Comp plan returns to drawing board

Tur ner It hasn’t been hard to find Chesterfield residents who take issue with the draft comprehensive plan that was returned last week for a thorough rewrite despite nearly three years of work. As it turns out, the county’s supervisors were as critical of the document as anybody.

All five board members agreed last week to send the 216-page draft back to the Planning Commission for a rewrite, though Clover Hill Supervisor Art Warren ended up voting against the motion because of a disagreement over the wording.

The wording of the draft plan itself was probably the thing that most people considered the biggest drawback of the document, which emerged from almost three years of committee meetings, consultant study and public discussion.

In a presentation on the plan during a Board of Supervisors work session last week ahead of the board’s vote, Planning Director Kirk Turner summarized the objections that supervisors had expressed to him and his department.

Gecker What board members had said was that “we really need to step away from the draft plan that has been prepared and brought through the process. We need a new start,” Turner said.

The main reason is that citizens and county staff members alike need a document that is clear, understandable and usable, he explained.

Board members “would like to avoid jargon at all costs and to be more clear and direct in the language that we use,” especially in describing land-use categories, Turner said. Those categories “really need to be very clear, precise and easily understood from a common sense standpoint.”

For residents’ benefit, he said, “I’d like to have land-use categories that I can hand to a neighbor that has no involvement in planning whatsoever … and have them feel reasonably sure that they have understood the uses they can make of their property.”

Warren Overall, he said, “We don’t want people to feel like they have to come to county staff or planning staff or hire a professional to interpret the plan for them.”

The board’s consensus even before last week’s meeting was that the best way to achieve that goal and also solve other problems they saw in the document was to go back to the county’s existing comp plan and area plans and build on those.

Turner said supervisors had made it clear that “we need to use the format of the existing area plans … to build this new plan around. And frankly, staff is in agreement with that.

“We enjoyed tremendous success with the formats that we used in our area plans, especially the Upper Swift Creek plan and the Northern Courthouse Road plan.”

Holland Board members reiterated their concerns during the meeting, with the chairman, Midlothian Supervisor Dan Gecker, noting that after the board’s public hearing on the comp plan on Jan. 25, “it became clear that a more substantial rewrite was going to be necessary.”

Warren emphasized that the existing area plans had gone through a thorough review and public hearing process and “serve us very well.”

In fact, the disagreement between Warren and the other board members was over how strictly to direct the Planning Commission to adhere to the existing plan.

Initially, Dale Supervisor Jim Holland moved to “direct” the Planning Commission to “seriously consider” using the current plan as a basis, adding that “this is not a motion requiring the Planning Commission to retain this draft plan or any portion of the plan.”

Warren then introduced what he called a “substitute motion” to “redirect” the commission “to use” the existing comp plan.

Holland’s motion passed by a 4-1 vote. It includes a stipulation that the Planning Commission complete its redrafting of the plan no later than Aug. 21 of this year.

The motion also incorporated a list of additional concerns that board members had raised over aspects of the draft plan and issues they believed were not included but needed to be:

• “Land use recommendations should recognize the county’s existing suburban land use pattern, emphasize the importance of Chesterfield’s villages, identify higher-density nodes on Route 288, identify fewer mixed-use centers and limited mixed use along corridors.”

• “A coordinated water demand and supply management strategy.”

• “Include the East/West Freeway for long-range planning purposes.”

• “A separate revitalization chapter focusing on parity of public facilities and services, especially schools, with promoting of higher density not a goal of revitalization efforts, and the need to revitalize commercial corridors.”

• “To the extent required by law, consideration of urban development areas along Route 288 corridor nodes.”

• “Accommodate transit nodes.”

• “The importance of our rural areas, with the understanding that rural areas should have some development as a matter of right, and if maintained as rural, bring forward an acquisition of development rights program.”

• “Parity among public facilities, especially in schools, identifying specific schools to completely rehabilitate, as well as promoting neighborhood schools concepts (smaller), and using the public facilities plan as the model for the Capital Improvement Program.”

• “Recognize and support the expansion of Virginia State University.”

• “Acknowledge the importance of Chesterfield’s riverfronts through focused planning efforts.”