City of Suffolk – Care4Suffolk

Decisions Without Data

Care4Suffolk — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 16:05:03 +0000

When the first draft of the Suffolk 2045 Comprehensive Plan was published about a year ago, Care4Suffolk raised the flag about the missing Fiscal Impact Analysis (FIA). Our concerns were brushed off and we were told it wasn’t necessary. City Council went on to adopt the comp plan in December of 2024 with big changes and without a public hearing or public notice.

This is all old news, so why do we bring it up? The answer is because the City’s lack of concern about the fiscal analysis is very relevant right now.

Just last week, City Council approved the annual Capital Improvements Program (CIP) and this week our real estate assessments will be mailed out. How much the City receives in revenue, and what it pays in services and capital improvements, is at the very heart of an FIA.

(For context, land valuations for Suffolk residential properties are up over 6% this year and the ten year outlook for capital improvement costs has reached $2 billion–an increase of $1billion from a few years ago).

Back on May 1, 2024, City Council and Planning Commission held a joint meeting about the draft of the 2045 Comp Plan where they heard a presentation by city staff. (You can read more about it here.) It was at that meeting that Comprehensive Planning Manager Keith Cannady assured council members and commissioners that the City didn’t need to do a FIA for the comp plan because they are done at the “site level” for individual developments during rezoning requests. He also said that the City’s current fiscal analysis tool needs work, so it isn’t a useful tool at the moment. Additionally, he stated that since the City wasn’t considering changing its growth strategy, a FIA for the comp plan wasn’t necessary.

As a counterpoint to Mr. Cannady’s argument that FIAs are conducted at the site level, we did a FOIA request and received a copy of the FIA that was done for the Port 460 Project. A fiscal impact analysis is supposed to show the revenue that a development will generate and the costs of services that the development will require. However, this site-level FIA was done by the developer and did not contain the required costs of services portion. The City can not accurately understand if a development will be fiscally net negative or positive in the long-run without the essential costs of services component.

Port 460 was arguably the largest rezoning request in Suffolk in years, yet staff recommended approval and City Council voted to approve it without an accurate idea of what the costs of the project would be for the City in the long-term.

We do know that there was also no FIA done for the 2035 Comprehensive Plan (adopted in 2015). We know, via another FOIA request, that the original Request for Proposal (RFP) and the contract for the 2045 Comp Plan (signed in early 2021), included the task of updating the fiscal impact tool and a Fiscal Impact Analysis, considering multiple growth models, to be completed during the plan’s development. City staff at that point (late 2020) clearly knew that the fiscal impact tool needed to be updated and understood that it is typically used as part of a comprehensive plan process.

In May of 2022, a group of city staff and comp plan consultants held a Land Use Workshop, one of the three main purposes of which was to “determine fiscal model objectives and data needs.”

In September 2022 the comp plan steering committee meeting apparently included quite a lengthy presentation about the role of a Fiscal Impact Analysis in the comprehensive plan. We obtained, via FOIA, the attendance list for this and other steering committee meetings:

The slide presentation from this meeting was available on the 2045 Comp Plan website and most of it is about the FIA and its importance in both the comprehensive plan process and in aiding city staff with evaluating development.

Below are some slides from that presentation:

This slide, Fiscal Impact Analysis: Understanding Costs and Revenues, covers what a FIA is and why it is important – will the revenue generated by new growth be enough to cover the resulting services and facility demands? This is a very important question that city staff and City Council should be asking, not just during the comp plan process, but also during each rezoning request. If development requires more services or capital improvements than the development will raise in revenue, the shortfall has to be covered by the city – paid for by taxpayers.

In this next slide, Role in Suffolk Comprehensive Plan, a key talking point was how a FIA can be used in the comp plan process to see how changes will affect revenues and costs for city services and infrastructure. We know that the contract included comparing three development models for the comp plan, so that the City could compare different models on a fiscal level. By the time of the draft release, the staff had decided not to consider any other growth models than what it’s currently using.

In this slide, What Types of Questions Can Be Answered?, we can see how land use policies and development patterns affect fiscal impacts. It is clear that staff was presented with the idea that different types of growth models have different fiscal impacts.

This slide, Capacity of Infrastructure, contains a real life example from Champaign, IL and the two model types it was comparing. Champaign was comparing “Growth Within the Service Area” and “Growth Beyond the Service Area” and the fiscal impact analysis showed that “Growth Beyond the Service Area” created a $50 million difference in additional capital infrastructure costs. It costs more money to extend into areas that lack infrastructure, like roads, water, sewers, storm water drainage, etc. versus building within areas that already contain many of these services. Suffolk’s “managed growth approach” for decades has been to extend growth areas into predominantly agricultural areas, which tend to lack the essential infrastructure needed for large residential neighborhoods and non-residential uses. This method of growth can be more expensive than growing within existing infrastructure, yet the City chose not to consider other growth options.

Fast forward to that May 2024 joint meeting, and Council Members Johnson and Butler Barlow, along with Commissioner Baur, all asked the city planner questions about the FIA. They wanted to understand why it wasn’t done.

