations and we are going to be available for 1-on-1 conversations as appropriate.

Sarah Kirk, Project Manager – We have put out a draft earlier this month. It has been an
ongoing effort these past eleven months under Cville Plans Together. Some of the work that we
have already done included building on the past housing needs assessment to really understand
the work that has already been done in Charlottesville, engaging with the steering committee as
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well as other local groups to understand priority issues around housing, participating in the
public engagement for Cville Plans Together, and really evaluating the tools that are a part of the
recommendations for their feasibility and their potential impacts in Charlottesville. We are in the
midst of a one month public review and comment period. We are welcoming comments. We
have already gotten some input in writing from groups in Charlottesville. Through the
engagement and the comments provided by email or through the website, we are incorporating
feedback. Based on that feedback, we are revising the plan and submitting it for endorsement in
early 2021.

Mayor Walker – How are you tracking the recommendations that come in and whether you
implement them in the plan? Will we know that?

Mr. Kash – How we are planning to approach this has been similar to us. This is not a HUD
regulated plan. We are intent with following general HUD rules. We will take all of the
comments and the comments will be attached as an appendix to the document so that it is
transparent with we have responded to. This isn’t federally regulated. We have a great deal of
flexibility in how we approach it. We want to make sure that the comments are reflected.
Otherwise, it undermines people’s willingness to give us comments.

Mayor Walker – I think we should just know where the comments came from and how they are
being incorporated.

Ms. Kirk – Our goal for today is to provide an overview of the plan as well as the key initiatives
and ideas that are within the plan. We’re going to go through that and hold discussions. We
would like to talk through the recommendations. At that we point, we are going to go through
section by section of the recommendations and allow for discussion as needed. Then talk a little
about the next steps.

A lot of people have seen this before. We have shown this to a lot of people. This has been how
we have been talking about the core ideas of the plan since this summer. The recommendations
in the plan are informed by three guiding principles. These aren’t really goals. They are lenses
and types of consideration that are brought into each of the recommendations. We have thought
about how each recommendation aligns with these guiding principles. Those are Racial Equity
– We want to make sure that we are making recommendations about how these tools or
recommendations can be implemented, but how they can be implemented in a way that is
intentional and overcoming historic inequities – Regional Collaboration – Identifying areas
where we’re making recommendations for the city but the city has an opportunity to partner
within the region to advance its goals more broadly – Comprehensive Approach – Making sure
that we’re thinking a broad variety types of tools and types of housing options that the city
should be supporting.

There are five chapters of the plan. The first two are about implementation needs. The other
three are about tools. That is backwards from how we would do it. What we have found is that
Charlottesville has already considered that it has in place a lot of the tools that we were talking
about. We have made recommendations about how Charlottesville could approach, tweak,
design, and approach to implement those various tools. Where we have found the real need for
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focus was how those tools get implemented. That’s specifically around funding and governance.
We have put those two up front. There are twenty-two separate tools recommended within the
plan. We have captured a lot of the different ideas that people have been talking about in
Charlottesville and thought about how to move them forward in alignment with those guiding
principles. The core ideas of the plan are these three initiatives. Those three initiatives form a
really strong commitment to equitable affordable housing in Charlottesville. Those are funding:
dedicating $10 million annually to affordable housing. Governance: building inclusive
governments throughout Charlottesville’s affordable housing infrastructure. That’s the city,
public organizations that advise on the use of public funds, and that’s the leadership of nonprofit
partners. Governance that is inclusive across all of those different groups is really crucial to
insure that Charlottesville’s affordable housing work is meeting that racial equity goal and
including diverse voices. The third one is Adopting Progressive and Inclusionary Zoning
Reforms: We know that is something the city has spent a lot of time talking about. It’s going to
be done in part through the rest of this Cville Plans Together effort. Those three things together
would be a major commitment above and beyond what a lot of cities across the country are
doing to advance affordable housing.

Chairman Mitchell – How typical is it that we actually articulate a number relating to funding
in the Comprehensive Plan?

Mr. Kash – For a comprehensive plan, it is pretty unusual. For an affordable housing plan, it is
much more common. Even with an affordable housing plan, you don’t always do it. For an
affordable housing plan, you might talk about a particular bond issuance. You might talk about
how you are going to spend the bond issuance. We are really talking more about a plan that goes
with your housing trust fund. It’s not uncommon for a housing plan to do this. About 50% of
housing plans do this. With comprehensive plans, it is unusual the approach that Charlottesville
is taking with the comprehensive plan having a housing plan component to it.

Chairman Mitchell – As we move forward, you may want to coach us as to how we blend this
into the comprehensive plan. The Planning Commission is focused on getting the comprehensive
plan out. We will need some guidance as to how we “marry” these things.

Mr. Kash – If we can’t implement them, we didn’t succeed. That seems like a fair request.

Ms. Kirk – There are a lot of recommendations and a lot of details in the full draft plan. It is
now available. We encourage everybody to take some time to look through it and provide us
comments. For each housing tool, we talk about how the tool is currently used or how it relates
to the needs that have been previously identified in Charlottesville. We provide greater detail
about recommended changes or approaches to implementing the recommendation. We talk about
the potential impacts of implementing the recommended changes. For each tool, we provide
some considerations to ensure that they align with the guiding principles. We talk about the
implementation needs, including potential timeframes for implementation and the lead and
partners that will be able to help advance that. The final program design and annual budget
priorities will be set by the city in coordination with both the HAC and a new committee we are
recommending be formed to govern the CAHF funds. Those particular implementation needs
may change based on the priorities that those bodies set. We have tried to provide a robust
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understanding of where the priorities might be and how the city should go about making those
changes.

Mr. Kash – That’s an overview of really what we are going through here. We’re going to go
through each of these five chapters. We are going to talk about the higher level before we start to
get into the first ones. The first one that we are going to get into is about funding. Is there high
level questions or comments? I heard the comment about how this connects to the comp plan. I
heard the comment about making sure we are showing all of the comments for full transparency.

Mr. Lahendro – Can you explain how that funding level was arrived at?

Mr. Kash – At the highest level, we are proposing dedicating $10 million over the next ten
years. When we look at the programs and the level of impact, we think that gets you to around
4,000 households benefited. We made this commitment for a couple of reasons. There is
significant need in Charlottesville for affordable housing. We had the previous study on the level
of need. I think that makes a pretty compelling case. Everything in our analysis supports that
case. There is a need for consistent funding. We are addressing this as a challenge that it with us
for the long term. You need funding so that you can build out the capacity in your partners and
capacity in the local government to execute it. We did not recommend a bond approach where
you go once with a large amount of capital, but actually recommended an ongoing funding
approach. We made recommendations about the level of funding. We have tried to reflect these
both on the priorities that we heard from the community and where we heard the housing gap is
at. We made a recommendation that 40% of the funding go to extreme low income households
under 30% of Area Median Income, 40% of the funding go to households at 60% Area Median
Income, and 20% be able to serve households up to 80% of AMI. We have made real
recommendations on the targeting. We made some recommendations about transparency:
Publishing the metrics that are going to be used to measure impacts, the level of costs, and what
is being produced with this funding and making sure that is transparent and clear. Can we
disaggregate it based on neighborhood and characteristics of who benefits, race, and income
levels?

Chairman Mitchell – You’re going to go into exactly where this money is going to go? What
portion of this is going to go into helping with a down payments, rental support, mortgage
offsets? Are you going to go into that?

Mr. Kash – We did not recommend a detailed budget by program. We recommended an
allocation by funding level. We recommended a set of programs. We recommended a
governance structure that makes recommendations about the allocations of that. The allocations
of funding are done on an annual basis.

Mayor Walker – Is there any assessment done on the available land within the city limits and
how many of these 4,000 households could be created within the city without looking at those
partnership opportunities?

Mr. Kash – The 4,000 households is not necessarily for 4,000 new units of housing. We looked
at the programs. What is the ability of programs to implement into them? We are talking about
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public housing. The redevelopment of public housing units would potentially be included in this
4,000 units. Those are existing sites where there are already land. When we looked at that
program, we look at that. We looked low income housing tax credit. We looked at some of the
development you have, some of the parcels that are available in the community, and the potential
to absorb it. This is where we talk about regionality. What is the ability to do some of this
development in the urban ring? We don’t make that a requirement. We make that a
recommendation. Yes, we have looked at the ability of the different programs to absorb and be
feasible to execute it. It would be a stretch for me to say that we have identified sites for all of
this development. We have not gone to that level of granularity.

Commissioner Solla-Yates – I have a question on the bucket sizes. Just looking at the bucket
sizes and rental homes, they are different partly because they are looking at different AMI slices.
I am worried about what the blanket is covering and who isn’t being covered. Does this still
cover everyone under 30% AMI?

Mr. Kash – Covers everyone under 30% AMI? Would this cover every household under 30%
AMI? It would not.

Ms. Kirk – That 40% of funding that is available for households at 30% and below.

