DATE: Thursday, November 6, 1997            TAG: 9711060004

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Patrick Lackey 

                                            LENGTH:  100 lines

THE OLD QUESTION: PRIVATE VS. PUBLIC GOOD SHOULD THE CITY GAIN THE POWER TO STOP HOMES FROM BEING BUILT WHERE CITY SERVICES ARE INADEQUATE TO SERVE THE INCREASED POPULATION?

Gene Waters had one of the easiest jobs in the world Tuesday.

Outside American Legion Post 280, a polling place on bustling Battlefield Boulevard in the Great Bridge section of Chesapeake, he was persuading voters to sign a petition calling for a referendum aimed at managing growth.

All he usually had to do, actually, was ask voters to sign, and sometimes he didn't even have to do that.

Sue Boyette, a Chesapeake math teacher, parked her car, hopped out and said right off, ``Where is it?''

She meant, of course, the managed-growth petition. She signed it, then voted.

Last year she taught math at a school with 41 portable classrooms. This year she's teaching at brand new Hickory Middle School. It's 95 percent full, she said, and probably will have portable classrooms next year.

It grieves her heart, she said, to see what's happening to Chesapeake, where she's lived 45 years. She said, ``If they wouldn't try to put a kabillion . . . that's a good number for a math teacher . . . a kabillion houses on one small tract, it would be different, but developers control City Council.''

If about 16,500 residents sign the petition, this is the question that will go on the May municipal election ballot:

Should the General Assembly enact legislation authorizing the City of Chesapeake to adopt an ordinance providing that approval of residential subdivision plats and issuance of residential building permits shall be contingent upon the availability of roads, schools, public safety services, water services, and sewer services that are adequate to support development?''

In short, should the city gain the power to stop homes from being built where city services are inadequate to serve the increased population?

Twice previously, by votes of 5-4 and 5-3, City Council has blocked residents' attempts to put such a referendum on the ballot, even though it would be nonbinding.

Then the 1997 General Assembly approved holding advisory referendums with or without local council approval, provided a petition is signed by a number of registered voters equal to a fourth of voters in the previous presidential election.

If the ease with which Waters obtained signatures Tuesday is any indication, the referendum question will be on the ballot and it will pass overwhelmingly.

For one thing, managing growth sounds so much better than not managing growth. For another, Chesapeake's population exploded in the late '80s, clogging roads and crowding schools. Many residents liked the city better before it became the state's fastest growing locality.

The past few years, City Council has greatly restrained growth on land that requires rezoning for development. Council now takes into account whether such construction will overtax city roads, schools, sewage and other services. If so, rezoning is denied, unless the builder agrees to pay to upgrade those services.

The referendum, if approved, would seek to treat property already zoned residential the same way. If building homes on land already zoned for that purpose would overtax city services, building permits would be denied until city services in the area caught up.

Currently, council lacks such powers and thus cannot manage growth on 5,100 acres and an estimated 21,000 lots zoned residential by previous councils, mostly in 1969. That's not good.

Consider this rough rule of thumb: Each new house means 10 more vehicle trips daily and one and a half more kids to teach. Taxes on the house won't nearly pay for the services that have to be provided, unless it costs $200,000 or more.

On the other hand, barring owners of residentially zoned land from building houses on it, at least until city services catch up, lowers the value of that property, often drastically. For that reason, many private-property advocates characterize such action as theft of property rights.

``When I take your property rights away,'' said Robert L. Briggs, former chair of the Chesapeake Planning Commission, ``I'm really taking my own. We don't have too many rights left. We have to protect them as hard as we can.''

Although the vast majority of the petition signers at the American Legion Post were there to vote for conservative candidates (Democrats didn't even bother to post signs), most apparently did not consider barring home construction on land zoned residential to be theft.

Waters, president of the Chesapeake Council of Civic Organizations, said that even as a smoker bears some responsibility for the effects of his smoke on others, a land owner bears some responsibility for what happens to others residents when he builds homes that crowd roads and schools.

Boyette was asked what she would tell landowners prevented from developing their land, even though it was zoned for residential development when they bought it.

``I'd say, `Look around you. You have got to consider the greater good.' I know that's utopian.''

So the kabillion-dollar question facing city leaders today is this: Can they preserve property owners' rights while creating and preserving the city that residents want? It's the old question of private vs. public good.

Over the centuries, cities passed from being controlled by tyrants to being controlled or blocked by individual land owners, each a despot over his own domain. Neither situation is ideal for building livable cities.

One thing is certain: If elected leaders do not determine how fast Chesapeake grows and in which parts, developers will. MEMO: Mr. Lackey is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.

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