Projects require proper planning

Peter T. Kleeman Charlottesville
Published: October 8, 2008

“Just winging it” appears to me to be very poor public policy in evaluating and approving development proffers.

In “Spiffing up proffer plans” (Daily Progress editorial, Sept. 29) it is suggested that providing guidance to developers without overly directing them as to what proffer might be accepted as “deal-sweeteners” was discussed.
This guidance strategy is an improvement over winging it, but a much better alternative is to require developers to estimate impacts their proposed projects would have on the community and to demonstrate the degree to which proposed proffers would mitigate those impacts. This would require that developers provide credible analyses of how proposed proffers actually mitigate traffic congestion, stormwater flows, community noise increases or any of the myriad impacts a proposed development might cause.

The burden of analysis should be placed on the applicant — not the planning commissioners and city staff. Planning commissioners are not expected to be experts in a broad variety of impact and mitigation analysis methodologies, but they can be expected to consider developer proposals and weigh benefits of a project and associated proffers against unmitigated impacts in determining if the proposal is worthy of approval.

I urge the Charlottesville Planning Commission and city staff to develop guidelines on the required level of analysis to be provided with any proffers relevant to mitigating impacts from proposed projects. I believe this allows developers maximum flexibility in finding truly meaningful proffers that best complement a proposal and may be both innovative and effective in aiding planning commissioners to evaluate project proposals.
Not only will this process provide decision information to planning commissioners, but will inform city residents about what impacts a project might have and what measures a developer will include to mitigate impacts on those residents and the community at large. In addition, planning commissioners can legitimately suggest that anticipated impacts are not adequately mitigated through proposed proffers and suggest that additional mitigation is necessary for project approval.

This policy may well avoid many of the shortcomings of the current proffer evaluation process. Now is a terrific time to develop a policy. Is winging it a policy we want to use now or into the future?