Mr. Cannady’s response is below:

“The original RFP, and this was November of 2020, actually recommended that the city evaluate the different growth strategies that could come out of this process, for their fiscal impacts. In other words, if we picked something very different from the growth management approach that we’re following, it would be good to evaluate that new alternative for its fiscal impact. As this plan developed, we realized we were gonna stick with our basic growth management approach, so it didn’t really make sense to evaluate something that we weren’t going to seriously consider.”

– Mr. Keith Cannady, Joint Session of the Suffolk City Council and Suffolk Planning Commission, May 1, 2024

According to Mr. Cannady, the FIA is only necessary if the city wants to change its growth strategy. However, the current approach was never fiscally evaluated in 2015 when the 2035 Comp Plan was adopted, so we don’t know if the strategy that’s been used for at least a decade is even fiscally sound.

The comprehensive plan is the single most important piece of policy for the City. It is a 20-year, long-range plan that guides all future development in Suffolk and city staff chose to be willfully ignorant to the fiscal impacts of this growth strategy AND refused to consider any other models for comparison.

Later he adds:

“I think what we wanted to make sure is that you all understood what we recommended several months ago, and have been recommending actually for quite a while, the way to go forward with the fiscal impact analysis. I think there was some concern that, ah, we took out a step that we should have taken. Ah, that we um should have had this analysis done because it was in the RFP. Ah, and I don’t believe that’s the case. I believe we made a good recommendation based on the ah plan that was developing, um, and the strategies and priorities that we needed to set going forward. I think it would have been, frankly, a waste of our time and our money to evaluate options that were essentially all the same.”

– Mr. Keith Cannady, Joint Session of the Suffolk City Council and Suffolk Planning Commission, May 1, 2024

In the video above, we here Mr. Cannady talk about recommendations. This was not a recommendation as Mr. Cannady characterizes it. City staff that made the unilateral decision. When Care4Suffolk spoke with most of the City Council members and Planning Commissioners, not a single one said to us that they were aware of the removal of the FIA from the comp plan process, despite several of these individuals being on the comp plan steering committee. It was also surprising because the Planning Commission, according to Virginia state law, was the body responsible for leading the comp plan process.

Instead of listening to the expert advice that was already budgeted for and following the contract to analyze three different growth methods for their fiscal benefits and burdens, City staff decided to simply continue its current “strategy”– a strategy that is known to potentially increase costs. These are the kind of decisions that can cause budget shortfalls down the road, requiring taxes to be increased. Knowing this, staff still felt that the fiscal impact analysis would be, as Mr. Cannady said, “…frankly, a waste of our time and our money”.

The City staff, at some point during this process, decided that we, the taxpayers, don’t need or want choices for future growth in our city. There was a plan developing and those ‘strategies’ and ‘priorities’, that Mr. Cannady alluded to, made looking at alternatives unnecessary, possibly even inconvenient.

Maybe we can garner some insight from Mr. Cannady’s explanation below:

“I think one of the things that we were concerned about, um and I think the city is concerned about too, is um when it comes to those larger employment center types of uses, we realized that we just didn’t have room within the current growth area boundary to be a part of that growth opportunity that this region has. And so when we put some options out that we thought would allow us to do that. And that one, [Rt] 460, was one of those corridors. I don’t disagree with you that’s a significant change in land use and expansion of the growth area, but we felt like to take advantage of um that opportunity that the city has um providing an area that’s in a good location, you can effectively, cost effectively extend utilities to it and capture some of those economic development opportunities, was something we all needed to think about, recognizing that there are some trade offs there.”

– Mr. Keith Cannady, Joint Session of the Suffolk City Council and Suffolk Planning Commission, May 1, 2024

There’s that word: “Regional.” We keep hearing this over and over again. There are regional interests pushing to build here and to do that, the City of Suffolk has to expand its growth areas and drastically change land use. Mr. Cannady actually is in agreement that these changes are significant, which is in direct contradiction to his previous statement early in the meeting that we didn’t need to do the FIA because we weren’t really changing anything.

Let’s recap: Suffolk has had a growth strategy to expand its growth areas into agricultural areas. The City’s fiscal analysis tool has not been fixed in many years, so fiscal impacts of all development over this time period were not adequately evaluated. Staff had the opportunity to look at the costs of this growth, as well as compare it to some alternative growth methods, but decided it wasn’t ‘worth the time or money’. Staff stated the reason the growth areas need to be drastically expanded is for ‘economic development opportunities’.

How can staff, with a straight face, seriously say that it is NOT in the best interest of the City to analyze cost benefits and burdens, but then use the excuse that this is being done for economic development? That is essentially saying that we don’t need data about the money, but we are doing this for more money.

Decisions about taxpayer money should ALWAYS be based on data.

There is no data to support that the enormous growth laid out in the 2045 Comp Plan will be a net positive fiscal opportunity for Suffolk. This could just as easily be a boondoggle that burdens us with infrastructure costs for decades (like the latest $2 billion ten-year CIP!) Mr. Cannady doesn’t know, we don’t know, and no one knows, because staff chose NOT to do the fiscal analysis.

The City staff, who work on behalf of the citizens of Suffolk, didn’t want to look at what this development model will cost Suffolk residents, nor consider any alternatives that might be better for the taxpayers.

