Good evening. Welcome to the January 16th, 2024 meeting of the Ashton Town Council. Thank you for being here. Generally, start off with a moment of silence and seeing as how yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I'd like to read a quote and it's probably very familiar to most of y'all, but I thought I'd read this and then we could have a moment of silence and reflect on it. This is from a speech, actually a sermon he gave February 4, 1968 called the Drum Major Instinct, but the quote, everybody can be great because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You only need a heartful of grace, a soul generated by love. And so I appreciate that greatness pairs well with service, just like success pairs well with humility. So please join me in a moment of silence. Thank you. Mr. Vice-Manager, you lead since pledge. As you're able, please stand and join me in the pledge. As you're able, please stand and join me in the pledge. My pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. We'll take a moment to review our agenda for tonight. We have our consent agenda, and I'll call it as items when we get to the vote on the consent agenda. Then we have two presentations, one an update from Dominion Energy brought to us by Miss Julia Polenko. And an update from downtown Ashland, from Executive Director Maggie Longest. We have citizen input time, opportunity for any individual wants to come forward and speak to town council on an item that isn't one of the public hearings. So we'll have that at citizen time. We have two public hearings, the first one, Ordnance 20401, multi-use trail easement agreement, Mr. Jennings, and then we have our comprehensive plan update. Mr. Will Cockrole, Ms. Amos and Ms. Raglan will be presenting that. We have one action item, COU 210, neighborhood services program policy. Ashland helping Ashland brought to us by another planning staff item, COU 210 Neighborhood Services Program Policy. Ashland helping Ashland brought to us by another planning staff member, Mr. Keller. And then we have a discussion item. The fiscal year 2025-2029 Capital Improvements Program brought to us by Mistone. We'll have reports from the Planning Department, the Finance Department, and the Police Department. Is there consensus for the Agenda's presented? Yes. All right, thank you. All right, for our Consent Agenda, we have minutes from our January 2nd, 2024 Council meeting. We have invoice, we have a referral. We actually have three referrals, and the referrals are to take applications. They come to council, come to staff, and then we refer them to the planning commission and where they do the hardest work and then send it to us. Yes, sir. There's a planning commission in the room, we're in the audience, I'm sorry. Yeah. A heading mark down, but this is a great town dimension. Yeah Mr. Tim Merrill Recently chosen by his peers to be vice chair of our planning commission and we thank you for the work That you've done that we'll talk about later tonight and we thank you for the work that we'll be sending to y'all So first referral CUP 24-0103 Berkleytown Heritage Park the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of the city of for Oakland Section 2. All those are on our consent agenda. All right, and so with the consent agenda, are there any comments, questions, or a motion? I move to approve the consent agenda as written and pay the bills. I agree. Second. Vice Mayor Hodges. I, Miss Soapall. I, Miss Barnhart. I, Dr. McGraw. I, Mayor Trebat. may your trip at I thank you All right, we'll go to our first presentation at this time the update from Dominion energy welcome Thank you Mayor Trubot and good evening all First, I want to thank you all for the opportunity to be here tonight to present to you all. My name is Julia Pilipenko. I'm an external affairs representative with Dominion Energy. I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself and also provide a brief company update. I am sort of new to this role. I was previously the external affairs representative for all of the Western region of Virginia. So I recently moved into this central Virginia role. So I'm supporting part of the central Virginia region, including the town of Ashland, Hanover, Guczland, and Powtank counties. OK, hopefully I can figure out. Okay, easy enough. Sometimes the clickers can be tricky. So, Dominion Energy Virginia at a glance, we serve 2.7 million customers in Virginia that includes homes and businesses. We employ over 10,000 employees and contractors. I'm gonna go a little out of order here. We employ over 10,000 employees and contractors. I'm going to go a little out of order here. We have over 65,000 miles of power lines and we have over, we generate over 20,000 megawatts of power. Our residential rate is 16% below the national average. And we just celebrated 40 years of energy share back in 2022. That's our Bill Payment Assistance and Home Weatherization Program. And I know that I've been told to limit this to about five minutes. I have a lot of slides, so I'm going to rush through them. I apologize, but I just sat over respect for your time. I'm not going to go through every single bullet, but you all have my contact or you will. I'll give you all my cards. So any follow-up questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. All right, thank you. So Virginia has been consistently placed number one in CNBC's top state for business ranking. Just a few examples of the economic development projects that have come to Virginia. And part of the reason that Virginia keeps attracting economic development projects like this is because of Dominion Energy's electric rates for our large customers. They're very competitive and I'll get into that in the next couple of slides. So I mentioned our residential rate is 16% below the national average. This is a look at how it compares with the statewide national regional and deregulated model rates. If I'm just asking you a question. There it says 4.3% below the Virginia average. And so the Virginia rate is below the national average. And so elsewhere in Virginia people are paying more than we have to pay in this region. So I just want to say thank you. Well thank you. Thank you for pointing that out. And then this is a look at our industrial rate comparison. So it's kind of hard to see the difference, but our Dominion Energy's industrial rate is 20% below the national average and almost 20% below the Virginia average. So Dominion Energy is a vertically integrated utility and what does that mean? That means that we basically do it all. We have generation transmission and distribution. So when it comes to generation, we believe in all of the above approach to generation. So that means we have our base load units which operate 24-7 around the clock, think of your nuclear power stations. We have peaker units, which ramp up when demand is high. We have renewables, solar, wind, we're working on the first offshore wind project of its kind in the nation. And then we have our storage, which includes battery storage and includes our bath county pump storage station, and then we also purchase power from the wholesale PGM market. Transmission steps up electricity to a higher voltage and transports it across long distances. We are part of the PGM network of transmission and then we are regulated at the federal level by FERC. And for the most part, customers, like homes and businesses, will connect at the distribution level but there are some larger customers that connect at the transmission level as well. And then like I just mentioned,, that is step down and delivered to homes and businesses. It's step down at a safe level and it's carried by the main line and then the tap line will take it from the mainline to the individual and use customer. So this is just an interesting snapshot. You're looking at our Power Generation mix on our peak customer load back on Christmas Eve of 2022. That's when we had our record customer demand. customer load back on Christmas Eve of 2022. That's when we had our record customer demand. And it's just a prime example of the importance of having in all of the above approach to power generation. As you can see, we had a diverse mix of generation. And if you recall, this was a date when temperatures were extremely low and we actually hit our peak load at around 5 a.m. just before the sun was rising so there wasn't any solar available to be deployed at that time and it was just before the sun was coming up so people's heaters were just starting to kick on. And we were able to maintain reliable energy throughout that entire cold spell. So like I said, it just goes to show how important it is to have all of the above approach. Continuing on with the theme of all of the above, I mentioned our offshore wind project, the coastal Virginia offshore wind, or see that as we call it for short. It is the first offshore wind project developed and owned by a utility. And we announced it in 2019 and we anticipate that construction will begin this year and conclude in late 2026. And that will be their remaining, excuse me, we started with two test turbines. Those were completed in 2020 and we are working on the remaining 176 turbines. And we are proud that that project remains on time and on budget. Couple of initiatives that I wanted to touch on briefly. We are proud of our 99.99% reliability outside of major storms, but we always strive for 100%. And a couple of initiatives that we have to, that we're working on to continue working towards that 100% reliability goal is our grid transformation plan and our strategic underground program. Our grid transformation plan is a 10-year initiative to strengthen the grid and make investments that focus on reliability and resilience. So that's just to name a few is would be main feeder hardening, smart meters, battery storage projects, etc. And then our strategic underground program, we determine which above ground lines are most outage prone and we convert those to underground. And I want to note that this benefits not only those on the circuit, which is undergrounded, but it benefits customers as a whole because it means fewer outages, so less of shorter response time when there is an outage. response time when there is an outage. So going back to all of the above approach, we're regularly asked about nuclear. We just recently applied to extend our licenses for sorry and North Anna nuclear power stations. Small modular reactors are also a very interesting new technology that we're looking at and seeing how that can fit into the overall power generation equation. Hydrogen is another really exciting new technology that we're looking at. It's very new, so we think that there may be opportunities in the future to look at hydrogen, or we are looking at it, but just kind of seeing down the road where how can we add that into the mix as well. And then quickly want to touch on our energy efficiency programs. Today we have nearly 40 programs that our customers can take advantage of. There are programs for residential, non-residential, and income and age qualifying programs available for our customers, and we're working on additional programs as well. These are available on our website, and they're great ways for customers to just look at, get a whole overview of the different areas within their homes that they can save energy and money. And then lastly, just want to emphasize our mission, which is providing reliable, affordable, and increasingly clean energy, while also giving back to the communities that we serve. That's my contact information up there. If I can be of any assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out. Any questions right now? Anyone? Yeah. We thank you. And after having a minor but still a storm event we all appreciate one of our powers Of course, well, please please don't hesitate to reach out. I will leave my business cards with Doug To distribute. Thank you very much. Thank you so much All right next presentation downtown Ashland Association update. This is longest. Welcome back. Hi, thank you. I'm Maggie Longest, I'm Executive Director for Downtown Ashland Association. This is a quarterly report. We are halfway through, our fiscal year, and so coming to tell you about how our partnership is working for everybody. So I'm happy, so I'm going to quickly talk through the highlights of last quarter, which thankfully I think I saw all of you out with us enjoying the festivities. But then I'm also looking forward to talking about what's ahead here in the next couple months. So we had a great extraordinary season in this last quarter of 2023 that we had extraordinary volunteer hours and that matched up with having extraordinary events. We had record views of our website and just to have 56,000 views in just a quarter, that's about what we would usually, what we used to see at six months. So we're growing our platform and glad to be doing it. And then we've seen great increases in business participation in certain events, and particularly action Christmas market, is one that is benefiting everybody, and we can see that by probably about a 30% increase in attendance this year, or participation, excuse me. So all of that made it possible to have two very successful events if you can now scroll down there. So, Ashlyn Halloween was, it feels like ages ago now, but was October 27th through the 31st. That campaign had earned media coverage of 700,000 viewers in addition to 200,000 on social media. So really pushing those numbers and feel good about what we're achieving as far as marketing of our community as a place to come and spend time for that. Those Halloween festivities, you'll remember that's everything from the classic Halloween movies at the theater to the beer festival at the center to the businesses events at the center to the businesses events of bar crawls and historic tours and everything in between. So that's a great event where everybody benefits from that media coverage we hope. And then light up the tracks. As you know was November 18th through January 1st of this year. so that's the weekend before Halloween, and then we go through the holidays. Thank you all for being part of the celebration on the lawn. Here, I think it was our best yet, and looking forward to repeating and improving for next year. That event, like the others within Light Up The Tracks saw at least 100% attendance increase. And we earned more than a million news media, news media impressions for Light Up The Tracks campaign over the six weeks. And social media will be another 200,000 there too. So we're seeing great results for the work that we're putting in and the capacity that you've helped us build with having a new marketing director. In addition, I wanted to sort of uncover sometimes things go on in the background, but they're actually really important. And one of them is our partnership with Shiloh Baptist Church, the historically black church that's just right to block down the road here. We've been strengthening that partnership