THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 23, 1994 TAG: 9412220148
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
Virginia Beach, with its abundance of Great Outdoors, now has an Outdoors Plan. It'll take public participation and public money. It can use even more than it's gotten of both.
The goal is primarily recreational and preservational - keeping natural, open spaces more natural and open to varied leisure activities than parks and playgrounds are. Key to the Outdoors Plan is integrating greenways, waterways, parks, paths and such into residential and commercial areas, and linking greenways, trails and such with each other. If one end result is easier access in and around a less crowded town by other than motorized vehicles, so much the better, for the city's health and its citizens'. It's a sign of the times that so many devotees of exercise wouldn't think of walking the two miles to their gym.
It's also a sign of how inhospitable, not to say dangerous, to walkers, hikers and cyclists much of suburbia can be. Space for such ``passive'' recreation is, like soccer and softball fields, an amenity that will help sell the city and could cover its own cost. It could help to sell houses that suit home builders', buyers' and the city's needs, particularly if the city finds (as the plan recommends) more flexible ways to encourage developers to dedicate open space and homeowners' associations to maintain it. City staff are mapping existing and potential open spaces. They'll propose projects to the citizenry for approval and suggestions.
The Outdoors Plan is less a program than a process, and homeowners' associations and civic leagues, with which city staff plan to consult regularly, are great ways to get that component crucial to the process, public participation. But they aren't the only ways. The outdoors management and acquisition committees don't now include citizen representatives, only elected and appointed city officials and city staff; could they? For now, city staff will present the plan on request to organizations and civic leagues. They'll take written and phoned suggestions from individuals regarding procedures and projects. Take them up on the offer: For city and citizens alike, sooner is better than later for public involvement in the process and the projects. And formal provision for it is preferable to a promise.
When the plans and procedures come off the drawing board, will Outdoors have the money? City Council diverted the funding for the first year of the Outdoors Plan, some $1.6 million, to the purchase of Lake Ridge. City staffers understand that those funds, a designated portion of the real-estate tax, will come back to them come July. There's another promise that could use formalizing. by CNB