Planning Department – Care4Suffolk

2024 Comprehensive Plan Timeline

Care4Suffolk — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 06:54:26 +0000

Nov 2020

Request for Proposal sent out by Suffolk’s Purchasing Division for “Review and Update of the 2035 Comprehensive Plan”

Jan 2021

Proposal received from Planning Next

July 2021

Contract executed between City of Suffolk and Planning Next (ACP/Greene & Associates, LLC)

Dec 2021

Vision and Goals to be completed; first payment executed

Plan contains no vision statement nor any goals

April 2022

Scope of Work Refinement: change of land use approach to “focus on trends or expectations about future development” verses “incorporating an entirely new, detailed scenario analysis.”

Added additional 25% above the cost of the original scope of work

Workshop and focus group attendees & meeting “minutes”

May 2022

Staff Land Use Workshop, including attendance by the Vice President of Tischler-Bise to discuss the Fiscal Impact Analysis

Several one-time, 1.5 hour focus groups held about different topics; focus group attendance ranged from 4-11 people.

Summer 2022

Fiscal Impact Analysis mentioned in emails between Planning NEXT and city staff

Planning staff attend various city events with a booth about comprehensive plan

Nov 2022

First public engagement gathering organized by Care4Suffolk

This was the original completion timeframe according to proposal

Feb/Mar 2023

City-organized public engagement sessions (one per borough with 2 in the Suffolk borough)

June 2023

City-organized three open-houses and included a “dot” board activity

August 2023

Fiscal Impact Analysis removed from Scope of Work to be completed after comp plan approval

Nov 2023 – Jan 2024

City Council Work Session presentations by Planning Department

All Growth Area expansion options presented to City Council in January

Feb 2024

Release of 2045 Plan draft; start of online survey

Mar 2024

City-organized three open-houses (summary of public input)

May 2024

Joint Planning Commission/City Council work session to discuss the 2045 draft

Reduction in Growth Area recommendations

Need expressed for transportation plan

Planner Keith Cannady stated that no Fiscal Impact Analysis needed because current growth strategy is being continued and because it is done at the site level rezonings

Public hearings delayed (TBD)

Rountree Property advertised on VEDP website and Yes Suffolk as being in the 2045 Comp Plan Growth Area although the plan had not been approved yet

June 2024

Planning Commission Work Session presentation

Reduction in Growth Areas

Other changes made, only 3 briefed

Lengthy Economic Development briefing on warehouse development

Land use pie chart added

All departments present slides

New “smart growth” label appears on some slides, but with no actual discussion of smart growth

Addition of Utility Scale Solar as a use for Rural Agriculture land; this was not briefed during the work session

July 2024

Planning Commission voted to recommend approval of the 2045 Comp Plan

City Council received a work session update after Planning Commission had already voted

August 2024

Changes made to plan AFTER Planning Commission vote

Map changed due to “a number of landowners”

Planning Commission has to have a “do over” vote because the city failed to provide the legally required public notice

Planning Commission Johnnie Edwards gives a speech stating that Suffolk is strategically important to the Port of Virginia and that the 2045 Comp Plan is the start of Suffolk serving the regional goals of the port.

Planning Commission again votes to recommend approval of the 2045 Comp Plan

City Council votes to table the vote on the 2045 Comp Plan until Nov 2024

Mayor Duman stipulates that Council needs to have the Master Transportation Plan in their hands to be able to vote on the comp plan

More new slides from Economic Development

Pie chart

Removal of “smart growth” from slides, changed to “focused growth”

Al Moore states that staff are already working on Master Transportation Plan it will be a “solid” by Nov 20

FOIA request for already completed parts of Master Transportation Plan

Sept 2024

Second FOIA request for any additional completed parts of Master Transportation Plan

One memo from May 2024 provided

Ground-breaking for Port 460

2025 Legislative Agenda presentation to City Council

Rt. 460 Project construction phase increased from $47 million to $65 million

Master Transportation Plan on Sept 24th joint City Council/School Board meeting agenda

Email from Lewis to Moore expressing confusion as to what is expected

Despite being on the agenda, the Master Transportation Plan was not discussed at meeting

Oct 2024

Comp Plan submitted to VDOT for review (Oct 2)

City Council Work Session (Oct 16)

No Master Transportation Plan, just VHB briefing and outline

No real changes to accommodate citizen concerns

Mayor Duman states that the comp plan should reflect what the recent State of the Region report says about needing more housing in Hampton Roads and Keith Cannady assures him that the 2045 Plan “provides a strategy for that.”

