Remarks to the Prince William Planning Commission: September 28, 2022

My name is Bill Wright and I live in Gainesville.  I oppose the land use chapter update being pushed through in a single evening.  Your recommendation must be deferred until there is greater public understanding of what is being proposed.  Like maybe discuss it with affected residents.

The Planning Commission should be smarting from the public rebuke it received for its sham hearing on the Prince William Digital Gateway just two weeks ago.  Have you learned anything from that experience?  Possibly not, because here we are again poised to quickly run extraordinarily impactful changes past an uninformed public.

The land use chapter is an exhaustive document that the average citizen cannot possibly digest and review in a single evening.   It is too important and sweeping to be thoroughly understood and commented upon tonight. 

A cursory review of this complex document reveals a developer’s Christmas tree which needs to be surgically dissected to uncover all the land mines planted underneath it by salivating developers and enabled by an overwhelmed county staff.  Citizens should not have to play “Where’s Waldo?” on their own time to unearth every time bomb.  

The general public does not have the time and expertise to notice or interpret many subtle changes which may have significant impacts.  Let me give you two high profile two examples of how the county intends to catch us napping.  They just make minor alterations to the land use map where zoning designations are changed without even mentioning them in the plan update text.  The differences between the February and current versions of the land use maps indicate the characterization of the Devlin Technology Park area was changed from a designation consistent with the surrounding residential areas to a designation consistent with nearby data center areas.  Thus, by approving the Comprehensive Plan update, you surreptitiously enable the Devlin Technology Park, thereby circumventing the contentious CPA review process.  The same thing was done with the controversial John Marshall Commons.  Both of these projects recently had their public hearings deferred. 

We would normally expect professional government staff and elected officials to look out for our best interests, but recent experience confirms they cannot be trusted to do so.

Citizens are wise to the con of bogus promises of lowering our taxes while we give multi-billion-dollar tech companies a 60% discount.  Despite current runaway development our property tax burden was increased and the supervisors added a new meals tax.

 The land use chapter is too important and sweeping to be relegated to a late-night railroading.  It is integrated with other chapters and cannot be voted on separately.  If the Supervisors are confident of their vision for the future of this county, they should exhibit the transparency to explain it to the citizens and the courage to debate it during the upcoming 2023 election cycle.

County government has been working overtime to undermine public trust.  It’s time for you to restore it.  Say no to developer gold mines and citizen land mines.  Vote to defer!  Keep the public hearing open.