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Plan gets
good
reaction
1
By John Kiser
Special to the Rappahannock News
A general feeling of satisfaction was expressed by participants at last week s county Planning Commission meeting that the Comprehensive Plan, crafted back in 1973 for Rappahannock County and updated every five years, continues to serve the county well.
“Keep up the good work.”
“We have a good thing.”
“It is conservative yet can be adapted."
~ These were typical of the laudatory public responses to chapters 1-5 of the draft comprehensive plan at last Wednesday's meeting at the county courthouse in Washington.
The review of the plan has been underway for over a year. It began with a series of public hearings at the fire halls in the county where residents expressed their views on how they w’ant the county to look in the future.
The first five chapters in Rappahannock s plan lay out facts about the county—its government, environment, economy, population characteristics and existing land use characteristics—and describe the basic components of the plan.
“The power of the plan,” said county resident Clyde Humphrey, “lies in the combination of flexibility, consistency and enforcement.”
A thoughtful discussion took place around the only controversial subject of the evening: the villages in the county.
Should they have boundaries? How would they be determined? What purposes would boundaries actually serve if the villages remained unincorporated? Are boundaries needed to foster the clustering of new development in villages?
The commissioners generally expressed the view that the county government should stay out of these discussions and that, these issues should be driven by needs at the grass roots level.
Sperryville was cited by Cliff Miller as an example of grass roots involvement in village development. Don Audette thought more public education on village and boundary related issues would be useful.
While the Comprehensive Plan expresses the aspiration that future growth should be clustered around existing villages, County Administrator John McCarthy noted that community density issues can be addressed without boundaries. Boundaries were more relevant to establishing water and sewer service limits.
Commissioner A1 Henry was concerned that boundaries might act as a road map for attracting developers. McCarthy thought the lack of boundaries gave Rappahannock more flexibility in protecting key gateway views and in defending the scenic qualities of the county as a whole. By allowing selective flexibility through the use of exceptions the county can defend itself more easily against potential charges by developers of exclusionary zoning.
The commissioners thanked the dozen people who came to the meeting and stressed the great value of receiving ideas and reaction from the public. The next hearing on the draft plan will address chapters six and seven wiych concern goals, policies and planning for the future.
Meanwhile, the New Harvest Christian Fellowship Church building application for a variance was tabled until next month.
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