The Transportation and Land Use Committee met to discuss and vote on several items including attainable housing on public land, the 2026 Countywide Transportation Plan (CTP) review, and extensive revisions to Western Loudoun rural uses and standards, particularly the Mountainside Overlay District (MOD). The meeting included public input, adoption of a consent agenda, and multiple votes on action items.
Evening everyone, I'd like to call to order the January twenty-six twenty-second, twenty twenty-six transportation and land use committee meeting. This room has a hearing loop. If you need hearing assistance, switch your hearing aids to telecoil mode. If you need a headset, we have those available as well. Please see the clerk to request one. So we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance. Okay, so we're gonna start with uh public input session, and we have three speakers. See if I am hot on this status. Okay. Um so we have three advanced speakers for our public input portion of the meeting. If there is anybody in the boardroom that would like to address the committee and has not already signed up to speak, please see the clerk. Members of the public who wish to speak will be allotted two minutes, and we change that in the new year, so it's two minutes, not two and a half. When your name is called, please state your name for the public record. When your time has expired, please leave yield the floor to the next speaker. And we limit public input just so everybody knows to fifteen minutes, so we can get on with our agenda. Okay, so the first speaker is uh Mr. Peter Weeks. Since our last TLUC meeting, the entire MOD landscape has changed with the Paris Mountain Resort Complex. Now we are a witness to the consequences of the decision to postpone what type of uses were permitted in the MOD. Investors purchased a hundred and forty-seven acres along the ridgeline of the Blue Ridge adjacent to Sky Meadow State Park and the Appalachian Trail along Route 50. Their proposal is to bring build a resort complex which would include a restaurant, spa, event center, and two hotel structures. A country restaurant is currently a permitted use, and they are initially arguing that they can build their resort by right. So this this development is going to have a very set of very bad precedent. And we've stated from the beginning that permitted uses in the MOD must be sharply restricted. Tree houses, zip lines, wedding centers seem innoculous at first glance, but they create the slippery slope that leads to the monetization of our mountains. We have before us potential threats to change our rural landscape forever. Recommendations you propose regarding the MOD will impact generations that follow. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you, Mr. Weeks. Next, we have Tia Earman. Is she here? I don't think she is. I don't see her. Okay. Next, we have uh Todd Henkel. Uh good evening. Uh my name is Todd Hinkle, and my wife uh Amy and I have owned and operated Lost Creek Winery since 2012. I've spoken to this forum before regarding my concerns about the MMOD, and tonight I'd like to offer some additional comments on the draft motions related to encroachments and grading, specifically uh 3, 4a, and 5A addressing minor encroachments. As I've said previously, the MOD contains some of the most pristine, highest quality vineyard land in our region. Because of that, there will naturally be continued interest in developing these properties into working farms and sustainable agricultural businesses. My concern is that these draft motions, as currently written, will unfairly and unnecessarily restrict the kinds of projects that can responsibly succeed in the MOD. One of the proposals would restrict land disturbance in the MOD to less than 600 square feet. And I respectfully submit that this threshold is far too low to be considered agricultural business friendly. To put this into real world perspective, my operation in Blue Mont is quite small and focused entirely on producing high quality wine. We have no tasting room, we have no event space. Our goal is simple. Grow great fruit and produce great wine. Even at that modest scale, our facilities require space. And next to that is a 50 foot by 25 foot farm building which supports uh which houses equipment to support the farm.