A large portion of the citizenry is not happy with the current development model the City is using. During the comp plan public engagement sessions, the majority of citizens specifically asked to slow development down, so infrastructure can catch up. But instead, growth will be accelerated with the 2045 Comp Plan. We are paying more in taxes, but our quality of life has deteriorated. Traffic is worse, more roads need repairs and improvements, storm water is a recurring issue, our waterways are ‘impaired’, and many of our schools remain over-crowded. As evidence of citizen frustration, last November, the council member in charge of the comp plan was voted out of office and the mayor barely made it back into office, receiving only one-third of the vote and winning by only about 100 votes.

Maybe the reason why our costs are going up and our quality of life is going down is because this growth model isn’t working. Maybe all the development that the City has been approving for a decade or more is costing more money than it’s generating in revenue. Maybe the FIA would have shown this. If the FIA showed a negative fiscal impact, that would have been very inconvenient for those that want to implement these Regional goals (read more about regional goals here and here.)

Let us be clear: – it isn’t that the City can’t know what all this development will cost taxpayers, it’s that the City chose to NOT know.

City leadership needs to acknowledge that they have been making huge land use changes without complete fiscal data. Those who are responsible for these poor decisions need to go. Suffolk can NOT continue to force the taxpayers to foot the bill for bad development decisions.

City Council’s Comp Plan Confusion

Care4Suffolk — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 15:54:13 +0000

The Suffolk 2045 Comprehensive Plan went before City Council on August 21, 2024. During the public hearing, there were many comments from various concerned individuals and community organization representatives about the many reasons this plan is NOT good for the City or its citizens.

Reasons for opposing the plan included:

It isn’t representative of public input
It invites more development that will contribute to storm water issues
Lack of fiscal responsibility due to staff cancellation of the Fiscal Impact Analysis
Growth is outpacing infrastructure and destroying quality of life
It destroys the rural/small town feel of Suffolk
It encourages more warehouse development – against citizen feedback
It doesn’t seriously address traffic issues
It favors developers at the expense of citizens
It sidelines the agricultural industry

Council Member Fawcett agreed with a developer’s lawyer who suggested the vote be postponed and made the motion to delay action on the comprehensive plan until November 20th. Conveniently, that put the vote just past election day, but before a new City Council will be seated in 2025. This motion was seconded by Council Member LeOtis Williams.

During the August meeting, Mayor Duman stated that transportation has been the most prevalent complaint. He stated that we need a Master Transportation Plan.

“I believe that the Master Transportation Plan is something that really does need to be, not only be looked at, but we need to have something in our hands before we pass the comprehensive plan. And I’ve been told that that’s, I think, this 90 day extension will give us something to actually look at.” (Mayor Duman, City Council Meeting August 21, 2024, mark: 3:00:30)

Mayor Duman asked City Manager Al Moore if it is possible to put together a Master Transportation Plan in that 60-75 day time period to present at a work session before the November 20th meeting. Mr. Moore responded that staff has already been working on the Master Transportation Plan for some period and that ”The Transportation Plan, probably, it will be solid enough to be in shape to talk about.”

Mayor Duman responded, “I think that’s the key. If we get a Transportation Plan in place and, like I said, we just work on a few other adjustments, that being the main thing, because it is the main concern.”

Fast forward to the October 16, 2024 City Council Work Session: a presentation was given by a new contractor, VHB, that was not connected with the 2045 Comprehensive Plan. This was only made clear when Council Member Butler Barlow asked about VHB. The VHB representative stated that she is not involved in the 2045 Comprehensive Plan, but is working on the Master Transportation Plan and the only things she presented were a basic overview of the plan and samples of what some maps may look like.

There was clearly confusion about the lack of an actual Master Transportation Plan. Council member Johnson asked if they will have a copy of the new plan before they vote on the 2045 Comprehensive Plan.

Director of Public Works, Robert Lewis stated that their ‘vision’ is that this Master Transportation Plan will not be part of the 2045 Comprehensive Plan. He states that the Comp Plan already has Chapter 4 that addresses all the things required.

“Our vision of this, this is going to become a stand alone document. So essentially, we’ve pulled Chapter 4 out, we added to it, eventually we will bring that back to Council, you all can adopt it. But the idea is to keep it a living document, so each year as you update your CIP, we’ll go back and add those projects back in. They’ll go from visionary to funded, to planned. And again, this becomes a living document. So yes sir, I believe the intent is for you to see this, prior to November, but I’m not sure at this point, we really intend for this to be a document that’s adopted by Council that night because again there’ still some work to be done.” (Robert Lewis, City Council Work Session October 16, 2024, mark 21:48)

Keith Cannady, Comprehensive Planning Manager, jumped in to state that the Comprehensive Plan is a broad document to address land use and doesn’t go into detail for any municipal department.

Mayor Duman stated that he also expected to see more specifics as to what we plan on doing. He stated that the Comp Plan is about where we expect to see growth and what kind of growth. With that, the Transportation Plan should address how they will deal with that growth. Mr. Lewis responded that pages 98 and 99 of the 2045 Plan address this.

Mr. Moore then stated that, “This afternoon, what we want to do is bring you the opening, initial show of what we’re attempting to do. Um, it wasn’t envisioned that we’d have a complete document today, and I think I relayed that to all of you.”

Are you confused yet? We were confused watching all this unfold.