Mr. Kash – Even dedicating 100% of this funding would not cover everyone under 30% AMI.

Commissioner Stolzenberg – Where did you guys come up with this 40%, 40%, 20%
framework? Looking at the rental affordability challenges on page 31 of the draft, the extremely
cost burden households, the majority of them are certainly below 50% AMI. By the time you get
into the 60-80, we have no or very few households that are extremely cost burden. Why not
specifically target families with the most need?

Mr. Kash – We are targeting the families with the most need. There is need at every percent of
AMI and below. It’s not just rental housing that we are trying to address. We are also trying to
address access to home ownership. It is really consideration of both home ownership and rental
that led us to this distribution. We will get feedback that pushes us to a different distribution. A
different distribution can be done. We think that you want to have mix of incomes. There is
housing need up to 80% AMI. We particularly think your home ownerships should go up to 80%
and below. 50% AMI could still be a part of your home ownership program. We really mean the
below comment. We are trying to address the home ownership and access to wealth building
issues and affordability challenges in Charlottesville as well. Dedicating funding only to
extremely low income rental doesn’t give you room to address that public policy goal as well.
There might be a decision that it is not a public policy goal Charlottesville wants to address.
That is something we will talk more about in the governance section. We got a lot of feedback
and pushback to make sure that was something that was included. We think it is a good policy to
include it.

Commissioner Solla-Yates – In thinking about the different bucket sizes, it might be helpful to
understand the racial equity implications of the income bucket. That might help us understand.
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Mr. Kash – The racial mix for the different income bands.

Commissioner Stolzenberg – I have one more question. Ten million dollars as a number could
mean a lot of different things in terms of how that figures out into the budget. It seems that there
are very different constraints on cash funded expenditures versus bondable expenditures. Is there
a prediction or designation of how much would go to which either in the context of city funding
constraints or in the context of needs? Or is the idea that however you come up with it, whatever
government structure is in place, we will figure out what that mix is?

Mr. Kash – The recommendation here is that funding is flexible enough that it can move across
regardless of recommended programs. Whether it goes into a physical asset or actually goes into
rental assistance, a non-physical asset, what we are recommending is the flexibility. Which pot
the city draws from, we’re not saying it should be from one particular pot versus another. It
should have the flexibility to serve regardless.

Commissioner Stolzenberg – Is it $10 million in cash that the city is allocating per year? In the
next fiscal year, the city drops $10 million on some project that was bondable, we are really
spending $500,000 over 20 years plus some interest, does that count as meeting the $10 million
for this year?

Mr. Kash – Yes.

When we came with the recommendation of $10 million, we really put a focus on consistency
and looking at what Charlottesville has been doing on a scale of needs. We are trying to balance
two sides here. The first side is what we can see in Charlottesville’s budget and what appears to
be sustainable. The other side is the ability is to absorb the capital, the capacity, and what money
is being deployed in the market and the scale of need and the level of challenge that we have
here. What we came out with was a recommendation of $10 million. In the last three years,
Charlottesville has been putting more money towards affordable housing. We are recommending
a slight increase in that level commitment to sustaining it going forward. We are recommending
$9 million that would go out directly into programs and $1 million to be set aside for
administrative expenses. I think there is a very fair comment to be raised on whether the
administrative costs should sit inside the $10 million or outside. We do think it is really
important to invest in the administrative side of this. Charlottesville is really taking on a lot of
affordable housing programs much closer to a larger city and has to scale up both the capacity of
its local government apparatus as well as investing in the capacity in training the nonprofit
partners who are delivering. This administrative money is intended primarily for local
government capacity to execute efficiently, but also for some capacity building to the recipients
of the funding.

Chairman Mitchell – The $9 million is a capital commitment and the $1 million is an
operational commitment?

Mr. Kash – The $9 million would necessarily qualify for capital. Some of it won’t go into
physical improvements. Some of it might be rental assistance.
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Ms. Kirk – It also include tax relief

Chairman Mitchell – I am wondering practically of how it works from a budgeting perspective,
since Council cannot commit another Council to expenditures.

Mr. Kash – The plan is a commitment but it means it cannot be changed in the future. A future
Council could decide not to follow this.

Chairman Mitchell – This is more of an aspirational approach?

Mr. Kash – It is a specific commitment made to doing something. Somebody could run on a
platform to not do this. It is a democratic society. People can change what the government is
doing. As long as community support remains for it, these things usually stay. It is a challenge
all housing trust funds work on. We have seen housing trust funds be hollowed out over time.

Commissioner Stolzenberg – If the administrative funding is paying for staff capacity plus
trainings for nonprofits, is there additional administrative overhead within the $9 million?

Mr. Kash – Usually with these programs, you are covering a set delivery fee with it. Let’s say
you are doing the down payment assistance program. You would have a cost you to administer
the down payment program to every grant. You would build in some administrative costs. That
would be part of it. That is intended to be in there.

Councilor Payne – In terms of dedicating it across Councils, I know one of the difficulties is
that Councils can’t legally bind future Councils to expenditures. One of the challenges there is
how you create mechanisms to ensure that any funding level is maintained. We have some legal
restrictions at the state level.

Mayor Walker – If we build this culture within the community who is voting for Councils,
understand this commitment. No matter who they vote for, this should remain a commitment.
We just have to figure out how to make sure this is a community level conversation and not
simply based on the individuals who are in positions right now.

Mr. Kash – We can hopefully speak to that on the governance side. Sustaining the commitment
is one of the keys to success. It can lead to increases in these. It can go the other way.

We have talked about this income targeting. I heard the feedback. One is whether we are missing
the point about serving extremely low income rental households. Two is whether this lines up
with our racial priorities by income band. Those were the main pieces of feedback. The other
piece of the income band is the community representation piece. We are looking for community
representation in anyone who receives funding for this program. Let’s say it is a program
administrator. What is their representation on their or amongst their staff? When we say
community representation, do we mean both racial representation? How are the households that
are beneficiaries participating in the programs involved in the decision making process for how
these program are designed and operated and implemented? That has not been the approach
historically in affordable housing. As we look at best practices around the country, they are
                                                                                                     14

trying to reconcile with their goals, priorities, and how this has been done historically. That is a
really important recommendation. I don’t want inflate race and beneficiary. We are making two
separate and related recommendations there. One is about racial diversity and reflecting
Charlottesville’s role and the other about beneficiaries and participants in the housing programs
being included in the decision making process. It doesn’t make a recommendation about pushing
for maximum levels of affordability. On the rental side, that’s a clear point. We’re talking 99
years. On home ownership, we’re talking about repayment of funds as opposed turning
everything into grants. That’s always the right balance on home ownership. It is a sticky
conversation.

Commissioner Solla-Yates – I had a question on the 99 years. We haven’t done that because
it’s been cost prohibitive up to now. Is it cost effective? Can we do it?

Mr. Kash – I don’t want to undermine or challenge anything that has been done previously. I
haven’t done the analysis on the deals. Usually, it’s extremely cost effective. When we are not
doing work for local governments, we do work for developers. The cost of affordability 30 years
from now is very, very low as a developer. That’s not how my financial model works. Usually,
it’s the best possible investment a local government can make. There are exceptions to that.
Sometimes it is little more complicated. There are reasons you don’t want to mess up financing.
There are plenty of places in the country that do 50 years and others that do 99 years and no
negative impact on their pricing. We say that pretty consistently. Developers should be willing
to give you longer affordability in exchange for other support pretty easily. It is pretty good deal
for everybody financially.

Mayor Walker – We pushed that with the PHA to expand there and we will see how it works.
It’s the Friendship Court Development.

Mr. Kash – That is one of the core challenges of public housing redevelopment. The country
has gone in a direction of bringing private financing into public housing. On one side, it is great
in that brings additional funding. On the other side is the privatizing public housing and could be
the worst thing ever. It could be a Trojan horse. Making sure you have permanent affordability
and really understanding the development agreement that you are entering into and the
government structure of that development agreement is really important. I don’t believe anyone
you are working with is to be this type. There are a number of affordable housing groups out
there, who structure these transactions so that they are intentionally going to bankruptcy so they
can break the affordability restrictions. That is a real thing.

Commissioner Stolzenberg – Friendship Court is not under the Housing Authority. Mayor
Walker, how did that end up with PHA or are those discussions still on going?