over years and it's really coming to light now where we see the church participating in Ashland Halloween and light up the tracks and even sending carolers to perform. So proud that they're also finding value in these things and that we're all participating as a community. So that was the look backward. Any thoughts, questions about fall and Christmas? Anyone? No, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a fun year, hasn't it? And then I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about what we have coming ahead. Hopefully you all saw the announcements that we are beginning a year long entrepreneurship initiative. Right now we are recruiting for our startup business accelerator. So folks that have an idea or have started a business or we're going to have a initiative. Right now we are recruiting for our start-up business accelerator. So folks that have an idea or have started a business within the first two years. We would love to have those folks join us and be part of a group of 12 that we work together for four weeks and really hone in your business ideas and make sure that we match you with a mentor one-on-one. That program is going to be really robust and I'm excited about it. So that is our first application deadline is January 23rd. That's why I'm highlighting it here. Next up you'll see the pitch competition, Center Street pitch competition hosted by Downtown Ashton Association and Dominion Energy's Innovation Center. And that'll be a $20,000 purse for three prizes. So you can win $5,000 in free rent for a year in one of three categories. A startup business, a business expansion for an existing business, and or a agricultural and forestry business. So, we're hoping that to get ideas flowing here early in the year, we will follow on with that with more workshops, both in English and in Spanish, and some leadership roundtables, and I will be back to talk to you more about those, but they don't start until April and May. So yeah, really excited about what we're gonna be able to do. This is grant funding that the town helped us to apply for, supported these efforts, and is partnering with us on getting the word out. So we're grateful for your partnership, and really looking forward to a great year. So. All right. Wonderful. You see, taking questions. A future project, the Mid-Atlantic Railroad Park. Thank you, sir, for the question. We are still hung up in fabrication for the Mid-Atlantic Railroad Park. We are seeing leases come in, which is a good sign. Working on the fine print there, but yeah, so the pieces are in place to move forward as soon as the aluminum is in a structure. So unfortunately, I hear from town projects are having trouble in fabrication too. I think it's an industry wide problem But we are doing everything we can to be ready as soon as they are So that's that's the short answer. It's just some point in the future. I won't ask for it I would love to give you I would love to have one for my own peace of mind But that does not exist at this moment. We look forward to it. Thank you. We're excited about it too. Any other questions? No. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. All right. That brings us to a citizen input time. And just invite you. If you're not here to speak on one of the public hearings, you'll have that opportunity at that time. But on another matter, if you'd like, just come up, introduce yourself, name and address. Just invite you to come up with this time. All right, seeing no one will move past citizen input time and move on to our first public hearing, ordinance 2024-01, multi-use trail easement agreement, Mr. Jennings. Good evening, members of Town Council. As the mayor mentioned, I bring to you ordinance 2024-01, the first one of the year, for the multi-use trail ease and agreement. Hopefully. Okay. All right. This is to request town council approval of ordinance 2024-01. For the town manager to sign a multi-use trail agreement with VDOT for a portion of the fall line trail here in town. So as you all know, VDOTs administering the funding and construction of the northern section of this trail. And that section runs from where we stopped at the end of the water road with the boardwalk section through Hannaver County, across the Chikahame River, and then point two miles south of Winfrey Road just in Reiko County. So the portion in town is approximately 1200 feet long that was part of this project and as you'll know it'll be a multi-use trail They'll be 10 foot wide asphalt path Here's a visual to kind of better see exactly what I'm talking about As you can see to the north in white is the portion of the boardwalk that we completed back in 2021 And in blue is the portion that we're requesting this multi-use trail easement with V.Dot for the fall line trail. So you may have seen these images in the paper, which weren't very clear, unfortunately. But this is the plan sheets from the actual plans. And as you all know, as I've mentioned in some of my monthly reports, that they're about, could work on the 100% plans now for this project. And what this is, is this is the, there's two sections of the, two plan sheets of the plan that show what they're requesting. As you can see in the orange or yellow lines on the outside is actually a proposed temporary construction easement, which will be a part of this agreement. And the green lines will be a permanent easement. I'll explain exactly a little bit further what that is. So as you can see, the Hanover, Ashland borders there on the left side of the screen. And you see the measurements like 329, 330, those are 100 every 100 foot. So that's what that means for the plan sheets. And this is the other sheet that ties into that one, which would be the rest of the easement that they were requesting. Once again, in green would be the permanent easement for VIDOT to maintain this. And then the temporary construction easements in the yellow as you all see. So what entails, we'll Vida will construct the multi-use trail here on town owned property because town does own that property. The agreement includes the temporary construction easement and the permanent trail easement. Vida will keep clear and cut back any trees or brush in the easement area that may endanger the public's safe and proper use of that multi-use trail. And also, V.O. will maintain this portion of the fall line trail once this project is completed. I offered them the boardwalk, but they wouldn't take it. So, I tried. So based on that, staff recommendation is approval of ordinance 24-01 for the town manager to sign a multi-use trail ease and agreement with v. for the portion of the fall line trail as presented. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. All right. Questions from Mr. James at this time? I do later after the public here. Okay. Okay. All right. At this point, we'll go ahead and open the public hearing. Okay. Okay. And invite individuals, if you want to speak to this, whether or not you can just add a question I was saying with a new trail and everything else. Sir. Is it parking going to be available for us to get to instead of parking in front of people's private homes to walk on the trip. Yeah, and we can speak to you about that or Mr. Ginny's, Mr. Ginny's can speak to you about that afterward. So if you don't mind. Was that picked up by the recorder, the question? So I'm going to repeat this question. If that's a fact, the gentleman's question was whether or not parking will be available at some point in time to access the trail versus parking in front of private residents. I believe I summed up his question adequately. OK. Yes, sir. We'll give you a more specific answer. I can say yes at the park that already exists, but there's probably more than that that's been planned. So I'll let a staff person figure that on that. Thank you, sir. For the public hearing on this, are there any other comments or questions at this time? Anyone want to come forward? All right. Seeing no one will close the public hearing and bring it back to council for your question. Can you show the first plan sheet? Sir. Yes. I think I'm seeing that. Yes. North is to the right. And as you can see the Palm Leaf trailer park owns this portion which would be to the east. Yes. I'm sort of interesting. I was hoping to get a cross section and maybe one's not been prepared. We have the boardwalk that will continue to maintain. And then you get to sort of the historic trail. And I was hoping that a cross-section might show whether there would be some railing. There's a relatively steep slope on, if you're headed south on the left-hand side. And I don't know how much gradings involved, whether there'll be railings on the left hand side. I don't know how much grading's involved, whether there'll be railings on at least one side. I think one side is pretty much wooded and the other side is not. And how much grading there might be. How much elevation will the trail be lowered? So there's limited, so I apologize for not putting a cross section in my presentation. That would have been a good idea. The cross section does include the 10 foot asphalt path. There's some shoulders and then there will be pedestrian and an rails on both sides. Because both sides will still be steep. That helps. That's what they're looking at with this project. That was one of the first questions raised in concerns because it is very steep. And it's not something we're deciding. It's just more for public information of what they can attack in the construction. Yes, they are required for safety. All right, in the other question. Thank you. Sorry. All right, is there a motion? Well, Mr. Mayor, I move for town council approval of ordinance 2024-01 for the town manager to Sonny multi-use trail easement agreement with V dot for a portion of the fall on trail as presented Hi second Miss Barnhart. Hi Dr. McGraw. Hi miss so Paul. Hi vice mayor Hodges McGraw. Aye. Ms. Soapall. Aye. Vice Mayor Hodges. Aye. Mayor Trevett. Aye. All right, thank you. Thank you all. Can you help the gentleman with his question? Yes. Thank you. All right. That brings us to our next public hearing. CPA 23-1115. Comprehensive Plan Update. And update, and staff will present it in the order that they so choose. Mr. Goodman, a matter of practice. Can you let me know if this shows up? Maybe more practice. Well, good evening. Thank you for having me here this evening. My name is Will Cockroll. I'm with EPRPC at a Charlottesville, Virginia. And I was helping staff, or EPR was assisting staff on the comp plan update, helping with mapping, data collection, and formatting. I will say that Gary Raglan and Nora Amos really did the heavy lifting on this one so I'll provide more of an overview of there's more detailed questions I might have to defer to them. But just a quick overview of the comp plan process and some of the updates that were made. I will also just touch briefly on the comprehensive plan as a concept. We've got some folks in the crowd here and just comprehensive plans and CUPs and CIPs and zoning isn't always the most intuitive thing in the world. So just do a very quick touch base on that one. And then we'll get into any questions that you have in recommendations that came to the process. So first off, the comprehensive plan for anyone who's not aware, it's the primary policy document and local government. Really, this is a foundation for any decisions made through the local legislature, which is obviously you all, who are the policy and the lawmakers here and the town of Ashland. So this should be the foundation for any laws that are passed here, including zoning, subdivision ordinance, future land use, I'm sorry, zoning map amendments. It also should be the foundation, the comp plan for any, are the maintenance of the capital improvements program. So that's what finances the physical stuff that we build in local government. Also, it should be the support for any one-time initiatives, any one-time costs, like the development of an additional plan. I know that was a few of the actions coming out of the comprehensive plan was to conduct an additional study or analysis. And then finally, the fourth that always is the implementation side of the comp plan are programs. Those are recurring programs on an annual or bilingual schedule, things like housing programs and environmental programs that those recurring costs there. So it's land use regulations, capital investments, initiatives and programs. So anything that the town does, it should risk, kind of, its justification, its policy foundation from this comprehensive plan. In Virginia, you're not required to follow the comprehensive plan, although I get that question a lot in local government of, do we have to follow this document in my response as well? The correct question is, why is this in your comp plan if you don't want to do it? So this really is, it's a guide, but it's also meant to represent the town and what it is you truly envision and how you see yourself getting there. It does include policies, policies being statements that should give some stability of what the town or how they will address particular issues. So basically it's promises of how the local government agrees to govern and to address issues detailed in the plan. And of course recommendations. And I know that the existing comprehensive plan adopted in 2016 had quite a few policies and recommendations and actions in there that was one of the process and a staff went through was going through those policies consolidating some of those because there was a lot of overlap. And also the town has done quite a bit since 2016 so there's a lot of things we can cross off the list and really tightened up that list there. So again, this is a five-year update. Virginia, we update the comprehensive plan every five years, and it's generally a 20-year vision as we go forward. In terms of the foundation of the plan, in the update here, we still have the main six Guardian principles here. We have Preserving Small Town character, unique features, our green town, continued, encouraged continued variety, economic vitality, and also provide a high level of government service. There's been a little tweaking here and there in the language. I know number five, there's a very slight tweak on that, but the message is still the same. And I think looking at this and the fact that these six core principles are still valid. We'll talk about the engagement process and the data collection, but really what we saw is the vision that's in the plan is still on target and it's kind of a continue the course as what came out of this process. Again in terms of the update, this main content here of the plan was adopted in 2011. There was a 2016 update. This is another update here as part of the required review of this. Again, essentially the same. There are, in terms of the core principles, we did update the data, updated the policies, make a few tweaks, and of course, wanted to validate the main policies through the process. Another thing we wanted