Questions (click on question to jump to responses)
8. How would you improve access to public transportation in our City?
Candidate Responses
(in the order received)
1. Considering data center ordinance changes under consideration in Chesapeake, what policies would you support regarding the siting of data centers and the management of associated impacts, such as setbacks, noise, pollution, water use, energy demand, backup generators, environmental impacts, and infrastructure costs?
Ozan Duran: I have talked quite extensively on this issue at City Council meetings. Data centers(Or what the words currently represent to the layman) need to be restricted until they no longer pose a societal harm. There are many concerns regarding these. I don’t want to order the issues to mean that one is more important than another, but to start with: wastewater, stormwater, noise, rezoning(these are industrial facilities, we shouldn’t be rezoning residential or agricultural land for this type of project), energy use(under our first to exploit system), heat islanding, pollution(1. in the form of discharge(in the case there is closed loop[which is preferred], these systems need to be purged, the heat exchangers need to be washed down, they are breeding grounds for microorganisms(Legionella in particular) due to the temperatures that they operate at. The washdown and purge water needs to be retained on site in hazmat containers, evaporated off, then disposed of appropriately. 2. In the form of air pollution, the generators must be specified to be efficient, there should be limitations on what constitutes an emergency(they can operate for 2-3 hours in order for the servers to safely shutdown in the case of a power outage, .. Read More
Dr. George Yacus: Since our governing state statutes do not allow us to ban certain types of businesses and industry, the best we can do in our governance is to regulate limitations for the community’s best interest. I would try to ensure that the data center was located in a non-residential area, had appropriate setbacks , set a specific measurable noise level limit in decibels, ensure that the proposal included expected environmental pollution impacts to the community, would ensure that the site plan had adequate drainage and parking in accordance with city codes, and ensure that an engineering study would indicate that water and electrical usage would not adversely affect our community customers and result in an additional negative burden, either service-wise or economically. We can only develop as far as our infrastructure will support the development. I would also stress that the data center be CEEDA certified and have ISO 30134 certification.
2. How would you promote making more clean energy available to residents, businesses, and institutions in Chesapeake? What is your position on siting of battery energy storage systems (BESS) and utility scale solar? What do you believe the City can do to promote rooftop, balcony, and parking lot solar?
Ozan Duran: One of my proposals which is in line with the Dillon rule is to sever the requirement of habitability from being connected to the Grid. Right now if you disconnected power service from Dominion, your house would be deemed uninhabitable.
Why do we do this? If you have enough solar or wind power on your property to meet your needs, you still need to be connected to the grid, and pay grid fees. Unless you have a grandfathered contract, you earn pennies on the dollar to support the profit of Dominion Energy. With this one change, if you have batteries or enough power generation capacity, you don’t need to be connected to the grid and would allow for homeowners and businesses to have greater freedom in their property rights. The installation of the systems must still be in compliance with the NEC and local, state, and federal regulations.
Regarding BESS, it is being sold as an “improving reliance and allowing storage of unreliable energy sources”. The reality of the situation is that it will ensure that Dominion will be able to always have “peak demand”. I don’t agree with BESS systems being prioritized over additional power generating systems. ... Read More
Dr. George Yacus: As a former government federal employee from the office of Fossil Energy in the U.S. Department of Energy, I have a good knowledge of the energy sector and I am a firm supporter of multiple energy sources, including clean coal, natural gas, oil, hydroelectric, nuclear, wind, and solar. We are technologically finding new solutions to meet electric demand, so innovation is leading the way and I don’t know what new systems it will bring to the market. From a personal point of view demonstrating support for clean energy, I have solar hot water and solar PEV panels in my home, as well as a large battery bank, so I’m a believer. I don’t foresee any special subsidies from the city to fund personal clean energy in private homes, but I do endorse building codes and planning that supports these initiatives. Our codes have to be balanced to support new materials, better HVAC and lighting, and other initiatives while not burdening builders and buyers into only being allowed to build unaffordable homes. Federal programs like Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings (GEB), state initiatives, and industry initiatives are plentiful and supporting clean energy.
3. Between 2014 and 2021, the City had a net loss of over 800 acres of trees, largely to development. What polices will you support to protect tree canopy during development? Would you support increasing the tree canopy requirement on site plans for low-density single-family home development?
Ozan Duran: I love trees, I think it is a shame that developers do not care for them, nor do insurance companies, or hedge funds. I will begin with saying I would like to mandate that any tree over the age of 80 must be preserved, especially if there was already another home on the property. We also need to make sure that during development of these properties, developers aren’t damaging their root systems, they can use pier foundations to make sure that the house still has a good foundation, while staying away from the lifesystem of the tree. We shouldn’t have century old oaks being cut down for the sake of Wall Street billionaires.
