Supervisors take on the road more traveled
Citizens express concern about a dangerous stretch of 211 Whitson makes ‘appeal to the public for decency toward other citizens’
Tra c inside the county courthouse, regular meeting place of the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors, was unusually light this Monday a ernoon — a rare rst Monday of the month, moreover, when there wasn’t even a 7 p.m. session scheduled.
Taking advantage of the absence of the usual time-consuming contention and/or compromise, the board primarily discussed something most everyone agrees on: tra c.
Near the start of the meeting, the board heard a
Whitson pushes back against Lord Fairfax personal attacks: ‘All I would ask is, if citizens continue to feel frustration about that name change, and they want to direct that frustration somewhere, direct it at me. Not at Mr. Wenger and his wife.’
brief presentation by Patrick Kenney, during which the new superintendent of Shenandoah National Park told the board that, despite — or more likely because of — the pandemic, the park’s visitation in 2020 was up an unexpected 15 percent from the year before. Its total visitors last October, Kenney said, were up a whopping 53 percent over the previous October.
Following that, during the public comment period, several citizens stood to express alarm about traffic along the two-lane portion of U.S. 211 leading up to the park from Sperryville. Constituents were specifically concerned about the stretch of straight road where Sperryville Trading Cafe and Off the Grid flank the highway, where the double-yellow lines yield to separate stretches of passing zones for both eastbound (near Sperryville Trading) and westbound (closer to Off the Grid) traffic.
“The traffic is just, well … everybody’s been on the hairpin turns, coming down from Luray, and somebody’s going to die in front of my house if you guys don’t paint those yellow lines,” said Debbie Fitzgerald, whose house is directly opposite Off the Grid. “If we can slow down the impatient people coming down that hill, we’re going to save someone’s life.”
Stonewall-Hawthorne Supervisor Chris Parrish said he’d recently spoken to the manager of Off the Grid, “and she complained pretty hard about the accidents and near-accidents in that area.”
Elizabeth Melson, who’s the farm manager for Off the Grid, said it’s not just ea stbound traffic in a hurry to get past perceived slowpokes. More than a few times, she said, as she’s been heading west and about to turn left into Off the Grid from 211, “and even when I am braking and with a turn signal, people still pass me!”
Later, Jackson District Supervisor Ron Frazier said the same thing had happened to him. “There’s got to be a prohibition to issuing driver’s licenses to stupid people,” Frazier said, inciting laughter. “But in the meantime,” he continued, the board should take action.
Frazier’s comments came during the board’s scheduled discussion to review and possibly lower speed limits and assess road markings on Route 211 between the village of Sperryville and the park — something local governments can request, but only the state highway commission, with a recommendation from its district engineers, can carry out.
Attending the meeting via Zoom, Mark Nesbit, resident engineer for the Culpeper District of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), cited the results of 2018 speed studies conducted by VDOT which showed that the median speed on Route 211 was 54 mph (the posted speed limit is 45 mph) two miles from Sperryville’s Main Street — at almost exactly the location of Sperryville Trading. He added that the accident rate was slightly higher on this part of Route 211 than the average for two-lane primary roads in the district.
In 2018, Nesbit said, “these studies did not result in a recommendation to lower the speed limit,” only a recommendation to increase enforcement efforts.
“As we just heard from the superintendent,” Piedmont Supervisor Christine Smith said, “the park’s traffic was up 50 percent last October. Things have changed. We have more people coming through, and more coming through quickly. I’ve noticed it myself just eating in restaurants on the side of that road.
“You need to go back and look at it,” she said, “and make these changes.”
The board unanimously approved a motion directing County Administrator Garrey Currey to inform VDOT of its request for another review of traffic along Route 211 and its desire to make changes.
IN OTHER ACTION
► The board voted unanimously to reappoint Brian Scheulen to a fouryear term as the county planning commission’s Wakefield District representative.
► By general consensus, instead of scheduling a public hearing, the board requested Currey set up a public work session later this month for “zoning education,” as described by Wakefield Supervisor Debbie Donehey, the board chair, during a brief discussion of a rezoning application by Tom Taylor. Taylor would like to turn his 35acre property along Woodward Road in Sperryville into a subdivision of 13 homes, each on two acres (the current minimum acreage is five). The planning commission last month decided 4-3 to pass the application on, without recommendation to approve or reject, to the supervisors — who would make the final decision anyway.
“My conversations with citizens about this,” Donehey said, “all have to do with setting precedents … if we do this, is the rest of the county going to blow up with subdivisions? What Pandora’s Box is opened by doing this? … I would like to know our zoning better.”
“I thought it prudent, given the large body of material accumulated in this case, that it should be moved forward to the board of supervisors,” said Hampton Supervisor Keir Whitson, who also serves as chair of the planning commission and cast the deciding vote to pass the application on to the supervisors.
“Why not schedule a public hearing now?” Frazier asked. “I don’t know why we have such distaste for making a decision. We have a decision to make, that’s part of the job we were elected to do.”
Donehey and Smith pushed for, as Donehey put it, “having a zoning expert come in and tell us, ‘If you make the vote for this project, these are things you need to worry about, and if you make a vote against, likewise.’”
► The board authorized Currey to advertise a public hearing for 7 p.m. on April 19 at the Rappahannock County Elementary School gym to discuss the county’s $27.6 million budget for fiscal year 2022.
• The supervisors authorized Currey to advertise a public hearing next month for an amendment to the county ordinance governing the personal property tax break given to active volunteers for the county’s fire and rescue squads. Originally rewritten primarily to streamline the administrative process, the revised ordinance also raised the limit for the tax break from $300 to $574, but Frazier’s argument that the limit should be higher resulted in an advertised amendment that will allow a credit of “up to $1,200” to be applied to qualifying volunteers’ personal property tax bills. Frazier said it is still unclear whether anything over $600 means the county must send a 1099 form to the recipients of the credit, and Currey said that he will look further into that.
► At the very end of the meeting the supervisors heard an emotional “appeal to the public for decency toward other citizens” from Whitson, in which he referred to the “robust” discussion at last month’s supervisors’ meeting regarding the Lord Fairfax Community College’s name change.
“Within that discussion, there were public comments directed at our appointee to the Lord Fairfax College board, Mr. [Mike] Wenger, who is my constituent,” Whitson began. “I had hoped [the letter of opposition] would be enough, but clearly it wasn’t. And so in the weeks since our meeting, on social media and other means, there’s been a lot of anger and vitriol directed toward Mr. Wenger and his wife. One citizen posted on our listserv, Rappnet, that they should be tarred and feathered and run out of the county on a rail. And all I would ask is, if citizens continue to feel frustration about that name change, and they want to direct that frustration somewhere, direct it at me. Not at Mr. Wenger and his wife.
“They’re great volunteers. Mr. Wenger is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. He was a fighter pilot and a fighter pilot instructor, and if we’re talking about someone who can speak firsthand toward the importance of technical education … I think Mr. Wenger is well qualified. The five of us here agreed to appoint him to a term. And so all I would ask is, in the spirit of Rappahannock County, please stop. And treat Mr. and Mrs. Wenger with the respect they deserve as citizens, and if there’s ongoing frustration … direct it at me.”