The cycle of unsustainable annexation must stop

Dear Editor:

After reading about the proposed application for annexation of a property on the north end of Purcellville, the former Warner Brook property – currently named Purcellville Road, LLC – I was again reminded of, and unnerved by, the basic tenet of these proposals: the idea that developers can solve the very problems that development has created in this town. 

The cycle of unsustainable annexation has essentially gone forward as a grand plan for economic redistribution–one in which developers front a relatively small initial cost and then leave the town footing the bill for extended sewer and water lines, road infrastructure costs, and increased town services costs. 

Chuck Marohn, founder and president of Strong Towns, an urban planning nonprofit, calls this pattern of suburban growth a Ponzi scheme. Though there is no denying that Purcellville could be in a stronger financial position, I applaud Mayor Fraser, and many others on the town council, for finding creative ways to arrive at a more economically sustainable town budget. 

But let’s be very clear about the causes of this problem–the unsustainable annexation for residential, commercial, and industrial development beginning in the early 2000’s. And now, what does this developer propose? More annexation, more development. This is no way to dig ourselves out of a hole dug by careless annexation and development. 

Furthermore, we must consider the town’s aesthetic integrity. A town must end somewhere, there must be some limit, some boundary, or a town loses coherence. The fields and woods that surround our town give this place its singular look and feel. Though there might be some sort of annexation that I could envision being healthy and appropriate at certain edges of the town perimeter, this approach does not seem to be that. 

In my view, any annexation should be measured (of a size less than 25 or 50 acres), carefully integrated into the existing town, and economically sustainable in the long-term. What does that last point mean? It means that any additional services provided to the annexed area should cost less than the revenue provided in a 50-year time horizon. 

The town cannot afford to perpetuate the cycle, even the addiction, of unsustainable development. The light industrial site the developer is currently proposing for the area does not seem to reflect a careful and coherent style. It is the type of development which imagines this property as easily used and misused. 

We need to approach the issues of development and annexation with humility and patience. If we want Purcellville to continue to thrive and reflect the area’s natural and cultural beauty for the next 100 years, such decisions about annexation should be made soberly and with imagination. If all we can imagine for this beautiful farmland is an industrial park–a use both disconnected from the landscape and the town – there is work to be done in broadening our collective imagination.

Adam Stevenson

Purcellville