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By Kevin Allen
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Residents near the intersection of Piedmont and Oden avenues, west of the Town of Washington, are feeling left out. But any resolution to their request to extend the town’s borders seems far away after a meeting of the Town Planning Commission on Tuesday evening.
Owners of 12 properties in the neighborhood, which is adjacent to the town, have requested that the town’s borders be adjusted to include their properties. The petition was first presented by Bill Metcalfe at a planning commission meeting in June.
The bulk of the meeting time Tuesday was spent clarifying and reiterating the many dimensions of the petition and the process the town is using to consider it. The planning commission arrived at more questions than conclusions Tuesday, and decided commission members need to do more research on the issue before agreeing on a recommendation for how the Town Council should rule.
The discussion of extending the town’s borders is not limited to the Piedmont-Oden area, Planning Commission Chairman Gary Schwartz said. He said the commission needs to consider all possible ramifications of extending the town’s borders, because the decision on the Piedmont-Oden petition might be seen as a precedent for the next time a property owner requests to be incorporated into the town.
Residents’ request
“If you look at a map, the lots on Piedmont are of the same size, shape and manner as the town,” said Metcalfe, who also mentioned that he has health concerns about failing septic tanks on the Piedmont-Oden properties. Metcalfe said the residents want to have the opportunity to be included in the town’s proposed sewage system and wastewater treatment plant. Eleven of the 12 properties on the petition are already hooked up to the town’s water supply.
Schwartz said that even if the wastewater system does come to fruition, there is no guarantee that the entire town would receive the service. One proposal is to build the system in two phases, installing service first for properties zoned non-rural residential. That particular proposal calls for a second phase of installation to begin for rural residential properties after the system’s capacity is confirmed. The properties in the PiedmontOden area are zoned rural residential.
“We still don’t have a wastewater system, so to talk about phase two when we haven’t even done phase one
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