In the beginning (2021), the 2045 Comprehensive Plan was supposed to take about a year and a half, cost less than $1 million and contain: a FIA (Fiscal Impact Analysis), Master Transportation Plan, Village Plans, and reflect the input from the citizens of Suffolk.

To date, the 2045 Comp Plan is overdue, over budget, lacks the FIA, does not conform to citizen feedback, and both the Village Plans and Master Transportation Plan will be delivered at some unspecified date in the future. There is now a new contractor to handle the transportation, even though it was already in the 2045 Comp Plan contract.

We all know that there is an expectation that the 2045 Comp Plan will pass when it comes back before City Council in November. City Council Members focused on the lack of a Master Transportation Plan to table their vote until after the election, but then did not push back when staff made it clear they can’t deliver it before the vote. Will Council still press forward on this flawed 2045 Comp Plan and vote to approve?

Our City Council seems easily led by a Staff that gives excuses and rationalizes away any citizen criticisms. Despite the fact that the 2045 Comp Plan still does not reflect public input, still lacks a FIA, and still won’t have the Master Transportation Plan or Village Plans completed, I think Council will probably fall in line and send this to vote on November 20th.

Please sign our petition to let City Council know that you want them to vote ‘NO’ on this failed 2045 Comprehensive Plan.

City Council Voting Record

Care4Suffolk — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 08:17:00 +0000

As election day approaches and early voting is well on its way, it is important to have information on which to base your decision.

Finding out how any particular City Council Member voted on any particular rezoning or land use decision is a difficult task that requires hours of combing through the agenda center on the city’s website. Sometimes that agenda isn’t clear on the rezoning location or the nature of the rezoning, in which case you have to watch the video to learn more.

We know people are busy and so Care4Suffolk has done a lot of the leg work for you. Below you can look at key rezonings and land use decisions over the last couple of years. We tried to find any rezoning that was large, or had a lot of public interest, or was similar to other rezonings that got a lot of public interest. If you are interested in learning more about a particular rezoning listed, or if we forgot a rezoning that you want to know about, just email us at care4suffolk@gmail.com.

Click on the chart to enlarge.

2024 City Council Votes

Note: The 2024 chart was edited to reflect a rezoning for Pitchkettle Landing on July 2. Thank you to the community member who brought it to our attention!

2023 City Council Votes

2022 City Council Votes

Note: CUP2021-003 – Motion way made to Deny, so Aye votes were to deny. It was unanimously was denied.

CONFIRMED! Suffolk’s Future is to Serve the Port

Care4Suffolk — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 19:48:46 +0000

Care4Suffolk has talked a lot about how the 2045 Comprehensive Plan does NOT reflect the citizen’s input. We have also pointed out how this plan prioritizes the Port over the people and seems to have the goal of turning Suffolk into a dry port to serve the needs of the Port of Virginia.

We have heard city staff and some city leaders defend the 2045 Comprehensive Plan numerous times since the draft came out in February. They say that not everyone is going to get what they want, that the plan is “just a plan” and that nothing is set in stone. They keep pushing back on citizens’ concerns, and have only minimally adjusted course. Since June, staff has added new slides to each presentation to further justify more warehouses. Why are unelected city staff and commissioners so determined to resist the citizens and cater to the Port?

They are treating the whole thing like a negotiation, but instead of negotiating between groups of Suffolkians, they are negotiating between the citizens of Suffolk and “other stakeholders”. This plan is clearly about the Port of Virginia – the other stakeholder – and Suffolk’s agricultural land that can be turned into warehouses to supply the Port’s needs. This is exactly the opposite of the public feedback that the citizens are continually providing the City.

Finally, we have had a city representative admit clearly what this 2045 Comprehensive Plan and projects like Port 460 are all about. At the conclusion of the August 20, 2024 Planning Commission public hearing about the 2045 Comprehensive Plan, Planning Commissioner Johnnie Edwards laid it all out in no uncertain terms:

Planning Commissioner Johnnie Edwards discussing the Planning Commission retreat he attended with a presentation given by the Port of Virginia. (mark 3:55, clipped video from the Planning Commission meeting, August 20, 2024.)

“We are the future of the Region. And we have to start acting like we are the leader of the Region. Because guess what? Those other big cities, they don’t want to be leaders. And someone said in the room, ‘It should be Suffolk’. Well this is where it starts. Because you know what? The port is coming, and it’s going to be great – it’s going to change us forever. And we need to start capitalizing, because the whole world is trying to come to our area. And this plan, in my personal opinion, is the beginning. So yes, it’s time to vote and send this on to City Council.”

There you have it. After a presentation by the Port of Virginia, a Planning Commissioner now clearly understands why this 2045 Comprehensive Plan is so important – it is needed for Suffolk to lead the region in supporting the Port of Virginia.

This is the vision that Planning Commissioner Edwards buys into. What do YOU want Suffolk’s future to be? The City’s future is in our hands. We can do nothing and Suffolk’s agricultural lands will be turned into even more warehouses or we can take a stand together.

Please sign our petition opposing the 2045 Comprehensive Plan and go out and vote now or on November 5th. Make your voice heard or be prepared to watch Suffolk become the warehouse capital of Virginia.

Voting and Election Information: https://www.suffolkva.us/773/Registrar

American Association Virginia Chapter Annual Conference: “Revolutionary Planning” with keynote speaker, Stephen A. Edwards, CEO and Executive Director of the Virginia Port Authority.

