LETTER: County’s draft comprehensive plan ignores resident input | Opinion | princewilliamtimes.com
The Prince William County Planning Office and staff are clueless. We participated in charettes, community planning sessions, taken survey after survey and the planning office has ignored EVERYTHING we as a community proposed.
The planning office has hired more employees and more contractors/experts. None of these people are trained or specialize in what we said we want: rural areas maintained, less sprawl, curbing industrialization, more parks and recreational areas, housing with smart growth near the transportation hubs, agritourism opportunities for entrepreneurs, better-planned roads. None of these items in our hopes for the comprehensive plan have been included.
The entire process for the 2040 Comprehensive Plan is a farce. A plan has achievable, measurable goals with clear priorities and a methodical approach that is open and visible for all stakeholders.
We citizens are the stakeholders. We pay these planning office personnel who are incapable and incompetent and unable to meet the parameters we laid out for the comp plan years ago. They have failed and earned a “no confidence” vote from the several hundred people who have spoken at BOCS and planning sessions and written to these staff.
We have been stonewalled. Crickets. A glazed look on the faces of staff we have approached asking why our input over these years has been ignored. The current version of the 2040 Comprehensive Plan is a jumble of stuff that might or might not happen, without any timelines or priorities of what needs to happen first, second, or third in which years.
Come on! Either get your act together or get fired!! Period.
Sharon Harvey
Coles District