to do was update the formatting on this, so the transportation chapter is the new format. The comprehensive plan is a policy tool, and tools are on the good if they're easy to use. And really effective comprehensive plans are ones that are easy to use. You can reference them easily when you need to make a decision and it's all right there for you. That's been a big focus here. The public engagement process will go through that in a little bit more detail, but there were a couple surveys that went out. I know that the process got started. And kind of a rough time was 2020. There's a few things going on back then and there were some virtual meetings and then it picked up again where we had some in-person meetings. So a couple surveys, multiple meetings, community discussions. There were 10 planning commission work sessions here. And I know that they put a lot of work into this over the over 2023 and really went chapter by chapter, topic by topic and really got into each one of those. So I think really a thorough process on that front. Through the survey, a few themes popped up to the top and all landscaping, environmental issues came up there. I think in the open-ended responses, I think trees came up quite a bit, and those were some hot topics. Honestly, of the themes we laid out there, we saw that people were really energized and thought all of them are priorities. It's just some are higher priorities than others. And really I think the challenge on staff was trying to think of when so many things are priorities, how do we navigate that and have a concise vision with very clear actions for you all as the policy makers. We did help staff and worked on the demographic updates and the data analysis side of this. Certainly, if you trends here, I think the town is, you know, as most places, starting to kind of trend a little bit, aging a little bit older as we go along, have that under five population is shrinking, so fewer kids, under five here, population over 65 increased 47% since the 2016 plan, so I'm gonna see in that trend going along there. At the same time when you look at the median age, I think Ashlyn is about about I think that's 32 years is kind of The average there I think Hanover is 42 Virginia I believe is 38 so you take an average, you know It's a little bit farther down there that could be throwing off a little bit by the fact you've got a college down the street so That is a factor when you look at the housing data when you look at income that you've got a college down the street. So that is a factor when you look at the housing data, when you look at income, that whenever you have a college or university in town that's going to kind of throw those numbers at that. We can hit on a few of these others here as we go through these other topics but now I think a good thorough update, I know Kerry put a lot of effort into that data analysis and really, really getting all that in here. On the introduction side, there's a new section providing information on the update process. This is really what sets the tone of what's the character of Ashland, what makes Ashland to Ashland. On the Guardian principles, there were a few tweaks, as I mentioned, the promote economic vitality kind of morphed out of the promote continued to economic development. Just kind of small nuance changes on that. There's a narrative under each one of these Guardian principles and the narrative in there. There were a few changes, a few things, as I mentioned, has been kind of checked off the list as the town has made progress and continued on the policies from the last plan so Really an update Through the engagement process the surveys the meetings the community discussions the workshops in here the 10 and 2023 Really everything just pointed to yes these principles We're validating those and we're on the right track with that so I think really From the process showing that you could do a Complete rewrite of a comp plan, but when you see certain themes and then engagement side And if you're still on the right course then then it's just making those updates, updating and tweaking. On the community character, we'll say there were some sketches I believe in this chapter from Bob Brown, who did those, those are still on the plan. They're not in those word version that you all received, but those are in here. And we're going to make sure we source him on that. Kind of, as I mentioned before, tightening up the policies a bit. There's a little bit of overlap. There's some things have been done. Good progress made. So from 44 policies down to 32. So I think that's a good sign. It makes it a little bit more concise as the local legislature hopefully makes it a little easier for you all to use and to reference things as well. A few new policies. One of them is an architectural advisory board. That is not an architectural review board, which has a little bit more of kind of a bureaucratic feel or connotation to it although there are a lot of great ones out there. This is more to provide resources and advisement. There are some examples out there I think Falls Church I think has has a structure like this so this looks like a good good approach there policy and on in-field development and making sure that that's in character consistency with historic downtown and England Street and then also community gateways. We do know that Hanover County updated their comp plan back in September and so there was a few changes in their future land use map. They have some some transition areas here and there have been certainly discussions on things going on in Hanover County and how to address those gateways. Again, the more detail in the staff report, staff pulled that together. I think that a very thorough job. Chapter four is online use. This really is the bread and butter of any comprehensive plan. This is the heart and soul of it and any other metaphor you'd like to use. But there are a few changes on this. We'll just go through those briefly. Again, the main policy statements seem to be validated to the process. A lot of support for that have continued along this path that's been this consistency over the past 10 years. So it's going to look very similar to you. There is a new land use designation and the land use designation is that mixed use master plan and that's for the Holland track on the north side of town. That's about 150 acres, and I'll touch on that in just a moment. And so yeah, it's gonna look, it's gonna look pretty similar here. There's a few new policies and a address Randolph-Macon, some concern about having crotching off across the railroad track over to the west, and I was trying to keep that boundary there. Henry Clay elementary school, that was certainly a discussion during the process. I think at some point kind of a realization that this is a little bit, this is a whole other conversation. So broken off a bit from the comp plan. I know that the county, they own the property and they were looking to do some engagement on this and the town is eager to participate in that process and be part of that process. There's also, when you hear a couple other small areas, can I mention up here, focus areas. The focus area is a little bit different that's on the first chapter. There's a focus areas of downtown in England Street residential. This is more a small area. So some small area plans here. Where the future land use map gives a general vision of what the policies are. So you can look at the future land use map in the comp plan. And you should at a glance be able to tell what's the general policy direction here? What is it that locality is trying to accomplish? With more detailed small area plans, you can go into more detail and have a clearer, more strategic set of recommendations and much more detailed maps, like master plans, when you do those types of efforts. So one is off of Ashcake and Maple Street. There's that area there. This is south of Ashcake, west of Route 1. And the comp plan calls for a small area planning effort in that area. I mentioned the Holland tract, So it's about 150 acres. That was a change in the future land use map, but the plan does also call for an additional study, small area study for the Holland track here. So that go under one of our initiatives, and we have a one time expense on that. A few other changes. Again, we have the Holland track up there at the top. The real discussion item is over on the west side of town, so that was the Lourdes and Luck Farm area. That was, I believe, open space. I believe that came to you all, and you sent it back to the Planning Commission for discussion. I know there's a lot of discussion on that one. The public hearing that the Planning Commission held on December 13th. There were three members of the public there. I think all three comments had to do with that area. In this change, it's a little hard to tell with the coloration, but it's shown as a traditional neighborhood from open space. There was discussion of going to the neighborhood commercial, and it was a little bit of a toss-up. Maybe what you might call split decision, if we were in more of a court setting here. So I know that's one area that there's been a lot of discussion on that. There might be more discussion at the public hearing and your deliberation this evening. Of course, with such field, that was industrial or currently is industrial in the future land use map and the recommended change is to take that to a mixed neighborhood that's currently manufactured homes there or mobile homes and that designation would be a little more appropriate for that existing land use. Of course, there's some changes here related to the parks. We got South Taylor Park in Berkeley Town and Heritage Park. Of course, we got North Ashland Park, which is that circle up to the north on the railroad track and then of course the Holland property. So we just hit on these already, but again those were the main areas and recommended changes to the future line use map. But again, a lot of the feedback, I had to keep hitting on this point, but it was really, yep, this looks good. Keep going. And so no real big changes on that future line you snapped there. Touching really quick on housing, the big push here was really just updating the data. I mean, any type of housing chapter has in plan, that is going to be a very data heavy chapter there. There was kind of looking at median income and cost of housing. You know I think when you're looking at the numbers I think a decent supply of affordable housing here. I can tell you working on it with a lot of communities across the state and the country, one issue you might find is that missing middle area of, if you don't have enough of that housing product out there, then what people might do is they might buy down market and they'll buy a more affordable home and kind and push out other households that would move into that home. You can have some dynamics here that might be coming into play where you have a supply of what you might call affordable housing, but that might be kind of eating into that middle housing range there. Household income is about 55,000. Again, that might be thrown off a little bit with a college there. And if you have senior centers and other kind of communities like colleges and senior centers, that can kind of throw your numbers off a little bit. I know Hanover's about 100,000 on that one. So yeah, and again, just going through what affordable, so that's 80% of area median income, so that's about 32%, which that's good. But again, here when you look at that middle, it's around 11, that's maybe getting a little, a little low there. So, but the policies coming out of this is a balance of housing options, more affordable home ownership in the town. I know current number, I think is 52.8 or somewhere around there, which is about the same as a town of Culpepper. So that's your bout on track there with your benchmarking community. So that's a bout on mark. On the economic side, again, the focus was updating some data here just a few tweaks on how we labeled the policies or staff labeled those policies. There was a new paragraph included on business supporting outdoor recreation. I can tell you just from our work, nationwide work, on outdoor recreation, that is a very hot topic. In terms of economic development, that's certainly where you want to put your focus as outdoor recreation is where a lot of communities are pivoting to help build business and local jobs. That's certainly a good one to put in. Also an addition of the Public Arts Commission, which was established just last year. And then more information on taxes and revenue. Yes, these numbers and percentages can change based on any given year based on the budget season, but I think it's kind of a good general bar park of what the financials look like on the economic side. Transportation, there are a couple of other efforts obviously that the town is underway or finished just recently on the transportation side, the town adopted the 2040 plan, I was adopted in 2020, and really with the transportation chapter, this one was really overhauled completely, but in a way it wasn't because all that information came over from the transportation chapter, from the transportation plan into the chapter here. There was some additional data collection on this, really the emphasis in what came out of the surveys and the public meetings and everything else was more multimodal bike pedestrian options out there. And so that got a little bit more of an emphasis here on the updated transportation chapter. Few of the recommendations, medians on Route one, realignment of the Almont medical drive with Vaughan Road, that's kind of a little jog there, so just tighten that up and teet up the intersection. It certainly helps with safety. A DDI or a divergent diamond, interchange there, has anyone driven through one of those? Recently, I feel like that's driving through those a little bit more often these days. Takes a minute to get used to it. And then just a few other changes with signage, traffic calming, as I mentioned, bike pedestrian crosswalks, street lighting. There's an action in there of a local bus circulation. Certainly, obviously with the railroad and the rail project here, there's certainly discussion on that and what the town is for and what they are against on that front. So that is made loud and clear here in the transportation chapter as well. Environment, update of the data, a few tweaks on how they're listed. The actions here is there's one on BCITY, USA designation, environmental hazards, and more training on response to that. I think great idea on that one, especially on the I-95 quarter on a railroad right there. That's a great one to have in there. And then action on solar panels, just clarification, this isn't utility solar that we're talking about here, this is more home solar of what you have on your home, kind of small scale solar. Parks and Recreation, there's also a Parks and Rec master plan. This underway, the Parks and Rec manager