City Relying on Bad Data

Care4Suffolk — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 14:58:00 +0000

At the July 17 City Council Work Session, Mayor Duman stated (mark 1:39:34)

“The numbers are pretty impressive. When you take Ag land, conservation land, and then put parks and open space with it, it is 82% of our land mass. I mean that’s, I mean that’s…anyway, I knew it was a lot, but that is, that is a lot. To say we have 82% in Ag, conservation, and in parks.”

That does sound like a lot, but is it true? Who is checking the data coming out of the Planning Department.

Mayor Duman is referring to the data presented by the Planning Department earlier in the work session. Keith Cannady presented the Pie Chart below with the breakdown of Land Use type. The purpose of this was to show how much land in Suffolk is still ‘rural’ (that is agricultural land, conservation, with parks & open space).

Adding those numbers up you get 83% making it look like Suffolk still has a lot of green space. That is what Mayor Duman was referencing in his quote.

We made a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request of the City for the areas that those percentages are based on. We received this typed-up sheet in response (Full document is available as a pdf at the end of this article).

These numbers do in fact tally up to the percentages in the pie chart, but the question is, where did they come from? We dug a little deeper to find some other numbers from the City regarding Land Use. In the Suffolk 2026 Comprehensive Plan (adopted in 2006), Table 3-2 on page labeled 3-7 (page 37 of document), lists Land Use data from 2005, with the source being the City of Suffolk, Geographic Information Systems compiled by URS Corp in 2005.

The two sets of data were in very different formats, so we combined them into a chart to make a comparison easier. Land Uses/Zoning were placed beside comparable Land Use (the City changes categories with comprehensive plans, but they provide corresponding zoning and land uses categories.)

We noticed right away that the City used a different Total Area for the City of Suffolk in its Pie Chart numbers. The 2005 data uses 429.2 square miles (430 square miles is the generally accepted amount of area in Suffolk), while the recent 2024 data has 388.4 square miles. The amount of water in Suffolk is roughly 30 square miles, and since this is about Land Use, it seems appropriate that it was left out. That left us with balancing the total areas so that we can compare percentages. We did this by subtracting the difference between two total areas in the two data sets and then subtracting that difference from the 2005 data in the Conservation category (because that is the category the water area would fall under). It wouldn’t make any sense that the City removed 40-ish square miles from any other land use category (Suffolk has not shrunk in the last 20 years!), so this felt like a safe assumption. Now the Total Land Area of Suffolk is equal between both data sets.

Chart created by Care4Suffolk to compare data provided by the City of Suffolk in 2005 and 2024.

The chart is split into two sides with the 2005 data on the left and 2024 data on the right. The colors used match the 2045 Comprehensive Plan Land Use Categories to make it easier to compare and find corresponding areas on the Land Use Map. Some categories have been combined, but these are noted in the 2045 Comp Plan.

This slide is from the Planning Commission Meeting on June 18, 2024. We have circled the new Growth Areas in red to highlight them, since the City did not have any way to distinguish the current Growth Areas from Future Growth Areas.

Now, let’s dig into some of these numbers on that chart. If you look at the area in acres, you will notice that in the last two decades, Suffolk has managed to increase its green space (ag land, conservation, and parks) by more than 26,000 acres, all while decreasing commercial area (by 660 acres), industrial area (by 5,500 acres), and residential land use by a whopping 18,000 acres!

If you have lived in Suffolk for even part of that time, you might be asking yourself: HOW? How has the City of Suffolk, that consistently gets ranked as one of the faster growing cities in Virginia, managed to DECREASE the amount of land use for these land use categories while still maintaining huge growth. It defies belief.

The only reasonable explanation is that one of the data sets has incorrect data. The 2005 data is properly sourced and published in the 2026 Comprehensive Plan, while the 2024 data that was presented at City Council, and when pressed for the area (with the FOIA request), was just a typed up document with no source provided. So that begs the question, where did this data even come from?

This is not the first data that the City staff has presented data that doesn’t make sense. The Planning Department has stated multiple times that the Employment Centers category (where warehouses can be built) is only a 14% increase in area compared to current industrial areas. Here are the side-by-side map comparison:

The purple areas on both maps represent where warehouses can be built. The left side is current land use and the right side is what will be if the 2045 comp plan is approved. Of course the City doesn’t provide area numbers, they just state that it is a 14% increase. Does the purple on the right look like a slight 14% increase? Not even close! It looks to be more than double the current purple area (maybe even triple – that is a LOT of purple). Is this just like the City stating that Suffolk has 83% of its land as green space? What is the real measure of that green space? We know that in 2005, it was less than 73% and the growth in the City has been historically huge! Are we even at 50% any more? We have no idea, but the important point is neither does the City!

City Council is about to vote on the 2045 Comprehensive Plan in a few short weeks. They are basing their decision in large part by the data that the City’s Planning Department is providing them. But where is this data coming from? If this information is wrong, what else is wrong? We already know that the City staff choose NOT to have the Fiscal Impact Analysis done as was originally required with this new comprehensive plan. The City staff also have postponed the Master Transportation Plan until some unspecified date in the future. Both of these would have provided a tremendous amount of data to evaluate this plan. The City also used traffic data gathered during the pandemic (when schools went online, many businesses had work from home – so this was NOT typical of traffic patterns!) When the Planning Department presents information like this to City Council and the Public, the data has to be accurate. Decisions for our future are based on this data. What other previous decisions have been based on bad data?

