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dents are past their childbearing years, said McCarthy. As a result, county citizens are typically older than others in the Piedmont region, which is older than the state average to begin with. Last year Rappahannock’s school population even dropped by six percent.
With an aging population comes a need for more services, among them more emergency medical staff and adult day care providers. Such services need workers.
Td love if our population growth doubled,” McCarthy said. Td love it if we approved 5 or 10-lot subdivisions around out villages, so we can have that mix of community. Any community that is developing entirely on one track, or isn’t developing at all, is headed for a problem.”
Also a concern is Lane Industries, a Chicago-based company that owns about 8,000 acres around, Woodville. Talk of a resort community or retirement center emerges horn time to time, but nothing concrete.
Others disagree that growth will come at all.
“We don’t have to accept the inevitability of growth,” Farmer said. “We’ve got an opportunity as one of the few places to set an example of how to do it better, how to organize our lives and space in a way that makes sense.”
In the meantime, Rappahannock’s only issue could be its reputation. 4
McCarthy noted that a Virginia tech professor recently accused Clarke and Rappahannock counties of elitism, and claimed -that other localities had to take the growth they had refused.
“Winchester’s developing because it’s on 66 and 81, because it’s on, Route 50, because it’s a transportation hub,” McCarthy said. “It was a transportation hub in the Civil War, the damn place changed hands 12 times during the War. Rappahannock is in the proverbial sticks.”
“Why you should blame Clarke for wanting to stay like it is completely escapes me,” McCarthy said. “It’s not what they’re about, it’s not what we’re about. If you can do it, do it. But if you can’t, why get in that game?"
Email the reporter at jpeck@timespapers.com
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