
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 8, 1994                    TAG: 9406080009 
SECTION: FRONT                     PAGE: A14    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: Short 
DATELINE: 940608                                 LENGTH:

CLUSTER ZONINGS DECRIED

{LEAD} I read with interest ``Chesapeake parks'' (editorial, May 20), especially considering your somewhat naive analysis that ``Chesapeake City Council has, in effect, used its zoning power to provide citizens of the community with more green space at no expense to taxpayers.''

Three cluster zonings passed at City Council that week will result in approximately 900 more homes in Virginia's fastest-growing municipality. That will result in thousands more trips on already crowded roads, dozens more children in schools already bursting at the seams, and ever-increasing water demands. These are just some of the expenses to taxpayers which will occur as a result of these actions.

{REST} Yet you would have us applaud a City Council whose members acted in direct contradiction to their recent campaign promises to hold the line on residential growth. To say that these actions were examples of one of ``the creative ways to gratify the wishes of citizens without picking the pockets of taxpayers to do it'' flies in the face of logic and makes your readers wonder just how simple-minded you think we must be.

You were right in saying that ``government can use zoning to enhance and manage a municipality's growth or it can abuse the power.'' These most recent actions by Chesapeake City Council would appear to be the latter, not the former. Please do not add insult to injury by asking us to applaud another in the long list of abuses we subject ourselves to weekly.

JAMES E. WHITENER

Chesapeake, May 23, 1994

by CNB