did review this chapter and made sure that there's no issues between the master planning and the comp plan. In here are some new or some updated policies, one on recreational programming, park signage and way finding and sustainability. park signage and wayfinding and sustainability. Community facilities, really on this one. Again, the school came up with Henry Clay, with broadband, putting in empty culverts in the ground to help with laying a broadband connections EVs. This is another one that's receding in comp plans more often these days. It takes a minute to charge up that car and as communities, you can have an audience right there. They got nowhere to go. That's a really good place for economic development on that front too. On the automated aviation, a state code does put a lot of regulations in place that limits what localities can do, but good addition here, and I think that's really, you wanna try to stay ahead of that topic there. Then finally with appendices, again, there was a lot of data on this process, a lot of sorting through what are the right data sets. 2020, as you might imagine, was kind of a tough year for the U.S. Census, especially for smaller geography. If you're on a town level or census tract or census block, the smaller you go, the harder that data is. You have to validate it and make sure it's all right. So, a lot of process there, it's all documented in the appendix. Reports and summaries of the engagement process and so forth all laid out there. The Conference of the Planning Commission, again they had their public hearing on December 13th. There were four members present. They voted for zero to recommend approval to the legislative body before us this evening. There were three members of the public that showed up. I believe all three comments were related to 54, the Lane Use area that we brought up earlier. I think there's one side that might have been hidden, so we kind of jumped over it here, but again, just to touch base in the process. The comp plan process here started in 2020. Obviously, we had the pandemic that caused a little disruption on that front, but there were a couple of virtual meetings there, kind of a restart up later. There were two more in-person meetings in 2022, two more in 2023. There were two surveys that went out. I think the first survey was open for quite a while, but we got close to 200 responses on that. And the Planning Commission again was in this room 10 times last year having work sessions on this and really going chapter by chapter by topic. So I know of just general process laid out there. So for this evening, certainly there's more information in the packets. Staff put together a detailed report for you. I can certainly answer any questions for you. Kind of higher level. The process staff can answer more detailed questions if we need to be. Of course, public hearing this evening, you can go with an approval and go with, you know, to defer that. And those are kind of the main core options there. I will kind of emphasize one more time of what you have in your packet. That's the word version. And chapter, the transportation chapter is the formatted one of all of them so you can kind of see what that format is. We didn't want to format the whole document because then you might have changes and then everything gets all crazy. And if you ever worked with Microsoft Word, you will, I don't need to tell you anymore. So we've just got to wait on that. Those are administrative changes and we'll get that formatted version up and go on as soon as you all feel comfortable with the policy content and the plan itself. So those are the main points. All right. Thank you. are the main points. Thank you. Mr. McRoberts can let me know whether I'm out of line or not. I'm the mayor. I'm one of five council members. I don't have authority to decide what we'll do as a council. But I can't express my opinion. And I just want to say that I know that there's individuals who want to speak to this from different viewpoints. And for myself, I just want to say, I don't plan to vote one way or another on this tonight. I want to hear more only now, I'm starting to get emails, public input. And so I'm not saying that for the sake of procrastinating which I'm very good at. But I say that for the sake of people not feeling like, hey, I got it. Everybody's welcome to speak tonight, who wants to. But I don't want anyone to feel pressure right now at this moment. Oh my gosh, if I don't say the right thing, the right way, you know, I've blown it. So I just wanted to start with that. And I think I've got consensus with my peers on council that we want to make sure, just like the planning commission, we want to make sure that we're reflecting, thinking, and analyzing everything as best we can. It's not my town. In any individual in here, it's not your town. It's our town, so we need to have plurality of opinion and time to think about it. So with all of that, I'll say any questions at this point for Mr. Cockle? From any commission? Any council member council member from may not until after the I just want to make one comment sure I can't and I believe the reason for the transportation the format of the transportation is so that this can also be alive a document that you can click through online and so I think that's why we see all those bullet points and the policies so if you you turn to page one and transportation, you could click on T1, is that correct? And then it'll take you directly to it. Okay. So it might be not necessarily size 12 font, but it makes it fairly pleasing read online. So I just wanted to comment on that. That's all I think it's a clever idea. Is this the only opportunity to ask a question? Oh, no. No, we can ask questions now of Mr. Cockrell, but then we'll open the public hearing and individuals can come forward and speak. I do have one question. OK. There's just something I've had trouble understanding. Why was such feel ever office industrial when it was residential. That's a good question. I'm happy to answer that. I'm happy to answer this question, but then we should probably move to the public hearing. So when the original this overview of the plan was created back in 2011 and then again in 2016. The Planning Commission took and then the Council approved the opinion of what would we want this property to be if it were demolished and rebuilt and in the future, if it wasn't going to be a mobile home park, what would we like this property to be, have as a land use category. And so it's surrounded by mixed business, interstate commercial and industrial. And so the planning commission at each of those opportunities to update it have designated it as industrial. And so with the planning commission, this time around said that they would prefer to see it maintained as the mixed neighborhood a higher density residential. So even if all those mobile homes went away they'd like to see that land use continued. Thank you. Any others? Out at this time. All right well go ahead and open the public hearing. Right now we had one individual who was willing to sign up that doesn doesn't mean that you don't have opportunity to come forward if you like. But I figured if Mr. Hall signed up, he might as well go first. So Mr. Hall, if you just come and introduce yourself, address and get his heart in here. Thank you so much. I am Rich Hall the proud president of the Board of Directors of Kidney Kingdom. Look at 813 Thompson Street. First of all, we would like to express our thanks to our planning commission as well as to staff for their diligent work over the last few months to solicit input from residents, from businesses like our own. It really was a moving experience to walk through with them. And so we are happy to be here tonight to voice our support for the comprehensive plan that you have before you as it is presented, specifically as it relates to the Route 54 corridor and the properties adjacent to our own. We as a board do not object to development types, but we are concerned about the zoning immediately around our own property. but we are concerned about the zoning immediately around our own property. As we've looked over the past five years, we've had concerns about the impacts of traffic that you heard of, the planning commission heard about in December and around utility infrastructure. So to keep it short, we've presented you with a letter today, the email is all that was attached tonight. Thank you, Mr. Goodman. Each day of the commuter traffic becomes much more difficult to navigate in that area in front of our little daycare. And of course, over our 55 years, the safety of our children and our families is our first and primary concern. Every single day we hear from our parents that somebody almost got hit every day because of the traffic in that area. And we're very concerned that if you were to entertain changing the designated use of the land around us to a commercial type or a business type, that that would increase greatly the traffic concerns in that area. Again, we've provided a number of our concerns. We emailed to you concerning sewage and water runoff. I won't go into this. Suffice it to say that we're very worried that any concerns to the proposed plan before you that would call for any new commercial development would negatively impact the businesses and the homes that are already in that area. So we respectfully ask that you as town council after appropriate deliberation and time and we appreciate your thoughtfulness and insight in that. We would ask you to adopt the comprehensive plan as it has been proposed with regard to the Route 54 corridor. And we thank you for your time and your consideration. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Anyone else that's come forward to this time? Yes sir, if you just come forward and identify yourself by name and address. Good evening, thank you for letting me talk here. My name is Ken Cellshorst and I live in a 728 Chapman Street in Louridell. And we've been out here now for three, four years and really have just, we moved here originally for the fact to get away from congestion. We wanted green. And that makes, especially at our age, it makes us happy to do that. And we feel that the change that thing from commercial, possible commercial is wrong. We feel that it's as stay as purely homes and it should stay even as it is in pure green. We need to bring our business downtown to more people there. There's a lot of parking down there The needs to be some renovation for the housing there are the buildings that are there, but You know if we're willing to spend that kind of money on an empty lot Why can't we do it in a town of Ashland? I think that you know to the people we've talked to We really want to maintain this purity as homes, not commercial, and it just is the right thing to do, I think. And that says sort of what Ashley and Watts for growth, they want to have a green community, they want to have a, you know, homogeneous type of people. To give you an example, it's like we lived in short fun for a long time. And when we walk to the mall or whatever, we wouldn't see anything we know. We walk here to downtown and we see people we know, we talk, we get involved, we sit down, maybe have a cup of coffee, you know, or whatever, the restaurants that are around, and that performs, and you tell your friends that come to visit you, you take them downtown and they should be impressed about it. So we really have, in fact, sent out many letters to you already, we want to keep this as a green area. So thank you for your time. Appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Anyone else? Hi, my name is Paul Koza and I live at 100 Brook Neal Alley in Loretale. I think speaking for myself, the ideal would be to leave the area along Highway 54 as a green space. I think that's what we've been used to and I think a lot of people who bought into Loretale were under the impression that that's the way it was going to be. However, I'm not so naive to think that there's a lot of pressure on communities small and large that eventually development is going to happen. And I would like to challenge the town council to say if that does happen, that the same, I guess, restrictions are put on any development that were put on Eagle Construction in Lordell. We have sidewalks, we have trees, we have a lot of green spaces. I would hate to see that destroyed. So whatever happens in the future, whether this is adopted in this plan or something happens down the road, what changes of zoning, that that is kept in mind by the town council in moving forward. Thank you. Sir, would you kindly spell your last name? It's K-O-Z-A. That helps with our records. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, yes sir. Thank you. All right. Yes, sir. Thank you for your time. My name is Tom Heiser and I'm a 120 Lordell road. And it's not really a comment. It's a question. As I understand it, if you're going into Lordel from 54, then on the left hand side that's zone for residential, is that correct? Yeah. Is that, do I understand that correctly? Okay. And then on the right hand side is, I joke with my wife, is Lake Lordel. And that area is so, you know, it's like, I don't know, it's 50% underwater and very soggy, I'm sure, or where it's not. Is that area designated for some sort of development? That's just a question. And as far as seeing water, there are things that can be done as long as something isn't declared a wetland. So that is not declared a wetland in that. No, sir. Okay. Alright. Alright. Thank you. Alright. And if you would spell your last name as well. Okay. Thank you. All right. Another individual? Yes, sir. Welcome back. Good evening. My name is Todd Rogers. I'm a local businessman, business owner in the town, and also I'm several properties around the town. First of all, I want to reiterate what some of the other speakers have said. The amount of work that has gone into this, we've witnessed it firsthand. A cell for members of our staff have attended probably 90% of those meetings and it's been a lot of work that's gone into this and a lot of thoughtfulness. And just from a property owners perspective, we appreciate the time effort and energy that's put into this. Because comprehensive plans like the gentleman that did the presentation is something that land owners ought to be able to kind of count on as far as the future of the town, not only from land use, but also transportation, economic development, everything the comprehensive plan talks about. So it is a very important document for the future of the town. And the nice thing is obviously we get to do this about every five years. So you get to, you don't just put it away and say, okay, we're done with that and we never come back to it. So thank you for that and all the time that's been put into that. and we certainly appreciate that process. Talking specifically about the parcels or parcels that's been brought up tonight, the areas along Route 54. Route 54, other than Route 1 is probably the most heavily traveled road in the town of Ashland out there. On a heavily traveled road, just our opinion is having traditional neighborhood right up against that road just as does not make sense. Having some sort of neighborhood commercial in that area like is already there with the existing Kitty Kingdom that's there and other businesses that are along there. And that going into the rule point of Hanna where to me again make sense and everybody has different opinions and we certainly understand it, understand that. With also in your transportation plan, you have Von Road Extension. Von Road's on a matter of, we had to give right away through our property in luck form to accommodate Von road extension to tie back into Elmont road. With that intersection there, that's gonna help the traffic in that area once that happens down through there. Another thing that's helped the traffic already is starting to help the traffic is the reduction in speed limit through that area. You may or may not know they pushed 35 mile an hour speed limit further towards the counting line if you will and that does help slow down the traffic in that in that area. We would just appreciate the consideration of having that area be neighborhood commercial and a continual development as is already on Route 54. So thank you for your consideration. