I support HB208 This bill will give localities an opportunity to use commonsense planning techniques and growth management policies, to develop safer and healthier neighbourhoods, and business/commercial spaces. In addition, it’s sets a guide for productive public engagement.

To be effective, this bill needs to be amended to encourage transitioning away from decorative mowed turf lawns, phasing out aesthetic nuisance ordinances, assisting people aging in place in Low Income and Disadvantaged Communities to adapt to ecological landscape norms and firewalling government assistance for healthy community practices away from government enforcement powers so residents will not fear trying healthy community practices. Tall grass and weed ordinances are a significant and deeply unpopular barrier to healthy communities. Their origins are bound up with exclusionary zoning, innovated by J. C. Nichols at the turn of the 20th century and developed to shore up de facto segregation thereafter. They function to exclude by adding cost and by subjecting target residents to accusations based on aesthetics that are stigmatizing and difficult to defend against. The experience of Harrisonburg suggests that the good intentions of this bill will not get far if the chilling effects of lawn ordinances are left in place. The Harrisonburg parcel dataset contains 13,435 records. 1,403 parcels have been targeted by tall grass and weed (TGW) complaints. 1,038 have iNaturalist records, 461, about 3.4% of parcels receive the stormwater utility credit. The iNaturalist and tall grass and weed parcels have 82 items in common, about 5.8% of TGW parcels, leaving nearly 2,441 parcels with natural areas that might benefit from the stormwater utility credit and its tall grass and weed exemption. Of these, only 86, about 3.5% of parcels, participate in the stormwater utility credit: 3.3% of tall grass and weed parcels, and 3.6% of iNaturalist parcels. Note that TGW targets are almost twice as likely to participate in the non-city ecological program. After winning an 2013 MLK street renaming, Harrisonburg's historic African American neighborhood proposed a community greenspace project with mentoring for individuals with barriers to employment much like examples described on pp. 35-36 of the EPA's _Climate Pollution Reduction Grants Program: Implementation Grants General Competition _ which also offers "Update building and zoning codes" on p. 9. While the project ran, community health improved, as proxied by a plummeting incarceration rate. The unfunded project ended in part because of fear of the city's lawn ordinance. Harrisonburg's tall grass and weed enforcement has fluctuated over time, but is lower than other localities. Those localities might have higher participation in eco-friendly city programs, but that would be surprising. In the 2023 November election, among the lowest turnout of its kind in Harrisonburg, and in the bottom 10% in Virginia, 186 people who had voted were asked how they would feel about repealing the enabling legislation that allowed the Assistant City Attorney to ban natural landscapes. 16 opposed repeal. A portion of those were concerned about "the silent majority." A portion expressed sentiments similar to those of people who removed trees because they feared they wouldn't be able to rake leaves to meet expectations of a tidy yard as they aged. Such people lit up at the suggestion of a program like the American Climate Corps employing youth to help care for the neighborhood. Content analysis of a facebook post by WHSV TV asking about No Mow May with 39 respondents had 4 opponents, 2 of whom disapproved of being different. More at http://BuildingBetterCommunities.org

I SUPPORT HB208, 281, 634, and 644. Gas-powered leaf blowers are an environmental scourge and I'm thankful that a bill has been written to allow localities to restrict them. I wish the Commonwealth of Virginia could just ban them outright. I wholeheartedly support repurposing office buildings to serve as childcare centers.