‘Who’s the customer?’ Mayor Fraser asks 

Zoning Ordinance discussion grows heated

By Valerie Cury

Both the May 5 Purcellville Planning Commission meeting and the May 9 Special Joint Purcellville Town Council and Planning Commission meeting shed light on two opposing points of view regarding the Town’s Comprehensive Plan. 

On one side is Town Attorney Sally Hankins, who doesn’t want to follow the Comprehensive Plan. Along with ZoneCo, she has proposed a new map, adding new dense zones to already vetted areas. 

On the other side is the Planning Commission, who wants to use the zoning map in the already approved Comprehensive Plan when updating the Town’s Zoning Ordinance.  

Early in the May 9 Joint Special Town Council and Planning Commission meeting, Hankins tried to defend her position of letting ZoneCo present a map that wasn’t in line with the Comprehensive Plan. However, the Planning Commission had already decided not to use the map at their May 5 meeting.

Council Member and Council Liaison to the Planning Commission Stan Milan was asking Hankins questions when she interrupted him, trying to talk over others who had also started to speak. Mayor Kwasi Fraser quickly gained control of the meeting using his gavel. 

“At the end of the day I have asked this question, ‘Who is the customer?’ If we have multiple customers and multiple interests, we’ll have meetings like these,” Fraser cautioned. “I do not want the Planning Commissioners to come to us with 35-line items of concern every other week or every month.” 

Fraser explained it was up to the Planning Commission to work from the Town’s Comprehensive Plan map. “We need to clearly define that the Planning Commission is the customer. The Comprehensive Plan is the statement of work, and the vendor [ZoneCo] needs to comply with the Comprehensive Plan. End of story.

“We should not have a vendor coming up with creative maps. The Comprehensive Plan clearly states what the map is, don’t you agree? I see you nodding, so we need to do that.”

Council Member Joel Grewe, who ran on a pro-growth platform (unopposed by a slow growth candidate) and was the lone vote opposing the Comprehensive Plan, said he wanted to hear the consultant.

 “I’ve seen this game 1,000 times,” Fraser countered. “If I have a vendor come in that is clearly not going with my statement of work, it is a waste of my time to listen to that vendor. I see a plan from the vendor that is not in alignment with the map in the Comprehensive Plan.

“My concern goes back to who is the customer? We can not have multiple customers and multiple meetings.” 

Fraser continued, “The Planning Commissioners were each interviewed and selected to be champions of this Comprehensive Plan, to make sure that we then go through the next phase of the Comprehensive Plan, which is the zoning execution … We have one member as a liaison. If there are any items that are major, that member should come back to the Town Council and educate us on that. The process should be between, you, the vendor, and the client, and that’s it.”

Hankins interjected that the maps weren’t “necessarily different.”

Fraser responded, “This map is very confusing, and we can try to describe it a thousand different ways. I’ll walk away being confused with this map versus the map in the Comprehensive Plan.”

He elaborated with an example. “On the eastern part of the Town of Purcellville, I remember we had a lot of debate, a lot of deliberation on how we ensure that the traffic circle does not become inundated and agreed that the land uses that are still there would be agricultural commercial [O’Toole and DiPalma-Kipfer properties]. 

“When I see a map that shows where the Dunkin’ Donuts is and it is the same color as the quadrant agricultural commercial, it gives me pause and that’s where the confusion is.”

Council Member Chris Bertaut said the Comprehensive Plan is “laid out as a done deal … Let’s do what’s in scope first and then add values by suggesting changes consistent with the Comprehensive Plan. We can avoid confusion, and we can avoid contention if we stick with the map that came with the Comprehensive Plan.”

At the May 5 Planning Commission Meeting, Planning Commissioner Nedim Ogelman said, “There are mismatches between the physical geographic use desires articulated in our Comprehensive Plan and the layout of the first draft zoning map … It feels like there’s a disconnect between what it says in the Comprehensive Plan … and this first draft of the zoning map … they [ZoneCo] would say that it’s an iterative process [open for change, revision].” 