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Good evening. Good evening. My name is Jansi Jones. I live at San Moe. I used to live at San Moe 3 Maple Street, San Virginia. I don't have a three-eleven dairy lane in San Virginia. One, the thank you for all the work that you're going to be presenting and looking at. You have a lot of great opportunities in Ascent, for a lot of growth, and a lot of different areas north, south, east, and west of the town. The planning commission has done an unbelievable job and a little bit late. Mr. Rogers said, I've been to 90% of all the meetings and hear what people have to say and so forth. Being a resident of the town, most of all my life and also have commercial businesses and properties through the town that I've lived in, but the Planning Commission has come up with on the property on West of Ashland. On both sides, one side was green and they changed it to residential and the other side has been residential and they leftaid residential. I feel it should be left exactly the way it is of green property and town edge, I guess you call it, on the south west side of it and the north side of it would be residential as it is now as the Planning Commission has offered to y'all. So thank you. Appreciate your work. Thank you. Anyone else at this time? All right. Seeing no one would close the public hearing. Bring it back to council. If there are questions for any follow-up comments from Mr. Cockroach or anyone else, or questions from council for any staff person, invite you to do that this time. When Mr. Jones makes the comment about residential on the north side, are we talking going west? Are we talking coming east? It would be helpful if maybe that map that illustrates it. Just for people to clarify for folks. In my mind, I'm thinking northeast, however, thinking northeast however it's safer not to go just by my moment. It's twisty. So is he referring to my question was when he just to clarify for folks is he referring to that he wants residential on the north side. So if I'm going out towards Patrick Henry is he referring to that as the north side or the other side. Yeah, Mr. Jones just looking. Or I mean, or just looking at the map. These are Jones again. Thanks. Sorry. So the northwest side, the side next to Laordell, the land on that side is residential. And the planning commission is still as residential. And the south side on the other side of it is green today or town edge. I'm not sure one of those two things it's over there now. Okay, I just want to make sure that was clear for folks. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yes, sir. Since we have that up on the screen and that seems to be the topic of discussion, I'd like to clarify what the current plan shows on that property that we're proposing to change. And I can answer my own question. I understand that the area that I'm going to call the west side of 54, the luck farm side is shown as green space, the whole 250 foot depth, and then there's a strip of green space that runs along 54 on the west side that the commission is recommending be eliminated and leaving the residential. And a question I would have would be, I understand why the green space on the west, the look farm side, there's a concern that you, if you show open space that you may be implying that we're going to buy it or somehow make it a non-developed use, which I don't think we intend. But on the east side, and it's in the term, it complines a guide, it's not meant to be literal. There was a strip of green, which is a little like the strip of green on 54 East coming in the town that was added with the Iron Horse development. And I'm interested in hearing the commissions or the staff's thoughts and why that green strip was taken out because I don't think that implies taking of property. And I have a follow-up question and that's an all-way for that. Or do you want to take them one at a time? I'm just going to take this one since we kind of just went back and forth. And so the Planning Commission spent a significant amount of time discussing this topic as you can imagine because this is what we received most of our public input on. And so they and their review of the land use for open space which I'm sorry I'm trying to pull this up get it pulled up here. Okay, so in their review of Open Space and the definition of Open Space, they saw it more of protecting environmental features and parks and trails, and there is not buffering. So in their opinion, buffering should come through recommendations for buffer that gets put into an ordinance. And so buffering between uses, for example, we talk about that between commercial uses and residential or industrial and commercial. And that's all addressed in our zoning ordinance. They did not feel that this property had an environmental feature that should have the designation of open space as discussed in the land use plan. And you are very clear in your response. And it's an issue, I think, is worthy of further discussion, open space. I think there are areas, and as we discuss the area around Carter Hill states, which is off Jamestown Road, which is in the proximity, chose a number of open space areas that were required through the zoning process. Some of it, natural, some of it didn't. So my basic, excuse me, my basic question relates to the definition of open space. I think I hear the commission leaning towards natural features and not private space, not necessarily private space that may be along a road that might be a condition of approval. I think this area is special. I think that there is, as call for in the plan, a need to have a community gateway. This is the one area of the town that the county has left us some rural area and they have put a subdivision in there. Luck Farm which is 80% open space. There's that allowance for a farm for a house. But they managed to do their job, I think, of creating a strong edge coming into the town of rural transition into the town. My concern is that we should consider, I think, the open space designation, at least on the east side, as a signal and a strip, not the whole area, basically what's shown in the plan now, as a signal to the developer of the property that we're looking for a higher standard in this area, and that we would like there to be a rural transition. And I think a lot of the value of a plan is not to keep the development community guessing. Let them know if that's where you want to have a buffer and landscaping, tell the development community that. Don't let them wait till the public hearing to find out. So I would argue not with taking all the green space off of the area to the west but I think we need to leave some symbolic if you will green space as a community gateway. So that's a topic of discussion, but I'm not sure we're gonna resolve, but I keep hearing the term green space. It's high priority and people wanna see it. And I think we have an opportunity there. It doesn't change what the commission's recommended and I think they've done a wonderful job. As did the staff, but it does signal to the development community we want something special here as opposed to the rest of the town. Right. Other questions or comments this time? Still trying to digest vice mayor's comments. I'm not 100% sure I know where his head's going, but that's okay. We got time. It's me, not you. I observed all of the discussion with planning. And it was interesting because planning went from something that's's gonna be developed here to Commercial long low sides all the way through to housing so I feel like I feel like we need to have that discussion Maybe not tonight Which is why I sent each one of you individually my thoughts my observations I didn't do that to stress you which I may have caused stress and I apologize. It was helpful I just I just want to go through a few of the bullet points and I appreciate nor are you sitting down with me and and changing the language a little bit in the comp plan and and and recognizing some of those things but as I read the comp plan it reads as if neighborhood commercial is that we were proud about sometimes like we're proud that we can walk to a doctor's office. We're proud that we can walk to a dentist's office. So I think there is something to be discussed. And when I was listening to Vice Mayor Hodges, I think what I heard was not just neighborhood commercial, but something really, really unique. And I don't know what that means. And I'm't know what that means. And I'm open to that. And so I would like to have a full discussion because when I heard planning talk, they were split. They were really split on this. And I can appreciate the neighbors and residents wanting to keep what they have. I really do understand that and I understand businesses nervous about what it means if something else comes in here. I do trust planning to hold anything that happens to a higher standard there, no matter what it is, whether it ends up being open space, a neighborhood, a traditional neighborhood, or whatever. So that's why I sent those things to you. But I will read just something that I saw in 1-1, this is just what I observed in the comp plan, and it said, what makes Ashland-Ashland and two themes emerge. One, neighborhoods in downtown, and then quality of development that supports civic life and economic development. And so that's what resonated with me, which meant it's not just a neighborhood. It's a neighborhood plus something else. And I'm not saying what that something else is, but as some of the residents said, yeah, being able to walk downtown, awesome, being able to walk to some things that we really appreciate and value, being able to have a park, several of them, which by the way I don't think we hone a park on that side, but anyway. So that's why I sent what I said, and so yeah, I'm not ready to make a decision tonight. And I'm open to lots of communication from citizens and hand in variants and business people and all kinds of. That's it. Well, I too am not ready to make a decision tonight either. I welcome conversation. I will tell you that we have spent time chatting with one another also talking with staff. And I do want to begin by saying, I should say, I should begin by saying with this. I want to say thank you to the Planning Commission and also to our staff members. This is a really important tool. And it's going to be a guide for us when we make our decisions about land use. And as you can see, here we are talking about a small tiny little parcel, but it's so special to Ashland. And it's so special to us because, you know, we're only seven miles or plus. So what decisions do we make out there? It is really important. So I welcome continued conversations. One of the things I noted as I was reading over the comp plan was that folks are very concerned about environment. They're very concerned about green spaces. They're very concerned about trees and canopies and plants. So I do want folks to know that that's something that I heard loud and clear and that I know is not like included in the comp plan, but something that I want to make sure that I protect as well. So again, I'm not interested in making a decision yet tonight. I'm interested in having more conversation about this so we make the right decision. I should say the best decision that we possibly can for that property and I know folks will understand that whatever we come up with, whatever decision we make, it is because we've done our research, we've done our new diligence. I just for the sake of clarification, I know you made a statement and you said we've talked with each other or talked about. Oh, I get one on one. Not like the group. No, one on one, I have contacted each of you individually. And or had conversations with the staff. Right, I just haven't had a party going over that. Exactly. I just want to make a quick observation that I should wait. I just want to say that we're looking right now at the comp plan for the entire town with multiple chapters, multiple purposes. And so while right now the focus is on one segment of that, I want to make sure that people understand that if this carries the conversation, it's not carrying the deliberation or the decision. As important as any one person's house is, mine is very important to me. This is what I say that as we talk about this, we're not going to focus so much on this, there would not be thoughtful about the entire plan. Thank you, Ms. Hope. OK, I just want to say that this is very much on my mind. I've talked with several staff members. And I know that together with using the current plan as a guide and with research and community input. That's what's brought us to the point where we are now. I attended the community meeting on November 13th last year at the Ashland Library. Stations were set up and staff members were there to answer questions. I didn't see anybody in a rush to do anything. Everyone took their time and browsed the stations. I feel that this is all presented in a way that it's easy to understand what the plan will cover in the years to come. And I just wanna say, Dan, Councilman McGraw said a moment ago, something about Ashland being a walkable town or something like that, but I just want to say it looks like we in town enjoy about a 10-minute neighborhood we have gas stations, grocery store, medical dining and everything close to us just by the way of walking, biking or driving and everything close to us, just by the way of walking, biking, or driving. This is a strong document that reflects our community values, and I'm proud to be a part of this. Thank you. I just want to, if I could, I just want to go through a few more things. It wasn't just this one section, section