Mayor Walker – I am here and learning through this process. When we were working with
Keith Woodard and the development downtown, that is the terms that they put on the parking
garage. Let me explore this a little bit more and ask for them to include it there. That’s where I
learned that is what is common. I have been asking for it since then.
                                                                                                15

Mr. Kash – We are moving into governance. I hear the comments on funding. We going to get
into governance. On the governance side, we’re trying to give you the best plan possible and
hear all the different needs and try to give you recommendations on it. The needs and priorities
are dynamic. You have asked very good questions about how this gets implemented. The
questions about the administrative costs are really important. We wanted to make sure that we
are putting just as much effort into the governance structures. We also recognize that working in
Charlottesville where you have a preponderance of government structures compared to some of
the other communities that we work in. We want to make sure that those are working. As we
saw our work, we saw real differences in what the priorities were for housing and we want to
make sure the government structures are set up to have those conversations. Home ownership
was the clearest difference that happened to line up along racial lines. There are other cleavage
points. When you talk to black respondents, home ownership ranked as a very high priority.
When we spoke with white respondents, it was closer to 50-50. I can speculate why that is. That
has to do with different lived experiences. We wanted to take ourselves out of the role of trying
to arbitrate that and more build the government structure. The key actions on the governance at
the highest level are making there is an onboarding process and significant training. Affordable
housing is a complicated topic that we pepper with technical speak and acronyms to make it
more opaque and complicated. There is training on that front. We think it is really important. We
also think there is cost to administer this. We want to make sure that is supporting the
governance. We want to make sure that this is all set up to model success. When we say that, it’s
really making sure that we can see the progress in diverse participation. Is there actual
participation in the governance and decision making process? Telling you that 100 units were
built. Telling you where those 100 units were built and who benefited from them is just as an
important part of the conversation and the housing industry tends to stop there. That’s now what
you asked for in the plan.

Ms. Kirk – There are four key areas of recommendations that we are making around
governance. The first two are external bodies to the city: the HAC and (what we are
recommending) the Affordable Housing Fund Committee. The second two are more related to
the city’s own capacity and its processes. The key recommendations that we are making for the
HAC are to refocus the HAC around providing City Council with recommendations around
housing policy priorities and to separate the budget piece from the work that they are doing. It
might be making recommendations about a potential zoning change. We know that there is new
state legislation enabling the city to adopt inclusionary zoning. It might be about the city needs
to do more about home ownership or investigating land bank or other tools that come up in
conversation. That’s a key piece of the refocused HAC. That is pretty much in line with what
they are already doing. In addition, making sure they can champion and advance the
implementation of the affordable housing plan. Understanding where those priorities are and
making recommendations about when and how to adopt some of the recommended tools that are
outlined in the plan.

Commissioner Solla-Yates – It is hard for the HAC and the Planning Commission to stay in
line. I spend a lot of time trying to do that. How will that work in this plan?

Mr. Kash – I believe that we have made things more complicated. We have made a
recommendation that we never normally make, which is another governing body. We have made
                                                                                                   16

this with great hesitance. Part of that is about not addressing that well on the membership side. I
take it as a point of feedback. Maybe there needs to be cross-seating between the Planning
Commission and the HAC. There is just more of a direct connection. That may happen
informally, It is a good thing to call out. There is some overlap and interest there. Part of that is
through conversation. I don’t have a perfect answer to that. Mainly some cross-seating and
conversation. We’re open to feedback, pushback, and better thoughts than what we have on that.

Ms. Kirk – We have spent a lot of time thinking about how to bring the city staff into alignment
with housing advocates on budget priorities. That was an area we had seen and heard about
tension. That’s something we might need to talk about on the HAC side as well. One of the key
reasons we are advocating for a second body is to avoid and reduce opportunities for conflicts of
interest between the HAC. By separating that funding recommendation piece, we hope that we
can continue engage affordable housing providers, real estate professionals, etc. on housing
priorities but separating that conflict of interest piece.

Mr. Kash – This is as much about perception. The HAC has been pretty clear and avoiding
conflicts of interests. That is something we consistently heard. If nothing else, there is a
perception there. The budget piece can swallow the entire HAC. We don’t think the budgeting
process should swallow that. We think that is an important policy. Part of our goal on the
comprehensive is for you to be working on housing goals, issues, and solutions. HAC still gets
connected to the programmatic side and funding side by pushing priorities like home ownership
and tools. The budgeting conversation gets handled in a different conversation. It is not that
different from what the HAC had moved towards with a subcommittee on this topic. We think
full separation is actually useful here. We are recommending another body which is something
we don’t normally do.

Ms. Kirk – The recommended CAHF Committee as we are calling it would be charged with
providing City Council with recommendations about the budgeting and the use of CAHF funds
as well as making recommendations on scoring and selection criteria for recipients of those
funds. We’re recommending a structure that provides equal weight to providers and applicants
for affordable housing, affordable housing residents or beneficiaries, and city staff. The goal is
to bring into alignment people who are benefitting from the city funds, people who are using city
funds, and the city staff, who are administering city funds.

Councilor Hill – With the size of the city and the number of providers, it could be a challenge to
have that without people having a conflict. There may not be a conflict one year but to not have
a conflict over multiple years would be difficult to retain continuity on this committee.

Mr. Kash – Do you think that’s a challenge? We wrote a draft conflict of interest policy because
we thought it was such a challenge. It’s included in the plan that makes for two tiers of conflict.
One is allocating funding across the different programs. It lets you vote on the allocation of
funding across the programs, just not the program you are participating in. You can participate.
If you worked at a nonprofit that provides down payment assistance, you wouldn’t be able to
vote on any allocation to that program. You wouldn’t be able to participate in the conversation
on scoring criteria or selection for anybody in that space. You could participate in the rest of the
conversation. We definitely acknowledge this challenge of having experts and having the people
                                                                                                17

invested in this involved without having conflict or perception of conflict. The policy draft is
based on some work we have done in Pittsburgh. We laid it out because we want to get feedback
on it. It has worked pretty well there. It is a real challenge. You need continuity and expertise.
Councilor Hill – For all intents and purposes, the subcommittee of the HAC has tried to achieve
that separation. I do think there is value in having a separate group that’s not intertwined with
the groups that has the people that are going to be the beneficiaries that are doing the policy
making. I see the logic. I also appreciate smaller committees both in terms of what you proposed
for the HAC. This would be much more effective at times.

Commissioner Stolzenberg – You said that we already have a lot of government structures.
You specifically would never recommend making a new government structure. Why do you
recommend a new government structure?

Mr. Kash – We think you have to separate the budgeting conversation from the policy side of
this.

Commissioner Stolzenberg – In what other contexts, what do you do? Do just not have the
policy committee?

Mr. Kash – In other places, the HAC or the equivalent is more informal. I think that we see it
two ways. Usually there is not a formal group like the HAC. You have a housing trust fund
created. Then you have housing trust fund board. The housing trust fund board encroaching into
policy issues that they shouldn’t encroach or maybe they should. We see encroachment in the
other direction. It is relatively unusual for it to go the other way. That is our thinking here. We
are certainly open to conversations about more elegant solutions and not creating additional
bodies. The comment made that this is not that dissimilar. It is already happening; just a little
more formalized. Hopefully it turns out to be a positive thing. This is what we are
recommending. I think it is a good recommendation. It doesn’t feel as perfect and clean we
wanted it to come up with. The other we feature that we thought in particular was a forum for
city staff and the housing providers to be talking directly to each other on their recommendations
before they get to elected officials. The decision ultimately rests with the elected officials.
Elected officials make all of the calls. A forum for that conversation to happen seemed really
important. We heard some concerns and some distrust on both sides. There is always going to be
some tension between the administrator of a program and the person, who operates it. That’s
somewhat healthy. It seemed like there was room for improvement for those relationships. This
could be a forum to help make that happen.

Ms. Kirk – The next recommendation is about empowering and increasing the capacity of city
staff. This recommendation is really about staffing the city’s housing staff at a level that is
equivalent that recognizes the scale of housing programming that is existing in Charlottesville.
Making sure that there are enough staff adequately resourced to administer all of the different
programs that we are talking about. We provide some information in the plan about the level of
staff Charlottesville has relative to its funding and the level of staff at some other comparable
cities. We provide some other recommendations, which are outlined here that would help to
further increase staff capacity to the collaborators and supporters of affordable housing. That
includes assigning a staff member to be a liaison for affordable housing development. The city
                                                                                                     18

already does this for historic preservation. Making sure there is somebody on city staff who can
be the point person to shepherd development through. We also talk about including city staff on
the CAHF committee in order to encourage collaboration on funding priorities and providing
clear communication about staff rules and city processes as well as opportunities and pathways
for community feedback to the city. There a lot of things there that are mostly around making
sure that the city staff is adequately resourced to implement the various tools and
recommendations of the plan. As part of that work increasing the capacity and support of the
staff, we talked about establishing clear, transparent, and competitive processes to award funds.
This relates both to city staff and to the CAHF committee. It is really about establishing a
transparent RFP process for funds and competitively scoring projects using a standard
underwriting process. We have provided some examples of types of scoring criteria that could be
used. It’s really about making sure that public funds are used efficiently and effectively and
targeted to the areas of need in the city.

