Chesapeake: Levels of service work here
By Greg Pearson STAFF WRITER

Nielson

For almost 13 years, the city of Chesapeake in the Hampton Roads area has been using levels of service (LOS) standards to manage growth. It's worked well, according to the city's Planning Director Brent Nielson.

"Prior to 1995, the city had congested roads and numerous portable classrooms in our schools so the council asked me and the City Attorney's Office to look at measures to manage growth under the existing legislation," he explained.

Six months later, the Chesapeake City Council enacted the Planning and Land Use Policy, which guides growth with published standards for schools, roads and sewer capacity. The standards allow Chesapeake leaders to deny a rezoning if the new growth causes stress to those services.

Chesterfield leaders are considering enacting similar standards in the Upper Swift Creek Plan area, and LOS is expected to one day be applied to the entire county. Chesapeake's policy is being used as a model.

As a matter of policy, Chesapeake requires its planning department to recommend denial of any rezoning if the new growth causes nearby schools to operate at more than 20 percent over design capacity with a one year grace period. Some developers do proffer phasing in their certificates of occupancy for new homes to meet the policy.

Like Chesapeake, Chesterfield is also reviewing the road standards that require a level "D" as a minimum grade and rejects levels "E" and "F." Here, those standards are based generally on how many lanes and the average number of vehicles that travel them daily. Many of those substandard roads are in more rural areas of Chesterfield.

"[The policy] has been fairly well accepted because we worked with the building community," adds Nielson. "I can't say the industry accepts it, but builders do understand our reasons."

Sources at the Tidewater Builders Association were unable to provide a comment by press deadline.

In size, Chesapeake is about 100 square miles less than Chesterfield's 450 square miles, and it has 90,000 fewer residents than our 311,000. The city also uses other tools to manage growth: comprehensive plans, zoning and proffers.

Proffers in Chesapeake are a maximum of $20,350 per single-family home for the services those new residents will need. But the proffer "is substantially less for multifamily units" because there is less likelihood they will have school-aged children.

Proffers are fees developers pay per home to offset the cost of a locality providing services such as schools, roads and fire/EMS protection.

Chesterfield's current maximum proffer is $15,600, regardless of whether it's singlefamily or multifamily, but the county's administration is expected to ask for an increase of about $7,000 next month. Because of the "one size fits all" proffer, many in the county think that is the reason about 85 percent of the housing here is single-family - a very high percentage.

Some in the development community here have questioned the legality of LOS, but it's been 13 years since Chesapeake adopted its standards, and there hasn't been a single lawsuit.

Although Chesapeake's policy is for staff to recommend denial of a rezoning if LOS standards aren't met, its planning commission and city council are not required to follow that recommendation.

"There's leeway for development that creates jobs - particularly redevelopment," said Nielson.

That's contrary to the initial advice from the County Attorney's Office here, which has warned of potential legal problems if the criteria should waiver.

Initially, Chesterfield is studying just LOS standards for roads and schools, but the planning staff has been told that LOS for parks, police, fire/EMS and libraries will likely follow countywide.