After the public has said its piece and left, and most of the staff has vanished into the night—that’s when the Board of Supervisors can really start talking. Fortunately, Charlottesville Tomorrow’s mics keep recording.
At the close of the September 5 supervisors meeting, a heated discussion was sparked by a simple question from Community Development Director Mark Graham: whether or not to have a work session on proposed rural area protection ordinances currently with the Planning Commission.
Supervisor Ken Boyd wanted to delay a public hearing on rural protection ordinances by first having a work session.
|
Chairman Ken Boyd thought so. "I don’t know about ya’ll, but I’m hearing an awful lot of public input on this," said Boyd.
"I’m not sure that a work session is going to make that much of a difference if what we’ve got is a fairly simple ordinance that we’ve already talked about," said Supervisor David Slutzky.
Boyd: "What I’m saying is it isn’t [simple]."
Slutzky: "But we’ve already talked about it."
That "fairly simple ordinance" is what remains of the failed Mountain Overlay District, which was itself the legacy of a prior failed attempt to restrict development in high elevation areas around the county. The ordinance that the county is looking at would restrict building on so-called critical slopes, those at grades 25 percent or higher, as well as increase buffers to protect from building around streams, among other things.
The topic has caused an uproar every time it has come up for public hearing. In August 2006, cries of "keep your cotton picking hands off my mountain!" rose from the crowd assembled in the County Office Building for the hearing on the Mountain Overlay District. When notification was sent this go around to potentially affected land owners, so many people logged onto the county mapping website simultaneously that the system crashed. According to Graham, the county has set up a hotline to answer calls on the question, and several hundred landowners have visited county staff to get clarification.
"David, the devil’s in the details," said Supervisor Lindsay Dorrier to Slutzky.
"The devil’s in the election, Lindsay," replied Slutzky.
Incidentally or not, those wanting to delay the issue are up for re-election—Boyd, Dorrier and David Wyant. In January, it was Wyant who seemed to have broken a 3-3 split by supporting the idea. Now, that consensus seems up for grabs.
Supervisor Sally Thomas wanted a spade called a spade: "This board and its predecessors has a policy, I believe at least if you judge by past conduct, of being very much in favor of the concepts, but boy, do we never pass the ordinances. So why don’t we just be consistent and recognize that we speak a good speech but we don’t act?"
Boyd disagreed, stressing the details again: "Why is this such an important issue to get passed in the next month and a half or two months or three months? What’s the rush on this? What is the rush? Explain it to us."
Slutzky: "Because we’ve already been there. It seems like we’re delaying it, as opposed to rushing it."
Dorrier: "I don’t think we’re delaying it. If Albemarle County was a flat piece of land like Kansas, we wouldn’t be having this discussion."
They quibbled about mortgage bankers, family subdivisions and whether or not they already had a work session—Slutzky and Supervisor Dennis Rooker said they had; Boyd said it was on the concepts, not the details. They argued about whether constituents are mostly for or against the proposals. When Rooker brought up a recent poll conducted by Charlottesville Tomorrow that suggests overwhelming support for development restrictions in the rural areas, Boyd responded, "That survey’s so flawed, it’s unbelievable. It’s a push poll is what it is."
Yet Boyd in the end was stymied in his efforts to get a work session. If the Planning Commission makes a vote on the rural protection ordinances at their September 11 meeting, the matter could come before the Board as early as October—just in time to factor into those November elections.
C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.