Mr. Kash – It puts you in a place to evaluate on whether you are funding and supporting the
goals. We need to be primarily funding 30% AMI. If we end up at 40% without this kind of
analysis reporting, it very hard to be sure of that. It is about process. It is less exciting than some
of the other ones. We think that it’s really important if there’s a long term commitment to
affordability to have these in place because they make the programs more effective and
sustaining public trust, transparency, and making this is an ongoing commitment. The public
understands what they are getting for their investment. It is much easier and clear to
communicate the public benefits that are being generated here. Annual reports are dull but
incredibly useful if they are well organized.

Chairman Mitchell – What are we talking about? Are we talking about local funds? Are we
talking about local and federal funds?

Mr. Kash – We are primarily talking about local funds. That’s a fair point. If you are doing this
report, you might as well pull the same numbers and information for federal funds. We were
thinking about local funds. You have made a good point.

Councilor Hill – One of the challenges that we have had is how the city allocates all of its
dollars to outside resources. There has been inconsistency in just the process by which we
evaluate those things. Within the housing funding that might come locally or non-locally as well
as some of the nonprofit funding requests, which comes from our vibrant community funds. I
have always been interested in going through this process and that we come out of this. This is
way beyond housing. We have a measurements and solutions group that is working on basically
putting targets in place. If we are going to be allocating city funds, we have consistent criteria so
that there is full transparency and fairness across the levers that are being pulled for those funds
come from.

Chairman Mitchell – The other thing that I did not quite understand was the underwriting.
What do you mean by that?

Mr. Kash – This applies more to the development projects. Are these financially feasible with
what they propose to do? You are underwriting for two sides. One is to make sure that the deal is
                                                                                                 19

financially viable. The other is whether they leveraged all of the private money that is reasonable
to leverage. Public sector underwriting is much harder because you have to figure out if the deal
works and did I get the most for public money? Underwriting for this is challenging. You want
the deals to be safe. If there is a bump in the economy, they still work. You want to stretch the
public dollar and get as many as you can.

Chairman Mitchell – What is the threshold? Where is the threshold?

Mr. Kash – You have to measure on both sides.

Mayor Walker – I think the annual plan is a great idea. The last development we voted on, I
asked a question during that about whether the previous units on Main Street that were supposed
to be affordable units. They didn’t have people in them. We voted on something. The market
rate units were built. The affordable units were not. An annual plan will help us keep track. I
have been asking since I have been here where are all of the affordable units? I still don’t have a
clear understanding. I know what has been voted on. I don’t know what has been maintained or
even ever filled with some affordable to begin with. There’s no accountability even when we
have been giving SUPs to developers. That accountability piece isn’t there.

Mr. Kash – We have only talked about implementation. We haven’t talked about the tools,
which is usually we spend most of our conversation. We’re going to get into land use to start
with. Given the composition of this group, we will spend a fair amount of time talking about
this.

Ms. Kirk – Land use is particularly where there is opportunity and a real direct connection
between the housing plan and the comprehensive plan. What we have done is provide
recommendations and guidance about ways to think about land use reform. It is one of those
major initiatives. The specifics of how, where, and how much will be decided through the comp
plan update and the zoning rewrite. When we talk about land use, we are talking about using
land use reform to increase access to opportunity or increase housing in areas that are served by
transit or near employment centers, to redress or reduce racial segregation, in particular
recognizing historic role that land use and zoning have played in creating and sustaining racial
segregation. It’s about increasing the housing supply and limiting the increase of home prices
that can result from limited supply, and supporting affordability without subsidy. Without
subsidy, you’re not going to decrease rent or meet the needs of the extremely low income
households. There is also the potential to create unintended development pressures in areas
susceptible to gentrification displacement. We have made recommendations to try to curb that.
We have provided detail about each of these recommendations. Are there tools in particular that
the group wants to spend more time on?

Commissioner Solla-Yates – We have gotten some pushback about whether by right makes
sense or should it all be affordable only. Can you help us understand what each tool is and why
it makes sense?

Mr. Kash – Multi-family by right, the way we have written it, is housing development. You are
asking: Why housing development vs the by right should be affordable only? I think it is a “yes
                                                                                                20

and” answer. Yes, definitely for affordable housing. We tried to lay this out on the front slide
that we just went through. We do believe supply is part of the conversation when talking about
affordability. Not building enough housing will lead to market pressure and that will make
affordability worse. A supply solution has major limitations. Building more housing can slow
the increase in rent. There is plenty of evidence of that happening. It’s not going to create
affordability. We are making this recommendation because Charlottesville is a nice place to live.
I don’t expect that to change anytime soon. I don’t think you will want that to change anytime
soon. For it change, it will have to stop being a nice place to live. How does that desire get
accommodated? If it doesn’t get accommodated, it gets accommodated by bidding up the price
to be in Charlottesville, which is happening in desirable and amenity rich neighborhoods across
the country. Part of that is allowing for an increase in the supply of housing. There is a real
tension for public bodies like yourself to help manage that tension between building enough
housing to accommodate that growth and destroying the character of a neighborhood and
creating a gentrification pressure. We are trying to be direct and sincere of the tensions between
those two things and recognize the limitations of housing supply. The other thing that may not
come across as well as it should in the shortened condensed version is that Charlottesville has a
really important role to play. This is the point more than any other where regionality and the
urban ring are critical. Charlottesville is an important part of the housing market. It is not big
enough by itself to shift the housing market with supply chains on its own. That is clear in the
report. It is not as clear as it needs to be. We have done analysis in other cities on how much
housing is needed to shift the curve. It is not small numbers. It almost never shifts the curve
down. It just means that it levels it out. On the multi-family side, allowing more multi-family
development has to pair with inclusionary zoning. You can have exclusionary zoning without
allowing more multi-family development. We think it will be much less effective. On the multi-
family side, we are talking about removing some of the barriers. These are the actions we are
talking about. We are recognizing that there is a significant nuance to what is actually going to
happen. We are talking about restructuring your existing multi-family zoning so that actual
feasible development is by right. With setback requirements and actual lot usage restrictions and
other issues, you can’t do it. You still have toc come in to get permission. We have started to
talk about and look at the areas where the commercial areas and some of the single family areas
are and are suitable to allow more. Making it easier to do and where it is already permitted and
identifying some different areas but doing it in such a way that it doesn’t displace low income
residents. Drawing a map and saying that this is an area that has lower price points and lower
income and we are not going to up-zone that area because the market pressure will lead to
demolition, redevelopment, and displacement. That’s not what we are looking for.
Fundamentally, we are recommending less discretion and setting some criteria on the front end
and less discretion on a project by project basis. That is a hard change to make and practiced to
work well. That is the recommendation we are making. It has to be with the urban ring and we
can get bigger than that. The urban ring is going to be a bigger driver of this than you are.

Chairman Mitchell – I totally agree that the urban ring is where we are going to most
effectively address this problem. We cannot do it just inside Charlottesville. Collaboration is
going to be very important. I am hoping that you can “beef up” the chapters as it relates to what
is happening in the urban ring and we can do to collaborate with the county just outside of the
city. The question is related to this feedback we got back from the HAC on your report. The
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objective to by right soft density and they wanted us to talk about by right affordable soft
density. What does by right affordable soft density mean?

Mr. Kash – We received that and we read through it. We have not had the conversation with the
HAC. This is my interpretation. What I believe it is allowing some of that soft density but only
in places where it is exchanged for affordability. There are examples where you could allow a
triplex, up to three in soft density, where one of them has to be affordable. It’s an inclusionary
zoning policy that would apply in your single family areas. I might be wrong about what they
intend to do. Unless you have significant subsidy nested with the zoning, the economics on that
usually don’t work. The affordable units don’t make enough money to pay for construction
costs. If you have two other market rate units, they are not enough to cross subsidize. You
usually have to get to around higher than four in a fourplex. I don’t think that recommendation
will work. I might be misunderstanding what they are saying and want to have a conversation.
Maybe it’s about nesting with a subsidy. If we have enough money, it could be a great strategy.

Commissioner Stolzenberg – In a few places you talk about identifying single family
neighborhoods that might be suitable for soft density or for denser multi-family. It is not an
accurate claim to say any of our neighborhoods in the city are single family. If you look at the
built environment, every neighborhood has some level of attached homes or duplexes. I wonder
if the framing on soft density, in particular, should be more about identifying neighborhoods
where it is not suitable because we don’t want to create built in pressures. If it defaults, more
would be allowed.

Mr. Kash – That makes a lot of sense.

Councilor Payne – It’s really an important point that it begins in the land use section with the
acknowledgement that this will not bring rents down. It won’t meet need at even 80% AMI and
certainly not at 60% or below. Up-zoning could potentially will bring in more outside
investment and that varies street by street the impact on displacement that could have important
grounded realities. I am particularly interested in multi-family. What areas both in the city and
the urban ring as well as what specific changes can be made? One of our big problems is our
zoning incentivizing by right office space and in some cases hotels. It is not producing any
housing and having the biggest effect in terms of creating demand for people to live in the city.
What specific areas and changes can flip that so that we are not just seeing all of this by right
office space that is popping up by right? If anybody wants multi-family housing, they have to go
this through long process. It seems like inclusionary zoning might square that circle of
conversation around affordable density. When we are developing that policy, we think that will
address that concern as well as developing that policy will get us to the point where we are doing
that market analysis of what is feasible in addition? When are we going to need additional
subsidy in order to bring down the AMI levels? That inclusionary zoning is an important piece
for us to discuss if we are thinking about that.

