Growth virus is green

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Growth virus is green				October 26, 2005

You never know about pandemics. There are probably hundreds of them out there in a state of potentiality, just waiting to be actualized and do us in. What’s doubly disturbing is that some of them are coursing around in the most benign and cuddly of creatures, like moony-eyed cows gone mad or chirpy birdies bustling above with a bad case of the flu.

Now another voracious bug is on the move. Out of radar range for many years, this little fellow produces in a limited number of susceptible humans what’s called viridia devoranda, or an incurable insistence on gobbling up everything that’s green. It targets mainly mayors, county supervisors, members of planning commissions and acquisitive developers. Its symptoms are manifested in an unnatural phobia for things like trees and farmland produce.

Upon seeing what they call “evil green,” victims’ eyes roll around uncontrollably. This is followed by apoplectic seizures that induce profuse sweating, gaseous tummy rumbles and an intense desire to escape to the nearest housing development or shopping mall.

The first occurrence of the epidemic occurred in a small New Jersey village called Bedminster Township. Tired of seeing their hamlet pillaged, flattened and ravaged by wanton developers who looked upon zoning ordinances as playthings, the good people of Bedminster fought back and went to the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court. There they won a decision that increased the minimum lot size in rural areas from three to 10 acres. That’s right. One unit per 10 acres. According to special counsel Howard Cohen, “zoning will now be based on preservation of the environment and natural resources.”

The nasty bug then moved to New York City, where angry residents revolted and forced the Bloomberg administration to rewrite development-friendly zoning laws. According to the New York Times, “communities throughout the city want to see an end to an influx of apartments, additional people and what they consider McMansions. They want to preserve their neighborhoods.” Bloomberg agreed, and since 2002, 42 rezonings “to preserve neighborhood character” have been approved.

Would that we in James City were so lucky.

Here, to our everlasting detriment, viridia devoranda is on the move and its symptoms border on the incurable. It has obviously infected all but one member of the James City Planning Commission and a majority of the Board of Supervisors. Rezoning requests favorable to developers flourish, and, depending on the needs of particular developers, the Comprehensive Plan is seen either as an intractable document or one with more holes than Swiss cheese.

Previously rural neighborhoods like Lightfoot and Norge have been devoured and destroyed. Now Toano is under attack by the vicious virus.

Thanks to the collusion of a Planning Commission that wouldn’t recognize an established rural neighborhood if it bit them on their respective tushes and supervisors hellbent on tearing up the village of Toano for a shopping mall, a Food Lion, and runaway housing developments, the character of this part of the county is slowly being jolted from its rusticity into the world of concrete and architectural eclecticism.

Not content to cram hundreds of new homes onto the open spaces at Anderson’s Corner, the virus and those infected with it are now ready to start ravaging Forge Road, one of the last rural farming bastions in the county.

Unlike the wise administrators in Bedminster, the James City Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors will undoubtedly agree to rezone 20 acres of farmland across from the fire station on Forge Road to accommodate a housing development of not two, as Bedminster would allow, but 97 units. And this along what has been designated a “Community Character Corridor.”

Flush with duplexes and triplexes that are about as far removed from the character of Toano as the character of Toano used to be from Denbigh, this development will flood Forge Road with yet more traffic and certainly send more than the developer’s projected 15 students into our already overburdened school system.

Faced with the avian flu, countries where the infestation has manifested itself are conducting mass killings of infected birds. Obviously we can’t bump off county administrators infected with viridia devoranda, but we can remove them from office.

To this end, I recommend that the Planning Commission, like the School Board, become an elected entity. Only then will citizens of the county get a full discussion of policy and positions. As it stands now, it’s simply a bunch of rubber-stampers appointed by a development-hungry Board of Supervisors.

Managed growth is one thing. Savage attacks on rural lands that disallow any consideration of existent quality of life, traffic problems, school population and drains on resources are quite another.

While we in Stonehouse will have to wait a while for the next face-off between slow-growth advocate Jim Kennedy and our viridescently challenged developers’ soul mate, supervisor Andy Bradshaw, those living in Powatan and Jamestown districts have a chance this year to strike a blow for carefully managed development. Both Jim Icenhour and John McGlennon offer a cautious and balanced approach to growth. They should be elected.

There is no reason why we in James City cannot effect the same kind of control over rampant, ruinous development that the people in Bedminster and New York have so successfully brought about. It’s time to excise the anti-green epidemic by excising those whose infection with it is so appallingly virulent.