four, but in section 2.1, Miss Amos, there's in there that the advisory board and I went to Falls Church and and I see their advisory board and I'm just I'm just concerned that we're creating more work if we're creating this advisory board because what falls church has is pretty intense And I think it's wonderful to have that. But at the same time, there are sometimes staff is overwhelmed with stuff. Anyway, I just wanted you to put on that. Yeah, I agree. We are not a false church. And probably it would take us to a while. It might be something to look up to. Across the state, across the country, there is a wide spectrum of architectural advisory boards or review boards. We, for the past two comprehensive plans and now for the third comprehensive plan, have had public input about the concern of losing our historic resources. Every time another structure is demolished, every time another structure, the facade is changed, or new windows are taken out, we get calls of people who are concerned. But we also have calls from new property owners or from older property owners who ask us about tax incentives, historic tax credits. They ask us the best way to preserve their property or to continue in contributing to the historic district. And we do have some knowledge here in staff. We can also direct them to the Department of Historic Resources who has always been willing to help. But this is something we've continually asked for and we've gotten positive public input on having an advisory board of professionals of architects of historic preservationist who someone can go to for free. So you're not paying a large hourly rate to an architect or someone to get input on how to restore your building or to protect your building. Or if you're building new in town, within the historic district, how you can fit in without replicating perhaps that historic structure, but being able to fit in within the fabric of the community. And so, guess it will take a little extra time, similar to the arts commission, but I think it's something that would be quite valuable to the town and worth putting that time to. Thanks. And... Just one other comment I just wanted to make was, and I think it's already in the comp plan now because of our conversation, but since our conversation is having canapes that match our community. When we talk about we want more trees, we want more vegetation, we want vegetation that actually thrives here, not vegetation that becomes like an invasive species of sorts. And so anyway, I just thought that was, thank you for putting that in for adjusting it. That's it for me. All right, anything else? Mr. Mayor? Yes, sir. Just for the purpose of the minutes being the folks took time to send in public comment. We want to just acknowledge we receive public comment prior to the agenda being developed from Mr. Todd Rogers. Mr. Schoehurst, Mr. Hall and before the meeting this evening, Mr. Jamie Isaacs sent public comment in but it was past the point before I could actually put it into the agenda digitally so that will all four of those letters will be included in the minutes. All right. Good deal. Thank you. Yes, sir. Given that this is one of the more what we're looking at, this land use change is one of the more controversial. I understand that the county has completed forecasts and projections. And I don't know. Our 2040 transportation plan took a snapshot of what the traffic looked like. And I think 2018 in that time period. It didn't forecast. We're pretty much a built out community. But we're building a road that is the connection of Vaughan Road, basically from James Street, 254. Part of it goes through L'Ordale. And if there are traffic projections, which look at future roads, future congestion, it would be helpful to know what the volumes of traffic that are expected on Vaughan Road and how it might impact the intersection with 54. Concerned that Vaughan Road not become a de facto bypass with a downtown area, it's not really designed that. It is a local collector. So there are some issues. There is some value when you look at the Lannys map to overlay it with the plan, thoroughfare plan, or the road network. When you pick up future road connections that helps explain why there would be a consideration potentially for commercial in that area, not saying I support it, but I think that again, excuse me, helps explain why the land use is the way it is you've got to look at your future roads as well as existing So I would just say there is value in Finding out if it's available forecast population on the future bond road when it's connected during this time period and What it looks like to this community so they're educated as to what our plans are connecting Vaughan Road and the impact it might have in this area. And this goes along with the theme that we're not ready to act on this. And I think we're trying to articulate issues that hopefully will help us make a decision. Yes sir. Let me state another obvious thing. There has been confusion about what is open space, what is green space, what does that mean today, what does that mean for the future? And I just want to make a point that we get applications all the time and there's some going on now where individuals will say, I like the view I have out my front, I'll embarrass her. She's in her 30s, I'll just say that. She was upset when the luxury barn was taken down, and when the watch tower of Scotchtown Road was taken down. Because she said, I grew up seeing those things. And I like seeing those things. And I hate to see that change. Well, all of us have things we don't like to see change. All of us have things we prefer. But one thing that's difficult, but required of us, when we make these decisions, we're making decisions about other people's property. And so while I understand, we'd like to see something left open, but the town doesn't own it. The town doesn't necessarily own property to say, well, sure. The town will just agree, let's just leave it open. But when other individuals own property, we have to balance their rights to what they want to do. And certainly, everybody doesn't get to do whatever they want to do. But we have to balance their rights to what they want to do and certainly everybody doesn't get to do whatever they want to do. But we have to balance their rights with what they want to do with my rights, with what I don't want to happen. And that's part of what we're doing here. We're weighing out the best balance between everyone's right to what the best view of the town and the best view from their doorstep can be as we work through into the future. So that's what makes it more difficult, but that's what the Planning Commission had to deal with. And while it's been pointed out that there was, I won't say there wasn't contention in the Planning Commission, but there was strong opinion and diverse opinion, and that's not a bad thing. That's people working through trying to find that balance for the sake of the future. So we'll continue to work to find that balance. And if there's no other comments, I imagine we would need a motion at this point. Yes sir? If there's no other comments. That's right. at this point. Yes sir. If there are no other comments. I would move for the referral of CPA 2023 1115 conference at plan update and I would request that it be deferred to the next to the February planning meeting which I think is the 20th, whatever second meeting in February. Second meeting in February, thank you. And I would respectfully request that in my motion, that we re-avortize the public hearing. But this time include a summary of what we're proposing to change. What are the significant items, not everything, not as much detail as we've gotten into? I think there, we basically advertise we're mending the comp plan. That's pretty much what we said. We didn't say what we were doing. I think there's value to the community in terms of transparency and saying, well, this is what we're going to change. Or at least the significant item. So my motion would be to defer this CPA to the second meeting in February and to re-advertise the public hearing with an ad that summarizes the significant changes. Should there be any more comment? Hi, second. Oops. Was there something you need to add? Yeah, Mr. Mayor. Okay. You could slide your work in motion. I'll try. You're a guidance, I appreciate. I'll try. Your guidance is appreciated. Well, the existing public hearing is a big one. The all-way should have additional public. I think that would be wonderful. And so you can just slightly reword the public hearing. It would be my motion to advertise an additional public hearing, which includes in the ad the significant changes, a summary of significant changes, and that we hold a public hearing on the second meeting in February to hear public comment. Is that, we try. I second motion made in second Dr. McGraw I this barn heart I vice mayor Hodges I my soap home I may or should that I All right, so we'll take this up again the second meeting in February and please understand We're are so important. The generally important or summary, I defer to the staff to identify what they think based on the commission's actions, what are significant items. Exactly. And try to spell them out. I think they know. Yeah. So I just want to make that point. Significances in the eye of the beholder as well. Or to the staff. All right. All right. Thank y'all. Thanks everyone. For that that brings us to our action item. COU 210 Neighborhood Services Program Policy. Ashwin helping Ashwin, Mr. Keller. There's a four to this, sir. Feel free if individuals, if you'd like to leave at this point, you don't have to, but if you want to, it will not disrupt our meeting. Thank you for giving up your time. We're still really excited about your presentation too. Oh yeah, I hope it's given some time to get out. No rush. All right. Yes sir. We cleared the room. Well hi friends. Great to see you. Hopefully this is a, I don't know if, easy or is it right word, but a little less intensive conversation for us. I bring before you, Council Policy COU-210, Neighborhood Services Program, Ashland Helping Ashland. The request to the town council is approval of this policy to create and fund a Neighborhood Services Program to address community concerns before using code enforcement procedures which are allowed by law to solve these issues. So what is this that we're proposing? What we're proposing is a free tool lending program for the Ashland community. The current name that we've thought of is Ashland Helping Ashland. That's, if you guys want to change that name, you're more than welcome to. I've listed some other ideas that we've come up with. If you want to choose from that list or come up with your own, that's up to you. Otherwise, we'll just move forward with Hashlin helping Ashlin. We can talk more about that later in the presentation. The why. So there are a lot of people in the community that would maintain their properties, but just don't have the means to do so with the resources, the time, or even the physical ability. They just aren't able to do it on their own. And the code enforcement process that I use to help people clean up their properties, it's time consuming, it's a legal process and I think most importantly it doesn't promote a sense of community. And what I would like to do is foster a sense of community where people are helping people, where ashlanders are helping ashlanders. Other communities have found success in implementing a program like this and again we'll talk about that. That example later in this presentation. So how does this program work? It's a trailer that we would purchase and fill it with tools and equipment. Lawn mowers, leaf blowers, hedge trimmers, anything that you would need to maintain a property. I cut the grass, things like that. Tool rentals would be free. We wouldn't charge. They would just have to check them out. They'd have to assign a rental terms agreement that we would have council help us put together. The town staff would control the rentals so we would give them up to 14 days per rental period and if they needed it long than that they would have to re-rent the tools. No commercial enterprises would be allowed to use the tools that they would otherwise be able to be able to provide by themselves. In essence, we don't want anyone to financially benefit from this program. This is meant to be a help to the community, not a commercial enterprise for anybody. And then the public works maintenance shop has agreed to store the trailer at their shop behind the security fence and they would help maintain the tools and the equipment and then the town manager or his designate would administer this program. So the example that we have for you comes from Ron Rock, Texas. They did this exact thing and they had a lot of success with it. They saw their complaints, their zoning complaints, and their staff time spent on those complaints dropped by about 37%, which is a very big number. I don't know if you have anything else to add on the presentation that you watched. It's been a few years since I saw the presentation live from this community, but it was really obvious and kind of overwhelming from the staff perspective that their manager had gotten working with their code enforcement team, and they were community that's different, but had some similar elements to Ash on where it's not for lack of trying that people aren't keeping their things up. It's financial resources. It's physical ability. And it's a great way not only to just check our box. We can get our thing fixed that we want fixed, but it genuinely does. And that was the surprise to me. And again, not to use the acronym, but the AHAL moment for me was that it helped build community. You started getting more neighborhoods working together. So if I'm one person living single in a house and can't do that myself even with the equipment, your neighborhood association, your neighbors, your friends, your, the person lives next to you, started getting together and it very quickly started to snowball of people getting to know each other and not just working together to clean up homes but having little parties, having community engagements. And so again, a lot of what we do and we talk about in this community is quality of life. And so I think we saw this is a really great opportunity to continue to build quality of life. Also again checking those boxes of getting the maintenance issues fixed. