What is a comprehensive plan update, anyways?

A central focus of the Many Plans, One Community initiative is a joint comprehensive plan update process for Charlottesville and Albemarle County. By undertaking a joint update process for the first time, the two localities hope to find areas in which to align their policies and implementation plans to create a more livable region for all of us who live, work, and play across the borders of these two jurisdictions.

While it is a fundamental document for city and county planners and elected officials, the comprehensive plan may be unfamiliar to many members of the general public. The comprehensive plan is the blueprint for all future development in a locality and plays a central role in shaping our community. It is referred to in approving or denying a rezoning request, choosing where to build a new school or park, and deciding where to invest in the transportation system. Here is a brief overview.  More information can be found on our website.

What is a Comprehensive Plan?

According to the state code, every Virginia locality is required to create a comprehensive plan. Section 15.2-2223 reads:

“The local planning commission shall prepare and recommend a comprehensive plan for the physical development of the territory within its jurisdiction and every governing body shall adopt a comprehensive plan for the territory under its jurisdiction.”

The code goes on to specify that the plan should identify existing conditions in the jurisdiction and create a plan for future development, including residential, commercial, industrial, recreational, agricultural, and other types of land use. As well, the plan should address transportation infrastructure and prioritize projects for improvements or new construction. A central component of the comprehensive plan is a map depicting the community vision for future growth.

How is it updated?

The state code decrees that the comprehensive plan must be reviewed every five years to determine if updates are needed. Both Charlottesville and Albemarle’s plans are currently up for review. Our series of community workshops, which began in September and will continue through spring 2012, provide opportunities for the public to review the current comprehensive plan policies and provide feedback on whether the existing goals still apply to our communities needs. Since the comprehensive plan is a weighty document – Albemarle’s clocks in at over 400 pages – we have broken the meetings up by thematic issues. Workshops thus far have focused on the environment, land use, and transportation. Still to come are housing, economic drivers, recreational and cultural facilities, and historic preservation. The full calendar can be found on our website.

If you have been attending these workshops, you know that each session presents excerpts from Albemarle and Charlottesville’s existing comprehensive plans and describes how each locality has implemented these policies in the past five years. Feedback is solicited from the community as to whether they believe these policies are adequate and relevant, as well as what other issues or goals they’d like to see incorporated into the comprehensive plan.

This feedback will be reviewed by city and county staff, and will inform the revisions they make to their respective comp plans. The two planning commissions, made up of citizen representatives, will also play an essential role in reviewing feedback and making recommendations for updates. Commissioners will work closely with planning staff to prioritize areas to update and new goals to adopt. They will be looking especially for areas of common ground between the localities where parallel policies can be put into place in order to strengthen our community. Finally, the recommended updates must be voted on and approved by the Board of Supervisors in Albemarle or City Council in Charlottesville to be enacted as official public documents.

We hope you will use this process as a way to help shape your community! Attend a workshop to share your views and vision for our community. If you are unable to attend a workshop, you can always comment online. The next workshop will be held Thursday, December 1 at the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library in downtown Charlottesville and will focus on housing and economic drivers. Stay tuned for more information about this topic! 

Community Workshop on Land Use and Transportation

Thank you to all who attended the Environment Community Workshop on the September 29^th. We had a good turnout with lots of great discussion.  The comments and feedback we received during the Workshop are incredibly valuable to the Livability Project.

We are looking forward to seeing all of you at our next Public Workshop  on October 27^th at the County Office Building on McIntire Road.  We will have two separate exhibits at this Workshop. One highlighting current Land Use and Transportation goals from the City and County Comprehensive Plans. Another will showcase goals and projects found in the Metropolitan Planning Organization’s (MPO) Long Range Transportation Plan.

Come early and learn what the City, County and MPO have been doing to facilitate effective and efficient land use, and increase mobility for all modes of transportation.  Stay to review the extensive information displayed, and make sure to provide feedback, offer suggestions, and make comments in order to help shape our community.

Overview presentations will be given at 4:30pm, 5:30pm, and 6:30pm.

Community Workshop on Environmental Issues

Do you have ideas on how to improve our natural environment? Would you like to have easier access to a trail in your neighborhood? Are you concerned about water quality of the Rivanna and other streams in our region? Come share your thoughts at a public workshop on environmental issues on September 29, the first in a series of events which will inform the Charlottesville and Albemarle Comprehensive Plan updates.

A major component of the Many Plans, One Community initiative is to gather community input related to the updates of both the Charlottesville and Albemarle Comprehensive Plans. While Charlottesville and Albemarle are governed separately and thus have distinct comprehensive plans, our communities are inherently linked. The two municipalities hope to bring their plans into greater alignment – thus improving the lives of their citizens, who typically live, work, shop, play, and learn across city/county boundaries – with this joint planning process. While each comprehensive plan will be unique, reflecting the needs and goals of each place, by updating the two comprehensive plans at the same time, common goals can be set for the entire region.

In order to gather public input that will shape the updates to the comprehensive plans – and guide future development in our region – TJPDC, the City and the County are hosting a series of community workshops over the next year. Each workshop will focus on a particular aspect of the comprehensive plan, such as housing, transportation, or the economy. The full calendar of workshops can be found here.

The first workshop in the series will focus on environmental issues including parks and greenways, sustainable development, water quality and stormwater management, and natural resource protection. Come learn what the city and county have been doing to protect the natural environment, then provide feedback and share your vision for our region. 

