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(Continued from Page 1) proval. “Unfortunately, what they (the people) want la not really what we're going to be able to do.”
Pointing to the maps of Jeffersonton displayed by Marshall, Miller said “To me. this will lead to high density development around the villages and it will just mushroom right out into the rest of the county. A detailed study like this will be a blueprint for developers. It will lead to high intensity development and that’s going to need public water and sewer.”
“I don’t necessarily agree,” Planner Pete Luke replied. He argued that public water and sewer could be avoided by keeping minimum lot size around the villages to five acres—enough for a well with septic field and replacement field.
"If we want to preserve open spaces for agriculture, we’ll have to develop around the villages,” Luke maintained. “That’s why we’ve got them.”
By allowing open land to be cut up into lots—even large lots of 25 or 50 acres—all of the county will eventually be subdivided, Luke insisted. Then, viewed from the air, Rappahannock will be a “hodgepodge of telephone lines and electric wires” with roads crisscrossing over all. To avoid further proliferation and maintenance costs for secondary roads, Luke suggested allowing "a little bit smaller lot lize” around villages.
“The laws are going to have to change” before open spaces can be preserved by channeling high density development around villages, interjected Planner Walter Masterson. He predicted an end to agriculture in Rappahannock if the majority of local expenses for education, welfare and administration continued to be paid by farmers.
Luke remarked that the people buying 25 and 50-acre tracts in the county were not farmers.
Not Tax Drains
"They’re not tax drains on the county either.” Miller countered, adding that he believed a study would show that large lot owners produced a tax surplus, paying more than the cost of services provided them.
“We talk about saving open spaces but it’s just talk,” Miller continued. "There’s no way to legislate open spaces...You can’t just develop around the villages and leave the rest of the county in open space. The courts won't allow you to do that."
The policy that the county
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