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So the staff recommendation is to approve the council policy and COU-210 neighborhood services program, Ashland, and I hope in Ashland. Like Josh said, Mr. Ferrer, the vision that I have for this is not just people coming and renting some tools and equipment going home and keeping their lawn cut or bushes trimmed or stuff picked up out of the yard. The vision that I have is organizations coming to us and saying, hey, we know of this person that needs help. We want to get some volunteers together. Can we borrow some tools? Absolutely, yes. Or even if someone does come to us and say, hey, my property needs help, what can I do to upkeep it? Then we would turn them to these organizations that can then find the volunteers, organize everything, get the tools from us, and then have it have a service day. A year ago, about this time a year ago, the town did put together a service day where we helped one of our zoning violators clean up her yard. Got the grass cut, got the bushes trimmed, got the trash picked up, and lots of other things. And the property looked amazing afterwards. And we didn't have this trailer to do it, so we worked with a church to get everything there. Two churches, actually, to get everything there and all the volunteers there. And it was a huge success. And I would like to see us be able to do this again and again, and even the town being able to provide those tools and equipment to keep that going. So any questions at this time? Questions? Great idea. Go ahead, sir. Did you have some? Yes. Being a volunteer and a nonprofit organization, I've habitat. They have something similar to that, that they move around. They call it the context. And basically, I have to sign a waiver statement before I can touch a chainsaw or any piece of equipment might do me harm. The other thing is, habitat comes with some technical advice. I may know how to press the button, but I'm not sure I know how to use all the tools. I don't know if we're handing a neighborhood community a chainsaw and saying, you know, go out and do good things. If there's any implied liability, or is there, are we offering them any training or support to the nonprofit? I love the idea. I'm trying to be critical. I'm just trying to think through the mechanism. Yeah, I'm glad you asked that question. My first response is, I would lean heavily on our legal counsel to think through a lot of those things. And my second response is when I was looking at other programs around the nation that do this, they have exactly that is they have those training programs or tutorial videos to show people how to use the equipment. And I think that's a great idea. I'm glad you brought that up. And I can add a little bit more vice-marriage is that was in the live presentation, probably second or third slide, right? You know our idea now as a manager, what's your first concern? Liability comes up immediately. And they were very clear kind of saying where there's a will there's a way with good counsel with your insurance company if you can get together and make sure you do it right, you can kind of avoid most of those concerns. And so that's on the liability end of it. And I think was it round rock that was doing a video library too of how to use all the equipment, I think I saw something in that effect. So again, yeah, you could do in person, but you also can say you've got to certify to me that you watched that 10 minute video on how to use this piece of equipment through VOS, or the Virginia Occupational Safety, whatever. And that's another reason why I really want to push the organization's renting the tools and equipment because when in an organization, the way I have it set up right now is the way in organization, when they come up to us and they want to rent, then we would require that proof of insurance. And I think having them certify that they've watched training videos would be helpful as well. require that proof of insurance. And I think having them certify that they've watched training videos would be helpful as well. That's helpful. I'd also say that, in the example, I use the Connex, basically got a full-time volunteer, inventorying equipment, keeping track of it, organizing it, reordering things. So it can be intensive, but I love the idea. Yeah. On other comments? Obviously, if we approve this, you will work a little bit on language. I mean, we saw a presentation. And so I just want to make observation for the sake of language. Like, I believe that one of the slides said, we would want to do this before any enforcement action. It might be that this may not even, it may be during. So I'm just saying, we wanna be open-minded to say that no, absolutely once enforcement starts, we can't do that. So I'm just saying, think broadly about the wording to make sure we don't necessarily trap ourselves. And obviously, you made the statement that no commercial enterprise would come in and make a profit off of it. There is a financial gain, I guess, for the individual that you're helping because it's saving them from having to hire a company to do it. So just tweaking the language to make it say exactly what you want to do. But I think it's a bad idea behind it. I think it's wonderful. People helping people so that people know each other and make friends. Because a lot of times I've known individuals that live by themselves. They've lost a spouse. There's no one else that can help them. Their income is reduced. And even if that's not a problem, a lot of times there's loneliness. And so this indirectly helps the loneliness aside from if their house was a macular. So anyway, I think that's a great idea. I asked Claire of course. Are you suggested that maybe it needs to be referred to be refined before we act on it? Well we're not voting tonight on the language. Well there is a policy in there. And so we are asking you to adopt the policy. If you're not comfortable that we're happy to bring it back after some edits or if you want to adopt it with authority of the town manager to make administrative changes to it for language. Has the attorney reviewed it? I think that like any policy, it's a living document. And I think the town manager can be authorized to make appropriate changes based upon Councilman put Yeah, okay, that sounds good like that a layer concerns Any other comments or perhaps a motion I'm moved to a proof I move to approve. I move for the approval of COU-210, Neighborhood Services Program, Ashlyn helping Ashlyn with the notion that town manager can make a few edits based off of individual conversations with council members. Second. All right. Okay. Ms. Barnhart. Hi. Vice Mayor Hodges. Hi. Ms. Soapal. Hi. Dr. McGraw. Hi. Mayor Trevett. Hi. All right, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for bringing this forward. All right. All right. Now, discussion, fiscal year 2025, 2029, capital improvement program. Do not see Mr. Stone. Yeah, I am filling in for that one and trying to get my computer up and running for you here. All right, so I have not given a capital improvement program presentation and sometimes so bear with me on this one but tonight we bring you only discussion so we're not asking you to take any action tonight on the capital improvement program. And I want to, for a few notes and I'm happy to go into detail with you on specific projects if you have questions it is not my plan to go individually through all of them. I understand with Miss Soapall being relatively new we have designated a little bit of time Monday where she and I can go into detail on these particular projects but if you would like to discuss any of those for public perspective or just for transparency I'm happy to. But a few notes on the capital improvement program. It's a five year plan where we plan how to fund all our capital projects. And all of the projects within it, typically, and there may be an exception here or there, come out of another plan, right? So the Parks and Recreation Master Plan, and builds a bunch of parks, the Transportation 2040 Plan, puts in the Transportation Projects, the The community facilities portion of the comprehensive plan certainly informs the public facilities portion of the CIP. So a lot of the message there is that these aren't just haphazard spur of the moment ideas that we come up with. Typically we try to run those through ideas through the other policies and manuals so that they can eventually be incorporated into the CIP. The exercise that we go through with our town council and the Planning Commission for this is a little bit different than other communities but still accomplishes the overall goal. The Planning Commission sees it and holds a public hearing and we ask Planning Commission to really focus on prioritization. That is their primary focus. We ask them not to get to into the weeds of the financing piece of the CIP. And so they've provided you and it's in your packet. They're recommended and that's what's being presented to you is they are recommended CIP, just like the comprehensive plan. They're recommended CIP with top 10 priorities. And we usually do that as a P1 for the, you're in the top 5, P2, you're in the, in the top 10. And then everything else is just listed as vision so that we're not Trying to go through and create too many different categories We also have provided you a staff prioritization. I will say I can't necessarily vouch for all of those because that is an average score Amongst many department heads and we all have certainly different perspectives of where we're coming from as we put our priorities in there But that's in there for you. I think that's been a helpful tool for counseling the past as well to know where staff may think important projects may lie. And then another important note with the capital improvement program is that this isn't where we plan the details of projects, right? So if we're going to build if there's a root one expanded from X-road to Y-road, that's So if we're going to build, if there's a root one expanded from X-road to Y-road, that's not where we talked about how many trees, how many mediums, how many, you know, little bump outs, it's generally the project, the money, and we get the big picture into this project so we can start budgeting into the future. And so the plan in front of you is split up into multiple categories. We have public facilities, economic development projects, parks facilities, road facilities, and there may even be one other category included there. And it's over 35 projects, and I'm just gonna be very frank with you, we don't have enough money to do with them all, right? And so that let's just be very clear from the start with that. And so when we bring this back to you on May 1st, it will have updated finance numbers where you can look a little bit about how we plan on getting there financially, but just know not everything's gonna be funded. And that's natural, that's to be expected. There's just too much there. The other important note here, and this is more for when you get to your prioritization exercise, is just because you don't vote for it doesn't mean it doesn't get done, right? So this is really a message for you to tell me, Josh, I would really like to see money towards this. That's an easy way to kind of think of what your prioritization would be. The example we use often, and you know, I like Mr. Jennings to hear this so he knows that we value what he does as well. The stormwater ones. We all know stormrars, incredibly important in national. We've spent millions of dollars on it. Most of it is state required, and so whether you put it in your top 10 or just lies on the vision, we're going to keep working on that. And so just know that we're always going to work on these, but you're trying to tell staff where to put the money and where to focus priority. And so that's the prioritization exercise we would go through. So with that, again, this is just an introduction. The homework we're going to give you is to go home and give us your top 10 and I think we have a due date in there of, what was it? January 21st. So I think that's sometime next week. If you can get those back to us, that will give us enough time to prepare an agenda item for February 1st. We'll do the public hearing then. And that will be staff's recommended, in the planning commission's recommended CIP to you. And that's where we can dive a little bit more into you all negotiating your top 10 priorities and then any real detailed questions about projects that you may have as well. And so with that, I'll leave it relatively brief and see if you have any questions before we proceed. Questions? Carole? We're doing the same number system and everything. Okay. Yep. So remember, your ranked one gets 10 points, right? And your bottom rank only gets one point. So my top priority is 10. Yeah. Because you want to score high. Yes. Good point. Good. Not the number one choice being a one. I will put notes in the email we sent you. How about that? This is your one Sunday. And that is one of the. And that is from Miss Soapalls. Say, being new, we do want to be thoughtful and consider it. But at the same time, I want to say, I've been on councilor, I think 12, since 2012. I don't like this exercise. I've never had, I probably never will. So don't feel all alone. OK. Oh, you carry on, sir. And genuinely, that's the end of the presentation. Unless you have questions, there's no action you need to take at the moment. If you want more information from me, please ask. But if not, we're ready to move on to the next item. I would just comment from Miss Soapall. From my perspective, it's the easiest way to try to get five people to figure out what their priorities are I'm looking for to it Well said All right So we'll dispense with that and move on to our reports, planning department. Same. Good evening. His raglan has left, but I have to take the opportunity once more to thank her and congratulate her for all the hard work she put in on the comprehensive plan. She is the one who worked directly with Will Cockrole with EPR and they've been fantastic to work with and we look forward to working with them in the future on getting the plan formatted and appreciate Will being here. So how to get that on the record. So the update my report is in your packet, but just to go over a few of the items that we've attached there. We've been probably updating you for about two years on the updated FEMA floodplain maps, and we have finally received our final determination that they have gone through the public process and that those maps are now, or will be within six months official and we have six months to update our ordinances and processes to make sure that we've incorporated those new maps. I'm excited again. I feel like I've talked about this a lot, but I am thoroughly excited. The Micro Transit Project, which if you go online and you Google GRTC micro transit the links website will come up and it has a lot of information on the existing services as well as the plan services we heard I think last week the azealia service down in hand over has over the previous week I believe had 200 passengers so we're hopeful that we can see that as well. Go ahead. Man, ask questions. What practically does the micro, what will that bring to us? We don't have that. I'm so glad you asked. And so we will have community input sessions and be providing all this information probably later in February. And by we, I mean, GRTC will be helping us and we'll be pushing out what they give to us. And so it's a micro transit program