Michael Crenshaw

Also Nashville, Tennessee is Germantown-maxxing

Yeah both are bummers and good reaspn to prefer public trails, but the one by Starr Hill is much more understandable.

It's also why I'm so adamant that the trail across Windy Knoll should be public. It's our last real chance to get a bike connection from Eastern Ave to the commercial area, and I don't want an HOA shutting it down.

Please ignore those fucking signs. It's my HOA, and it's because one person was worried kids' electric bikes would damage the trail. That's stupid, because the only kids who bike those trails are in the HOA, and part of the marked-off trail is asphalt.

People are so reflexively anti- social.

Urbanism meme: Her: He's probably thinking of Zoning Him: We should upzone Sylvan Park to at least RM20.

The whole world except the United States knows about how to put crucial government services where everyone can get to them.

The crucial service marooned on an inaccessible hilltop culdesac, reachable only by car, is a uniquely USA idea.

(Chattanooga, TN, USA)

Livable Cville Meetup! Thursday, February 12, 5-7 pm All are welcome! Brazos Tacos IX Art Park 925 2nd St SE LIVABLE CVILLE

We look forward to seeing you this evening at Ix @brazos.bsky.social!

And we're done! I made my pitch about a bike path at Windy Knoll, now it's time for Windy Knoll drinks.

Mallek on BOS updates: It took $2500 and a year for a school to get a SUP for extended hours. Similar story for a slow SUP for an artisan furniture builder. Gives another example. She's basically saying these "easy yes" SUPs are taking way too long, and the zoning code should be fixed.

He says that mitigation often takes the form of tree tubes that never get removed, and he'd like more process around those mitigation.

He suggests that if you did something in a stream buffer, when a development comes in, it should be held to the same standard as ot would be if it were a new road.

Next concern: intermittent streams in water supply + development area, first 50ft can be built on if there's mitigation.

There's now a discussion about water protection legislation (i think county level) that is apparently under development right now. He's concerned about exceptions to standards, such as farm roads that get "grandfathered in" when farms are converted to housing developments.

Mallek suggests it's because we tend to just expect a big developer will gobble the whole thing up and make the slivers bot matter.

She says Europe has figured out how to do all this well and protect their little cottages(???).

Murray: when we finish developments, we leave street stubs intentionally. In this case small slivers of land make it cost prohibitive to complete the stubbed out road. He wants to know how we managed to paint ourselves into this corner.

Mallek: "everyone please continue to stay watchful" of coming changes. Says if there arent substantial changes "there should be more process."

Murray on Windy Knoll: PC's concerned about "cramming" units "haphazardly" into the upper corner of the property without "consideration for the quality of life of folks that lived there." Also lack of interconnectivity.

Mallek says that up until 10 years ago, staff had the tendency to accept incomplete applications and do work for developers, but that's improved a lot.

Mallek is talking about the downtown crozet special zoning district. Says height is one limitatuon. 4 is fine, but Piedmont Place had to get a Special Use Permit for 6 stories (everything else was by right). Is suggesting this is a good model, lets development avoid "constant negotiation."

On to PC/BOS updates. Murray is talking about PC discussions around sustainability, the different classifications of streets, and possible classifications of "green streets" that provide stormwater mitigation.

It's a bummer we have to find ourselves constantly talking about roads.

Yeah I was confused about this with several folks' comments. Taxes can be redistributive if you craft them thay way??? So do that?

bsky.app/profile/llcr...

Monaco, who is a brutal time enforcer, says let's identify some action items. Sounds like folks are interested in a survey? I'm not sure what the survey is exactly going to be attempting to find though. Sounds like we're going to take advantage of connections to the school of architecture.

Murray says instead of affordability proffers for new developments, it makes more sense to do that with existing apartments, I guess proffers in exchange for subsidies for the renovations?

Murray suggests that the county could work with developers to upgrade existing apartments instead of allowing other developers to replace those old units with "luxury apartments."

Throwing around "luxury" annoys me in a way thay is probably similar to how "affordable" annoys Mallek.

And safety impact. How many of my neighbors will get into wrecks on 64 this year?

Monaco points out that data we collect will go out of date and that if we dont act on it quickly, it's wasted effort. Alderman suggests automation to keep it up to date instead of a one time study.

I generally like this idea, but building and maintaining automation is costly.

I zoned out for a sec, and now Murray is saying some people graduate from the school of data science unable to write a single line of code.

Not sure how we got to that topic, but btw I weep for the folks who are learning to code in the world of LLMs.

Mallek says she's been annoyed by people supporting "anything with the word affordability in it, no matter how atrocious," like developments with private roads thay residents can't afford to clear of snow (a likely reference to Windy Knoll, giving us a preview of that BOS meeting).

This meeting should really be using the phrase “already existing affordable housing” since they seem to show zero interest in creating housing.

I would be interested in the climate impact of 36 people driving over the mountain every day to get to work because we just denied 18 homes.