County revisits land-use plan
That 1998 plan acts as a guide for long-range development, and sets up classifications for various types of building.
On Tuesday, the joint boards were operating under a mandate from County Executive Craig S. Gerhart and the planning staff to keep the project to 1,600 hours of staff time.
The board of supervisors itself had earlier stipulated the update should take no more than 18 months and begin in January. That could only be accomplished if the scope of the project was limited, staffers said.
Among items for consideration Tuesday night:
l Sector plans will not be eliminated, but smaller pieces of land that have been rezoned and don’t fit their surroundings will be considered.
l Setting up guidelines for developers to pay for police stations didn’t make the cut, but deciding if land near Vint Hill Road is in the Rural Crescent did.
Much of the discussion revolved around establishing a new public safety chapter that could require developers to contribute cash to help build police stations when they add new housing subdivisions.
“Judicial and law enforcement costs constitute 12 [percent] to 16 percent of the county’s portion of the budget,” said Dumfries District planning commissioner Rene M. Fry. “It’s time we address how we are going to pay for this infrastructure,” he said. However, there wasn’t enough consensus for including it.
Several site-specific issues also fell by the wayside, including one involving KSI. Supervisor Edgar S. Wilbourn III, R-Gainesville, argued for including it with another comprehensive-plan amendment already in the works. The project known as Greater South Market would be a golf course community to be built along U.S. 15 near the western Rural Cre-scent. “It just makes sense,” Wilbourn said, to put them together. But he was overruled by his colleagues.