Looking For A Challenge?

Not only a map would have been useful but explaining the options allowed including the one exercised by several countries by simply designating the areas already served by water/sewer as UDAs that mixed-use proposals of 8DU would be considered.

That’s all the law requires – just designation of an area (that they recommend is already served by water/sewer and transit) to be simply designated as available for mixed-use proposals.

4DU is NOT REQUIRED for populations under 130,000 – only allowed and it certainly makes since than if a county is close to the 130K threshold that they go ahead and designate for 8DU.

A 4DU designation is not dense enough for cost-effective transit. In fact, 4DU in residential is the very same 1/4 acre subdivisions that Stafford has traditionally approved.

By choosing NEW areas not currently served by water and sewer for 4DU development all they are really doing is expanding the water/sewer Master Plan .. i.e. more auto-dependent development that fits the classic definition of “sprawl” .

What the county seems to be counting on with it’s process is to not have a legitimate public involvement process and the survey is the latest strategy to get developers and others friendly to the idea of expanding water/sewer to fill out – and then for the county to claim that the survey “proves” that county residents want the “sprawl” UDAs (areas not currently served by water and sewer).

It’s a pretty flimsy way to run a public involvement process in my view and when you combine it with not putting their BOS agendas online – and having closed meetings that seem questionable on the face of it – it does not say good things about the county BOS.

I’ve looked at the survey and it’s totally lame and it basically insults the intelligence of the average person.

BEFORE anyone could say where to put growth and how much – they would need to know some basics like where water/sewer is and is not and how much existing capacity there is and how much it would cost to add capacity.

The same would need to be done with road infrastructure. Has the county made available to citizens the letter from VDOT telling the county what would need to be done in terms of roads to serve the UDAs that they proposed?

Has the Water/Sewer people generated a similar letter outlining what would need to be done for each UDA and the costs associated with it?

Ask wide open question about how many people to put in each UDA without providing the relevant impact information serves what purpose?

Is the county basically asking for WAGs from whoever wants to gill out the survey?

How could anyone intelligently answer the survey questions without the infrastructure impact data?

Does the county really want INFORMED comments?