Mr. Kash – Yes. Connecting inclusionary zoning and multi-family is essential. You can’t make
that same connection on the single family. I think it has to be framed a different way. The
framing that was recommended to us was a good way to change that conversation. The fact that
you are incentivizing something because multi-family is difficult that you don’t really don’t
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want to be incentivizing is a great conversation to be having. We started with Code Studio really
looking at neighborhoods and areas and having some conversations about it. The housing plan
that we are writing won’t specify neighborhoods but the portion of the comp plan will start to
have those conversations. We are getting into it. Our piece of work doesn’t get into it as much
because Code Studio is “much smarter” about this than we are. Code Studio has been in all of
our conversations. We have been talking with them and will stay involved and around for any
conversations that they have so that these things are not too disjointed. We have worked really
hard and RHI has done a good job of talking with us. I don’t have any answers about location,
but we are talking with each other.

Ms. Kirk – We do provide recommendations on tenant’s rights. Tenant’s rights are really about
helping existing tenants increase their housing stability and to find a better balance between the
power and rights of landlords and their tenants. They won’t create any new affordable units.
They do help households to stay in housing. They also really have limited potential in
Charlottesville due to restrictive state laws. We have made some recommendations around ways
that Charlottesville can meaningful advance tenant’s rights either through avenues that are
currently available legally to the city or through advocacy at the state level. The two key ones
that are really available to the city currently are related to any time that the city is putting funds
into a development or into a deal or into a program. We have already talked about the scoring
criteria that the city should use to award funds. The city can put in requirements for enhanced
tenant’s rights any time it is providing funding for affordable housing development. If the city is
able to provide funding for legal services for tenants facing eviction, it can establish citywide
right to counsel to help tenants facing eviction to stay in their homes.

We have a number of recommendations about the public subsidy. We have recommendations
about rental affordability, home ownership, and helping tenants to meet a gap to make their
rental payments.

Mr. Kash – The purpose of limitations are straight forward. You are creating direct housing and
providing direct assistance. This is really the only way you’re getting to those at the lowest
levels of income. When I say lowest levels of income, households at $35 to $40 thousand a year
in many cases like households that certainly have significant income. The housing market is not
serving them. There are limitations to this. The limitations on subsidy are related to the fact that
it is extensive. There is a limit on public funding to pay for it. It takes careful design and
program execution to design it. Those are straight forward.

I do want to talk about the tools here. There are a lot of tools here and we’re probably not going
to do them justice. We group the tools based on the issue they are trying to address. These are
the tools most directly related to rental affordability or either creating or preserving affordable
housing. Land bank can be used for home ownership as well. It has more flexibility. That is an
imperfect grouping. You are funding low income tax credit. The low income tax credit is how
most affordable housing in America is produced. When I say most, I mean 90% plus. It is the
biggest tool. Due to development in Charlottesville, there is still a need for additional gap
funding to help the close the deal. It is not true everywhere. It is true that Charlottesville is a
more expensive place to build. This is about making sure there is gap funding so that
Charlottesville is going after and getting a regular pipeline of tax credit deals. Charlottesville
                                                                                                  23

should be going after deals on an annual basis. There should be a regular pipeline of production
here. That is possible the way the state is currently allocating funding. It had to be competitive.
It is not easy to do, but it is possible to have significant higher level of production. We talked
about public housing redevelopment. Redeveloping and modernizing the public housing in
Charlottesville and making sure that it remains an asset available to current and future
generations is essential. Public housing, while extremely expensive and at times frustrating for
everyone, is the best way to make sure there is housing for households with extremely low
incomes. It is less expensive than any of the alternatives. The alternative is to allow
homelessness and squalor. There are certainly local governments that have tried to push and
tried to avoid public housing and have tried to use public housing development process to get rid
of their public housing. Charlottesville has decided not to do that. It has decided to invest in it.
This is about make sure that there is enough funding to make sure that public housing can be
redeveloped. This is one of the hardest parts in the whole plan because the housing
redevelopment authority is still in the process of digging through what the strategy is. We can’t
give exact numbers on the cost. We can only look at projects and efforts in other places and
deals that are currently moving forward and put forth recommendations there.

Mayor Walker – With regards to your comment earlier about making sure that the financing for
housing is structured in a way where it isn’t potentially bankrupt and lost. Do you have
examples where that financing has been structured differently than ours is being structured?

Mr. Kash – I don’t know how yours is being structured. I currently don’t have examples in the
plan. I can certainly give examples of public housing redevelopment that has been structured in a
way to protect the interests of the residents and affordable housing into perpetuity. A lot of it
comes down to who owns the land and who owns the building. Those are the two most
fundamental questions. If you own the land but not the building, how is your ground lease
structured?

Mayor Walker – That’s my other concern in the new development that is happening. That
struck a chord when you made the statement.

Mr. Kash – We will provide some examples and I am happy to talk about this more specifically.
It shouldn’t be a “buyer beware” situation. It should be a clear and safe harbor. That is not the
way HUD has structured. It is easy. I think a lot of these program were designed with good
intent with people trying to save affordable housing. If you end up with a developer who is not a
great partner, there is real risk. It is something we struggle with in other places.

The preservation fund is one of the few tools we are recommending that is not currently in
existence. This is really about acquiring existing single family or multi-family housing and
taking it out of the market. If you’re buying an apartment building, you get a mortgage. If you’re
a nonprofit developer, you put in some money. If you’re a for profit developer, you’re generally
putting in equity. That equity has a really high return requirement. That’s where most of the
profit motive is going on. The debt payment is fixed. The preservation fund is basically designed
to replace that equity with public money that doesn’t have that profit motive. Rents might go up
because that is what it takes to maintain and sustain the property, not on a profit motives. The
concept is to take the property out of the market. Preservation funds are becoming very popular
                                                                                                 24

in a lot of places. They are the best thing you can do efficiency-wise if you can’t do rent
regulation. In Virginia, you won’t be doing rent regulation. It is definitely worth looking at. You
have a lot of programs that are very effective. We put this in as another tool. It should not
necessarily jump in front of anything.

I won’t speak that much about the land bank. This is about creating a new legal entity or vesting
the legal authority in an existing entity to hold land and assemble properties and not have to pay
property taxes on them. This is something Charlottesville has looked at carefully before and got
derailed based on concerns about end runs around the housing redevelopment authority.

Chairman Mitchell – Why would we use a land bank assets for rental properties when the land
bank assets are dedicated to allowing our low wealth community to get in these land banks and
begin generating wealth?

Mr. Kash – I think the land bank can be just a legal entity to take the property and not pay
taxes. You have a lot of flexibility and that is why it is a little out of place. You don’t have to
just use it for rental. You can use this on a home ownership play. You can do a simple property
and then sell it. You can even try a land trust approach. The land trust owns the land and doesn’t
have to pay the taxes. There is still an opportunity for ownership and wealth building. This is
more about reaching an agreement on who should have this legal authority and how it should be
controlled. It is a legal authority the state has given you and Charlottesville should use. We just
need trust and an agreement on where that authority is going to rest.

Mayor Walker – You’re not talking about creating a new entity that is going to need funding
from the city?

Mr. Kash – We are not recommending a new entity unless that we can’t see that it is necessary.
You don’t need a new entity to have the legal authority to do this.

Mayor Walker – We don’t want to be creating new entities that are going to be additional
organizations competing for a limited set of funds.

Mr. Kash – I don’t think we say that as clearly as we should in the report. That is certainly our
intent and we will say that more clearly.

Councilor Payne – I want to emphasize the importance of the preservation fund. In your report,
it mentions that there is 644 low income housing tax properties in Charlottesville at risk of
becoming market rate. I think it is so important. If we are investing in interventions and 644
units are going away and becoming market rate, we may just be “treading water.” I think that is
why going forward structuring our low income tax credit investments with 99 year lease and
shared equity is so important that we are not making substantial investment in 30 years’ time. It
is all market rate again. We have made very superficial impacts. I want to emphasize of this as a
policy for us.

