THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 14, 1995 TAG: 9507130148
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH THIEL AND FRANCIE LATOUR, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 113 lines
When civic leaders banded together this week, their aim was to quell what had become for them a vivid nightmare:
Roads clogged with vehicles, school grounds choked with portable classrooms and sewer and water systems strained by too much demand - each problem spiraling steadily out of control as 23,000 new homes, apartments, townhouses and condos threaten to pop up from the 6,000 acres of undeveloped land in the city now zoned for residences.
The civic groups' solution was to demand that the City Council give voters a chance to speak out on a law designed to give the city the power to plan for, rather than react to, encroaching residential development.
``We want a change of life in Chesapeake,'' said Gene Waters, president of the Chesapeake Council of Civic Organizations. ``I can't believe that our citizens would be denied the right to vote on this issue.''
But they were.
While some council members agree that not enough has been done to rein in development in Virginia's fastest-growing city, a majority said a growth-control law called ``adequate public facilities'' was not the way to proceed.
In a 5-4 vote Tuesday, that majority also told citizens they would not approve a special referendum that would give citizens a chance to express collectively their feelings about the growth overtaking their city.
The vote in November would have asked citizens whether to ask the General Assembly for the authority to halt all new construction of new homes until schools, roads and utilities are in place to serve them, or until the developer agrees to pay for the services. State legislators repeatedly have denied Chesapeake permission to take such action.
Voting for the referendum were councilmen John M. de Triquet, Alan P. Krasnoff, Vice Mayor Robert T. Nance Jr. and Dalton S. Edge.
Voting against the measure were John E. Allen, John W. Butt, W. Joe Newman, Peter P. Duda Jr. and Mayor William E. Ward.
Developers have said that measures to limit building on residentially zoned property would inflate housing costs and put a moratorium on growth in the city.
Ward said council members, themselves residents of this rapidly growing city, are sensitive to the growing pains residents face.
``Councils past and present have taken affirmative steps to manage growth,'' he said.
Some of those steps, he said, include a proffer system, in which developers have since 1993 offered to pay up to $6,000 per unit to offset the impact of their projects on nearby services.
And a new policy implemented this year automatically denies rezoning requests where roads, sewers or schools are beyond or approaching certain standards.
But the 6,000 acres of land already zoned for residential development aren't covered by either of those tools, which is what civic leaders are worried about.
Councilman John W. Butt put it this way to the residents who flooded the council meeting in favor of cuffing development: ``If I told you tonight that you could not sell your house because of some regulation the city might have, or that you could not sell your land for development, you'd be hopping mad.''
Butt seemed to paint two conflicting pictures of the city. One one hand, he defended the city's growth and assured the audience that the ``sky was not falling'' in Chesapeake, contrary to their fears.
Then, in the same breath, the veteran council member said he feared for his children and grandchildren, who would be driven out of Chesapeake if the city continues on a growth-control path that is unfriendly to businesses.
In his argument against citizens' pleas for growth control and the right to vote, Councilman W. Joe Newman included everything from Federal Reserve interest rates to Ross Perot to former U.S. Sen. George McGovern to the national health care debate. Even though the plan to control growth is popular and sounds good, Newman said, it is much more complex beneath the surface than citizens may realize.
Ward, Butt and Newman suggested exploring alternatives to solving the growth problem. One solution would follow Virginia Beach's lead, paying property owners for the development rights to their land.
But citizens said that after years of promising to study other solutions, they were losing patience and trust in their council members.
``Despite all the studies that have been done, the documents that have been produced, and the speeches made, nothing has been accomplished,'' said Charles S. O'Rourke, a Deep Creek resident. ``And now, we are frustrated.''
Councilman Alan P. Krasnoff said his colleagues' unwillingness to pursue adequate public facilities laws did not square with their past decisions.
``We already use the same logic for rezonings,'' Krasnoff said, referring to the council's policy to deny requests by builders to rezone land if schools, roads and sewers falls below certain fixed standards.
``Why not do it across the board for zoned land?'' he asked.
The council's discussion also raised another question: Why have council members asked state legislators to support the bill when a majority of them don't support it themselves.
Councilman Peter P. Duda Jr. blamed everyone from state legislators to residents for the city's heavy growth, and admonished the audience to contact their state legislators if they want to be heard.
Duda also cast the push for a referendum as a political ploy by fellow councilmen, who he said were looking to get reelected.
``You're sitting out there, and you're being pawns for a political agenda,'' Duda told residents who attended the council meeting. ``I'm not going to stand by and watch you get used as pawns.''
The arguments angered civic leaders, who said they had been building grass roots support for adequate public facilities laws before the referendum was introduced by city politicians.
``To sit here and witness a group of elected officials speak to a group of citizens, residents and voters, and lecture to them about what they don't know, and deny us our right as citizens to be heard. . . I'm just amazed,'' said Bea Hudson, president of the Mill Creek/Elm Wood Landing Civic League in Deep Creek, where residential developments are springing up quickly along Cedar Road.
``We have been denied the right to voice our opinions, and that's absurd,'' Waters said.
KEYWORDS: CHESAPEAKE CITY COUNCIL by CNB