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Health Department permit for a septic field, then there’s no reason to have a Planning Commission and no purpose to planning because growth would occur unchecked, contended Phil Irwin. “Why should we be condemned to repeat the mistakes of Fairfax and Prince William?” he asked. As to liberalizing family transfer provisions with the goal of enabling the children of Rappahannock residents to make their homes in the county, “in most cases,” after a few years, “the family member no longer owns the little parcel created through the family subdivision exception,” Mr. Irwin said, maintaining that this density exception is often used as a means of circumventing subdivision controls.
David Chuse challenged Col. Bingham’s contention that 2.8 percent growth is either necessary or desirable, saying that figure is “way more than needed to sustain a society.”
“I resent somebody standing up and telling us we’re not doing our job when I was appointed to uphold the rules and regulations in here,” said Commissioner Bob Anderson, tapping his copies of Rappahannock’s zoning and subdivision ordinances. ‘We have to go by what’s in here.”
‘Who makes them rules?” interjected Bobby Carter.
The county’s land use regulations and comprehensive plan were adopted following extensive public hearings held in all five magisterial districts, noted Mike Massie, the Board of Supervisors’ representative on the Planning Commission.
“I get calls from all over this county, from people in every magisterial district [complaining about zoning and subdivision restrictions],” Col. Bingham interjected. “There’s too much unhappiness in this county. . .We have to consider people’s hopes and aspirations. We have to take care of our own. We have to keep our own in the county!”
The Planning Commission has struggled over changes to the family transfer provision, trying to make it equitable, countered Chairman A. Y. Stokes. “If we could write an ordinance that applies only to the natives of Rappahannock County that would be well and good, but I don’t think it would float legally,” he said.
From a planning standpoint, natural growth is not the “random growth” that comes from allowing residents to subdivide lots for their children but rather it is the natural growth arising from development in and around existing towns and villages, Mike Massie said. Through its land use controls, the county seeks to channel small-lot development around towns and villages because (1) that’s where the services are and (2) that’s where future services can be most economically provided, he explained.
In satisfying the state enabling legislation’s murky directive to facilitate family divisions, Fauquier County holds to its 10-acre minimum lot size in agricultural zones, while Clarke County merely waives re
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