Update email sent out with misrepresentation of what City Council wanted in August for Master Transportation Plan (Oct 31)

Addition of an Master Transportation Plan page and project diagrams into Ch. 4—AFTER work session & AFTER submission to VDOT

Nov 2024

Kevin Hughes sends an email to City Council informing them that the Master Transportation Plan is now in Chapter 4 of the comp plan a week after it was already updated as such on the 2045 website

City Council Nov 20th Work Session agenda posted and includes a 2045 Plan update presentation even though council is supposed to be voting on it that same evening

Fiscal Troubles Ahead?

Care4Suffolk — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 19:52:48 +0000

We are just a few days away from the City Council Meeting where the 2045 Comprehensive Plan is on the agenda. Care4Suffolk has pointed out many problems with this comprehensive plan, among the most important issues is the lack of a fiscal impact analysis.

A fiscal impact analysis allows a municipality to understand how specific development will impact a city financially over time. It looks at both the revenue that will be generated from the development and also the costs of services (roads, schools, utilities, emergency services, libraries, parks, etc.) and then compares them to determine if the development will bring a net positive fiscal contribution to the city, or if it will be a net negative and cost the city money.

Most municipalities also do a fiscal analysis during the comprehensive planning process. It allows a city to look at the type of growth they want to see and whether it will financially benefit the city or be a drain on the taxpayers. The City of Suffolk has decided to forgo the essential fiscal analysis. Why?

City Staff assured City Council that a fiscal analysis isn’t necessary for the comprehensive plan, despite the fact that it is about to increase the growth area by the largest amount of any previous comp plan. Staff’s reasoning was because the fiscal analyses are done at the site level. It is true that by law, they are required to be done for all rezoning applications.

Suffolk’s UDO (Unified Development Ordinance) reads:

B-14. – FISCAL IMPACT ANALYSIS.

All applications for a rezoning shall include a Fiscal Impact Study containing a comparison of the public revenues anticipated to be generated by the development and the anticipated capital, operations, maintenance and replacement costs for public facilities needed to service the project at the adopted level of service standards (see Section 31-601 of this Ordinance).

Furthermore, the UDO states that no rezoning application is complete without a fiscal analysis.

However, in a previous article, we demonstrated that the fiscal analysis for the Port 460 project, which was two years ago and was arguably the LARGEST rezoning application in years, failed to provide an adequate fiscal analysis. The developer did provide fiscal data, but it only showed all the money the city might make on the development. It left out all the costs of services.

Based on the UDO, that rezoning proposal never should have made it through the Planning Department because it lacked a proper fiscal analysis. Yet, it not only made it through the Planning Department, the Planning Commission voted to recommend approval, and City Council voted to approve the rezoning.

Suffolk has been rezoning with no idea if all this development in the long-term will bring money into the city coffers or cost taxpayers money to maintain it. The whole point of a fiscal analysis is to protect the citizens from poor planning and development that drains our resources.

Currently, City Staff fail to provide oversight to make sure a complete and accurate fiscal analysis is done at a rezoning. They also refuse to do a fiscal analysis for the comprehensive plan. How can City Council be so irresponsible with our taxpayer money? If the developer and the city can’t prove that these developments are fiscally beneficial for the city, they should not be approved. The same is true with the comprehensive plan. If City Staff want to increase Sufflolk’s growth area by the largest amount of any comp plan, they should have to prove that it is fiscally sound.

Join us at the City Council Meeting on Wednesday, November 20th at 6pm (City Hall, 442 W. Washington St.) and let City Council know that you do not want the 2045 Comprehensive Plan approved until they have completed the fiscal analysis.

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

Errors, Omissions & Discrepancies

Care4Suffolk — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 14:49:46 +0000

Citizens require transparency and thoroughness from their government. The Public can not be informed and involved if the government does not provide all necessary information. It is a minimum. When the government fails to fully disclose information, makes the process cumbersome or convoluted, or ignores important details in the name of time or labor saving, then the Public suffers.

Unfortunately, with REZONING REQUEST, RZN2021-00018, (Conditional), Lake Kilby Shores, this is what has happened. There have been a slew of errors, omissions, and discrepancies. City Council should vote NO to this rezoning request for this reasons alone. Below they are itemized:

Prior to First Planning Commission Meeting:

➢ No street address was listed in Public Notices.

