Ruckersville Citizens Council s1

RUCKERSVILLE CITIZENS COUNCIL Check out our website at http://www.orgsites.com/va/ruckersvillecitizens/index.html Minutes of March 3, 2009 Meeting

Discussion with Piedmont Environmental Council representatives Melissa Wiley, regarding their “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” initiative, Tiffany Parker, regarding their new “Greene County Local Decisions” web page and PEC’s Greene County field agent, Jenny Dietzel. PEC activities cover nine counties. They have 35 staff members, who provide services and expertise in the areas of land use, conservation, and mapping.

1. Buy Fresh Buy Local a. PEC activity – PEC has a web site, http://www.buylocalvirginia.org , that provides loads of information, including local food guides. Greene is included in the Charlottesville Area guide. PEC provides an annual mailer as the primary tool to promote local produce. Signage for producers and restaurants especially committed to using local produce is supplied as a PRC service. Pro- duce farmers can list themselves on the web site, and can get PEC involved in special events. If you copy the following link into your search bar, it will take you directly to the Greene producers’ page, which provides good details about producers in Greene: http://www.buylocalvirginia.org/bfbl/search-result.php?any=checkbox&county=Greene b. Greene activity re outlets, producers, schedule: i. Greene producers discussed included: Sweet Dog Farm, owned by Tom & Kelly Silli- man, offering eggs, chickens, and Thanksgiving turkeys, located on Rt 810. Blue Ridge Organic Beef, owned by Jim Call and Scott Murphy, among others. Stubborn Ass Farm, owned by Bev Heroy. Interested in providing community garden space is Jimmy Henshaw – might tie in with JABA’s efforts re senior volunteers for vegetable gardening. Other sources of producer information might include Kathy Alstat at Exten- sion Service and Bob & Joanne Burkholder at Farm Bureau. ii. Ruritans provide a Farmers’ Market in Greene. This is run by Bob Burkholder. Farm Bureau may be pushing forward to do some promotion and or support for this for 2009. iii. Community Garden proposal - (Note: There has been a lot of discussion involving Greene County Ruritans and Master Gardeners about this idea since the Ruckersville Citizens Council meeting – possibly produce would be split three ways between volunteers, local food assistance, and sale at Farmer’s Market to pay for garden supplies. Idea needs leadership and site to get going. If you know of anyone who might be interested, please pass the idea on and have them contact Jenny Dietzel at jdietzel@pecva.org . There was a TV news spot on 4/18/09 covering an already working community garden very similar to this that has been started in Madison this year.) c. Comments from Group – i. Barry Barnett asked if Greene has had a lot of participation to date. Melissa replied that there are not many producers involved as yet. Wineries have not been included in the annual mailer because the cost of producing and mailing it is too high to include the extra sheets that would be required – there are a lot of wineries. ii. Larry Miller asked if local crafts could be integrated with local produce in a possible full time outlet. The suggestion was made that the now empty space fronting on 29 sharing the building with Blue Ridge café might be a good location. Another possibility would be space in The Greene House Shops. iii. Andrea Wilkinson commented that the Greene Farmer’s Market, which is sponsored by Ruritans, has gotten a great deal more use since the PEC started promoting it in their newsletter, and that Farm Bureau may do some promotion for it as well this year. 2. PEC www.LocalDecisions.org for Greene County a. What it is – demonstration. Tiffany Parker explained that PEC has created a web site, which she showed us on her lap top, that encourages citizens to participate in the community planning process. Www.LocalDecisions.org combines Google maps, local county planning data, such as the number of units for residential developments, acreage, status of proposed developments, meeting dates, aerial maps, links to contact the local government, and blog technol- ogy, so visitors to the web site can post comments. b. Link information – PEC’s web site has a great deal of information about Greene, including access to a wide variety of Greene maps and news about events. You can access PEC’s Greene home page at: http://www.pecva.org/anx/index.cfm/1,95,0,0,html/Greene-County From there, you choose from a list of links providing all sorts of information about Greene, including maps highlighting wetlands, historic areas, prime farmland, conservation easements, and other information. Or, you can go to the home page or visit information about the other counties in PEC’s service area. Contact links to PEC offices are provided. c. Status in Greene of www.LocalDecisions.org This part of PEC’s website is in initial stages in Greene at the time of our March meeting, and is not currently available, but might be ready by the end of May. Initially, information provided will only include current rezoning projects and new proposed projects, but PEC is considering adding all site plan approved projects. d. Comments from group: i. Larry Miller asked how the GIS system is involved in the mapping. Carl Schmitt commented GIS provides the data base, and Greene County’s contractor for use of that data base is MSAG. Jenny Dietzel said PEC has good mapping capabilities, and a decent zoning map of Greene – might be the best available. ii. Regarding what information on the development tracker might be useful for planning in Greene, Carl Schmitt pointed out there are two levels of pending projects, already zoned but no site plan, and already has site plan approved. Nicole Strickland pointed out that if the map did not include information about everything with approved site plan, whether a recent rezoning or not, a realistic picture of impacts would not be provided. Andrea Wilkinson commented that water and sewer requirements differ for the vari- ous pending projects – some on public sewer but not public water, some on both, etc, and that information to show this would be important in assessing impacts. 3. Proposed RCC Procedural Statement a. Comments from group on proposed revisions – proposed revisions presented, no other alter- ations suggested. b. Adoption deferred to next meeting 4. Follow-up prior meetings a. B-1, B-2, B3 revisions – Planning Commission comments discussed. RCC’s interest in pursu- ing review of setbacks and side yard requirements to see if larger buffers between residential / agricultural and heavier commercial / industrial uses should be provided has been followed up by the Board of Supervisors with a recommendation by Chairman Steve Catalano that the Planning Department look into the matter. b. Broad band in Greene – Virginia Broadband has three county project to include Greene in na- tional stimulus package request 5. New business from group a. Proposed meeting with Tom Perriello – would have to be a Monday or Friday as legislature votes on Tuesdays through Thursdays – does group want to change a meeting to Monday? Group agreed to do so. (Note: Shortly before our April meeting, Mr. Periello held a town hall meeting mainly on the stimulus package on our April meeting date, so we cancelled our April meeting to avoid conflicting with that. This is not the same meeting mentioned above, which will still be scheduled for a later date).