This plan ignored public input, and now we find that City staff have been using bad data to frame the argument in favor of this plan. City Council needs to say no to this Comprehensive Plan. This is unacceptable and the citizens of Suffolk deserve better.

Please sign our petition and share with family, friends and neighbors in Suffolk.

Documentation:

Youtube Video for July 17 City Council Work Session
2026 Comprehensive Plan
2045 Comprehensive Plan
FOIA response from Suffolk regarding the acreage from slide show presentation

Pause the Plan

Care4Suffolk — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 18:04:39 +0000

You wouldn’t build an addition on your house and ask afterwards how much it cost, would you? Of course not – that would be ridiculous! If you waited to find out the price until after you built, you would have already incurred the cost and be responsible for the money you owe for the addition whether you could afford it or not. Nobody makes big, expensive decisions that way. First, you estimate the costs, you determine if you can afford it, and then you do a cost-benefit analysis to see if it is worth it.

This is how most people make decisions and we expect the same cost-benefit analysis from our government. After all, we have to pay for the decisions they make. This is why it is so concerning to see what is in the new 2045 Comprehensive Plan Draft AND what is NOT in it – there is no fiscal analysis. The City was supposed to have a fiscal analysis done prior to writing the comprehensive plan draft. The City chose not to have it done. What will the new development in the 2045 Comprehensive Plan cost? We don’t know, but it could potentially saddle us, the taxpayers, with huge infrastructure costs for decades to come. The lack of due diligence on the City’s part in making these recommendations without the fiscal analysis is concerning.

This image shows a map of Suffolk from the 2045 Comprehensive Plan Draft (p. 41) with the new and current Growth Areas. The red arrows have been added by Care4Suffolk to help show where the new growth areas will be.

Suffolk city managers and planners want to expand the city’s Growth Areas by almost 25%, prioritizing “land use type” changes to allow for a lot more industrial and suburban growth. Almost all the proposed new growth area is currently agricultural or low-density rural residential, adjacent to our water supply reservoirs. Turning rural areas into suburban residential and industrial areas is sprawl. Sprawl comes with a high price tag for infrastructure costs – roads, water, sewers, schools, and emergency response services.

This image is from the Fiscal Impact Analysis Report from the City of Eagle, Idaho (p.24). This is an example of the type of information from a fiscal analysis that provides valuable insight for a city to use in planning future development. The City of Eagle is looking at long-term Net Fiscal Impact for development in a specific area.

This image is from the Cost of Land Use Fiscal Impact Analysis for the Town of Davidson, North Carolina (p. 17). The Town of Davidson is comparing the fiscal impact (surplus vs deficit) of various non-residential land use types from 2014 compared to 2020. Notice that the warehouses are net negative, from 2014 to 2020.

During the planning process, the City sought public feedback and heard many concerns and frustrations regarding the rapid expansion in the last decade. Citizens are suffering from traffic congestion, unsafe roads, insufficient schools, increasing taxes, and lack of adequate public services. Considering the public pushback on development of warehouses and high-density housing in recent years, one would expect city managers and planners to go out of their way to justify why they recommend 17 square miles of additional suburban and industrial development in the new 2045 Comprehensive Plan draft. You would think that in order to alleviate our concerns they would be eager to demonstrate how all this benefits the city as a whole and improves our quality of life. The City has not done this. Instead, we are left with additional concerns about the lack of due diligence in the process.

The City of Suffolk has paid over a million dollars to create this plan. We expected that the City would analyze costs and impacts of growth and development as part of this new plan. We expected a thorough analysis of a variety of growth scenarios, weighing the costs versus benefits. We expected the City to provide specific strategies, goals, standards and methods of accountability. Yet, this has not been done.

The Fiscal Impact Analysis should have–and could have– been completed already according to the initial requirements of the contract with the consultant, but the City specifically asked to delay it. Below are all the records that show that contrary to the original agreement, the City of Suffolk asked to have the Fiscal Impact Analysis delayed and only done AFTER the new 2045 Comprehensive Plan is approved.

In November 2020, the Suffolk Purchasing Division put out a Request for Proposal (RFP) for “Review and Update of the 2035 Comprehensive Plan.” It contains a “Scope of Services,” (p.6-11) which lists what the City feels are the desired components “essential for reviewing, evaluating, and updating” the 2035 Plan by a potential contractor/consultant. One of these desired components was “Development of an appropriate fiscal analysis format and model; and review, update, and prepare fiscal impact analysis of future and preferred development scenarios” (p.6).

In January 2021, the consulting firm, Planning NEXT, presented its proposal to review and update the 2035 Plan. Their Scope of Work talks about fiscal analysis and “alternative land uses and build out scenarios” that they will prepare to “be compared with a set of metrics developed in collaboration with Staff” (p10-11). It states that they “will conduct an analysis to help determine the most advantageous types of economic development” (p12) and a Fiscal Impact Analysis is clearly listed as a specific task within the Technical Analysis component of the document (p12). The Plan Development component of the proposal lists a task to “Develop fiscal impact model tool and reports,” to include a “Growth Impact Report” as a “stand-alone document, that is easily understood by all interested parties” (p15).

