County planners to hold long-awaited public hearing on draft comprehensive plan
New text and maps anticipate future land use challenges/opportunities
“No Comprehensive Plan is perfect, but this [current draft] is close to 99 percent.”
So remarked Phil Irwin during an interview about the newly completed draft of the county’s
2020 plan for the future. A longtime Rappahannock resident and environmentalist, Irwin helped write boilerplate language for an early plan in the early 1960s that progressed into the first Rappahannock County Comprehensive Plan in 1973.
The draft of the 2020 plan will be the subject of a public hearing of the Rappahannock County Planning Commission next Wednesday, Aug. 19, at 7 p.m. at the Rappahannock High School Auditorium.
In 2019, the county’s Board of Supervisors hired The Berkley Group, an outside consulting firm that specializes in local governmental matters, to review the existing comprehensive plan.
“They, as well as the county’s Board of Zoning Appeals, and other interested parties, identified many deficiencies in the previous draft plan that was originally set for public hearing in February 2019,” said Planning Commission chair David Konick in an email. “The current revision addresses those shortcomings. Most significant are the additions to Chapters Seven and Eight on Future Land Use and Implementation.”
Chapter Seven addresses issues of current importance to the county and its residents — broadband communications, wireless telecommunications, renewable energy, and affordable housing.
“For example,” Konick said, “the current draft contains detailed requirements for siting telecommunications facilities based on what other Virginia localities have done and which have been upheld in state and federal courts. We have also added provisions that will be the basis for amendments to the Zoning Ordinance relative to large scale renewable energy facilities.“
Planner and former commission chair Gary Light agrees.
“Many of the changes to policies and objectives address relatively recently emergent challenges and opportunities,” Light said in an email, “such as wireless communication, broadband internet services, and the growing interest and adoption of solar photo-voltaic technologies. Some details have been added to encourage protection of specific resources such as access to SNP trails, historical stone walls/fences, dark night skies, and special view sheds . . .
“[W]e have also made changes to ensure that local needs (e.g., access to services, and the particular needs of families and an aging population) are duly considered in zoning decisions.”
However, Light added: “I am somewhat concerned that many of the details that have been added to the plan regarding wireless telecommunications and renewable energy would be better suited for the zoning ordinance where such detail[ed] requirements typically reside, and that their inclusion in the Plan might complicate future efforts to revise the ordinance. “
New language in Chapter Eight reinforces the need to regularly review and modify the county’s zoning and subdivision ordinances and other policies to protect the county’s rural character and direct development to appropriate areas.
The chapter also anticipates the need to further modify the plan depending on zoning needs, changes in state law, technology, and development pressures. And it even suggests instances when the county might review the plan annually rather than every five years, as mandated by state law.
But, said Konick, “Perhaps [the] most important [new feature of the plan] is the addition of village maps that strengthen the provisions of the Plan that direct future commercial and residential development to the areas in and around existing villages in the County.”
Konick thanked “all of my fellow Commissioners for their collaboration and support in getting the process to this point.”
But Konick himself has been credited with authoring much of the new text and pushing to complete the current draft. Jackson district resident Page Glennie, an outspoken advocate for revising the comprehensive plan, praised Konick in a phone call Sunday, noting “how much work David has done” to steer efforts toward completion of the draft.
No one calls the plan “perfect.”
“I do not think you ever achieve perfection in this kind of process, since the only permanent thing is change,” Konick said. “The primary purpose of planning is to manage that change, and try to stay a step or two ahead of changing circumstances. That is the key to preserving Rappahannock as we know and love it.”