Following is for-the-record citizen input regarding the PWC Rural Area – Rural Crescent:
Rural Crescent – How many more citizen comments are REALLY necessary?
The Planning Office and Planning Commissioners are encouraging citizens to submit more comments on the recommendations from the Rural Study, and the latest Planning Office Rural Area Plan.
Citizens have continuously been asked to submit comments on this Rural Crescent exercise – starting as far back as October of 2013. Citizens have continuously complied by providing their input – thousands of comments have come from citizens between then and now.
However – Not all citizen input is being acknowledged and considered, not all county decision-makers are reviewing citizen input, and not all citizen input can even be found. When reviewed, the citizen input that is documented by the Planning Office demonstrates consistent feedback.
The May 2014 Rural Preservation Study Report document, which can be accessed today on the Planning Office website, does contain citizen input on the Rural Crescent. As documented by ERM:
- The majority of respondents support 10-acre lots for residential development in the Rural Crescent: 61%: A good way to protect rural character, and 53%: A good way to protect the environment. Almost half, 48%, view it as a reasonable balance between encouraging farming and allowing large-lot residential.
- 60% of respondents felt the current County policy of no sewer in the Rural Crescent, except in emergency situations, is appropriate.
- 2/3 of the respondents indicate that for them the Rural Area means “A place for agriculture and forestland.”
- 68% of respondents indicated they would be willing to pay more to help preserve land in the Rural Crescent. 41% indicated a willingness to pay up to $25 per household; 38% a willingness to pay up to $50 per household.
Subsequent record-keeping by our county, of citizen input regarding the Rural Crescent after that 2014 study, is significantly lacking.
Public meetings were held through 2016 regarding Comprehensive Plan zoning text amendments related to the 2014 Rural Study. A PDR program was suggested. Citizens attended meetings, submitted comments at meetings on sticky notes, and sent in emails. None of those comments can be found on the Planning website. Nothing was implemented.
Public meetings were scheduled in 2018, again because the Board of Supervisors wanted to pursue a Comprehensive Plan Amendment (CPA 2018-00009), for rural preservation policies and tools. Some public meetings were held; some public meetings were cancelled. Citizen input was provided at all meetings held and via email. Again, none of this citizen input regarding the Rural Crescent recommendations can be found on the Planning website.
Public meetings have been held in 2019. Some, but not all, of the citizen input from 2019 regarding the Rural Crescent plan can be found on the Planning website. The Planning Office, and their new set of consultants, heard from vehement citizen participants at the June 24, 2019 meeting that continuous citizen input regarding the Rural Crescent, which has been provided since 2014, is being ignored. And that citizens are tired of repeatedly being asked the same questions, and providing the same answers.
In response to a FOIA request for any comments on the Rural Study as a result of the July 30, 2019 public meeting, the county provided a spreadsheet containing 646 emails. 89% of these emails are opposed to Rural Area Plan recommendations. After auditing this spreadsheet, I can attest that an additional 178 citizen Rural Area Plan petition emails from the month of August 2019 are missing from the list. Planning Director Horner acknowledged, after the Planning Office Sept. 24 meeting, that she hadn’t had the time to include all the Rural Crescent citizen input she had received that was in her inbox. And additional citizens confirmed at the Sept. 16, 2019 Rural Crescent Town Hall in Manassas that even more of their emails are missing from what is displayed on the Planning Office website. The Planning Office website provides a 2019 spreadsheet containing only 576 citizen emails addressing the Rural Crescent.
There are probably closer to at least a thousand Rural Crescent related citizen emails submitted just in 2019 to date.
On this issue, the trust with your stakeholders, the citizens of your county, is completely broken. You have been given documented proof, time and again, of what your citizens want. The citizen input given to the county is not made accessible to all county decision-makers. Citizen input is lost. When citizen input is provided, it is not reviewed. Some county personnel appear to be choosing to ignore citizen input because they don’t like what it tells them. And the process has dragged on for 6 years.
Why continue to ask for even more citizen comments, when thousands of comments already provided by citizens are being lost, marginalized, and ignored?
For six years, the majority of citizen input regarding the Rural Crescent is consistently as follows:
- Do not change the county’s Rural Area-Rural Crescent urban growth boundary.
- Do not change the sewer policy in the Rural Area-Rural Crescent.
- Do not permit residential density any lower than 10 acres per lot in the Rural Area-Rural Crescent.
- Implement a funded and enforceable county PDR program for permanent land preservation, with no extinguishment clauses, and with permanent conservation easements managed by accredited third-party land trusts.
- Incentivize all types of agriculture in the Rural Crescent, helping farmers who want to farm, without increasing housing densities in the Rural Crescent.
- Incentivize legally-binding permanent conservation easement programs, managed by accredited third-party land trusts, to preserve rural land and resources.
At the upcoming Planning Commission Rural Plan work session meeting on October 23, 2019, citizens will be permitted to make comments and ask questions. I am sure that people will show up to do exactly that – again. I am also convinced, that between now and the 23rd, many vigilant and engaged citizens will – again – send in emails providing their input regarding the Rural Crescent. I will probably submit a few more.
Is this county’s thought process that you will get different results for your decision-making if you drag out the process and keep asking for input? You haven’t – and you won’t.
Really, how many more citizen comments do you need in order to make the right choice for your citizens?
It is my understanding, and the expectation of citizens, that in our society our representatives consider holistic and comprehensive aspects in order to implement long-term policies which benefit the majority.
Please:
Either enforce, adopt, and implement the above majority supported choices for our Rural Crescent – which will benefit citizens county-wide.
Or stop this process: Cancel CPA 2018-00009 and DPA 2020-00001. Advise the public that both the recommendations from ERM’s 2014 Rural Preservation Study for the county Planning Office, and the Planning Office’s recommended Rural Area Plan, dated September 17, 2019, are rejected. And enforce the Rural Area Comprehensive Plan zoning and policies in our current Comprehensive Plan.
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NOTE: To ensure that this citizen input is included for-the-record, and to contribute to a comprehensive review of the impacts and issues being raised, the distro for this message includes the PWC Planning Office, the PWC Planning Commissioners, the PWC Board of County Supervisors, the PWC County Executive, and the Clerk of the Planning Commission.
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Please ensure these complete comments are included in the county record.
Karen Sheehan
Gainesville District