This may be small thinking, but it is also impactful where we are humans. Our neighborhoods are important reflections of how we live our lives.
This being said, it doesn’t address the larger issue, which is that we have a lot of agricultural land. Policies need to reflect sound forestry management, and I know some of our farmers have tree farms. ... Read More
Dr. George Yacus: I can’t make a decision on this initiative at this time that would endorse this proposal, because it could be considered an overreach of government authority. I think we could partner and collaborate with developers to strongly encourage site planning to maintain or grow our tree canopy in developments.
4. Our region faces a significant shortage of housing that is affordable to people earning the area median income or less. How would you promote building more housing in communities that maintains a high quality of life and a healthy and livable environment?
Ozan Duran: This is complicated and nuanced. Densification is important, but so is neighborhood cohesion. I live in Norfolk Highlands, we have a lot of older homes on larger plots. I’ve been lamenting the loss of these older homes that get replaced with cookie cutter duplicate houses. When we know that this will happen in the planning phase, we need to mandate that developers incorporate the existing building aesthetics so that we aren’t losing the character of the existing community. We also can incentivize that the older building be expanded and an attached or detached ADU be incorporated. We need to make the permitting process more streamlined, such that there are preconfigured 20x10, 20x20,20x30 autoapprove ADU permits that can be issued, provided the ADU match the existing architecture of the building. These notions should be the guidelines for within neighborhoods.
On the edges of neighborhoods and along major thoroughfares, we need to incentivize densification. Even in older established neighborhoods, having mixed use 3-4 floor buildings that are close to the street with covered sidewalks, businesses on the bottom floor, residential on the top, ... Read More
Dr. George Yacus: We have areas in the city where lower-income homes are more prevalent and available for sale. Generally, people that have bought properties and homes want to maximize the return on their investment, so I don’t believe that forcing them to build low-income homes would be fair, especially if it changes the character of the community to something different than what they and their neighbors bought. I believe that we have established communities with multi-family dwellings that are more affordable and will continue to do so. From a rental housing perspective, I own a recently refurbished 4 BR rental home in the city with Section 8 tenant that seems to be working out well, because it is managed by a rental agency, maintained by me, and supported with government funding. The tenants are integrated in a vibrant neighborhood instead of a city-owned project that would deteriorate over time.
5. Chesapeake continues to experience flooding, sea level rise, and increasingly intense rainfall. What are your priorities for improving flood resilience to protect neighborhoods, businesses, and natural resources?
Ozan Duran: Not cutting trees is an incredibly important start, and I think that beautifying stormwater infrastructure is an understated item. We have a lot of stormwater detention and retention ponds that could serve as destinations for people, which would increase appetite for additional projects that serve the interests of the public. It could be as simple as adding paddleboats and a pier to them.
Sealevel rise has two components: The sea as we know it is rising as ice and snow in previously frozen areas of the planet thaws, but Southeastern VA also is experiencing subsidence(The land sinking down). As we’ve been drawing from the aquifer(water that is underneath the soil that wells are supplied from), the water underneath the soil no longer can keep the soil up, and the soil drops. SWIFT is a program to pump highly treated wastewater back into the aquifer. 50% of the sealevel rise in Hampton Roads is attributed to subsidence. For me, this program is slightly controversial, as we don’t have a good way of filtering forever chemicals out of the water that we are pumping in. That being said, it is critical that we offset the water that is being used, ideally not use it any more, ... Read More
Dr. George Yacus: I live on the water on Indian River and have not experienced a significant sea-level rise and I believe it is just a natural climate variation over time and the threat may be overstated. The best we can do is maintain storm-water systems to the best of our ability, ensure that builders install the required drainage (including required French drains where stipulated), and ensure that any new development be designed with adequate infrastructure to support our mid-Atlantic climate.
6. One of the top resident priorities is "Preservation of large areas of open space and forest.*" How should Chesapeake balance continued economic growth with the preservation of open space, forests, wetlands, farms and rural character? How would you expand the City's urban forestry and natural lands management, such planting and maintaining trees, managing invasive plants, maintaining natural trails, and training staff on best practices? * As reported in the Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Master Plan study.
Ozan Duran: Chesapeake should not treat every farm, forest, or empty field as land waiting to become another subdivision. Economic growth should first happen where we already have roads, utilities, schools, empty shopping centers, and large parking lots. We should grow inward before we grow outward. I would generally vote against rezoning agricultural land for large residential developments.