where it's an on call similar to the dash program and we hope to connect with the folks at dash and it's a mapped out area and includes all of Ashland and then it goes down south to the air park. And it includes Lake Ridge Parkway. We tried to bring in the employees as well as the employers and making sure we're going to hit all those locations. And so a user would call similar to an Uber and within 20 minutes someone would come to your location and you can go to anywhere within that red zone area. And eventually hopefully you'll be able to get to a connection point that will take you down to the fixed service at Virginia Center. So that's a long-term goal, but then that would get you down to Richmond on a fixed service. Even better, the fixed service comes to Ashland. I have to make my goals little realistic. Yes, that would be great. That would be fantastic. And so you won't be seeing a van going around in a loop. This isn't a circulator loop. It's really just on call. So someone calls, or you can make an appointment in advance and say, I need to get picked up at 10 a.m. on this day and they will be there at your doorstep to pick you up. We have been working with GRTC to find a location to house the vehicles because you know down a Richmond they have their whole transfer station, they have security, they have the fueling because they run off a C&G and so we've been trying to work out some of those smaller details of how do you fuel this vehicle with the only place to fuel it down a Richmond? Are we driving to Richmond? Every few days to fuel it. So we're figuring out those details to your GC has been fantastic to work with. It will be not a large bus, one of their larger vans to hold up to 20 people and it will be able to hold two wheelchairs at a time. So very excited and we will get the word out. As I said, for the most part. And the best part is it costs. Oh, and it's free. I'm sorry. It's free. How exciting is free to us? It's free for the users for now. Somebody's paying for it. Somebody's paying for it, but it's not us currently. It sounds, if you have a schedule, schedules don't always work with everybody but schedules They they keep the frustration away from a farmer driver and I've got somebody who wants me to be at point a at 10 And I'm going to point B in somebody calls after I just left and I could have picked them up on the way it seemed like there's There's going to be a while to figure out for people to know or for some coordination. So that this thing is not constantly running back and forth in repeating routes where it'd been more efficient if people agreed to do something the same time. It would be and we're going to monitor that. And so again, we've reached out to the employers like the Amazon's and asked, when are your shifts? So we can plan, if we know that shift turnover is at 7 a.m., well, we might need two or three drivers at 7 a.m., whereas if there are shift changes at 2 p.m., perhaps that's wheeling one or two drivers then. So we know that there will be some overlap and there's gonna be some lessons learned. Right now we're looking at 6am to 11pm, but that might need to be seven to 12. Or it could be shortened if we're not getting users during those times and working with GRTC. They see, GRTC, they seem very flexible. And they're on top of the numbers. They keep track of all of this. So I think that there will be, it will be a fluid process to start with. But their first rodeo. Right, absolutely. It's ours, but not theirs. For the sake of our vice mayor, C&G, she referred to it running on C&G. Compressed natural gas, like natural gas. Or she said it. That's natural gas. Yeah, so anyway. Yes, I think I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And I think we I don't know if we've mentioned this publicly, but Popeyes held their grant opening and ribbon cutting on December 14th. Thank you to all the council members who were able to come out and celebrate with them. And then we just held our comprehensive plan public hearing. And so thank you for all your input and we look forward to working with you over the next month to get things ironed out. Thanks for a wonderful job. I think y'all that you and the planning commission staff did a wonderful job. I think y'all did. You and the planning commission and staff did a good job under duress. Yeah. Well, you know, it was put out there was COVID, but you as you all know that the public may not know. We also had several staff changes. So there was a lot of starting and stopping because of that. And so we're thrilled that Carrie was able to Mr. Ragnar was able to carry that through. You mentioned the FEMA maps. The decisions that were to be made concerning wetlands, east of Route 1, west of the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act mapping. Yes. So that is very separate from the FEMA floodplain maps. Right. We were working on the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act wetlands maps. Right. And so we had some concern from a property owner. And we've gone back and forth with the property owner and the consultant and public works. We have not come to a complete decision on what we would like to do to have the entire property studied in depth, which is what the property owner would like to see before we update those maps is cost prohibitive for the town to do. We understand that if that property owner work to come in and develop the property, they would have to have those similar wetland studies done in advance of doing any work. And so we're continuing to have discussion with staff at DQ about what we have to do and which maps we have to accept or if we could alter those slightly. Okay, thank you. Thank you for asking that. I knew one of the same thing, but it sparked my memory back to the, I knew that was, thank you for hiring. So to speak. Okay. No, thank you very much. Any other questions? All right, thank you. All right. Finance department, again. Again, an abbreviated report, Ms. Stone was unable to be here, but she will be at the next meetings. A few highlights on the finance report. The good news is, revenues are looking pretty good. Meals and sales tax in particular is doing really well, but do want to share a couple of the business items of the department. The really good news is that after significant work on the part of many staff, we do expect to go live using our new financial software, this coming payroll for the payroll module. So we'll actually be running payroll through there, and that will be the second module we've gone live. We're using it for our general finances right now in general ledger. Payroll will go, and then we'll move on to the tax module as well. But do you just want to publicly thank Ms. Cornwell and Ms. Stone for that effort. That has been countless hours and hours in effort and frustration to get us there. But I think we're in a good place. And then the last one, feel good sharing this from my old world is a tax tax guy and finance director. Tax bills are due February 5th. So make sure you get into pay. Anyone who is having any trouble or concerns about paying, we are happy to work with you on payment plans. So please do not let that be a reason you don't come into the office, even if you can only make the most minimal of payments. We want to work with you to get it paid up, and we are very, very flexible. So please come in and just make sure you get something to us before February 5th. And with that, I'll take any questions. Any questions? Okay. I'm paid mine today. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Police Department. Chief Aaron Holt. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the town council. This evening in your packet, you have the Ash and Police Department. I'm going to go to the meeting. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members, staff council this evening in your packet, you have the Asher and police department for the month of December and also preliminary annual report for the police department. I do have to be before I begin on the preliminary annual report. Admit that there is an error. The accident numbers should say 2023 in comparison of 2022 the bottom. Not the comparison of the same year So I apologize for that error on my part The one thing that jumps out of that particular category as well as the fact that we did have a significant increase in the number of motor vacuular accidents in the town Do that increase I did ask That we conduct a review of that which I did and And I'll just give some factors that came from that review. The primary reason for the collisions was found to be fair yield and falling too closely as the main reason for the accidents having occurred. It was also found that 41% of the accidents were happening at three key intersections. One in 54, ash cake and one and cottage drain and RL 54. The other thing to taking consideration is that the primary reason for these accidents, which was stark for me when we asked for the view was we only actually had a 10% response in the number of accidents we responded to. So not every accident we responded to is reportable. But in this instance, we only responded to a 10% increase in the raw number of accidents, but we had a 40% increase in the number of accidents which were reportable, which is concerning because that's determined by dollar amount. So given the reasons for the charges that were filed, coupled with the fact that the amount of vehicle damage is increasing, that means primarily probably the speeds are increasing as well in aggressive driving behavior. I think this can largely be attributed to people coming off the interstate being frustrated because they're on our roads trying to find the way to get to their destination. And I don't know that that's going to decrease. One thing that we have taken in consideration was the fact that ash cake road was closed down and maybe that's putting even more stress on around one of some other side streets. So with that in mind it does present us with some challenges because some of the residential neighborhoods want us to be in their neighborhoods when there's this large volume of traffic. So it's my goal to continue to be on Jamestown Road in Henry Street to provide the service we have in the times that normal times we'll try to pay attention to those intersections. But there's just so much traffic on Jamestown Road and Henry Street when Route 1 gets backed up that if we're not there, are we even gonna have more accidents with people trying to come out of their driveways? Before I continue on, we'll be happy to answer any questions anyone would have. Yes, sir? The Ways, you know, the app Ways. Yes, sir. I think we've tried to reach out to them the ways, you know, the app ways. Yes, sir. I think we've tried to reach out to them and see if they could take us, I mean, going through a neighborhood to avoid traffic. I reached out to Mr. Cook himself as well as I cannot pronounce the gentleman's name who's in charge of Google. They did say that they checked their email daily. I am not gonna say that that's untruthful, but they have yet to respond. Cotton to act me or respond back. So I know that we've also tried to reach out to government partners as well. And I know we are not the only jurisdiction that deals with this as common for many localities that are on the interstate highway. Unfortunately. One other thing in this preliminary annual report is we were on task to have a lower crime rate than last year, but we did have one individual who, as I reported in the last council meeting, did do 29 shoplettings, which was a 36% of our shoplettings, which this year did make up the bulk of our larceny offenses, which is a major factor in our part one crimes. And all other instances, we did have a reduction with exceptional burglaries, but we did not have the two homicides we had did last year, and robberies were flat. We also did have a decrease in aggravated assaults, which we've been having an alarming climb with that and we did have a reduction in that, although it was a minimal still reduction. So we were excited to hear about that. Highlights this month, we did do our shop of the cop program, which we helped out 36 kids. I am happy to say that my misminds and around the table hosted that event. All sorts of lots of work to get the presence. So my hat's off to him. He didn't outstanding job. But because of the staff at around the table, it allowed the police officers to come in, hang out with the kids, and we had a really good event. Santa Claus was there, and we had a really good event. Santa Claus was there, and we had a great opportunity. So I'm very proud of the effort that the crime prevention unit put into this. We also did our coffee with a cop program. We did that at the Jiffy Mark out there on 54. So we spent about two hours out there and provided coffee. I got to speak with citizens, so it was very, very good program as well. Also, I attended the Asian Chamber of Commerce, Gallaudet, down in the city of Richmond. And I'm happy to report on hiring, off the road, Ells, and she's in field training doing a great job. And our three recruits, the Academy are doing great as well. And I did just extend three offers of conditional employment. If they everything goes well they'll start the Academy in March which will bring us up to 27th of sworn. So I appreciate all the support and making this happen. We'll be at a 30th hope by this time next year. So we appreciate it. It's much needed for the officers to give them time off. And lastly I I'd just like to say, last week with the rain, the officers did a great job and very proud what they do with the power going out, but I do have to give a shout out to Rodney with a town maintenance shop. He was out there showing up trees and making it so the roadways got clear and keeping everyone safe. So I'd just like to give that shout out as well. No without answering any questions they wouldn't have. Questions? Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate the teamwork. Thanks sir. Thank you much. I know this is the meeting isn't the meeting where we give our reports. But I did want to say we had an email earlier today that Mr. Goodman had sent out from Joanne Jones, Alan, concerning the library. I had a conversation with her. She's going to reach out to Martha Miller and kind of brainstorm some of the objectives she's looking to accomplish. She may still reach back to us But anyway, and that was an idea from early in the day and We won't have another meeting before February 1st, but that's Legislative day now at the General Assembly VML Vaco in one another organization. I'm leaving out at the moment Yeah, yeah, that's right, the PDCs. So if you're planning on going down there, we can kind of coordinate that through Mr. Goodman. And I'm thinking we should identify our local reps and try to schedule in advance of that day. Already in the works. All right, good, good, good. I figured it as much. All right. Anything else to come for us to see? No. Where's your name? Thank you all.