Ogelman said the consultant should instead follow what the Planning Commission wants. “I’m looking for the zoning map and the uses aligning with the Comprehensive Plan.’ 

Milan said ZoneCo Lead Principal Sean Suder should focus on the areas that are “all in alignment with the Comprehensive Plan.” Looking at Suder’s comments, he added, “There’s a disconnect there.”

Ogelman said, “I feel like the effort and the work we did to provide feedback on the draft they [ZoneCo] did and their response to us is not commensurate. We are talking about a policy issue here, not a legal issue.”

“Something is very backwards. I don’t feel like we should be taking a zoning map that has had no citizen input and looking to reshuffle the Comprehensive Plan that is based on citizen input to accommodate” a draft zoning map that ZoneCo has created.

“The direction should be the opposite,” Ogleman reasoned. “It should be how is the zoning ordinance aligning to what our citizens said in our deliberative democratic process and what they want.”

Planning Commission Chair Nan Forbes said, “The maps that are in the Comprehensive Plan are presumptively correct … The idea that we are going to have to go back and find places over and over where they [ZoneCo] have essentially redrawn the lines without explanation, without anything except here it is, strikes me as being backwards … There is already a map which has been approved by the Town Council.

“We are essentially being told ‘don’t bother us,’ and it doesn’t feel very good.” Forbes pointed out that even at the Town Council level at a previous meeting the Council did “not want to see a lot of changes made to the existing Comprehensive Plan.” 

Forbes continued, “At least a month ago, prior to this map being delivered, we had a product … that we wanted to keep in place … and yet in spite of that pretty specific guidance, this map was delivered … and appeared to be a deliberate mismatch from the Comprehensive Plan.”

“The map in the Comprehensive Plan is good. If the goal is to be on time and not spend money, they [ZoneCo] should do what they were directed to do a month, a month and a half ago,” Forbes contended. “Don’t make us go back and reinvent the wheel and have to explain all over again why we did what we did – and that’s the position we are being put in.”

Milan said ZoneCo should be concentrating on what the focus group wanted them to follow and they have deviated from that a second time. “We are the client; they are not the client. We have given them an outline of how we want this to be.”

Ogelman said, “There is one thing that should be guiding them [ZoneCo], and that’s how we get as close to the desires of the Comprehensive Plan as possible … but to just tell us ‘don’t worry about your Comprehensive Plan and we’ll come up with something’ – that doesn’t work.”

Planning Commissioner Boo Bennett said she “doesn’t have the desire to have a discussion if it is not part of the Comprehensive Plan. We are spending money and I want to spend it wisely – not just the money, but the time.” 

Ogelman said that there were areas in the Town on the official zoning map that are classified as planned development housing, which comes with retail, commercial and other kinds of dense uses. But the areas are built out with single family housing. 

In the Comprehensive Plan, the citizens wanted to sustain these areas as single family residential. “It doesn’t make sense to me to leave them in the zoning ordinance with a battery of use categories that don’t exist there,” Ogelman argued.

In ZoneCo’s draft map, a proposed Trail Oriented District would encompass properties north and south of the W&OD Trail running from Hatcher on the east to beyond 21st Street on the west. This would add commercial, office and apartments to an area that would not be in line with the Comprehensive Plan. Multi family housing is not allowed in this district, and development is supposed to be in line with the existing neighborhoods.

The contract with ZoneCo, the company hired by senior management to work with the Planning Commission to implement the Town’s updated Zoning Ordinance, was signed in January 2022, with a completion date of 16 months. The Planning Commission is in the fifth month of trying to move forward with the 16-month goal. 

In emails on the night of the May 5 Planning Commission meeting, Hankins pressed Sean Suder to attend the joint meeting on May 9 and present his proposed map, despite the Planning Commission’s desire to use the approved Comprehensive Plan zoning map. Hankins also urged him to present the proposed TO District. Suder wrote, “If we are simply mapping the comp plan future land use map… we can do that and there is no need for a working meeting [on May 9]. There is nothing to discuss.”