Ideas, wishful thinking and some snark

By Charles Houston

Many simple ideas would make our lives more pleasant, and I’ve listed some. I also delve into politics and land use issues, inter alia. I’ve ignored practicality and difficulty, so this list is aspirational. I’ll start with a slam dunk:

Daily Life

Call centers must be located within the US, preferably in some place like Iowa. Ban all robocalls. Let you escape telephone prompts by requiring that you can always speak to a live human by pressing “O.” Chat Bots on websites must use a human for interaction; canned, computer-based responses are forbidden.

Landscapers must use bungees to tie down all their equipment to end the irritating clash-clatter as their trailers go by.

Hate traffic? Then know that “Sprawl” means congestion caused by population growth. 

VDOT should be proactive in maintaining our roads, instead of waiting for problems to be reported. Synchronize traffic lights to help traffic flow in areas such as East Market Street in Leesburg.

Politics

At all levels of government, impose term limits, even with the potential loss of institutional knowledge. Election ballots should not indicate party affiliation or incumbency. No one over the age of 70 should be able to run for president or other office.

Ethics issues and conflicts-of-interest should be vigorously enforced, with violations considered to be felonies with five-year jail time. Conflicts-of-interest must be broadly considered. A lawyer or engineer who represents developers should not be allowed on any County board that might consider an item with potential monetary benefit to them, direct, indirect or prospective. If your website says “I help developers,” you have a conflict.

County Government

Before plunging into planning and zoning, there should have been a vision of how citizens want things (population size, green space, data centers, et al) to be. The “Envision Loudoun” effort to discern what we want was weakened by developers and then was often ignored by Staff and its consultants. Zoning tends to be based only on location of properties and the ensuing land use decisions simply let things happen. That’s how our ballyhooed Comp Plan projects another 12,000 houses coming to western Loudoun. 

I think the Supervisors deserve a raise. If you knew their workload, you might agree.

The Zoning Ordinance Rewrite has been underway for years. Pass the damn thing and handle corrections next year.

As the Supervisors work on the zoning ordinance, they’ve anointed a group of Stakeholders to help. There are three developer and business members vs. a single conservation member in that group. No wonder we feel violated. The zoning process cannot even define the word “farm!” For example, a brewery that does not grow its ingredients is not a farm, but the zoning ordinance says it is. That’s special interests at work.

County staff should never grow faster than population growth.

Loudoun Parks and Rec has a record of proceeding with big projects without taking the pulse of neighbors. Sometimes the neighbors win; their vehement protests carried the day against Parks and Rec’s grotesque plan to turn Mickie Gordon Park into an enormous, intrusive cricket center.  

A conceptual countywide network of trails was called “Emrald Ribbons.” Nice, eh? Bureaucrats disagreed and used the acronym L-PAT, for Linear Parks and Trails. Why did they waste time doing that? Now they’re are at it again, and are hiring a “naming consultant” to advise them. Just use “Emerald Ribbons.”

Land Use and Buildings

Developers must attend at least one college-level design course to improve their taste, which today is banal and repetitive. Parking spaces should be comfortably wide, at least 8’6”. (Some developers shoehorn skinny 7’0” spaces to provide save money on paving.)

Roadway medians usually end with a bull-nose of plain concrete, and at night it’s easy to drive over the things. Your suspension doesn’t like that. Instead, use optic yellow paint around the bullnose. 

Do not pave our historic gravel roads.

Zoning enforcement is a farce. Its goal is to protect citizens, not find loopholes though which malefactors can skate. 

Developers cannot use the words farm, preserve, reserve or estates in the name of their subdivisions.

A “dark sky” has become a mirage because of development. Drive somewhere far away, turn off the car lights and look up. You can’t take that heavenly vision back to Loudoun, but remember the stars and contemplate what’s been lost here because of sprawl and commerce.

Many developments are now excused from notifying neighbors in advance of zoning applications or impending construction. That’s special interests again, and bad.

“Affordable housing” is an aspirational chimera promoted by people who want government to create some sort of egalitarian utopia. I am cynical. Developers will find a way to scam any such program that involves the private sector. Politicians will wastefully throw money at the issue. The aesthetics of cheap housing may be poor.

Ban dark brown or black buildings. Why? Just scope out the dreadful multifamily projects along Claiborne Parkway; they look like old Soviet worker housing. A giant data center is about to open on Old Ox Road. It’s completely black, and it evokes images of old, shuttered, grimy factory buildings.  I’ve quoted Frank Lloyd Wright before: “An ugly building makes my teeth hurt.” He’d be in agony here.  

There’s great controversy about data centers, but the goal is straightforward: Keep letting them in until they become problems to neighborhoods. Many of them already intrude on homes.  Solving the data center problem means we must unravel a spiderweb of details. 

Above all, remember that government is of, for and by the people. Not promoters and their shills. The concept of “stakeholders” is misguided and gives businesses too many seats at the table.  

A New County?

Actually, no. Some years ago, there was a quixotic attempt to break off western Loudoun, and form a new Catoctin County. There were just too many necessary approvals and the nascent idea died. ‘Twas a good concept, though, considering western Loudoun seems to get shafted at every turn.

But I found something.

It’s a simple procedure for two counties to enter into a boundary line adjustment. Use the crest of Furnace, Catoctin and Bull Run Mountains as the new eastern border of Clarke County, and remove us from Loudoun County. As a new part of the bucolic Clarke County to our west, we’d be protected instead of plundered.  

Charles Houston developed corporate office buildings throughout the south and now lives on a nice gravel road in Paeonian Springs. Sometimes he has too much time on his hands.