Stop approving new development

Dear Editor:

A recent readers’ poll in a local paper asked: “What should be the Board of Supervisors’ top priority in the last six months of their term?” The most common response, by far, was that the Board should “stop approving new development.”

According to County data, more than 900 new houses will be built in western Loudoun within the Board’s current, four-year term. The County estimates that those new residences will have generated an additional 9,000 vehicle trips per day on our rural roads.

There’s a big gap between County supervisors’ rhetoric about preserving rural areas and these facts on the ground.

When confronted with citizens’ concerns about over-development, supervisors typically respond that they “have not approved a single new house” in western Loudoun. Their defense is that, while the development obviously rolls on, we can’t hold them responsible for it.

This is strange because land use is one of the principal responsibilities of county governments in the Commonwealth of Virginia. How is it that the Board of Supervisors can be responsible for land use – but not be responsible for over-development in our rural areas?

The County’s Zoning Ordinance currently allows for more than 10,000 new houses to be built in Loudoun’s rural areas without any review by the supervisors of how it affects traffic, quality of life, or local business.

But who approves the Zoning Ordinance?

Right now, the Board of Supervisors is working on a complete overhaul of the Zoning Ordinance. The draft they are considering continues to allow for those 10,000 new rural residences, and the Board has already decided that it will do nothing to change that.

So the Board’s claim that they won’t approve a single new house in western Loudoun seems pretty misleading. When they vote to adopt the revised Zoning Ordinance, they will in fact be voting to re-approve a huge amount of new, completely unsupervised development.

The supervisors’ claim that they have not approved any new houses in western Loudoun also depends on how we define “western.”

Last year, for example, the Board approved a motion by Catoctin District Supervisor Caleb Kershner to allow developers to build 247 new houses on a wooded property between Aldie and Brambleton that was zoned at the time for only 29 houses. In introducing the motion, Supervisor Kershner commented that he didn’t like more houses, but he liked the builder and the subdivision was “an attractive and innovative design.”

Our supervisors pay a lot of lip service to the unique, irreplaceable value of western Loudoun and the importance of preserving it. However, they have not seen fit to stop approving more development. When elected as Supervisor for the Catoctin District, I will change that.

John Ellis
Hillsboro, Independent Candidate for Catoctin District Supervisor