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serted the PEC’s W.P. Dinsmoor White. “Should the county grow? How much should it grow? And where to channel that growth?”
That’s not three questions— its one answer. And we’re not sure it’s the answer Rappahannock citizens or officials are interested in. The survey conducted by the Rappahannock County Extension Office back in early summer was a lot more forthright in addressing this point. That survey found that a substantial majority of ordinary citizens and “community leaders” alike want Rappahannock to stay “like it is,” and by that they meant “natural beauty, rural character, open space and agriculture.” That’s something apart from White’s “answer,” and—in our opinion—a whole lot more accurate in describing the framework under which Rappahannock should plan for its future.
WHETHER A rigid, formal, elaborately structured “Master Plan” would fit Rappahannock’s needs is something that demands a lot more study before the county’s fate is committed to a set of planners’documents. The recent experience in Fauquier, where a vaunted “Master Plan” purportedly designed to “control growth” was revealed as actually something which was intended, all along, to foster development, only underscores the point.
Be careful, Rappahannock. Those gaily-colored Master Plans can be mighty tricky things.□
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