LoudounNow LOUDOUN COUNTY’S COMMUNITY-OWNED NEWS SOURCE
[ Vol. 3, No. 46 ]
[ loudounnow.com ]
State park plans expand
6
October 4, 2018 ]
Town Leaders Cite ‘Grave Concerns’ Over Draft Comp Plan BY RENSS GREENE
dor.” And Supervisor Geary M. Higgins (R-Catoctin) said he has met with farmers along the road. “Nothing is not an option,” Higgins said. “We’ve got to do something on this road to address the safety. We’ve had three fatalities in the last year and a half, and I don’t know how many other accidents.” He also dismissed the alternative design for the corridor, which is based on work by the same engineer who designed traffic calming improvements to the Rt. 50 corridor. Higgins said he met with that engineer, Ian Lockwood, for hours, but said the designs that worked on Rt. 50 won’t work on Rt. 15 because of its heavier traffic load.
Mayors, planning commissioners and staff members of Loudoun’s towns met with the Loudoun County Planning Commission last Thursday to express their concerns about the county’s ongoing work to rewrite its comprehensive plan. The new plan represents in some ways a dramatic departure from the county’s current comprehensive plan. But, while county policies in the rural west remain in some ways unchanged, the Coalition of Loudoun Towns found serious concerns. “The draft includes several areas of grave concern that, if implemented, will jeopardize the continued success of our rural area,” said a statement from the Coalition for Loudoun Towns read by Hillsboro Mayor Roger Vance. The coalition’s letter—coupled with detailed individual responses to the plan from each town—raised five chief areas of concern: The elimination of most policies relating to cooperative planning between the county and town governments, particularly joint land management areas around some towns; increased development density in the Transition Policy Area between rural west and suburban east; possibly releasing towns’ control of water and sewer systems where they serve people in joint land management areas, where towns sometimes charge higher out-of-town rates; the lack of specificity on individual towns in the plan; and an “overall weakening of protections for the transition and rural policy areas.” Joint land management areas faced a challenge in 2007 when the Town of Purcellville sued to prevent the county from building Woodgrove High School outside that town. Circuit Court Judge Thomas D. Horne ruled that despite the Purcellville Urban Growth Area Management Plan adopted by county supervisors and the Purcellville Town Council in 1995, the town did not have authority to control land use outside its borders.
RT. 15 >> 5
GRAVE CONCERNS >> 41
Renss Greene/Loudoun Now
Residents look over a map of an alternate plan for Rt. 15. during a Sept. 26 community meeting in Lucketts.
Rt. 15 Meeting Brings Out Community’s Divisions
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BY RENSS GREENE meeting hosted by the county government on plans to alleviate congestion on Rt. 15 brought out the differences in views among the people living along that corridor. People entering the Lucketts Community Center for the Sept. 26 meeting were greeted outside the doors with protest signs bearing messages like “Loudoun B.O.S. abandons rural farms & businesses” and “Loudoun BOS votes for less safe 15.” Inside the doors, opponents to the county’s plans to widen parts of Rt. 15 had set up their own parallel meeting with a map of an alternate plan for the corridor.
Inside the county government meeting, opinions were not more reserved. “It’s about time something’s done,” said one attendee. “And I’m sorry that these people want to live on the farms. My thing is, sell your house and go to Wyoming.” Others worried widening the road could impact agricultural businesses in the area. “Moving forward, we’re going to have to make a determination about are we going to maintain the agriculture that we have, and the infrastructure to support that,” said another. Susan Glass, of the county Department of Transportation and Capital Infrastructure, said the intent of the project approved by county supervisors was to “retain the rural character of the corri-
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