Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 4 · column 3 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
To the editor:
I would like to thank the Rappahannock News for the article about the county planner from Fairfax. If we ever need an example of what not to do, Fairfax is it.
One fact mentioned that I hope we never lose grasp of is that the county belongs to its citizens. If the people of this county are willing to forsake the gold by passing ordinances to limit growth, no outside 1 interest has any right to challenge that choice. Unlike Fairfax, our elected government was chosen to preserve what is, not to broaden the tax base by selling out to developers.
A quote from the article suggests that developers are not evil. I wholeheartedly disagree. To me, developers are akin to the characters in the old western movies whose job it was to acquire land for the railroads. Words like heartless, cruel and sinister, aptly describe their singleminded pursuits.
I lived the first 27 years of my life in Fairfax. Two years ago I moved here praying that I wouldn’t have to live through the mindless destruction of my home again. A subway train now runs over the creek bed where I once swam and fished, a townhouse complex was built on the floodplain at the bottom of a hill where I used to go sleigh riding (do you think the developer cared that those homes are going to have water up to their doorsteps when the next hurricane floods arrive?) Two lane roads are now four and six lane highways and the traffic patterns change so frequently I have to re-learn them whenever I visit my hometown.
There’s plenty of money, however. The value of my parent’s house is well over six times what they bought for it during the mid-sixties. Alluring, but the quality of life has
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