Now is NOT the time for the BOCS to dismantle the Rural Crescent!

Elena

For the fourth year in a row, yes folks, the fourth year, Classic Concepts Ltd, along with a few other land owners, will be asking to change several hundred acres of land, witin the Rural Crescent, to high density housing. Most of this land is located in Nokesville. This Tuesday, March 17, the Board will once again have to make a decision on several major proposed land use changes.  Given the amount of foreclosures in PWC, does ANYONE really believe that a responsible choice would be to rezone ANY parcel of land from 1 home per 10 acres to multiple homes per 10 acres? Can you imagine if we had not had the Rural Crescent zoning restrictions in place ,how many more homes would have been built, only to end up sitting vacant, dragging our real estate values even further into the proverbial grave? The Rural Crescent demonstrated, in this last “feeding frenzy” of home building, what a great smart growth tool it can be. Furthermore, PWC already has 35,000 homes that have been approved for build out! How much longer can this county sustain itself on real estate alone? I would suggest that WE CANNOT and must not continue down the same broken path anymore.

No Comprehensive Plan Amendments should be initiated by this Board that would approve any changes in current land use designations, not in the Rural Crescent and not in the Suburban Rural Residential zoning categories either!

I hope that Chairman Stewart and Supervisors Stirrup, May, and Principi will hold steadfast to their pledge, signed prior to the last election, that they would deny any changes to the Rural Crescent Boundaries and would hold to the 1 home per 10 acre density. I think we’ve all had enough of “building gone wild” !

http://www.pwcgov.org/documents/bocs/agendas/2009/20090317.pdf

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Remade in America pt 2: Is Perception Reality?

MoonHowler

From the New York Times, Sunday, March 15, 2009

Then there is Hylton High School’s home county, Prince William. What was once a mostly white, middle-class suburb 35 miles southwest of the nation’s capital has been transformed by a construction boom into a traffic-choked sprawl of townhouses and strip malls where Latinos are the fastest-growing group.

Neighborhood disputes led the county to enact laws intended to drive illegal immigrants away. White and black families with the means to buy their way out of the turmoil escaped to more affluent areas. Hispanic families, feeling threatened or just plain unwelcome, were torn between those who had legal status and those who did not. Many fled.

By last March, educators reported that at least 759 immigrant students had dropped out of county schools. Hylton, whose 2,200 student population is almost equal parts white, black and Latino and comes from working-class apartment complexes and upscale housing developments, was one of the hardest hit.

The New York Times is a large, well-funded newspaper that has national stature. Is the above excerpt from the article how things really happened here in Prince William County? Is this how our county looked to those outside the region? Is this how we want to be perceived?

Would you want to relocate in Prince William County after this description? If you were a business, would you want to move here?

At what point does it really matter what really happened? Has perception become reality?