Candidates Address How to Handle Growth, Development

Most Candidates Support a Get-Tough Approach to Development

By Arianne Aryanpur (Contact)

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Most of the candidates for the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, including a majority of the board, advocate a tougher stance toward developers as a key means of controlling the pace of growth in Loudoun, according to their responses to a questionnaire.

Some said the board should stop approving rezonings that increase the density of residential development. Others said the board needs to impose impact fees, demand more proffers, or financial commitments, from developers and be more aggressive in enforcing proffer agreements. Six of 19 candidates did not specifically call for more restrictive policies or new tools to control development.

The candidates responded via e-mail to a questionnaire from LoudounExtra.com, The Washington Post's Web site for Loudoun news. Mark A. Albright, the Republican nominee in the Catoctin District, was the only candidate among the 20 running for the board who did not answer the questionnaire.

Asked whether they supported the county's current comprehensive plan, which calls for Loudoun to be suburban in the east and rural in the west, with a transition area in between, 10 candidates gave the plan unqualified backing. The others either said they favored some changes in the plan or did not answer the question directly.

There was broader consensus on the issue of how to generate more revenue to pay for road improvements in Loudoun, with many of the candidates citing the special tax district that paid for interchanges along Route 28 as a model that should be used to fund improvements in other corridors.

Gauging Growth Controls

The comments on zoning and development came in response to the question, "Do you believe that any additional steps are needed to control the pace of growth in Loudoun?"

The board's chairman, Scott K. York (I), said the first step was to "say no to Comprehensive Plan Amendments that would add tens of thousands of new homes like what was proposed by the majority of this Board."

The Democratic candidates challenging Republican incumbents mostly gave answers similar to York's.

"We've been building too many houses, way too fast," said Stevens Miller (D), running in the Dulles District. Susan K. Buckley (D), running for the Sugarland Run seat, called overdevelopment Loudoun's biggest problem, "resulting in Sugarland Run residents facing more traffic gridlock, higher taxes, and an overburdened school system."

Jeanne R. West (D), running in the Sterling District, said the board needs to stop rezoning property from commercial to residential. She also suggested that mixed-use developments be "built in phases," instead of allowing all the homes in the project to be built first.

Republican incumbents Bruce E. Tulloch, Jim Clem and Lori L. Waters called for stronger efforts to force developers to build roads and other infrastructure to offset the impact of additional homes.

Tulloch, the Potomac supervisor, said the state should give local governments the power "to reject development plans if roads in the area and the region are too congested to support them."

Clem, representing the Leesburg District, said the county must demand "more and better proffers" from developers.

Waters, the incumbent in Broad Run, suggested that the board revoke building permits when developers fail to comply with proffers, "embrace impact fees for by-right development" and "require upfront proffers for rezoning applications that bring benefits to current residents."

Mick Staton Jr. (R), the incumbent in Sugarland Run, took a different view, saying that growth in Loudoun has slowed by more than 50 percent since the current board took office in 2004.

"We are collecting more from developers than ever before in Loudoun's history. We are getting more road improvements from developers than ever before, and more of them are being built up front, before any homes are built," he said. Staton called for more "consistency" in land-use policy, saying that "wild swings back and forth" create turmoil.

Jack Ryan (I), one of two challengers in Broad Run, said the county "must eliminate . . . inconsistent, capricious and unfair interference in the housing market" and review "all regulations and fees that increase the cost for building homes."

Stephen J. Snow (R), the incumbent in Dulles, and Michael Firetti (R), who is challenging York in the chairman's race, said the county's emphasis should be on working with developers to build planned communities, as opposed to by-right development, which, Firetti said, "means that developers can build without paying for the impact on the community."

Eugene A. Delgaudio (R), the incumbent in Sterling, answered the question about growth controls by citing his efforts to prevent illegal immigrants from converting single-family homes into "high density flophouses."

The candidates who said they supported the county's current comprehensive plan without reservation were York, Delgaudio, West, Buckley, Waters, Tulloch, Jim Burton (I-Blue Ridge), Sarah "Sally" Kurtz (D-Catoctin), Potomac challenger Andrea McGimsey (D) and Broad Run challenger Phyllis J. Randall (D).

Photo: Tracy A. Woodward

Most Loudoun County Board of Supervisor candidates say they support a tougher stance toward developers to control the county's pace of growth. This photo shows a new subdivision in the Aldie area of Loudoun. (File photo)

"It is the 'road map' as to how Loudoun should be developed and it considered many factors, from environmental impacts to . . . collaborative community planning," Randall said.

Snow said, however, that anti-growth advocates have turned the transition area, "much of which is in my district, into a veritable 'Dead Zone.' "

Ryan also took a dim view of the plan. "The professed goal of a suburban east, a transition area and a rural west has instead degenerated into an overburdened east, a patchwork transition area and a freeloading west," he said.

Wanted: High-Paying Firms

In response to a question about how to create more of a balance between new homes and new jobs in the county, most of the candidates said the county needs to do a better job of recruiting high-paying employers, which would increase Loudoun's commercial tax base and improve traffic by locating jobs closer to residents' homes.

Kelly Burk, the Democratic challenger in Leesburg, said that Loudoun needs to be marketed "as more than just a bedroom community for Fairfax." McGimsey said she would work to attract venture capital to the county, citing her experience working for a Fortune 500 company and running a small business.

Ken Mikeman (I), the other challenger in the Potomac District, said many employers do not want to come to Loudoun "because of the zoning and business regulatory hurdles and the ambiguity that exists in the various codes."

Although the candidates agreed about the urgency of relieving traffic congestion in Loudoun, they were mostly critical of the transportation funding package passed this year by the General Assembly. Several candidates said they were against the legislation because it gave an unelected regional panel, the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, the power to levy taxes on local residents. West, Kurtz and Randall said they would have preferred an increase in the state gas tax.

Transportation Fixes

Asked about other ways to generate transportation funds, many candidates cited public-private partnerships such as the Route 28 tax district, in which landowners and businesses along the road agreed to pay most of the cost of building interchanges.

York said that if the taxing power of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority is upheld by the courts, Loudoun's share of the revenue could be used to launch similar partnerships for improvements on routes 7, 50 and 606.

Firetti proposed asking county agencies to trim 5 percent from their budgets and putting the savings into a local transportation fund. He said that could generate up to $70 million a year for transportation upgrades.

Kurtz said she would approve using tolls to finance improvements on routes 7, 15 and 9 if the county were given the power to impose them.

Geary M. Higgins, her Republican challenger in the Catoctin District, suggested more telecommuting, wireless broadband access across the county and bus routes in western Loudoun that would provide access to MARC trains in Maryland at Point of Rocks and Brunswick. "All transportation solutions do not require more asphalt," he said.

West said she favored assessing transportation impact fees, which are allowed by the state, on developers. Miller agreed that the idea was worth exploring.

Several candidates, including Staton, Tulloch and Waters, said they favored continued use of local general obligation bonds to raise transportation money. Ryan disagreed, saying that issuing road bonds that need to be repaid by homeowners through real estate taxes is "very short-sighted and harmful."

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