Environmentalists Beware of Plan

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Environmentalists Beware of Plan				June 8, 2002

In 1997, the staff of the James City County Planning Department, after considerable consultation with citizens, developers, environmentalists and other interested groups, issued its Comprehensive Plan. According to the Foreword, the Plan represents a mandate on the part of the county to manage residential growth, preserve natural beauty, improve education and maintain basic services. Furthermore, the Plan is to be reviewed and updated periodically. In 2002 such a review will take place.

In addition to dealing with education, recreational facilities, transportation and other basic services provided by the county, the Plan also gets into the difficult question of land use. In an attempt to balance the tremendous population growth in the county with the services, both commercial and residential, needed to accommodate it, the Plan offers sound recommendations for future development. In fact, the Plan was so well constructed that, at the time of its presentation, the staff responsible for it were the recipients of well deserved awards.

In some areas, however, the Plan runs afoul of developers and other commercial interests. For instance, in the section dealing with land use, the Plan specifically states that development must be coordinated with the capacity and availability of public facilities. That is, there are some locations in which development simply cannot be accommodated.

Furthermore, there are definite limits on the county’s ability to absorb land use changes if growth is to be adequately managed and a high quality of life maintained. Hence there is a strong admonition against so-called “strip” commercial development, in that it negatively impacts the attractiveness of a commercial area by virtue of inherent traffic congestion. Indeed, one need only visit the malls along route 60 on the day after Thanksgiving to understand the truth of such observations.

In addition, there is a definite admonition in the Plan that a strong rural land policy remain in place to protect existing agricultural and forestry activities. The displacement of these by other types of development would run counter to the Plan’s intention of maintaining at least a similitude of a quality rural lifestyle.

Excellent as these recommendations are, they will now be reviewed. Unfortunately, there may be adverse forces at work to undermine their efficacy, and especially in the area of land use.

To begin with, the present Board of Supervisors is much more conservative than the one which originally approved the Plan in 1997. As such, it appears more willing to accommodate appeals from developers to ease the restrictions put in place as a result of the Plan.

Indeed, the Board’s first move in reviewing the Plan was to approve the hiring of outside consultants, as opposed to using the staff of the Planning Department that formulated the original Plan. To this end $60,000 has been allotted to consultants from Virginia Tech and another $137,000 for other outside consultants.

What the subtext of all this may be is hard to say, though one suspects that the Board hopes, by hiring outside consultants, to make an end run around local environmentalists and others opposed to further reckless expansion.

In fact, in a letter to the County Administrator and the Board, the Williamsburg Community Builders Association praises the Board’s actions and agrees that an outside consultant would provide a “fresh perspective” and offer “new ideas to meet the needs of the community.” One assumes that it will also meet the needs of the Builders Association.

But perhaps we reach the heart of the matter when, in the same letter, we read that “the longer this process takes, the more we lose widespread Community participation and are left with input from the “interest groups” who have the staying power to withstand the lengthy process.”

While no specific “interest groups” are mentioned, the good citizens and environmentalists who clamored for reasonable residential and commercial growth in discussions involving the 1997 Plan should beware. For in yet another letter from the Builders Association, there is a request to the County Development Manager that James City “improve the process used currently to administer land disturbing permits and building permits.”

And whom do the builders recommend that we emulate? York County! That bastion of aesthetics which sits astride Williamsburg and has given us the meanest cluster of tacky eyesores this side of South Of The Border.

While reading comprehensive plans is about as engaging as watching a turtle take a nap, we should all take the time to at least glance at the major recommendations in the 1997 Plan, and especially those in the section on land use. Since there may well be an attempt to ease regulations for development, it behooves all residents of the county to follow this review process as closely as possible.

There will always be special interest groups with the staying power to withstand a lengthy process. Developers and their construction cohorts are not the least among them.