Thread by @socialistdogmom

the agenda for tonight’s planning commission meeting... so much on the agenda that they’ll meet again tomorrow night. “party two nights in a row,” says the chair, sounding exhausted.
charlottesville.org/home/showdocum…

matters by the public: woman says she wrote her thesis on single women w/severely disabled children who live in poverty. trying to figure out the disparity in services rec’d by these women, she found it was directly related to who the caseworker was. unclear how it relates to SUP

aha, it was a confusing analogy about how much discretion exists within the system. clara the caseworker is somehow related to... the city’s handling of the special use permit?

heyyy, comrade michael. didn’t see you come in! at the mic advocating for participatory budgeting as part of the community engagement process + keeping that community land trust on people’s minds.

the next four public engagement meetings for the comprehensive plan:
may 1 @ buford, 6pm
may 10 @ cityspace, noon
may 13 @ central library, 10am
may 29 @ belmont arts collaborative, 5:30pm

the chair isn’t having it, but one member of the commission (keesecker) wants to talk to this grant coordinator about how their work would be a good model for expanding participatory budgeting in the comp plan!

santoski is recusing himself from this vote — he’s affiliated with the arc of the piedmont, who have applied for funds from this program. he’s speaking now about what a good program it is & how it serves folks with disabilities.

without santoski’s vote, they vote unanimously to pass it, with the understanding that the city can adjust the funding once the finalized HUD funding amount is clear.

sorry, i missed half the discussion on this river road SUP trying to figure out exactly how heimbach is related to the woman he was having an affair with... if she is his wife’s stepdad’s wife... he was fucking his mother in law/his wife’s MOTHER? master fuckin’ race, y’all.

huh. the zoning ordinance and the comprehensive plan define “mixed use” differently. and “a mix of uses” is different from “mixed use.”
is this real life?

voted unanimously to deny the special use permit for a storage facility on river road. decision seems mostly related to such a facility not being something that could be repurposed in the future.

thank you wes: he’s asking the permit applicant why they held their only community engagement meeting at 9am on a weekday.
“community engagement” that fails to actively engage the community DOES 👏 NOT 👏 COUNT

community engagement or not, they’ve voted unanimously to rezone that lot.

jesus fucking christ. speaking of ill-timed community engagement meetings... the community design meeting held by this permit applicant was LUNCHTIME ON AUGUST 12.

the architect is explaining why they need special permission to reduce the mandatory setback to 0ft... “that’s the kind of relationship you want. kinda bring people right up to the window.”
please. i walk my dogs there. i don’t want that relationship with your building.

the chair, joking about the design shown by the architect “you could funk it up a bit!”
i’m 98% sure she said ‘funk,’ but this would be so much spicier if i chose to believe she was asking him to fuck shit up a bit.
c’mon, give me a reason to pay attention.

woman from the neighborhood association at the mic taking the developer to task for using the neighborhood association logo on his powerpoint. the big issues, y’all!
(this is my neighborhood. i didn’t know we had a logo!)

i don’t actually know what a “critical slope waiver” is but they did NOT get one and this guy from the southern environmental law center is concerned about it. the committee is now debating whether or not they should talk about it.

committee chair also lives in the neighborhood - she’s trying to explain to folks that a 0ft setback just isn’t gonna be a comfortable pedestrian experience on that street. she’s right. they ought to walk down that street and reevaluate their opinion on the setback.

y’all i don’t wanna miss a SECOND of this thrilling discussion of discussing maybe talking about the critical slope waiver, which they do not have, but i’ve had to pee for a thousand years it feels like. they keep teasing the idea of a break...

they voted to defer... very unclear if the applicant is supposed to be getting this critical slope waiver or redesigning to build in a setback in the meantime. honestly i was trying to figure out how many kids heimbach has. i thought 3. a comrade says 2. anybody?

(sorry, this is assuming he ISN’T the father of his wife’s stepsister)

i’m so tired and bored! two items left on tonight’s agenda. everything else will be covered in tomorrow’s continuation of this meeting.

i am, in fact, still in this meeting. it’s just that i died about an hour ago and my corpse is now entering hour four of this discussion about rezoning various lots in my neighborhood.

ok, the three city councilors present for the meeting (it’s a joint session between the planning commission and city council) have packed up and left. this meeting shows no signs of stopping, though.