The journey to build housing continues. Connecting a few threads here about a housing, growth, and proffers.
We do a disservice to our community by not building connected neighborhoods. #crozet
“British Journal of Sports Medicine published a study about managing depression that will make Americans uncomfortable.
They found physical activity to be 1.5x more effective than counselling or the leading medications.”
via email this morning (I’m posting the full document at the end of this post). Bolding is mine
PROJECT: SDP202400023 Montclair Initial Site Plan
MAGISTERIAL DISTRICT: White Hall
TAX MAP/PARCEL: 05600-00-00-091A0 & 056E0-00-00-00200 (portion of)
LOCATION: 5055 Three Notch’d Road
PROPOSAL: Request for initial site plan approval to for eighty-eight (88) proposed dwellings units that would feature single-family detached, single family attached, or other dwelling unit types as allowed by the Application Plan and Code of Development of ZMA202000012. Total site acreage is 14.48 acres and the proposed density is 6.1 units/acre. 74 market-rate units and 14 affordable dwelling units are proposed. Site plan includes creation of new public and private street rights-of-way, landscaping, and 6.34 acres of open space. Water, sewer, drainage, and stormwater utilities are proposed.
ZONING: NMD Neighborhood Model District – residential (3 – 34 units/acre) mixed with commercial, service and industrial uses
PROFFERS: No
ENTRANCE CORRIDOR: Yes
OVERLAY DISTRICT: EC Entrance Corridor Overlay District, Managed & Preserved Steep Slopes Overlay District
COMPREHENSIVE PLAN: COMPREHENSIVE PLAN: Middle Density Residential – Residential densities of 6-12 units per acre, up to 18 units per acre for affordable housing or for construction of small-scale housing types: bungalow courts, small and medium multiplexes, accessory dwelling units, live/work units, small single family cottages, and tiny houses. Secondary uses include religious assembly uses, schools and child care, institutional, and commercial/retail; Neighborhood Density Residential-Residential densities of 3-6 units per acre, housing types including townhomes, single-family attached, single-family detached, accessory dwellings, Secondary uses include religious assembly uses, schools and child care, institutional, and commercial/retail; and Green Systems – parks, greenways, open space, environmental features within the Crozet Master Plan.
This is relevant re: proffers
From the Crozet Gazette’s story on Ann Mallek’s town hall last month (bolding is mine, again)
A Pleasant Green questioner asked if developers could be forced to build connecting sidewalks between their projects and nearby connecting sidewalks, and the answer was no. “We require developers to build that infrastructure within their developments, but in 2016 the state legislature severely restricted the county’s ability to require what’s called ‘proffers’—commitments to provide additional surrounding structures,” said McDermott. “We’re working right now to catch up throughout the entire county with all those areas that really need sidewalks, and we’re focused right now on ones that are high priority where people are getting injured or those that get a lot of use in high density residential areas. It’s a long list.”
Legislation signed this week by Gov. Terry McAuliffe will change the way Albemarle Countyand other Virginia localities negotiate with developers during the rezoning process.
“It effectively renders our cash proffer policy [invalid],” said Bill Fritz, Albemarle’s chief of special projects.
Fritz made his comments at a meeting Thursday of the Fiscal Impact Advisory Committee, a group created to advise the Board of Supervisors on how development affects the county’s operating and capital budgets.
The committee was briefed Thursday on the impacts the new law would have on a county whose population has increased from 68,040 in 1990 to an estimated 105,000 in 2015.
The Weldon Cooper Center at the University of Virginia projects that number could climb to more than 150,000 by 2040.
To help cover the costs generated by population growth, the county developed a policy over time that evaluated the impact each rezoning would have on school population, area roads and other government services.
However, the county formalized a cash policy proffer in October 2007 that established specific amounts all developers would pay per unit to help offset Albemarle’s need for increased real estate tax revenue.
“The methodology used was more of a broad approach where [staff] would calculate all the costs of impacts and come up with an average,” said Bill Letteri, deputy county executive. “That approach won’t work at all [anymore].”
The formula adopted then would require developers to pay $20,987 for each single-family detached unit, $14,271 for each attached unit and $14,871 for each unit in an apartment complex.
The fiscal impact committee already has recommended drastically lowering those amounts in response to legislation passed in 2013, but the new law calls those figures into question.
“The new legislation requires such a degree of certitude in identifying impacts [of new development] that the averages that we use in the cash proffer policy won’t work,” said Greg Kamptner, deputy county attorney.
Kamptner said the new law requires that any cash collected in a rezoning can only be spent on infrastructure that directly addresses the impacts of that new development. Localities will have to demonstrate that connection and possibly defend it in court.
Fritz said the county likely will move back to evaluating each rezoning application on a case-by-case basis.
“What used to happen [before 2007] is that the model would generate a number and then there would be negotiations about that number,” Fritz said. “With this legislation, we’ll have to be much more careful about what that initial number is.”
The new law, which goes into effect July 1, does not apply only to cash proffers. Developers have proffered other conditions in previous rezoning, such as land for libraries, courts or schools.
“The new standard is that for any on-site proffer, such as a dedication of a school site, they now have to be specifically attributable,” Kamptner said, but added that there’s no strict definition yet for what that means.
“If we have a project that dedicates a school site for an area large enough to handle 400 children, but it turns out the project will only serve 200 children from that project, that school site is now larger than what was specifically attributable to that project,” Kamptner said.
“That proffer is then in complete jeopardy,” he said.
