
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, December 14, 1993                   TAG: 9312140198
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

OPEN-SPACE PLAN VOTED DOWN BY BOARD

A blueprint for efforts to preserve open countryside went down in defeat Monday after several members of the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors said it was too far-reaching and would begin to erode landowners' rights.

The board defeated the conservation and development plan by a 5-2 vote. Only Supervisors Joe Gorman and Jim Moore, both of Blacksburg, favored it.

The decision ended two years of work by elected and appointed officials, planners and hundreds of county residents who participated in workshops to shape the document, known as the open-space plan.

After two years of study, the county Planning Commission recommended approval of the plan 4-1 in October.

A subsequent effort by Gorman to have the county Planning Commission revisit key sections of the hefty document and send them back to the Board of Supervisors also failed 5-2, with Gorman and Supervisor Henry Jablonski in the minority.

The plan included zoning innovations such as planned-unit developments, which while new to Montgomery, are used in other areas, including Roanoke County. A planned-unit development allows a mixture of residential, commercial and recreational uses with the intent of making the most efficient use of space and preserving some natural features of the landscape.

For Randi Lemmon, a Brush Mountain resident who is a land planner in private practice, the defeat is only part of a long-term process that began in 1988. The next step will be trying to move along with parts of the plan that the Board of Supervisors favored, said Lemmon, one of many people who volunteered time to help develop the draft.

In voting down the plan, which would have been an amendment to Montgomery's 1990 comprehensive plan, several supervisors said they had fielded numerous phone calls against it from property owners wary of government attempts to control how they use their land.

Board Chairman Ira Long, for instance, had been silent on the issue. But before the vote, Long, who represents the rural Prices Fork, Longshop and McCoy areas of western Montgomery, said he would not vote for the plan even if it was revised because it would infringe on landowners rights.

Shawsville and Elliston-area Supervisor Joe Stewart, previously the most outspoken opponent of the effort, said in "no way, shape, fashion or form" would he vote for the plan.

Though the planners and public who drafted the document stressed that the bulk of its recommendations were voluntary and provided tools for wise development, Stewart scoffed at that. "First thing you know, it won't be volunteer . . . [it will be] you do it," he said.

by CNB