The Chesapeake City Council held a work session at 4:45 p.m. and a regular meeting at 6:30 p.m. on June 18, 2024. The work session covered agricultural text amendments, the city's investment policy, and an update from Naval Air Station Oceana. The regular meeting included a special recognition, numerous public hearings on zoning and conditional use permits, and votes on several development proposals. Key decisions included approval of the Thornton North Battlefield rezoning (6-3), denial of The Commons accelerated proffer modification (6-3), and adoption of the agricultural text amendment (6-3).
We have a number of items. I'll turn it over to Mr. Manager to present. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Three items for you tonight. First is on rural preservation tools and its germane to an agenda item this evening on agricultural preservation subdivisions and how the subdivision ordinance interacts with the zoning ordinance. Second is our investment policy, and we have the team from finance and treasurer's office and the our consultants here. And then last uh we have uh a visit and an update from our friends at Oceana. Really appreciate uh them coming out that we have great partnerships with Ocean, and you'll hear about some of the great stuff that they're doing there. Um so getting started with rural preservation before we jump into the ordinance that's on the agenda tonight. Um I do want to recap a little bit from council's retreat um from last week uh for um the members of the public that may have not been able to see that retreat. Um as we talked about with council, we have a lot of agricultural preservation tools. The the code of Virginia authorizes um localities um to do different things. We we've taken advantage of the the enabling authority to to enact several um tools and tactics for rural preservation. Um, but it's pretty clear from council direction over the past year that um council and the community want to make sure that we can clearly articulate what's the overall strategy that that we're pursuing and what are the desired outcomes that we're trying to achieve with regards to rural preservation. And so they've uh council's asked staff to develop a much more comprehensive and coordinated rural preservation um strategy and overall program. Um at the end of the day, we want to make sure we align all of our plans, our policies of all of our tools to achieve um those desired outcomes of rural preservation. Um lots of tools uh won't go into uh a lot of these in detail, but it starts with uh having a clear strategy and objectives. Um council recently um in this budget year has significantly expanded um resources available for our conservation um uh programs. Council's added three million dollars um to the budget to be able to go out and augment our existing um open space acquisition programs. Um council's asked us to take a look at more opportunities for uh what we call value-added agriculture. This is agribusiness agro tourism. Um a year, a little more than a year ago, council approved uh approved some changes to the zoning ordinance to make some agribusiness and agritourism opportunities more available than they were in the past. We've learned some lessons and and are recommending some additional modifications and resources to continue to improve agribusiness and agro tourism opportunities. Um council asked us to explore farming villages. This is a way to um for for landowners to be able to better plan and utilize um utilize their land but also achieve some of the desired desired outcomes of rural preservation, um making sure that housing that's built uh pays its own way from an infrastructure perspective and is really value-added to the community, uh doesn't detract from the character of the rural area. Um council asked us, we're really excited about this one to pursue a transfer of development rights program. This is a a voluntary program that's enabled in Dakota, Virginia that would allow the private sector, the free market to transfer development rights um from the rural area into the development area, and without again going into a lot of detail because you'll see you'll see these tools coming forward to council in the in the relatively near future. This would allow a developer to go into Southern Chesapeake if council so chooses and um and um purchase what would have been development rights on a property um so that the landowner can keep the property, they can keep it available for farming, they don't have to develop it, they don't have to sell um to a developer, but they could sell the development rights, which a developer would then take and transfer those rights into an area that has existing or planned infrastructure. Um so again, matching matching development with where infrastructure is or is one of our principles of smart growth. Um obviously we continue to update ordinances and policies, including the agenda item on this evening, and at the end of the day, as I mentioned, we want to coordinate all of our programs to achieve council and the community's goals. So this is a brief graphic that we showed you at the retreat where each of the individual tools and tactics can be used to complement one another so we can start creating um true large areas of uh preserved open space. So if you combine a farming village tool with uh our open space acquisition program, we'll still have some minor subdivision aggregative activity, some value added ag in terms of agritourism, um, so lots of different tools uh put together to achieve really, really dramatic open space preservation in ways that we're not doing now that that would really benefit the community. Um lot of benefits that ensures clarity of our goals and objectives, maintains the rural character much more than than we're doing today. Um it provides multiple new opportunities uh and additional flexibility for landowners. I I know with the agenda item this evening, there's some perception from some of the landowners that we're taking rights away. Um these are really really significant new opportunities, including um potential sources of revenue, not not even tax funding, private private sector funding that that don't exist anywhere else in the city. So it's it's a pretty significant um uh opportunities for for landowners that don't exist today. It makes sure that lands actually preserved and available for farm or or rural use, some of our preservation tools today, um they they're not working as intended, so land's not actually being preserved. Um, so this makes sure that that is happening, and then finally improves the viability of the rural economy. So overall, each of these individual tactics uh when put together are pretty powerful in terms of achieving the desired count outcomes and councils assets to achieve ultimately improving um uh preserving land, um, improving agribusiness and and agritourism opportunities, maintaining the rural character, and providing additional flexibility and resources to um to landowners in southern Chesapeake. So I think we've done a pretty good job. It all starts, as I said, this evening with um addressing the agricultural text amendment that that's before you, um, and then we'll continue to bring these forward. So as far as next steps, um making sure all of those plans, policies, and ordinances are aligned. Uh, you'll take that first step uh at least it's on your agenda this evening. Um we will begin implementing the new three million dollar uh purchase of development rights program that council enacted in the budget, those funds will become available in July 1, and then we'll continue the tools that I just briefly mentioned. We'll to continue to advance those tools, have conversations with landowners, conversations with the community to make sure we're bringing you the best tool that makes sense for both Southern Chesapeake and the development area. At the end of the day, some of these tools are really powerful. I know Councilmember Ritter has said this many, many times, but I think we do some really great small area planning, but we we don't want to lose sight of the whole.