Urban Development Areas: SB274

Virginia's Senate Bills #274 and 291 would, if enacted, "make urban development areas optional rather than mandatory." Here's SB274:

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?121+ful+SB274

If you search lis.virginia.gov for "urban development," you'll find #291 there also, plus lots of House Bills and alternative wordings.

No, I didn't suddenly skip from HB999 to SB274 all by myself. While I was offline over the weekend and neck-deep in knitwear yesterday, more dedicated bill readers have been forging ahead to Virginia Senate Bills #274 and 291. I received alerts in the e-mail. What follows is an edited version of what I forwarded to State Senator Carrico...who's not on the committee weeding these bills. I hope a few constituents of the senators on that committee will see this post today.

Please count this voter in favor of recognizing the public right to opt out of "urban development" schemes. Not only do I support making "urban development areas" optional rather than mandatory, and subjecting any plans for them to a public vote (SB274 is better than SB291); I see no reason to hold "urban development" plans up for reconsideration only until July of this year and, in fact, think we need a bill allowing the citizens to vote to reclaim any "urban development" that may already have occurred.

If it is local "planning committees" that want to force these "urban developments" onto unsuspecting small towns and rural areas, please feel free to share with them the experience of Scott County. Our Board of Supervisors notified people of their right to attend a meeting and discuss the proposed zoning ordinance. I was there, and the sense of the meeting was solidly opposed to the zoning ordinance. The Board went ahead and voted for it anyway...and now we have a new Board. And we'll continue to have all-new Boards until we get a Board that recognizes that Virginia does not need to turn our beautiful rural scenery into a Euro-style ruin split between huge fiefs for the rich and slums for the poor.

You might also want to remind them that, in case of any natural emergency, densely populated areas are mass death zones. Compare the thousands of lives lost in New York with the back-to-business response in Arlington on September 12, 2001. Compare the plagues and atrocities that followed Hurricane Katrina with the orderly and neighborly behavior that followed the Clinchport Flood. Yes, these stories make us proud of being Virginians, but our ability to cope with disasters does not come from our identity alone; it has even more to do with our lower population density.

Let's keep Scott County beautiful, sparsely populated, and safe, and help other communities in Virginia stay clean and healthy likewise.