The notice listed only parcel IDs, which makes it very difficult for the Public to know where this property is located and therefore assess its impact.

➢ Planning Department approved developer’s traffic study despite it being out of date, containing errors, and missing important data on the two nearest intersections.

The Planning Department recommended approval of the Kilby rezoning based on bad data at the second Planning Commission meeting.
Today, the Planning Department knows the data is bad. They should retract their approval and require the developer to resubmit a thorough, complete study.
There are conflicting statements from the developer regarding the widening of Kilby: We will widen the road to a minimum 20 ft vs. We will widen the road up to 20 ft within the available right of way.
Additionally, the study was done during the pandemic when traffic was greatly reduced. No effort was made to provide up-to-date traffic data in the Traffic Study.
A proper traffic study would have (and should have) identified these limitations.

➢ The developer’s “narrative” provided to the Planning Department, included in the Staff Report packet, makes unsupported claims that were never questioned by anyone:

It states that, “In a review of the City’s available homes for sale, as well as discussing with realtors, there is still a deficit in supply of detached single family homes.” There is no supporting evidence or statistics to back up this claim.

➢ The narrative also states that, “Due to the rather low comparative density, the applicant is not submitting a proffer limiting the number of units in the project. The final number of units will be determined in the engineering phase.”

This is confusing because there is a listed proffer of 204 homes. We pointed out this contradiction to Planning, but they did not encourage the developer to fix this sloppy error.

At the March 21, 2023 Planning Commission Meeting:

➢ Order of agenda items was changed with short notice.

Caused the Public Hearing to be significantly later, impacting more than 100 citizens that attended.

➢ Developer removed a small wedge parcel from the proposed plan in order to prevent connectivity and Planning Department recommended rezoning despite connectivity being an established practice in city planning. Connectivity is safer and more cost effective for citizens.

On October 18, 2023, the Planning Department recommended denial of the rezoning application on the basis of non-connectivity.
The developer removing this small portion of land was done to intentionally skirt the best practices in city planning that requires adjacent developments to connect roads.

➢ The Planning Department presented slides with the developer’s road section analysis, which had not been made available to the public.

➢ The proffers state the the houses will be a minimum of 1850 sq ft, however, the Fiscal Impact Study uses 2720 sq ft for calculations.

This creates a big difference in cost of building materials and tax revenue.

At April 19, 2023 City Council Meeting:

➢ On April 18th, the day before City Council, the developer requested a 120–day deferral with the only reason being “for the Council to have sufficient time to evaluate the application prior to voting on it.”

City Council did not have to approve this deferral, but they did; a public hearing was still held and they also voted to schedule a second public hearing for August 16th.
The developer has played games with a lot of peoples’ time and our City Council let him get away with unnecessarily dragging out this rezoning issue.

➢ The Planning Department used the wrong conceptual site map during his Staff Report presentation (he presented the original one from October 2022, not the one with the 18 acre parcel removed).

This could have incorrectly led Council Members and citizens to believe that the proposed development will connect with the development to the north of the property.

➢ Packet was missing photos and several other documents, as well as public comments, that were submitted via the portal.

Planning was notified, but did nothing to rectify the situation.

➢ Intentional omission of key parts of the UDO description/purpose statement for Residential Medium zoning:

The developer narrative omitted the entire first sentence about RM zoning’s purpose being where “adequate public facilities and services ARE available”.
Planning’s Staff Report omitted the entire paragraph from the UDO and instead only quoted the two words “ideally suited.”

➢ Developer proffered any and all possible building materials and foundation types.

When every option is proffered, how is the city supposed to plan for or ensure quality of development?

➢Proffers have never been updated to reflect the very large increase in costs for new schools in the City’s current Capital Improvements Program.

There is also no requirement in the Staff Report to list when any new schools are forecasted to be built—how effective are proffers if a school won’t be replaced for almost a decade and costs are going up by the tens of millions?
Example: Elephant’s Fork Elementary is already at 120% capacity, but not due for replacement until at least 2029 (estimated completion in 2031).

Prior to August 16, 2023 City Council Meeting:

➢ Many public comments and submissions were not included in the City Council packet, again.

Many citizens are unable to make these public hearings, so they submit their comments via the portal only to have some go missing.

Many of these errors, omissions, and discrepancies were brought to the attention of the Planning Department prior to them making their recommendation for approval, but still remain incorrect or absent. The errors, omissions, and discrepancies all seem to favor the developer. None of this is in the best interest of the citizens of Suffolk.

