Guest Blog by Steve Whisler
PCW has posted the editable versions of the revised amended Comprehensive Plan, Comp Plan 5-8 rough scan (intended for inclusion in the Comp Plan) and Virginia Code 15.2-2223 under Comprehensive Plan on the main site at http://www.PageCountyWatch.org The DVD of the Comprehensive Plan portion of the Supervisors Retreat will be made available as soon as possible, most likely in time for the individual District Supervisor meetings to be held.
The Incomprehensible Plan
The Board of Supervisors has now returned from its retreat after deliberating for an entire hour on a 100 page document, a revised amended comprehensive plan. I have read the document as well as the Virginia code that requires county governments to have a comprehensive plan. The Virginia code states that a comprehensive plan is to address the physical development of the territory, in this case Page County. It is essentially described as a mapping/planning exercise intended to identify and document current land use and infrastructure and what it will need to be to accommodate projected changes in land use requirements.
The revision to the amended comprehensive plan under consideration by the Board is quite a different bird. It is a hash of goals and objectives only a few of which have anything to do with planning the physical development of the county. For some unexplained reason, even after significant editing, there remain academic discourses on unrelated topics such as Karst topography, acid rain, air pollution, etc, as well as policy implication statements, statements to encourage or discourage this, promote that, to prohibit or regulate the other, most of which have nothing to do with planning land use
(i.e., educating kids about robotics and aerospace technology; educating citizens about environment and water quality; promoting tourism; obtaining funding, etc. It goes on and on.). Buried within the document are the elements of what a comprehensive plan is suppose to be according to Virginia code. However, even those elements fall short of completeness.
Virginia code also calls for performing careful and comprehensive surveys and studies of existing conditions and trends of growth, and of the probable future requirements of the county and inhabitants in the context of land use. There is no evidence those types of things were ever done. Interestingly, there are elements of the plan that call for performing surveys and studies that should have been done prior to the development of a comprehensive plan. Even stranger is the fact that in the little snippet called “Comp Plan 5-8 rough scan” under the heading Land Use, what is suppose to be a land use plan calls for the creation of a land use plan. What?
Further, a comprehensive plan under Virginia code is mandated to include “A zoning ordinance and zoning district maps.” Why is the comprehensive plan subcommittee just now beginning work on that issue? What exactly would the Board of Supervisors be approving under the amended plan? It would seem that the comprehensive plan committee may have a little malfeasance problem as well. After three years or so of fumbling around they have produced absolutely nothing of value for the Board of Supervisors to adopt.
To be sure, many of the elements that are irrelevant for inclusion in a comprehensive plan as contemplated by Virginia code should be considered in developing it. However, they should be addressed somewhere else, possibly as part of a broad county strategic plan. It is a mystery how what was supposed to be a comprehensive plan was corrupted into what it has become. It may well be that somewhere, way back when, there was a recognition there was a need to have a broad strategic vision for the county and it seemed like a good idea at the time to roll it into this thing called a comprehensive plan. Egad, now we have a precedent!
What really concerns me is the Board of Supervisors is in the mood to adopt a comprehensive plan regardless of how fouled up it is. Changing a word here and shifting a sentence there really does not answer the mail. I would be willing to wager if the title “Comprehensive Plan” was to be placed on a comic book, as is the case here, they would approve it. Over recent months, the Board has shown little overt interest in what the citizens of the county have to say. If they do come to their senses regarding the comprehensive plan, they will realize that attempting to put lipstick on a pig will not make it anything other than a pig.
Steve Whisler
Note: The Board will review their “changes” to the Comprehensive Plan in the work session of July 3. At the Retreat, they said they would then take this plan to the citizens in individual district meetings, Supervisor to Citizen.
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8 comments:
Steve, is there anything to be done here? Are they going to approve this first and then tell us about it, or just approve it and not tell us about it, or are they actually looking for help and input?
Carl,
It is hard to tell exactly what the Board intends to do. Somehow there is a widely held belief the county’s so called comprehensive plan, current and revised, is a magic bullet. What I have tried to present in the blog is opinion based on what I have read. I do feel that it is true. First you must validate in your own mind that what I have written is true.
If you have not read the revised amended comprehensive plan considering the Virginia code, do so as soon as you can, only then can you truly understand its folly. I have a soft copy with a small addition plus the Virginia code that I can E-mail to you. I think the PCW folks can do the same. It is a painful exercise to try to make sense out of it all. I suspect few have bothered.
