At What Price - Part 2: The 57% Solution

At What Price – Part 2: The 57 Percent Solution
Why did this happen?
On July 17, The Comprehensive Plan was approved by the Page County Board of Supervisors. By the time they made the amendments which they worked out during the Retreat and in the following weeks, enough changes were made that the plan no longer said the most egregious things that had been added to it. In fact, those of us who call ourselves Page County Watch felt that the process worked in the end, and the final plan approved had the input of a broader group of citizens. We congratulate the Supervisors for listening to and understanding the intent of that broader citizen participation.

Some Supervisors said they were proud of the Comprehensive Plan, that it was a good plan. Page County Watch doesn’t agree. We agree that the changes the Supervisors made were good changes, and that they did manage to make it stop being an exceptionally bad plan. For that, we applaud them. But a Comprehensive Plan, by Virginia Code, contains the county’s Land Use Map to guide zoning. Our plan doesn’t have one.

Instead, our plan says, “Areas of severe development restriction are found along sections of the Shenandoah River and throughout the valley lowlands where Karst topography predominates and flood-prone areas are numerous. Because of these constraints, approximately 57 percent of the land in Page County is not suitable for development.” Understand, 34 % of the county is national and state parks. So that’s 57 + 34 = 91% of the county that “is not suitable for development.” In other words, we just approved a plan that wants to turn the county into a great big wildlife habitat. Great idea, if you’ve already got yours, and you want to make sure nobody else gets theirs. Taking a wild guess, I’d assume that some of that suitable 9% left for development is located on that large flat, non-flood-prone land area surrounding Yogi Bear park along route 211. I’m telling you, if I owned Yogi Bear park, I’d be hoppin’ up and down saying, “wow, what a great plan, let’s quickly move to keep development out,” myself.

So, yes, we’re happy that the Supervisors improved a bad situation, but we don’t go as far as saying, in the end, it was a good plan. Now, the important thing to learn from this situation is: how and why did we get ourselves into this place? We need to know that so that we don’t come here again next year and the year after that.

I think I have an answer to “how and why did this happen”. It’s a theory, yes, and I can’t prove it. Others might propose other theories, and that’s what the Comment button is for at the end of this Blog. How this happened is a matter of historical fact. The motives behind it, however, will remain speculation.

The “How” Part. Historical Fact.How it happened is simple. The time came to update the Comprehensive Plan, which was put together in 2001 by a large group of citizens. The thinking was that this would be just an “update” of the numbers in it, rechecking the population figures, assessing whether things were still true. So a subcommittee of the Planning Commission was charged with this update.

Only two citizens turned up to help the subcommittee write the Comprehensive Plan, and those two citizens both happen to be of the same mind regarding what the county should be. It should be a wildlife preserve, in their opinion. (That’s an editorial comment. I have no idea what their opinions are, except by what I hear them say and write, and that’s what it sounds like they are saying, to my ears.)

So for lack of staff to do the work, the volunteering citizens put a lot of effort into getting new numbers to update the plan, and oh, by the way, they also made a few “minor word changes” on An Unelected Citizen’s home computer. The minor word changes turned out to be similar to the famous “however” addition. That’s the one where “the scenic beauty attracts tourist and vacation cabins” was changed to “the scenic beauty, however, attracts tourist and vacation cabins”. While the changes were minor, they were lethal in their impact. The minor changes turned the TONE of the Plan around. It went from a simple statement of facts about the county, to a more complex statement of facts with moral judgements attached. Little and subtle word changes make a document that leaves a taste in your mouth. The flavor changes.

Don’t even tell me you can’t taste what I’m writing here. That’s what An Unelected Citizen did to the Comprehensive Plan. The citizen gave it a flavor, with a comma here, and a “but” there, and a subtle twist of the knife in the back. Words have the power to do that. I could write a document that could make you feel the nails sticking out of the paper, and yet you couldn’t exactly put your finger on which words were the ones that did that. The Intent of the Author shines through a document. This Author had an Intent based on a Belief and a Value System, and that Belief and Value System weeps from the page. These were not acts taken with evil intention. They were that citizen’s opinion about what was best for the county.

We all have an opinion, and individually, each of our opinions is worth what we pay for them. The key to opinions is that you need a whole large Gaggle of them, from differing viewpoints and broad backgrounds, before they’re worth any more than two cents. You can never do something with the impact of a Comprehensive Plan without actively soliciting that large Gaggle of opinion. Some people are of the opinion that their opinion is worth more than other people’s opinions, and so they try to impose theirs on other people’s houses, bank accounts, and lifestyles. From here on out, for ease of reference, let’s refer to those people as “True Believers”.

So when we look at the “How” of what happened, we can sum it up by saying, “True Believers wrote the plan, and then it got into the Process, and the Process is like a runaway train. It takes one big Bump in the Rail to try to stop it.”

Now that’s the How. What’s the Why?The real Why here is “why didn’t the Supervisors recognize what had happened here and step in and stop it before it got this far?” Why didn’t they acknowledge that the Plan had not been given an opportunity to have widespread distribution and citizen input, before it got to the point of “needing” to be passed before the deadline?

The closest thing I’ve ever heard as an answer to this question is that the Supervisors individually said they liked the plan. They liked the idea that the plan strongly promotes “retaining our rural lifestyle” by limiting development. They wanted a vision statement that says we are managing growth. More importantly, they wanted to get this phase over with, so the more important issue of the specifics of zoning ordinance changes could begin. They didn’t think the plan was bad enough to need changing any more than the changing they actually did do, as a result of their Retreat and followup work. Being pragmatic, they thought it was more important that a general plan be approved, and a specific zoning change process begin, than it was that wider citizen input be introduced late in the process. AND . . . and this is an important AND . . . they weren’t accustomed to having wide citizen input for any reason.

By their reasoning, if any citizens had wanted to have input or cared about the process, those citizens would have shown up three years ago in the beginning and wrested that disk out of the hands of An Unelected Citizen in the first place. So they thought, “if no citizens cared enough to bother stepping in and competing for Air Time to get their opinions included in the Plan when it was being written, then that means they’ve abdicated their right to complain about it after it’s been done.” They didn’t believe they were responsible to proactively inform the citizens about what their government was doing to them. Rather, they believed it was the citizens responsibility to proactively seek out the information for themselves.

This was the attitude the Board showed when they raised the real estate taxes from $6.7M to $11.3M in one year. They didn’t believe it was their responsibility to justify or explain themselves to the citizens about how and why they were doing that. They didn’t think it was necessary for them to explain the budget increase. Rather, they believed it was the citizens responsibility to look into it themselves, should they so desire to be informed.

So the Why of how this happened is:
It happened because the Beliefs and Values of the Board are that they are following the Process, and following the Process is what they are obligated to do. In their Belief, it is the Citizens’ obligation to take the initiative to participate in that Process, and learn how it works. In their Belief, it is not the Board’s obligation to go the extra mile to bring the Citizens into Enlightenment about the process’ inner workings. Once they follow the Process . . . well, then, the Results are “not their fault”.

This is Why it happened. It happened because the leadership of the Board of Supervisors, which sets the stage for its culture, believe that Process trumps Common Sense. I admit that now and then, I have personally seen Common Sense peek out from beneath the curtain. But it spends most of its time, hiding in shame, hoping the Lawyers don’t see it.

Next Installment: Who chased Common Sense into hiding? (And why does it smell like a Landfill)

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