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Our View
Best place to live
For any of you readers of the nationally recognized
Progressive Farmer magazine you’ll note
that nearby Fauquier County was recently named the Best Place to Live in Rural America.
Hum., they’re not that far away from Rappahannock County.
Wonder where this magazine did their research?
Admittedly Fauquier County is beautiful and also is billed as “business friendly”—actually “development friendly” of late and soon to be shy of enough schools to go around.
Fauquier still ranks higher in private land easements than Rappanhannock but you wouldn’t know it by driving through. It is getting harder and harder to have a peaceful constitutional—just try crossing the street in Old town Warrenton.
It was a nice compliment to have Fauquier County named the Best Place to Live in Rural America .
But this sort of acclhim can have the unwanted hard result of setting off a daisy-chain of things not so welcome to our countryside way of life.
There are those who would welcome some growth in Rappahannock, but not at the cost of sprawling unaffordable subdivision growth, which destroys this county’s way of life and drives the average homeowner’s taxes up as it has in Fairfax, Prince William and recently in Loudoun over the past half-century.
Remember Oregon? After being similarly recognized not long ago, its well-meaning governor had signs posted on every highway entering the state, “Come, visit, but please don’t stay.”
The result was a tsunami rolling in from across the nation to build in Oregon. The governor quickly, but almost too late, had the signs taken down.
Fauquier County has done very well with its Comprehensive Plan in restraining growth to its service districts.
Rappahannock County will undoubtedly struggle in the years ahead but to date the vast majority of its citizenry as well as elected and appointed officials believe that Rappahannock is a unique place to live and needs to be intrinsically protected.
We should be quietly proud of our neighbor’s recognition, note the reason for this award and continue to look forward in Rappahannock to a policy of planned, controlled and affordable growth.
Hopefully developers won’t be playing Centex Chinese checkers any time soon in Rappahannock.
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