Care4Suffolk supports growth and development, but it MUST be done responsibility. All of these errors, omissions, and discrepancies should have been corrected. There have been months to fix these, but the Planning Department is content to accept an incomplete traffic study. They gave their recommendation to approve even though the road improvements will not even meet the state’s minimum standards and knowing full well that the developer is avoiding connecting his proposed development with the adjacent development. Connectivity provides added safety to communities. The Planning Department knows this and is still allowing this. Delay tactics by the developer, including last-minute and lengthy deferrals, along with changes in the agenda order, as well as public comments going missing, have negatively impacted the Public’s ability to be engaged in the process.

The Public requires the Planning Department to fulfill its responsibility and change its recommendation of approval to denial and City Council needs to act in the best interest of the citizens and vote NO to this rezoning on Lake Kilby Road.

Public Hearing Items Available

Care4Suffolk — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 17:17:00 +0000

The City of Suffolk has recently implemented a new process for significant land use projects. The planning department now uses the threshold of the 100s (100+ homes, 100,000+ sq. ft. for commercial uses, or 100 acres) to determine if an application will require additional time.

This new process, for any rezoning application or conditional use permit that meets one of these threshold, or if it is deemed significant by the Planning Director, allows extra time for both the Planning Commission and the City Council to review these significant land use applications. It adds an additional 30 days above the previous requirements. Prior to implementing this new process, whether a request was for in-home daycare permit or a enormous warehouse, the same amount of time to was given to both. Often, the first time the Planning Commissioners would be seeing the plans would be just a few days before they were expected to vote on it. The new process gives both voting bodies a longer chance to look at the plans and analyze the request. This is a very positive change and CARE4Suffolk is excited to see it in action.

Additionally, the city is now providing citizens all the information on each rezoning and conditional use public hearing item. This is a plus for both the public and the planning department. Previously, when you saw a blue sign, you had to call the city to find out what is going on. This was time consuming for both the city employees and residents. Now, with a click of a button, you view and download all the available information. CARE4Suffolk applauds the efforts of the city to make the process more transparent and accessible to the public.

Note: The link to the city’s site with the rezoning and conditional use/public hearing items is now available on our main menu under Rezoning Concerns.

Community Engagement Sessions

Care4Suffolk — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 15:01:53 +0000

The City of Suffolk is currently working on the next Comprehensive Plan. This plan will provide the basis for how the City of Suffolk manages growth. It will impact where future development will happen, as well as influence policy and improvements in infrastructure such as schools, roads, public utilities, conservation and the protection of our quality of life as citizens of Suffolk.

What can you do to impact the Comprehensive Plan?

The City of Suffolk will be holding a series of Winter Community Engagement Sessions running through this month and February. In these meetings, the city is looking for feedback from residents for the upcoming Comprehensive Plan. We encourage all city residents to attend at least one session, and bring friends, family and neighbors, to speak with the Suffolk Planning Department about the following:

Planning and coordinating approaches for residential and commercial development
Carefully managing the impacts of increased residential development
Mitigating traffic congestion and developing roadway improvements
Designing a city that maintains its rural heritage and small-town feel
Creating opportunities for Downtown investment and revitalization
Incorporating open space, parks, entertainment, restaurants, recreation, and retail opportunities

Below is the schedule for the Community Engagement Sessions.

City Council Chambers
January 31st, 6pm – 8pm; 443 W Washington St, Suffolk, VA 23434

Southwestern Elementary School
February 2nd, 6pm – 8pm; 150 Pioneer Road, Suffolk, VA 23437

Chuckatuck Fire Station 9
February 9th, 6pm – 8pm; 300 Kings Hwy, Suffolk, VA 23432

John Yeates Middle School
February 14th, 6pm – 8pm; 4901 Bennetts Pasture Rd, Suffolk, VA 23435

Nansemond River High School
February 16th, 6pm – 8pm; 3301 Nansemond Pkwy, Suffolk, VA 23434

Col. Fred Cherry Middle School
February 23rd, 6pm -8pm; 7401 Burbage Dr, Suffolk, VA 23435

Curtis R. Milteer, Sr. Recreation Center
February 28th, 6pm – 8pm; 132 Robertson St, Suffolk, VA 23438

If you have any questions or would like to learn more, please email care4suffolk@gmail.com.