Mr. Kash – I want to spend on home ownership. This is the area we have received the most
comments on. We tried to lay out in our plan how important we think home ownership is. The
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feedback is telling us that we have to be even clearer on that. There is certainly a perception that
the plan is underselling that. We are going to try to listen to that feedback and get more and get
clearer and tighter on this and making sure that we’re reflecting everything. In our analysis with
the advisory committee, we have laid out how home ownership has been a real challenge in
Charlottesville. Home ownerships rates have dropped for lower incomes and how home
ownership rates have dropped for black households and the importance of home ownership.
Home ownership is so critical particularly if you have a racial equity lens on things. If you have
an economic equity lens on things, home ownership is the number one asset for most families. It
is the driver of economic mobility. You don’t have to like that that is the model for our country.
That is the current asset building model. We do think that it is immensely important. We lay out
several programs in here. These are all existing programs. We are just talking about making
modifications and adjustments. We are talking about down payment assistance program that we
are increasing the level of funding in the amount of money going into the program. We are
recommending a higher level and that more funding go in per household. One of the biggest
obstacles in down payment assistance programs right now is that the market is so expensive.
There is not enough money in the down payment assistance programs that let households
actually compete in Charlottesville. If you actually want this to be a meaningful program, there
has to be more funding and the ability to layer with other funding sources. This is really about
identifying opportunities for additional single family development and making sure they are
affordable. It could be paired with your ADU and some of the zoning recommendations we have
made. Owner occupied rehabilitation is a program that you already have. We’re recommending
additional funding for it so that it can be ramped up at higher levels of repair. If you are trying to
support low income home ownership, owner occupied rehabilitation is about two things. One is
making sure that existing owners can stay in their place. Two is making sure that their homes are
repaired and maintained over time. When it comes time to sell it, they are able to get the equity
and the value from that home. You can be in a neighborhood that is experiencing a lot of
appreciation. If you can’t access the financing, you can’t maintain the home. You end up selling
to a cash seller, which means you get much less value and there is much less wealth building for
you. This is intended to address both of those. To do that, we need more money and we need to
be comfortable spending more money per house. The last is an endorsement and
recommendation to maintain and extend your property tax relief program. It has a real cost and
there may need to be some targeted revisions over time. It also has a real benefit. It is reaching
households that are at risk of facing displacement pressure and have a real constrained budget.
When you look at the data on owners that are cost burden, you can see that.

Mayor Walker – With the rehabilitation assistance, are there clear recommendations or is this
the extent of the recommendation?

Mr. Kash – There are clear recommendations. There are recommended actions. The
recommendations are fundamentally about increasing the level of rental assistance, making the
assistance when you are doing a larger intervention, making it a no payment loan and not a
grant. The idea there being that the money will recycle back so that you can do more households.
By making it a loan, when that house does come up for sale, another affordable homeowner gets
the “first bite at the apple.” It doesn’t require the homeowner to give up any of the value of the
existing house. They should leave in a better financial place. We didn’t move it and make it a
recommendation less of a grant. We usually make that kind of recommendation and get feedback
                                                                                                  26

on it. There are legitimate public policy reasons to go both directions. We think it is important to
recycle and make sure there is access for future homeowners. There is a real balancing to that.
Councilor Payne – I would add with the property tax relief. I believe there are hard limits set by
the state about the amount of relief as well as the assessed value or the property that can qualify
that are real limits on the programs. That might be something we add to just cause eviction and
rent control for efficacy for the General Assembly to allow us to better target that program to
reach a deeper need.

Mr. Kash – We are going to follow up and ask more questions about that. I think we can add
that as an anti-displacement property tax policy at the state level. That is the goal of the
approach you are taking. It is an anti-displacement conversation.

The tenant based voucher and emergency assistance is for the lowest income residents on a
household basis. Those are at risk of eviction or homelessness. You have tenant based voucher
program. We make a couple of recommendations about adjustments and really about increasing
level of funding. In the emergency rental assistance, Charlottesville like most of the country has
been involved in standing up programs in response to COVID-19. We’re recommending that
you look at how to make these funds in this support an ongoing and permanent effort. The
country, as a whole, had an eviction crisis because of COVID-19. Whole households experience
eviction crises all of the time. Their crises, while not the community crises, aren’t any less real
or any less need of assistance. You stood up and created some of the infrastructure and to run
one of these programs. It should be easier to help make that a permanent thing.

I know that I went through this things quickly on the subsidy side. For each of these tools we lay
a couple of different slides explaining the context, explaining the specific recommended actions,
and talking about how each tool links back to those three guiding principles: regionality, racial
equity, and comprehensiveness.

Ms. Kirk – We are accepting public comments through December 2nd. Based on those
comments received, we are going to revise the plan and submit it for endorsement in early 2021.
The affordable housing plan is going to be incorporated into the comprehensive plan.

Ms. Koch – In general, we have outlined how we are envisioning that. The visions statement
that is in the affordable housing plan has been used in the comprehensive plan vision statement
for the housing chapter. The housing chapter in the comprehensive plan goes beyond what is in
the affordable housing plan. The policy recommendations in the affordable housing plan will be
incorporated into the comprehensive plan as goals and strategies to reflect or address that overall
housing vision statement that is in the comprehensive plan. In addition, these strategic actions
that are outlined in the affordable housing plan will be a piece of the implementation chapter of
the comprehensive plan. Those major recommendations and action steps of the affordable
housing plan will be placed directly into the comprehensive plan. The full document is not going
to be the housing chapter of the comprehensive plan. It will be an important document that will
be explicitly a piece of the comprehensive plan.

If you go to the website CvillePlansTogether.com/virtual-meeting/, you can see the engagement
summary from May and June. That is important because what we heard then from the Planning
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Commission, Council, and the steering committee fed into the affordable housing plan and the
comprehensive plan pieces that we have drafted. Please visit the website, we would love to hear
your comments. We will be following up with the Planning Commission and City Council by
email. We would love to have any other comments from you as well. There are many upcoming
events and webinars. You can find them on the virtual meeting page of the website.

We did have delays earlier in the project due to the slow start with COVID. There was some
other brief delays as well over the summer. We want to make sure that was all shown on the
schedule. There are a few important things shown on the schedule. We will be revising the
affordable housing plan as we get closer to the end of the year. The plan is to take that to City
Council for endorsement in January. We will be incorporating that into the comprehensive plan.
With the comprehensive plan, we are moving forward once we have done input on the vision
statements for the different chapters. We are going to be moving forward to make those
revisions and revise the goals and strategies that are in the plan to speak to those vision
statements. We will have a check in at the Planning Commission meeting on December 8th. At
that point, I would like to speak with you all about a few things. One of them will be checking
back in on the schedule, letting you know what we heard, what changes we think might be
needed with what we are sharing now, and if we need to make any adjustments to the schedule.
We would also like to talk to you about the future land use map. As we mentioned, that is a
really important piece of all of this. It feeds into the affordable housing plan recommendations.
We want to talk about your process in the past. We want to speak with you how we move
forward from that and how we want you to incorporate that into the future land use maps. That is
something we will be working on throughout December. We want to have a discussion with you.
This is an ambitious schedule and we are not trying to hide that. We think it is doable. It depends
on what comes out in the next month in terms of potential revisions or changes that might be
needed to our current path forward.

Commissioner Russell – I just keep coming back to the concern about the land use strategies of
ADUs, by right multi-family, and soft density. Unless there is an affordability requirement, they
won’t have that affordability effect unless they are paired with a requirement. How would we
make that criteria? That seems complicated and challenged.

Mr. Kash – I think that it is complicated and challenging. I think that you’re accurate. New
development and even Accessory Dwelling Units will not be affordable because the rents don’t
support it and people are going to tend to take the highest revenue they can. We do talk about
taking subsidy put it into Accessory Dwelling Units. There is some direct affordability. A lot of
the land use pieces are going to be, with the exception of the inclusionary zoning and multi-
family, the other land use pieces are primarily going to be about reducing the pressure on the
market. We tried to not overstate and make like that is a magical solution because it is not. The
data is really clear. It can work and make a difference. It is also really clear for Charlottesville
that you have to have development. Most of that is development is going to have to sit in the
urban ring for it to get to a scale that is going to move the needle or keep the needle from
moving up too quickly.
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Ms. Kirk – As we discussed before, a healthy multi-family development environment is going
to be a necessary precondition to having that inclusionary zoning, which is a tool that will
actually increase the production of affordable housing.

Commissioner Dowell – Did you see it feasible to come up with any recommendations to
incentivize property owners to rent or to continue renting to our lower income residents? Is there
any incentive or type of program to keep the units affordable for the actual landlords, who are
providing this housing?

Mr. Kash – You have a fair number of landlords that rent properties that are affordable. There is
market pressure in there. They have to make an economic choice about whether they raise the
rents or sell the property to redevelopment and what can we offer them to help to encourage to
keep them affordable? The most direct and honest answer to this question is no. We don’t have
policies along those lines. The preservation fund is probably the closest. It really isn’t set up for
them to stay the owner. It is more set up for them to sell it to somebody else with them knowing
that it would stay affordable. They would get to sell it at a market rate. That is the short, direct
answer. We could look at tax abatement policy and loan programs. That is something you could
do. It could be done. We can adjust the preservation program to be set up as more of a financing
tool for existing owners or we could look at tax abatement policies or how the land bank might
fit into that. We haven’t yet.