The image above is an excerpt from the Proposal: Review and Update of the Comprehensive Plan Suffolk, VA (p. 18) which is from Planning NEXT (January 20,2021). The highlighted section shows that the plan originally included a fiscal analysis that was to be completed prior to writing the comprehensive plan draft.

The images above are excerpts from the Scope of Work Amendment from Planning NEXT dated August 29, 2023 (page 3 on left and page 4 on right). These excerpts show that there was a change from the original plan where the City has made the decision to postpone the fiscal analysis until after the 2045 Comprehensive Plan is approved.

Suffolk’s city managers and planners decided they wanted to wait until AFTER the 2045 Plan was approved by City Council to have a thorough Fiscal Impact Analysis done. They want to approve this new growth plan without knowing the short-term or long-term costs. A Fiscal Impact Analysis is a standard recommended part of the comprehensive plan process. The consultants hired to help develop this plan both recommend, and routinely complete, these studies for the other cities that hire them.

This is an excerpt from Fiscal Impact Analysis: How Today’s Decisions Affect Tomorrow’s Budget by L. Carson Bise II of TischlerBise. This excerpt explains what an important tool the fiscal analysis can be for planners while making decisions like the ones made in the 2045 Comprehensive Plan. TischlerBise is the consultant that was going to conduct the fiscal analysis. Full document available at the end of the article and on their website.

This is an excerpt from Fiscal Impact Analysis: Reader Beware: Some Caveats by Paul Tischler of TischlerBise. This excerpt states that a fiscal analysis should be completed prior to developing the plan (before writing the 2045 Comprehensive Plan Draft). TischlerBise is the consultant that was going to conduct the fiscal analysis. Full document available at the end of the article and on their website.

It is clear from the city’s original queries and the consultant’s proposal that a Fiscal Impact Analysis is an integral part of the comprehensive plan review and update process. Plain old common sense tells the average person that these recommendations for drastic growth should be data-driven. To use the previous analogy, here we are with the City poised to build an addition and they have failed to do the basic cost-benefit analysis we all expect and require from our City officials and city planners. They want to build and then find out how much it will cost us.

The comprehensive plan impacts almost every land use decision the city makes and citizens of Suffolk need to know WHY our city managers and planners think moving forward with almost 25% increase in Growth Areas is warranted. We need the fiscal analysis completed so we can see the long-term impacts of the development proposed in the 2045 Comprehensive Plan. We deserve more than expansion without substantiation. Until we get some clear answers, the city needs to put a pause on the plan.

Let City Council know that you want them to ‘Pause the Plan’ and have the fiscal analysis completed BEFORE adopting the 2045 Comprehensive Plan: council@suffolkva.us

Michael D. Duman, Mayor

mayor@suffolkva.us

Phone: 757-514-4009

Lue R. Ward, Jr., Vice Mayor

(Nansemond Borough)

nansemond@suffolkva.us

Phone: 757-377-6929

Shelley Butler Barlow,

Council Member

(Chuckatuck Borough)

chuckatuck@suffolkva.us

Phone: 757-346-8355

Leroy Bennett, Council Member
(Cypress Borough)
cypress@suffolkva.us
Phone: 757-407-3750

Timothy J. Johnson, Council Member
(Holy Neck Borough)
holyneck@suffolkva.us
Phone: 757-407-0556

Roger W. Fawcett, Council Member
(Sleepy Hole Borough)
sleepyhole@suffolkva.us
Phone: 757-377-8641

John Rector, Council Member
(Suffolk Borough)
suffolk@suffolkva.us
Phone: 757-407-1953

LeOtis Williams, Council Member

(Whaleyville Borough)

whaleyville@suffolkva.us

Phone: 757-402-7100

Supporting Documentation and Additional Reading:

Warehouse and Warehousing Regulations to be Added to the UDO

Care4Suffolk — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 21:30:51 +0000

At last week’s City Council meeting, there was a public hearing for an ordinance to amend the UDO (Unified Development Ordinance). The changes are for Chapter 31, Article 7, Supplemental Use Regulations where the planning department has recommended that the city add a section (section 31-726) for Warehouses and Warehousing.

Planning Commissioner Mills Staylor made a motion at the July 2023 Planning Commission meeting to direct the city planning staff to draft language that would create supplemental use standards for industrial development in the M1 and M2 zoning districts when adjacent to residential districts, institutional uses, or public recreation uses. The motion passed unanimously. Credit goes to Mills Staylor, the other Planning Commissioners, and the planning department for seeing this need and acting on it.

As Kevin Hughes, Deputy City Manager, explained at the City Council meeting on September 20, 2023, that currently there are no specific Supplemental Use Regulations for warehouses and warehousing uses in Suffolk. For housing projects, the UDO provides guidance on setbacks and things of that nature when developing a neighborhood. There is currently nothing in the UDO to provide guidelines for the building of warehouses.

