Levels of service are needed as growth tool

Dear Editor,

There was so much spin in the opinion piece by Ed Barber's former Planning Com- missioner Will Shewmake that I had to sit down while reading it so I didn't get too dizzy. While he is correct about the problems with segregating retail and office space with the resultant sprawl, his arguments against level of service (LOS) standards totally ignore the reason they were proposed in the first place.

Chesterfield County, for years, has been approving development after development with little or no regard for the impact on surrounding property owners and county infrastructure. This has brought us to the point where we have trailers by the hundreds in our schoolyards and backlogs in highway construction that reach so far into the future, few of us will see adequate service in our lifetime.

The action by the planning commission to take levels of service into account when approving rezoning cases is just a response to the events of last November when the citizens said "No!" to business as usual. It is, after all, the citizens who pay for our government and, in this country, it is the citizens who grant authority to the government to do business on their behalf. Some may call this a populist response, but in reality, it is the planning commission acting on behalf of the citizens... something not seen in some time.

The fact that Mr. Shewmake, who is associated with many in the building industry, is opposing the concept that LOS should be used in determining zoning changes is an admission that much has been done and is being proposed that will further diminish these levels. So when looking at new development proposals, the supervisors and planning commissioners will now have another tool to use in evaluating whether a development will be detrimental to the community and only serve to enrich the developer.

Larry Miller

Chesterfield