Commissioner Dowell – If you have the time, I think that would be a positive road to go down.
With new development coming in, there goes the pressure with the taxes going up. If we are
really trying to make sure we increase or maintain our housing stock, we have to be able to
provide vouchers for residents to use with private landlords, but we need to figure out some type
of way to incentivize these landlords to keep their rents affordable in the private sector.


PUBLIC COMMENTS

Lakeisha Washington – I would like to speak about affordable home ownership for the people
in Charlottesville. My mom worked three jobs to pay bills and take care of us. I am now a mom
and that has been a dream for myself and daughter. I will not work more than 2 jobs to have a
home. Families shouldn’t have to make those kind of choices. I have worked with Habitat to
help reach my goal of home ownership. The affordable housing plan does have a lot of great
aspects. I feel that it doesn’t go far enough. I hope that you will consider this moving forward.

Emily Dreyfus – I was so glad to hear what you have recommended. This was a very inspiring
presentation. I liked the idea of hiring outreach peer workers. I wanted to emphasize a couple of
thoughts on tax relief and rent relief program. Those two programs need to go deeper to reduce
displacement. Spending more money per household is where we need to go to make those tools
more impactful.

Neil Williamson – I am very impressed by the consultant team that you have brought together. I
will hope that you will use empirical evidence to judges these various policies that are being
propagated. We have grave concerns about what is enabled in rent control. We have also
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     concerns about inclusionary zoning. We are very encouraged by the focus of increasing home
     ownership and increasing positive rental units. I am hopeful that the Planning Commission and
     City Council can evaluate these tools and how they can address the objectives in the plan.

V.   COMMISSION’S ACTION ITEMS
     Continuing: until all action items are concluded.
     No additional items

     PARKING GARAGE ON MARKET STREET

     Commissioner Stolzenberg – A few years ago, we bought the Guadalajara and Lucky Seven
     property for about $2.85 million. A year later, we came to an agreement with the County to
     redevelop courts. Part of that agreement was to use that Guadalajara and Lucky Seven parcel
     plus the next door service parking lot and to buy the County share of that to build structured
     parking, at least 90 spaces, to give to the County to support the courts. Kimbley Horton did a
     concept study on what could go there. Council directed staff to pursue a plan that used both
     parcels to build a parking structure of at least three stories and several hundred spaces with a
     little retail on the bottom floor. Staff added one more parameter that it be by right only so they
     would have to come and ask us for a Special Use Permit. At this point, staff is working on
     putting together a request for quotation to find some teams that will be capable of building this.
     Following finding those teams, they will put out a request for proposals. It will be a very broad
     task to allow those teams to create a creative proposal that satisfies the minimum requirements
     and do it how they would like. My initial proposal that I was going to introduce tonight. We
     have talked a little bit more about why the initial plan was to put the three story parking garage.
     The big constraint is that it is a very wide lot but a very thin lot. In downtown zoning, above the
     third story, there is a very large setback required to the point you basically can’t put any more
     stories on it cost effectively. My proposal is to change the zone of the parcels to Downtown
     Extended, which will let you do everything you can do on the downtown parcel and frees staff
     hands on the RFP proposal and to do a more creative proposal on that site. It would be a simple
     rezoning. When I brought that to the Parking and Economic Development Department, they
     were Ok with it. It doesn’t any additional constraints to them. They can do it the exact same way
     as they thought it would probably have to go down if possible. Maybe they will get a good
     proposal from RFP respondents. The way I was going to go about it was initiating a zoning map
     amendment tonight. Legal counsel has said that there are some issues, given that it is not a broad
     map change. It is just a rezoning of a few parcels. The City, as the owner, is going to have to
     initiate that. There were some concerns about whether anything would change on just allowing
     more to happen there, given that a taller building might cost more money even if it might bring
     in revenue through renting office space or creating housing and other social ends. That is beyond
     the scope of what I was thinking, which is a simple rezoning that would be done prior to the RFP
     going out in three months. There would be more options available to the respondents of that.

     Chairman Mitchell – The logic behind what Commissioner Stolzenberg is recommending is
     solid. It actually reflects the vote that we took a year ago when we voted on the Capital
     Improvement Program. We actually voted to not fund the garage to the extent that staff wanted
     us to. We didn’t think we needed as much parking space as had been budgeted. I think we
     reduced the funding of that by about 50%. We voted to reduce the parking, but honor the parking
     commitment to Albemarle County. We have made a commitment there. We also voted to
                                                                                                    30

include more mixed use and possibly include more housing in the project. What we are
attempting to do today is to start a conversation with Council regarding what we actually do with
that property. It allows us to reduce the cost, increase more affordable housing, make it a mixed
use property, and possibly put us in a position to raise more revenues.

Commissioner Stolzenberg – That is spot on. We have a $5.5 million piece of land. We have
$10 million to build some stuff on it. We know that we need to build a bunch of parking for the
County and the City. The problem is that is all you can do under the current zoning. Maybe there
is a potential for more. The land is already paid for. All of that space above it is free.

Chairman Mitchell – Our real intention today is get this in your mind and tee up some
conversations. The problem is that the RFP will be issued in February to do this.

Commissioner Stolzenberg – It will take about three months. That is the timeline, but it sounds
like it might slip.

Chairman Mitchell – We need to provide staff with a clear articulation for the parameters of
the RFP in three months.

Lisa Robertson, City Attorney – This is not just a simple RFP. This is a design build
construction process. We are giving them the minimum parameters. If we want there to be
residential units within this garage, we have to say that. The cost to the city up front to build a
building that would either include that at the outset or that would include a foundation that could
be used to add that on at a later date. I want everyone to understand that it is not as simple as a
straightforward RFP saying “Come build this for us.” Tell us what you think of the best thing to
do. Aside from that, they have correctly summarized what we talked about earlier this evening to
the extent. If there is going to be a rezoning, City Council would need to do it as the owner of
the property. That would also be the quickest way to move through a rezoning process. I think
that City Council should also directly touch base with the Economic Development Director
about timelines. It’s something that certainly can be considered. I certainly understand what is
motivating it. That is to give you the flexibility to expand the range of options on this difficult
site. I know that staff is very close to developing a final draft of the design build solicitation that
can go out. We are butting up against some timelines and deadlines that relate to establishing the
parking for the new general district court system. A lot of things have to come together pretty
quickly.

Councilor Hill – I don’t want the public that these were not very similar approaches and
questions that at that time, every councilor challenged staff on. A lot of it came down to
feasibility and budgeting. I want to be clear like we didn’t try to look at whatever way we could
do this to get the most we could out of these spaces and this land. I remember very clearly even
to build the foundation so that in the future, it could be built up high and other sources of
revenue was pretty cost prohibitive. At the same time, I am all about allowing for flexibility
because things can change. We have certainly pressed on this during many of this process.

Councilor Snook – I wasn’t on Council when the earlier decisions were made. One of the first
questions that I asked after being elected was whether it was possible to look at that site with
                                                                                                       31

more in mind than simply parking conscious of a couple of things. One is that ten years from
now, we are going to be thinking “Boy what a waste of parking on that spot.” The second thing
that I thought is that when you’re in the shadow of a very large building already, that’s not a bad
place to build a taller building. It might be out of line just a couple of blocks away. It would be
right next to a very large building. You can easily go 5 or 6 stories without confronting problems
with the overall skyline. It would still be a difficult problem perhaps at street level. It is not
going to look grossly out of place. If there is a way we could do that, I understand that there are
differences in cost and the foundations. If there is a way we can do it and elicit meaningful
proposals. I would like to try to do it.

Commissioner Lahendro – I saw this about a half hour before the meeting started tonight.
What immediately came to mind is that this is in an architecturally designed control district. It is
there for a reason. I wanted to make sure that we have the opportunity to evaluate it and evaluate
what it means to go much higher in this control district and make sure we get the appropriate
people and other boards, who have jurisdiction over things being built in this area the
opportunity to review it appropriately.

Mayor Walker – We were not all in these meetings together. During my meeting, I definitely
asked about housing because housing has always been a big deal. I also asked about the two
businesses that are being displaced because of the building and if there was a way to ensure that
they could come into the new building. If they wanted to stay in that location and build
everything from retail. It is harder to create for restaurants and retail structures. We did have
these conversations. I was not aware of what is being presented tonight. Anything that we can
explore that would make better uses is something definitely worth exploring. Just being in the
room with the County and how frustrating that relationship with the Board and the Council at the
time was the primary driver in attempting to get something resolved. If we can do this better, I
think we would all and the community would benefit from that.

Commissioner Stolzenberg – When the feasibility of alternatives was explored, all of those
concepts were still within this idea of staying within the existing downtown zone and not asking
for a rezoning. My primary initiative would be for Council to initiate a rezoning to downtown
extended, which simply adds more permission and doesn’t remove it from the architectural
review district. It sounds like there may be room for some discussions with the Economic
Development Department and Parking Director of exactly what might be allowed or feasible or
suggested in the design build RFP in order to accomplish some of those goals once those
constraints are loosened. Do those some reasonable?