Forests, farms, and wetlands also perform work for us. They hold water, reduce flooding, provide shade, and give wildlife somewhere to live. Once they are paved over, taxpayers often have to pay engineers to poorly recreate the same services.
Preserving open space does not mean putting a fence around it. I would like every home to have multiple places to recreate within a five-minute safe walk or bike ride. These do not all need to be expensive parks. A wooded path, pond, culvert, spillway, or drainage area can be made useful with safe access, shade, and places to sit. ... Read More
Dr. George Yacus: As a member of the city’s Citizen Advisory Committee for the Chesapeake Land Bank Authority, we do our best to repurpose blighted or unused properties for the good of the community. I think we have a good record of already doing the things mentioned in this question and will continue to do so. Blue Heron Park, a quarter of a mile from my home, is a good success story. Chesapeake is Virginia’s 2nd largest city and will continue to grow, so there needs to be a balance between development and preservation. We have a master plan to guide us and execute. With the proper oversight, we can maintain a healthy urban/rural balance. City Council members have some influence, but not overall control in this area.
7. Considering that many daily trips that people make are over short distances, often less than 1 or 2 miles, how would you work to make our streets safer and more connected for people walking, biking, and using mobility devices?
Ozan Duran: Lane diets are incredibly important, and the Comprehensive Plan gets a lot of things quite well when it comes to development. We need to reduce setbacks along roads, raise crosswalks within and when entering neighborhoods when sidewalks are present. With the demographics of Chesapeake, allowing low-speed vehicles along bike oriented infrastructure such as bike lanes could speed up adoption of road diets and public appetite with them. This needs to be studied. We are in an affordability crisis, it is unacceptable for a household to live within a mile of a grocery store, but not feel safe enough to walk or bike to it. Painting the lanes different colors, and adding reboundable bollards will increase the separation and aesthetic of this infrastructure. We also need to make sure that in lane dieted roads, we install pedestrian islands so that pedestrians can cross these 6 lane highways that are now converted.
Dr. George Yacus: Some of this is already occurring in our community and we have a good record of accomplishment. Indian River Road next to my house has reduced travel lanes from 3 to 2 and new bike paths have been instituted and marked just this month. I would like to continue to see sidewalks and bike-paths retrofitted where feasible in our city, and have developers include sidewalks in their site plans. I am a strong supporter of finishing the shoulders/sidewalks of Military Highway between Auburn Avenue and Greenbrier Parkway, which is a busy commercial corridor.
8. How would you improve access to public transportation in our City?
Ozan Duran: Funding. We are woefully underfunding our public transportation system, we only contribute 1/10th of what CPS does to its transportation, and 70% of riders of public transportation use it to go to work. I’ve been looking into if there are savings that could be had in combining part of the highschool transportation routes with existing HRT funding to see if that is possible, by expanding service, it might increase ridership. This needs to be studied. We need to stop paying consultants crazy fees when we have the ability to fund pilot programs and directly test what our experts at HRT and within the Public Works/Planning department know. This isn’t rocket science. We can’t complain about traffic but also not fund solutions to the traffic problem. A bus transports more people than a single car does, and does it for less fuel and cost. We need these buses to go to places that people need to go first, then want to go second. Let’s start by doubling our investment of 4m annually, and see where that gets us. Where do the diminishing returns begin? Are there studies that show this? Ideally we need to have models that demonstrate what expansion gets us, at what cost. Also, bus riders spend money on the bus system which is returned as revenue. So people using public transportation aren’t freeloaders, they are paying their fair share.
Dr. George Yacus: I will continue to support HRT and their programs to serve the community, possibly including point-to-point transport.
9. Considering the new 25-year contract the City signed with SPSA for combined single-bin trash and recycling collection, and considering the steadily increasing tipping fees (cost per ton collected) associated with the new contract, what steps should the City take to encourage residents, businesses, schools, and institutions to REDUCE the amount of solid waste put out for collection?
Ozan Duran: The cheapest ton of trash is the ton we never have to collect. We need to treat waste reduction as a financial issue. First, we need to measure what we are throwing away. The City should publish the total tons collected, the cost to taxpayers, and the amount of waste produced per household. We should set a public goal of reducing waste per resident by 10% by 2030 and 25% by 2040. City departments should also report their own waste and be held to the same goals. Ideally, we should know what type of trash is being produced at the greatest volume. My brain says it might be packaging materials such as cardboard and foam.
