12_4_24 Planning Board Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

Approved 2.5.25 terms of how they might play out across the landscape of the County. The first alternative was 220 enhancing agriculture and environmental protection, so really focusing on if we really double down 221 on that and focus on doing that with what we can do legally within the State of North Carolina, 222 what would that look like and what would the outcomes of that be? The third alternative was 223 looking at providing some additional housing opportunities within the County and some new 224 employment locations, but in, kind of, a low-impact format which we call world conservative 225 neighborhoods. And then the fourth alternative looked at providing two higher-intensity mixed-use 226 centers in specific locations in between Chapel Hill. Hillsborough is one and then closer to 227 Mebane as well as additional employment locations, kind of, near the Mebane/West Ten Road 228 area. So, that's kind of the refresher. Let's talk a little bit about what we learned. So, again, 229 there's the short survey and a long survey. There's a lot of technical information related to the 230 alternatives. For those that wanted to get in a little deeper, they could do the long survey. If they 231 wanted to just provide quick information, the short survey was a good option. All of the questions 232 were made available at the in-person meetings, both surveys and online so there was a lot of 233 different flexibility and accessibility in terms of people being able to participate in what ways 234 worked best for them. A total of 420 surveys were received. Approximately 115 of those were at 235 the in-person meetings and 305 were completed online; 286 of those were the short surveys, so 236 that was the preference for most people was to do the short survey, and 134 long surveys were 237 completed. And you can see the breakdown on that blue table about the number of persons for 238 attending each of the different locations and then in the orange to the left, the surveys and the exit 239 questionnaires. That's the separate survey that tells us more about who the respondents are and 240 some information about them that Emily was just sharing with you and what that breakdown is, in 241 terms of in person and online and all of this, again, will be available to you if you want to look at 242 details in the future. There's a lot of information in the summary report, but we wanted to try to 243 give you the so what of what we learned here. So, in terms of survey responses, the other thing 244 that we were testing as part of this was the vision themes and goals for the plan which were 245 drafted and shared with the public. For the short survey, there was strong support for all the 246 vision themes. That's the Venn diagram I was just showing you with the cultivate sustainable 247 development in the middle. There was the highest support for protecting critical watershed areas 248 and open spaces and preserving agricultural lands. About 85 percent really strongly supported 249 that. Lowest support which was still the majority but on the lower end of all of the different vision 250 themes was cultivating sustainable development and advancing equitable housing. So, just a 251 little, again, I think that's pretty good support. It's just on the lower end when compared to the 252 other vision themes. For the long survey, there was strong support for most of the goals. So, 253 highest support for environment, parks and recreation and working lands and open space goals. 254 Lower support for regional and local growth and economy and employment. So, there's some 255 kind of themes you can see there. There's a lot of support for protecting environmental areas, 256 agricultural lands, open spaces, etc. and a little bit more mixed responses with respect to growth 257 and development. So, some of the key takeaways. Like I was just mentioning, there's strong 258 support for changing the way we approach managing land use within the community, both to 259 protect natural lands and there is support for development of needed housing. I think that's 260 something that did come through the public inputs as well. There's very strong support for 261 protecting priority agricultural, environmental and rural lands and desire to see more housing 262 choices available in Orange County. This is a chart here that shows you each of those four vision 263 themes. Cultivate sustainable development's the first one, and then you see the other three in 264 that Venn diagram listed across. The gray is the most supportive on the far right of each of the 265 themes. The blue is, kind of, supportive, maybe not as supportive but as you can see, there's, 266 kind of, strong support for each of these vision themes. We're going to be making some tweaks to 267 the language based on the feedback that we received, but we think we're generally in the right 268 ballpark with respect to what we want to be using as our over-arching guidance for the land-use 269 plan. Some other takeaways: There was more mixed support for higher-density residential and 270 mixed-use development and providing more employment opportunities. There was pretty good 271 support for rural conservation neighborhoods and expanding the economic development area 272 near Mebane and I85, support for the goals and vision themes like I was just mentioning with 273 some adjustments and then some mixed support extension of public water and sewer and 274