Are they really looking for help? I was not at the Board meeting (Retreat) but it has been reported that Mr. LaFrance suggested each supervisor meet informally with constituents from their respective districts to receive input regarding the plan. The supervisors are then to send proposed changes to the County Planner by 28 June. My comments to my district supervisor are summarized in the blog.
Please understand, notwithstanding the occasional bad press, the Board members are good people who want to do the right thing. Unfortunately, in the past they have had few people to rely on to suggest to them what that might be. In this case, they are victims of precedent. For newcomers to the process to speak against current gospel is probably viewed as heresy. Until the Board members are persuaded otherwise, they will continue to believe eating ground glass is good for them.
Will the Board come down from the mountain and proclaim the new and improved comprehensive plan as gospel according to the usual suspects? Your guess is as good as mine. Will they be reluctant to admit virtually everyone, including myself, has been laboring under a gross misconception for many years? You bet! Will they have the integrity and courage to essentially start over and do it right? I haven’t a clue.
If you are interested in obtaining the documents or discussing this matter further with regard to what you might be able to do to help, please give me a call. My number is in the phone book.
Carl,
Attempting to persuade without an alternative solution is probably not helpful.
Understand that there is a lot of good policy stuff in the so called comprehensive plan that belongs somewhere, perhaps in a policy document entitled “Strategic Vision: Page County’s Road Map to the Future.” In this case, the county has it backwards. Plans implement policy, they do not make it!
My simple solution to the problem is to tidy up the revised comprehensive plan removing all unnecessary discourses, change its title as suggested above and have the county planning director pull together a working group to develop a code compliant comprehensive plan. Maybe that is just too simple.
Steve, that sounds like an excellent solution. But I'm wondering what the vehicle is, within the process, to get that proposal heard by those who could make the decision about it. One thinks that a citizen might go to their district supervisor and suggest something like this. The Supervisor would then be able to make the motion before the Board and see if it would be accepted.
Have you tried that?
Another possibility that citizens might think is that one could go to a public hearing and propose a suggestion under the Open Comments portion. I have seen citizens try that, and the response that I've seen by the Board is that they just completely ignore any citizen comments and proposals by that method.
Alice Richmond
As I told Carl, I met with my district supervisor and outlined the issues in the blog. He said he would speak with Mr. Belton about it. I just read today's PNC. Apparently, I kind of got it wrong. My district supervisor was suppose to explain the changes to the so called Comprehensive Plan to me. I am all agog with excitment at the prospect.
To be continued!
Thanks for providing people an opportunity to actually read what the county calls a comprehensive plan as amended/revised. I have now read it as well as the Virginia code. Steve Whisler seems to be on the right path. It is an incomprehensible plan.
For any of you out there who were at the retreat: Can anyone tell me whether anyone actually had a copy of the revised amended document? Did citizens have the opportunity to actually read the document that was being addressed? Was it published or announced that it was available before the public meeting? How can the board pretend to ask for citizen input if everything is keep under wraps? Could it be that it is so poorly done to have citizens actually read it would expose its faults? The Board cannot actually be considering this mess for some sort of action, can they? Now that would really be incomprehensible!
Chris, the Supervisors each had a copy of the markups that were made to the plan. I had a copy, which I got by FOIA weeks before, and which I used to prepare a document called "Objections to the Comprehensive Plan", and which was sent to the Supervisors even before the May 15 meeting, and before they saw the markups.
Anybody else who wanted a copy would have had to submit a FOIA request before the meeting, unless they got it from me.
It didn't much matter, however, as the one hour meeting didn't refer to it in any manner. In the one hour meeting, Chairman LaFrance said, "I think we should change prohibit to regulate", Charlie Hoke said, "that would probably take some of the sting out of it", John Rust said, "I'd like to get this approved so we can get on with redoing the zoning ordinance" and nobody else said too much of anything.
The full DVD will be available hopefully before any citizen meetings are scheduled. I would like to point out that it is not at all sure that citizen meetings even will be scheduled, as Mr. Shanks assured the Supervisors it would not be necessary for them to have any further public meetings about this issue.
Alice
Mr. Rust's comment about approving this mess so that the county can get on with its zoning ordinance business makes no sense. If I have read the law correctly, a real comprehensive plan should have at its base, a zoning ordinance. Mr. Rust must also be one of those who is clueless about what a comprehensive plan is suppose to be. There has been nothing to prevent the county from moving forward with evaluating its zoning ordinance. Approving or disapproving the mess called a comprehensible plan will change nothing, particularly since it isn't compliant with Virginia code. The poor guy is simply confused...
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