Vienna understands the goal of adding more housing near transit and Vienna has taken action to facilitate transit usage and provide more diverse housing. The town is in the process of updating its comprehensive plan and we do want to add more diverse housing in areas appropriate to our town’s layout. SN 717 completely overrides local land use authority. The boundary lines in this bill also split lots and neighborhoods. The bill itself is unclear on a few areas including how the distance lines are measured. We appreciate the change allowing localities to draft their own ordinance but even those guidelines are unclear. We suggest this bill not be passed but sent to a study committee.

Comments on SB717 1. For Transit oriented housing to work, you must fund transit, which is yet to happen. 2. Crowding makes things cost more so turning Northern Virginia into Brooklyn will increase the cost of housing, just look at Brooklyn. 3. pulling zoning decisions out of the democratic process will not not make anything better. Please vote Nay

On behalf of many of our member cities, we are very concerned with SB 717 and ask. you to oppose the bill. While there might be ways to limit its impact (such as by using the BZA process to take parcels out of these overlays), the effort needed to undo what is undesirable and, perhaps, harmful in this bill is extraordinarily expensive and time-consuming. The impact to our member cities, both large and small would be overwhelming. SB 717 has burdensome reporting requirements, presumably to help the state collect information about development in these overlays. We call this an unfunded mandate.