Food and yard waste should be the first target because they are heavy. The City should provide low-cost compost bins, expand places where residents can drop off food scraps and yard waste, and make it easier for local farms and composting businesses to accept these materials. We should work with Chesapeake Public Schools to compost cafeteria scraps.
The City should buy durable and repairable products, reduce single-use items, and require large vendors .... Read More
Dr. George Yacus: I personally somewhat favor curbside recycling in some form because it provides convenience for citizens that wish to recycle and promotes slightly better efficiency in recycling. It has been discontinued due to affordability for citizens and I support that decision. I endorse citizens voluntarily paying extra for curbside recycling if such a plan could be designed, and I will continue to recycle as I do now, bringing materials to the Indian River Library recycling site.
10. Would you support implementing a 5¢ fee on plastic bags to encourage the use of reusable shopping bags and to fund local environmental cleanup, litter and pollution mitigation, or environmental education efforts, and/or to provide reusable bags to recipients of SNAP or WIC benefits? Why or why not?
Ozan Duran: Yes. My only concern would be impact, is it regressive, but I think that a fee on plastic bags is more than reasonable. I also have a bone to pick with the receipt being automatically printed, as thermal paper is a carcinogen and hormone disrupter due to the presence of BPA and BPS. If I have a rewards account, just email or text me my receipt, or ask me if I want it.
Dr. George Yacus: More fees for citizens to pay just makes it more difficult for them to afford the basics of housing, fuel, groceries, etc. so I don’t support the 5-cent fee. I believe that we have the necessary resources already in place through non-profits like yourself, school systems, and volunteers to clean up Chesapeake and mitigate litter. I would fully support a city campaign to focus on Adopt-A-Highway programs and other similar initiatives. Almost every morning I walk 4 miles and I regularly pick up bottles and trash between Lilac Avenue and the Indian River Shopping Center, disposing of many handfuls of trash each time. We can attempt to change our culture to stop people from littering our streets with limited success, but we need to mitigate their bad behavior by cleaning it up. When I don’t pick up the litter, it remains there for weeks. I don’t believe that this has a government solution, but the government is a stakeholder and partner.
11. What steps would you take to improve transparency and public engagement in land use and development decisions?
Ozan Duran: The City should create one public website where residents can see every active rezoning, conditional use permit, and major development proposal. Each project should include a plain-language summary, a map, the number and type of homes or businesses proposed, expected traffic, school impacts, stormwater impacts, public infrastructure costs, and all documents submitted by the applicant. The website should show where the project is in the process and the dates of every future public meeting.
We should also publish a record of meetings between developers, City staff, Planning Commissioners, and City Council members. Residents should be able to see who met, when they met, what project was discussed, and what major concerns were raised. Ideally this is a transcript. It needs to be enough for the public to understand how the proposal changed and who helped shape it. Citizens shouldn’t have to play and replay a video of a meeting numerous times to see who said what when over time. Having a written record allows keyword searching, rather than the contents of meetings disappearing into obscurity, .... Read More
Dr. George Yacus: I would like to see current rules enforced. If a property is sold and a house is being built, there should be a posted building permit with a developer’s name on it. I am not sure, but I think that neighbors are supposed to be informed when a home is sold and a new building/demolition is to occur.
12. What other sustainability, environmental, or quality-of-life issue do you believe deserves greater attention? Please elaborate.
Ozan Duran: One issue that deserves greater attention is the long-term strength of our neighborhoods. A sustainable neighborhood should have a local school, safe ways to walk and bike, small businesses nearby, and a City government that makes reasonable projects easier instead of making every resident start from zero.
A neighborhood school is not just a building where children attend class. It is part of the transportation system and part of the community. When a neighborhood school closes or is converted to another use, more children may need to be driven or placed on buses. That means more fuel, more traffic, longer travel times, and higher transportation costs. It also means fewer children can safely walk or bike to school.
Before closing, converting, or consolidating a school, Chesapeake Public Schools should publish the full effects of the proposal. This should include changes in bus mileage, transportation costs, travel times, traffic, school crowding, portable classrooms, and future construction needs. The public should .... Read More
Dr. George Yacus: As co-chair of the Norfolk Highlands Civic League, the major complaints are neighborhood speeding, inadequate drainage, bad neighbors that don’t comply with parking or are running businesses out of their homes, and lack of responsiveness by the city. I can’t fix bad behavior as a city council member, but I can focus on city response to citizen requests so that we have a government that works for the people. I consider the city as a service provider, and the citizens as our customers. Customers want good services and good value at affordable prices. Ultimately, I believe in quality government that provides the best quality-of-life in this city at the best value.