Thursday, September 19, 2019

Supervisors Take Up the Battle for the Rural Crescent

On Monday night Brentsville Supervisor Jeanine Lawson held a bi-partisan town hall meeting co- hosted by Supervisor Pete Candland of Gainesville District and Supervisor Frank Principi of Woodbridge. They reached out to all the citizens of Prince William County to try to get all the stakeholders in the Rural Crescent “dispute” to the attend. The meeting was held a Stonewall Jackson High School and a moderate sized crowd attended.

The Supervisors each had an opportunity to comment, none of the three supported further growth within the rural crescent. All three supported Supervisor Lawson’s message that had been sent out earlier:

Under the staff proposal...“You will commute to work on increasingly clogged roads, your children’s schools will be more overcrowded, and your sports leagues will face field space shortages. Additionally, our real estate tax bills will rise dramatically to pay for all the new infrastructure required in the rural area to accommodate all these homes. Developing the Rural Crescent not only destroys our green open space, it transfers financial resources away from the parts of the county with dense populations and diverts it to an area that would need many infrastructure improvements to handle that type of growth.”

Supervisor Principi and Supervisor Candland spoke in agreement of that view, and Supervisor Principi spoke in support of further development in the eastern portion of the county. Then the Supervisors opened up the floor the allow citizens to have three minutes each to comment. Though large landowners and developers that have the most potential economic gain from a change in zoning and nature of the Rural Area, most people residing in the Rural Area and who enjoy the rural area are not large landowners. Thus, most of the comments were in support of restricting the growth and development of the Rural Crescent. There were some farmers and large land owners who reminded the crowd of their rights and concerns. However, the overwhelming majority of commenters were critical of the increased development of the Rural Crescent and highly critical of the process that had been used by County Staff.

The strongest feeling in the room was that Prince William County Planning Staff were not responsive to the needs and wants of the voting public and had taken too much upon themselves in shaping the future of Prince William County.

If you recall Prince William County is engaged in revising the sections of the Comprehensive Plan that pertain to the Rural Crescent and the Infrastructure and Facilities plan. According to Supervisor Lawson, the current Prince William County staff proposal contains changes that would greatly increase housing density in the rural area. The public has not seen the final proposal. PWC Planning Office will present the proposed revisions to the public on September 24th 2019 at the Hylton Performing Arts Center at George Mason University in Manassas from 5:30p.m - 8:30p.m. Despite the fact that the comments submitted by email were about 10 to 1 in support of restricting development in the Rural Crescent, it appears that the Planning Office intended to proceed with the plans to increase development within the Rural Crescent, reducing its size.

The tree Supervisors present at the meeting, Lawson, Candland and Principal appeared willing to stop the further development of the Rural Crescent; however, it takes five Supervisors to stop this. It is not clear if there are five votes to stop the Planning Office Proposal from moving forward. Supervisor Principi is not on the ballot in the fall and it is unknown what a future Board of Supervisors might do.

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