1^* ra how, when and where growth shoyyjd come.

1^* ra how, when and where growth shoyyjd come.

What struck me as most insight, fill in Mr. McNear’s comments his advice that Rappahannock County should be planning for adequate housing in and around the villages. He told the RFA meeting: 4‘If we’re trying to keep the country-? side, we must be sure to have areas adequately designated for housing in and around the villages. One of the biggest challenges is to try to meet the housing needs of our elderly and young people. This is tough, espe-; dally in this county where the villages don’t have the infrastructure to provide cost-effective housing* such as town houses, apartmeptq and duplexes.”

If those who love the rural beauty of Rappahannock county really want to preserve it, they should favor planned and controlled growth in and around the villages, especially developments of affordan ble housing. What would be wrong with well-planned, small-scale development of town houses in or around Washington, Flint Hill, Sperryville or Woodville? These villages cou]d become more vital and vibrfht places if such affordable housing provided the opportunity for yo^ijg working people and older retired people to live together in close community at reasonable cost. t,

I can foresee two alternative visions of Rappahannock County in 25 years. The first is a vision of a county with thriving villages surrounded by the beauty of unspoiled rural countryside. The second is a vision of rampant, scattershot development that crawls across our countryside like a runaway batallion of bulldozers, scarring the land and erecting tacky monuments to commercial greed and citizen blindness.

Which will it be, Rappahannock.? As we watch Prince William Count? commit Disneycide, we ought to d<J some serious planning to provide faf controlled, intelligent growth. It*s either that or get nibbled to death by Donald Duck. *

JAMES P. GANNOtf

Castleton