Ms. Robertson – I think that those are reasonable things to consider. I think that Council will
have some opportunity to look at this in the context of the workshop on Thursday. As I
understand it, the primary issue for City Council is going to be whether there is enough money
to fund that flexibility and build in that flexibility up front. It’s going to be a financial decision. I
have not talked to staff about whether it is possible.

Chairman Mitchell – Where is the initial financial burden coming from?
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Ms. Robertson – Even if you didn’t add the residential units up front, building a foundation that
can support adding additional floors to the building at a later date.

Chairman Mitchell – We voted on this last year. Our objective was to reduce the cost.

Ms. Creasy – The Commission provided a recommendation to City Council.

Chairman Mitchell – Our recommendation was to reduce the cost of the infrastructure to
support the parking lots.

Ms. Robertson – It is reasonable to request the City Council to consider what you are asking
for. It sounds like there is good consensus that people would like to see more done with this
property. You made Council aware of your strong feelings. It sounds like a number of councilors
have similar feelings. Is there a reasonable expectation within the city’s budgetary constraints
that even if you rezone the property, are you going to get what you are hoping for?

Commissioner Stolzenberg – That’s a really good point. At the very minimum, you won’t get
anything worse. When we were talking last December, the thing that we had envisioned to
reduce the cost and recommended in the memo was a public-private partnership. We make sure
we get the parking and we hand some of the parking over to the County, keep some parking, and
we make sure it is done on time. Whatever happens on the site is a bonus to everybody. My
understanding of the current RFP process is that it is open ended enough that a proposal could
come in with those other things with the caveat that under downtown zoning, it’s effectively
impossible. There is really no room for anything else.

Ms. Robertson – The site is a difficult site. What a design build solicitation seeks is you tell
them what you want. They tell you how they will build it. You are telling the design builder
what you want. You’re giving up some authority over how that gets done. I don’t want the
general public thinking that this is a design competition.

Councilor Snook – Could we be doing it as specifically as the request for people to jump in and
say that they want to be a partner in a public-private partnership that has the following
parameters. One of the parameters is that we are going to have a couple extra stories there that
we get to do with them what we will. Put together a deal that gives them something, gives us
something, and may hold the cost down. We would have to see what kind of proposals came in.
I think it would be possible to do something like that.

Ms. Robertson – It seems that there is a legal procedure for everything. There is a separate legal
procedure for public-private partnerships and how you receive those proposals. I think it would
be a really good idea for Council to check in with Chris Engle and discuss these issues and to
hear from Mr. Engle and the team of people that have been working on the design build process,
including going to the BAR at some point just like any other developer. I think it is important to
check in with Mr. Engle and see if any of these things are feasible and whether it can be
structured in a way that doesn’t delay the design build process.

Chairman Mitchell – What do you recommend that we do next?
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Ms. Robertson – Someone should make a motion to formally request Council to consider
changing the zoning on this site to a category that would allow more flexibility.

Commissioner Solla-Yates – Another way to think about this would be to look at it as a
boundary adjustment to extend the downtown extended zoning to this site so that it is a more
coherent “gateway” zone instead of just one blob. Would that make more sense?

Ms. Creasy – We may have more properties involved with that. That would be additional
owners. I am not involved in the process for this. I don’t have the background on this. We also
noted that it wouldn’t be the most straightforward zoning. There is an alley in there. There
would be some work to get through that. It wouldn’t be a straightforward, quick opportunity. We
can work through logistics. It wouldn’t be something that would be able to happen immediately.
We have to work through the legality.

Chairman Mitchell – We should think on this more. I think this is a great idea. We can make
this happen. I would love to have a chat with staff on how we structure this and we bring to the
table a motion that is going to work and pass in time for it to be rolled into the proposal.

Vice Mayor Magill – Any rezoning change that we would also be sending out notices for public
comment. How long of a timeframe is the minimum that we would be looking at to get the
rezoning done?

Ms. Creasy – We would have to work through any processes. Staff was looking at the aerial
map and found the alley. We started thinking through potential processes for how you deal with
that and what happens to that property once it is zoned. We would have to spend more time in
trying to figure out what the procedural steps would be to understand what limitations there are
on the property and what steps would have to happen to reach the goal that we have been given.
It’s a one for one rezoning. We have some more logistics that would have to come into play. I
also would not want to move forward with anything without any sort of direction from the staff
who are working on this day to day for multiple years. I am not familiar with the details. They
probably have some insights that we would have to “double do” that they already make and can
already provide.

Vice Mayor Magill – Even if it was the absolute cleanest process, is that a minimum of three
months?

Ms. Robertson – The quickest path forward is for City Council to initiate a change. That
requires the Planning Commission to report back to City Council within 100 days. Within that
time period, all of the public engagement and the community meetings have to be done within
100 days. That’s more than three months. That is going to impact the timeline that staff is
currently working under. They will have to tell City Council whether or not there is any leeway
in their schedule. My understanding is that the schedule is tight because it took so long to get an
agreement established to start with and to get into the process of getting this thing to the point
where it can be designed and constructed.
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Mayor Walker – It is important for us to reach out to the County and make sure they
understand if we are contemplating this change so they don’t think we’re not going through.
There was so much tension last time. If we’re going to explore something like this, I want to
make sure that we talked to Mr. Blair and make sure he reached out to Jeff Richardson to have
that conversation.

Commissioner Stolzenberg – I want to be very clear that my intention with this is definitely not
to impact the 90 spaces that we are giving to the courts or to impact the timeline at all. We’re
two years into this agreement being signed. We’re still another three years away from the garage
opening. I feel that there is still some flexibility to make this happen within the timeline. My
understanding is that those 100 days is the maximum amount of time before the Planning
Commission needs to make a decision.

Ms. Robertson – There is a new law that says if you want to reduce that time, you have to have
a public hearing on whether you should reduce the time. I would recommend that you make a
motion asking City Council to consider a different zoning, not necessarily specific to a particular
zoning district. Make a motion ask Council to quickly explore whether there is different zoning
that could be applied on this project.

Chairman Mitchell – I like your recommendation. Could you please walk us through the
implications of such a recommendation – like speed and viability?

Ms. Robertson – If you made that motion tonight, City Council can consult with Mr. Engle.
They can get updated information about timelines, cost, and implications for the project. They
can work directly with me and Mr. Blair. We can work with both zoning staff and the project
staff to see if not downtown extended, if there is some other way to resolve the zoning issues
that are providing the constraints.

Commissioner Russell – I want to understand something Commissioner Lahendro said about it
being an architectural design control district and allowing opportunity for the BAR to provide
comments. I have heard about all of these entities. Is their interest as part of this?

Commissioner Lahendro – That is a question for Ms. Robertson. As part of the evaluation by
staff, they would be in touch with Mr. Werner to determine if there are any ADC issues that
need to go to the BAR.

Ms. Robertson – Normally, that is built into the project. On the current project timeline, once
there is a proposed plan ready to review, that BAR review is part of that timeline. They are not
there yet because it is a design build process. While they are talking in general about what is to
be built, that is within the current zoning parameters. The BAR gets to review it. There is not an
issue of height in access of what is normal such as there might be with a Special Use Permit
process.

Commissioner Lahendro – With the change in zoning and the allowed additional extra street
wall height, how is that evaluated within an ADC?
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 Ms. Robertson – If you change the underlying zoning, that doesn’t change the overlay district.
 The overlay applies to whatever the underlying zoning district is. I suppose City Council could
 also consider exempting itself from the regulations, which would make things a lot quicker and
 achieve maximum flexibility. It doesn’t mean that the BAR couldn’t be asked to weigh in on
 things that are important. There are some other possibilities here that are available to the City. It
 is the sovereign entity that makes the rules as opposed to a private landowner. All of these things
 have implications. If you want maximum flexibility, that’s it. On the other hand, wrapping
 around another zoning district brings in private properties that adds a whole different dimension
 to a proposal. Just adding downtown extended zoning to this particular site is certainly an
 option. It would not change the BAR review. It would just change underlying zoning. There are
 basically three possibilities which can be evaluated within the parameters of the motion that
 Commissioner Stolzenberg just made.

 Commissioner Lahendro – It will still be within the control district and whatever project comes
 forward will still be part of that district.

 Ms. Robertson – Unless City Council determines that it would like to exempt itself.

 Commissioner Solla-Yates – If City Council wishes to exempt itself from those regulations,
 recognizing that the City is a good faith partner in development, how long would that take?

 Ms. Robertson – That could be done fairly quickly. I would need to look at that. That’s not
 something we have ever looked at in depth. It’s something that is legally a possibility.

 Motion – Commissioner Stolzenberg – For Council to consider an alternative zoning for
 this site in order to facilitate a process with staff creating a more productive end product.
 (Second by Commissioner Solla-Yates)

 Motion passed 7-0

Meeting was adjourned at 8:55 PM