THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 5, 1996 TAG: 9605030195
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 55 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: DECISION 96
ELECTION GUIDE
SOURCE: BY MAC DANIEL AND ELIZABETH THIEL, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 118 lines
EDITOR'S NOTE: In community conversations with Chesapeake citizens held during the campaign, growth and the city's response to it was identified over and over as the issue of greatest concern in choosing members of the City Council. This report first appeared in the April 24 edition of The Virginian-Pilot.
The population of Manhattan grew 101 percent in its first 30 years.
That's nothing.
Since 1963, when South Norfolk merged with Norfolk County to form present-day Chesapeake, the city's population has grown 140 percent, rocketing
Chesapeake into the ranks of the nation's fastest-growing cities.
And as once-rural Deep Creek begins to become the next densely populated area, many new and longtime Chesapeake residents are concerned.
They wonder if the city is doing anything to stem the tide of growth and worry that Chesapeake lacks the amenities, such as recreation centers, common to a city its size.
City leaders and planning officials say Chesapeake is doing all it can to control and even benefit from growth.
In many ways, Chesapeake city officials say, residents should blame the state, not them, for the congestion. The city has unsuccessfully asked the General Assembly many times for growth-control legislation.
``There are a lot of misconceptions out there about what the city can and can't do,'' said Brent R. Nielson, the city's planning director.
For instance, there are roughly 5,300 acres of vacant property in Chesapeake already zoned for residential development, according to the city Planning Department.
That's enough land for an estimated 19,000 homes, apartments or townhouses - and there's little the city can do to prevent them, officials said.
Chesapeake's rapid growth can be traced to several factors. But the groundwork was laid in 1969 when the entire city was rezoned under a Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance.
The rezoning was done to meld the zoning ordinances of the former Norfolk County and South Norfolk. About 5,000 acres were designated residential, much of the land in the western half of the city.
Immediately, the residentially rezoned land became easy pickings for developers. Developers could build with only a basic review by the Planning Commission, which has no authority to deny a development that is in compliance
with the city's zoning ordinance and other city codes.
``If the zoning is on the property,'' said Nielson, ``it's almost impossible to change it.''
Since the mass rezoning, Chesapeake has seen spurts of heavy growth and has
earned the tag line of Virginia's fastest-growing city. At times, it has been one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation.
Chesapeake recently began some major efforts to control residential growth and its impact on nearby communities. Those efforts have helped drop the city's growth rate substantially, from 4.24 percent in 1994 to 2.32 percent in
1995.
In November 1992, the City Council approved a new proffer policy to get developers to help pay for the cost of growth. Since then, anyone who wished to rezone residential property to higher-density uses has been encouraged to agree to proffers that will help offset expected costs to the city.
Proffers can be money for schools or roads. They can also include land dedications, architectural commitments or extra landscaping and buffering.
State law prohibits Chesapeake from requiring proffers, but when rezoning land, the city can favor developers who volunteer proffers.
At one point, Chesapeake was getting some of the highest cash proffers in Virginia for schools - $6,000 per new home, according to Nielson.
In addition, the city's staff always encourages the developer to limit the number of homes to be built each year, Nielson said.
The City Council adopted another major step to handle growth last summer when it approved the Planning and Land Use Policy - a document that instituted
a new standard called ``levels of service.''
Levels of service works like this: If a piece of land is proposed to be rezoned, from agricultural to residential, for example, the city's staff analyzes the impact of that development on local roads, schools and other city
services. If the proposed rezoning will have too negative an impact on the levels of service, the staff recommends denial.
The proffer and levels-of-service policies do not apply to previously zoned
land. Still, they seem to have had an impact.
Before the policies were in place, City Council approved an average of between 30 and 55 properties for rezoning each year; more than half of those were residential.
Last year, Chesapeake had only two rezonings, both of which were residential.
But it is the large stock of already rezoned vacant land that has residents
scared.
During recent workshops on the capital budget, City Council members discussed asking voters to approve a tax increase rather than bonds to pay for
new school construction. The city's debt limit has reached an all-time high, and city officials are concerned that, without a tax increase, the city's ability to get low-interest loans will be hampered.
The candidates appear to be thinking differently, however. At a forum in Chesapeake for City Council last week, all but one said they would not raise taxes. Only Mayor William E. Ward would not rule out an increase within five years.
Some of Virginia Beach's ability to provide amenities despite growth has been attributable to money brought in by tourists every year, a seasonal boost
to its economy that surrounding cities do not have.
Still, Chesapeake has an economic diversity that the resort city might envy.
Virginia Beach is heavily dependent on residential revenue, with only about
20 percent of its tax base coming from business and industry. That means residents are bearing most of the tax burden.
``Residential property, unless it's very expensive, just doesn't support the services that are needed,'' said Beach City Manager James K. Spore.
By comparison, a third of Chesapeake's tax base comes from commercial, office or industrial sources.
KEYWORDS: PUBLIC JOURNALISM COMMUNITY CONVERSATION GROWTH by CNB