Good morning, everyone, and thank you, planning commissioners of CSF for your participation today.

My name is John Coston, and I'm the chair of the G Planning Commission.

Welcome to the June 10th informal session of the Virginia Beach Planning Commission.

All this meetings or the staff anything have anything for us.

I'll have any updates this morning.

I know we have a full agenda, so we'll allot the time to that.

Let's get started.

Good morning, everyone.

I'm Hannah Setho, the zoning administrator for the city of Virginia Beach.

Um, these next five items were all briefed to you previously, and our updates to the zoning ordinance in response to the new bills that were approved by the state legislature to bring our ordinance into compliance with that updated state code.

Item one is an ordinance pertaining to solar facilities as conditional and accessory use.

This update is in response to House Bill 711.

It codifies an existing interpretation that permits accessory solar equipment and adds solar facilities as a principal use with a conditional use permit in the agricultural business and industrial districts.

The change to state code now requires that localities permit solar facilities in certain districts.

We can require conditional use permit, which is what this ordinance does.

So it adds the use to those districts, which are the agricultural districts, business districts, and industrial districts, again, with a conditional use permit required.

Solar facilities would have to comply with all of the district screening and setback requirements of that base district, and then any conditions that are added to that conditional use permit.

Due to the short turnaround for this amendment, um we did not include specific use conditions in the code, but we could always come back and add those to the zoning ordinance.

And in the meantime, any conditions that are specific to the use specific to the site can be added during that conditional use permit process.

For accessory structures, this amendment um codifies the existing interpretation that already allows solar panels as an accessory structure on the roofs, they must meet the height requirements, and then ground mounted equipment must comply with the accessory structure setbacks and size limitations for accessory structures.

So the same setbacks and size limitations that you would have for any other, like a shed, for example, in your backyard.

Any questions on solar panels?

One quick question that will apply to all six of these.

I'll just ask it once.

When the state law changed, and you had to then take those changes and incorporate them into our code.

Can you tell us did you exercise any discretion or did you only make a limited change permitted by state law?

For example, if it said you must change this, of course, you would change just that.

But if it said you may change for a range of things, did you change it for a range of things or just one thing?

So the answer is yes and no.

Um, because all of these changes were requirements for state code, so there was not a discretionary decision on should we bring this forward for your consideration.

But there are elements to some of these, such as the small lots ordinance that Hannah will be getting to that said that we have to have single family as a permitted use in a small lot, and they need some dimensional requirements that they did not nitpick far enough to say your front yard setback has to be this.

Your lot with for all dimensional requirements, so there was a little bit of discretion that was exercised in that way, but um all of these were must adopt something in in this fashion.

Understand.

So if it in any of the other five, if there is some element like you may extend it to five different types of use districts, and you chose to do all five instead of just three, for example.

Could you just tell us if one of those examples arises?

Yes, I will do my best to try and keep some of those.

Yes.

Okay.

So for moving forward to the um next one, item two is an ordinance to amend section 207 of the city zoning ordinance pertaining to building mounted antennas, small wireless facilities, and temporary communication towers.

So this uh amendment is in response to House Bill 876, which provides specific requirements and limitations for how locality can regulate these temporary wireless structures.

And I will note that this is one that they have very specific requirements.

So I think everything listed in here is directly from the state.

Um, temporary wireless structures are monopoles or other wireless communication facilities that are used to provide wireless transmissions within a designated area.

They do not have a permanent foundation.

And so these types of structures are used during times when an increase in wireless coverage is needed.

So during a city permitted special events, wireless testing outages during an emergency, and in the code, we specify which of these that you have to meet one of these conditions in order to get this permit.

They're approved for 180 days initially with an option to extend up to two years if that event or incident is continuing.

The wireless provider is required to restore the installers required to restore the site within 48 hours of removal.

Okay, sorry, any questions on that one?

Item three.

It's an ordinance to amend Section 203 of the city zoning ordinance pertaining to minimum parking requirements for residential and mixed uses.

So this amendment is in response to House Bill 888 and adds a parking reduction option for residential uses within half a mile of a public transportation facility.

Um the half a mile of if it does come from the state.

Um this map shows right here the bus stops within a half, and then the ones that have the blue radius around them are those with a bus shelter.

So it is, and I'll go back to specify that the parking reduction applies to bus stops that have a physical structure or a physical bus shelter.

It's not just all bus stops with a sign, it does need to have some sort of a structure attached to it.

And so that parking reduction, these specific numbers uh that what they're reduced to, that does come from the state.

So multifamily or mixed use residential development.

The parking would be 0.5 parking spaces per dwelling unit, and then one space per dwelling unit for one and two family and townhouse uses.

Um, if adopted, staff will send out a PCD notice to the development community to notify them of this change and to let them know that they can add this information onto the cover page of their site plans, and that we'll also be adding that bus shelter map on City Map for easy access.