Down to the Lick Log

By Charles Houston

A lick-log is a hollowed-out tree trunk, filled with salt that cattle or horses can lick. That somehow led to its vernacular usage today, which means nearing the end of negotiations. 

In 1836 the Mexican general Santa Ana besieged the Alamo. After a 13-day encirclement, his army left its encampments for a direct assault on the Alamo. Davy Crockett supposedly used “down to the lick-log” to refer to that impending fight. Crockett didn’t survive, but the phrase did.

“Nearing the end of negotiations” is where ZOC and DPZ are with the ZOR.

Without the acronyms, that’s where the Zoning Ordinance Committee and the County’s Department of Planning and Zoning are with the Zoning Ordinance Rewrite. The 1,004-page current zoning ordinance is based on the 1993 zoning document which has been amended about one hundred times. It needed to be replaced with a new ordinance that will be appropriate to 2022 Loudoun, and which will be easier to use and more readable.

Conflict, Compromise and Consensus.

“Appropriate for 2022 Loudoun” sounds nice, and implies that it’s an agreed-upon concept. It’s not. There are scores of things where ZOC members don’t agree, some large and some just ministerial. Breweries are an example of a major and unresolved issue. Some of our members relish their success. Other are furious at the traffic they bring. (I’ve suggested a compromise: Require special exceptions for any new breweries, while leaving the current ones alone. That would let the Board of Supervisors approve new breweries on a case-by case basis.)

There are any number of similar issues that still pend, especially in western Loudoun. We know that now it’s down to the lick log.  

The Lick-log Looms

ZOC’s work has to be finished in July in order to meet the deadline set by the Board of Supervisors. We will send our recommendations to the Planning Commission, which will hold meetings and hearings before the proposed ordinance is finally sent to the full Board for still more meetings and hearings. The Board hopes to enact the new zoning ordinance in the spring.

Wrapping up its work on the zoning rewrite will be a challenge for ZOC and particularly for Staff. For example, ZOC once discussed the MDOD and the VCOD, but only briefly and without any satisfactory conclusions – that’s the Mountainside Development Overlay District and the Village Conservation Overlay District. 

I can’t think of any things that are more important to Loudoun’s aesthetic appeal, than our mountains and our historic villages like Waterford. Unfortunately, they’ve been given short shrift so far. There are also some sections of zoning text that have not yet been drafted, and other issues that have not been fully resolved.

At the Lick-log

You may have noticed that I’ve not talked about cluster subdivisions. They are a huge area of concern and debate, so much so that they are on a separate track as a ZOAM – a Zoning Ordinance Amendment – that will probably carry into the next year. 

For now, there will be a draft thousand-page zoning ordinance that Staff presents to the public (and to ZOC,) a lengthy set of “ZOC Recommendations,” plus pages of comments by the public and interest groups. I’ll feel a bit frustrated, first that the final result won’t be perfect, but more importantly that western Loudoun will not get all the protections it deserves. C’est la vie.

 A Look Ahead

I’m confident that Staff will meet its deadlines, as will ZOC. I’m also confident that next year ZOC will have a lot of work to do. I hope that work helps save Western Loudoun from sprawl and commercialization. It’s inevitable that some of the newly adopted zoning ordinance will need to be changed for one reason or another. It’s also inevitable that here will be other ideas and problems for us to address.

Work will go on. 

My columns are Op-Eds, which means that they are my personal opinions. They are not any sort of “official” statement by any County officer or employee. Because I’m on the Zoning Ordinance Committee, I often offer updates on our work. Sometimes these updates include personal observations and lamentations; consider them my personal opinions.

Charles Houston developed more than six million square feet of office buildings throughout the south for an Atlanta based firm. He lives in Paeonian Springs.