Community Workshop on Environmental Issues

Thursday, September 29, 2011

4-7pm

Cityspace

100 5th St. NE
Charlottesville, VA 22902

We Want Your Feedback!

As we have discussed previously, the first step in the Many Plans, One Community Livability Project is the creation of a Performance Measurement System. This system will provide a snapshot of our community today and serve as a baseline for monitoring our progress over the coming years in areas that are essential to a livable community such as employment, water quality, housing affordability and more.

Now that we have drafted a preliminary version of the Performance Measurement System, we would like you to review the materials and take a survey to provide us with your feedback. If you did not have a chance to attend the Open House on June 23 to review the draft Performance Measurement System, you may do so online. Please take a moment to review the posters which contain the draft indicators and data, and then fill out an electronic survey to give us your feedback.

Please share with us your thoughts on the current indicators – do they cover the areas that make up a livable community to you and your family? Are there additional indicators you would like to see measured? Your comments will help shape the final version of the system, to be released later this year.

We hope you will take some time to examine the current version of the Performance Measurement System and share your thoughts with us. Your input helps ensure that the Performance Measurement System reflects the vision and goals of our community. Please feel free to encourage others to take the survey by directing them to our website, 1-community.org. Thank you in advance for your participation!

Census Data and the Performance Measurement System

Last week’s Open House provided a chance for the public to review a current draft of a Livability Performance Measurement System for our area. We appreciate the feedback that was received at this event, which has been transcribed and posted on our website. We welcome you to peruse this feedback, and leave additional comments here. This input will be taken into consideration and incorporated where appropriate into the final performance measurement system.

Since many of the comments suggest additional indicators or question why certain indicators were used, we thought it would be helpful to explain the data criteria in more detail. The performance measurement system is designed to evaluate our region based on data that is currently available. In other words, we are not collecting data for this project, such as conducting an inventory of animal species found locally, or carrying out a survey of housing conditions. For a majority of the indicators, we rely on credible, third-party sources to supply the data.

One of our main sources is the US Census Bureau – which conducts both the US Census (every 10 years) and the American Community Survey (or ACS, which is conducted on a continual basis, thus providing more current data). ACS data includes surveys of housing, the economy, population demographics, and social characteristics. We invite you to review the data we used for Albemarle County and Charlottesville and to explore the American Factfinder website to better understand the types of data that are available. The US Census offers a wealth of information that is relevant to our community. What measurements from the Census do you think could be helpful to better understand our region?

Get Involved with the Livability Project!

Thank you to everyone who took the time to attend the Livability Performance Measurement System Open House yesterday! We appreciate the thoughtful comments and input that participants provided. Your feedback allows us to improve the system so that it better reflects the values of our community. If you didn’t have a chance to attend, you can review the posters on our website leave your comments here.

We’d love any additional feedback – do you think these indicators are good measures of our community? What other indicators would reflect what you value in our community? (And meet our data criteria of being reliable and regularly produced.) What indicators would you like to see us make progress on in coming years? How can this be achieved?

If this project is one you or your organization would like to contribute to, please consider joining the Livability Partnership. This partnership will be made up of representatives from a wide array of community organizations, who will have a chance to provide input into the process. The partnership will convene for quarterly meetings to review Livability project materials and voice their concerns and goals for our community.

Please take a moment to read the letter of invitation and return the sign-up form if you are interested! We’d love to see you or a representative of your group at the first meeting on Monday, July 11 at 7:00pm.

Where Are We Now?

How will we know if the Charlottesville-Albemarle area has been successful in creating a more livable community in five, ten or even twenty years from now? In order to measure our progress, it’s important to have a snapshot of where we stand today. For this reason, the Livability project has designed a Performance Measurement System to evaluate where we stand in key areas of our community. This system will be shared with the public in its current, preliminary form this Thursday (details below).

The Performance Measurement System contains indicators which fall into six categories:

• Natural Resources
• Housing & the Built Environment
• Communities & Neighborhoods
• Transportation
• Economy
• Infrastructure

For each of these categories, 10-15 indicators were chosen to measure current outcomes in that category. Each of the systems and indicators are based on goals and values as expressed in the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County Comprehensive Plans. These documents have been approved by each locality’s elected officials and summarize the county or city’s vision for their future.

For example, one of the indicators measured in the Natural Resources system is the portion of our rivers that are currently considered impaired (for having bacteria or pollutant levels above standards). The comprehensive plans of both Charlottesville and Albemarle place importance on clean waterways, for ecological benefits as well as the protection of our drinking water supply. This indicator gives us a snapshot of the health of our waterways today, and can be compared to future evaluations of our streams to let us know if we have made progress in reducing pollution levels.

We hope you will join us at the Open House this Thursday to review each of the chosen indicators in detail and provide feedback. If you can’t make it, check the website on Friday for digital versions of the information that will be shared and leave your comments on the site.

Performance Measurement System Open House
Thursday, June 23
4:00-7:00pm
Saunders Hall
UVA Darden School of Business (North Grounds Campus)
100 Darden Blvd. Charlottesville, VA 22903

Full details and directions can be found under the Meetings & Events tab on this site.

Many Plans, One Community

Welcome to the Many Plans, One Community blog!  We hope to use this space to provide interested community members with a window into the Livable Communities Project.  We are on our way to planning for a more livable future for Charlottesville and Albemarle County.  Please use this space to stay informed of our activities and become engaged in the process.