Kevin Wyne, Director of Planning & Community Development, gave a presentation with slides that explained the new proposed regulations. (Watch the presentation, mark 43:51) The new regulations include setbacks, sound barriers, noise, truck parking, stacking (tractor trailers queuing to enter and load), truck routing, and landscaping buffers.0

After the presentation, the Public Hearing opened. Denise Murden, of Citizens Voice, spoke. She stated that her organization agrees that this ordinance is needed, but there is also room for improvements. Major concerns include the environmental and health impact, noise impact and traffic impact. She stated that setbacks should be 500 feet from residential developments, not the proposed 30 feet setback in the new regulations.

Former City Council Member Don Goldberg stated he was disturbed by all this, saying that no one in the manufacturing and warehouse industry knew about this. However, this text amendment went before the Planning Commission on August 15, 2023 (after the motion passed in July) and was also presented at the previous City Council meeting on September 6, 2023. For comparison, that is the same amount of time that citizens had to respond to the proposed and passed Port 460 warehouse complex from last year (which Mr. Goldberg voted to approve against strong citizen opposition).

There were two additional speakers before the Public Hearing on this closed. City Council voted to give this an additional 60 days before it comes back for a vote. It is great that the city is creating these guidelines, however, it is also important that citizens look into this and share their concerns with City Council (council@suffolkva.us)

Setbacks and Buffers

The proposed setback is 30 feet.

For comparison, the photo above shows a 30’ sailboat, from bow to stern. Two average sized cars parked bumper to bumper are also about 30 feet. That is the distance. Imagine a residential property and just one sailboat, or two cars, from the property line, where a warehouse can place the driveway for trucks to enter the site, or a parking lot where semi cabs can idle, or the side of the warehouse loading dock can be located.

If the industrial site has operations that are loud, it will require a barrier to dampen the sound. These regulations will require a buffer of 60 feet (total distance, not in addition to the 30 foot setback). A quick visual for this is the image below, where the boy is pitching on a mound which is 60’6” from home plate. Throw a few trees in there between the pitcher and the batter and that’s all the buffer required.

In contrast, Citizens Voice suggested the setback be 500 feet, which is about 7 average-sized tractor-trailer trucks lined up bumper to bumper. That may sound like a lot, but keep in mind that a warehouse isn’t a single story building. The Amazon fulfillment center in Northgate Commerce Park stands at 4.5 stories high (95 feet) with a footprint of over 800,000 square feet (that’s more than 18 acres or about 14 football fields!) Imagine your property line being 30 feet, 60 feet and then 500 from a giant warehouse. Which one seems the more appropriate distance?

Be sure to let your City Council Member know how you feel about this: City Council (council@suffolkva.us)

City of Suffolk Wants Your Input!

Care4Suffolk — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 19:35:03 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, CARE4Suffolk did a post about the CIty of Suffolk’s Open Houses looking for feedback from citizens. You can read more about that here. But if you didn’t get a chance to attend, please take a few minutes to share your thoughts now online through their website.

Here is some information that was available at the Open House.

Of particular interest is the Growth Areas. The black outlines (image below) are the same Growth Areas from the 2035 Comprehensive Plan. Please note the new added “Opportunity Areas” highlighted in orange. These include areas off I-664 in North Suffolk, Downtown Suffolk, with areas off Routes 58 and 460 (hopefully not more warehouses!) Additionally there is this area the city wants to develop that connects North Suffolk to the rest of Suffolk. I can’t help but notice that is an area that is in Rural Conservation according to the 2035 Comprehensive Plan. That area is Perhaps they will remove it from conservation to allow more development?

At the Open House they provided the participants with stickers to use on the display boards to express what they liked and didn’t like. Warehouses were very unpopular judging by the number of blue stickers placed on the dislike box.

Use this opportunity to let the City of Suffolk know what you like in the city and what you don’t like. What do you see for the future of Suffolk? What do you want our city to look like in the years to come? What development do you like that has occurred in the city over the last 10 years? What don’t you like?

This next Comprehensive Plan will directly impact the future of development in Suffolk. Make sure you let them know what you want. Please take a few minutes to share your opinions. They are hearing a lot from developers and real estate groups. Make sure they are hearing from the citizens and contribute to the discussion!

They are accepting feedback through the end of July, so hurry! Time is running out to have your voice heard!

Comprehensive Plan Open Houses

Care4Suffolk — Sat, 03 Jun 2023 13:05:27 +0000

The City of Suffolk will be hosting three Open Houses this month. They are looking for feedback and input from citizens for the upcoming Comprehensive Plan.

The Comprehensive Plan is used to determine future growth in the city. This is your chance to weigh in and have a voice in the future of Suffolk.

Open House Schedule:

• June 14, 3-7 p.m. – Hilton Garden Inn, 100 E. Constance Road

• June 15, 3-7 p.m. – Hub 757, 6801 Bridgeway Drive

• June 24, 9 a.m. -12 p.m. – City Hall, 442 W. Washington Street

All three sessions are identical. The Open House format allows attendees to drop in at any time during the events at their convenience. Attendees will have the chance to view display boards showing ideas for the 2045 Comprehensive Plan and can then provide feedback on key recommendations, priorities, and critical issues, including growth boundaries and the look and feel of Suffolk. Brief presentations will be made at 3:30 and 5:30 p.m. on June 14 and 15 and at 9:30 a.m. on June 24. Advance registration is requested at https://suffolk2045.org/#learn.

For those unable to participate in the sessions, online engagement is available on the project website beginning June 14. For more information, visit www.Suffolk2045.org.