Candidates Focus on Western Loudoun Growth

By Sandhya Somashekhar (Contact)

Friday, October 12, 2007

Six candidates for the Loudoun Board of Supervisors promised to bring more attention to the western part of the county Wednesday night at a debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters, which featured contenders from the Catoctin, Blue Ridge and Leesburg districts.

About 75 people attended the debate at Loudoun County High School in Leesburg. During the two-hour event, Supervisor Sarah R. “Sally” Kurtz (D-Catoctin) criticized her colleagues in the suburban east as having had undue influence on what happens in the west.

“This term, it has been the eastern supervisors who have dictated the growth and development in the west,” she said, accusing them of wielding “absolute power” over the supervisors representing the county’s sparsely developed rural reaches.

Late last year, the board voted narrowly to allow some 19,000 new homes to be built in the west, with most of the eastern district supervisors voting yes. Kurtz and others had favored allowing a much smaller number.

Geary Higgins (R), who lost to Kurtz during the last election and is hoping to unseat her this time, said he agreed that the board’s discourse is often acrimonious. But he said Kurtz was at fault, too.

“The board members should operate as professionals,” he said. “They should be able to disagree without being disagreeable, and come together when they need to come together.”

In the Blue Ridge District, incumbent James G. Burton (I) and Mark Albright (R) differed sharply on a plan to build a new high school near Purcellville, on a spot known as Fields Farm. Town officials have opposed the plan, saying it violates a land-use agreement with the county.

Burton has been a strong proponent of building the school near Purcellville despite the concerns of town leaders and just “a pocket of residents,” he said.

“Continued obstructionism, and that’s what’s going on here, will only hurt the children,” he said.

Albright, however, said he agreed with town leaders that the school should be built elsewhere.

“I’ve been talking to a lot of people, and I do not hear that Fields Farm is a good place,” he said. “I hear, anything but Fields Farm.”

In the Leesburg District, incumbent Jim E. Clem (R) defended his initial support, then last-minute rejection, of a project that would have brought up to 1,000 homes near Leesburg Executive Airport.

The development, called Crosstrail, was opposed by the Leesburg Town Council and residents who worried about traffic and the impact on the airport. Supervisors eventually rejected the project.

Clem said he never honestly supported the project, but used it as a bargaining chip with the town over providing water and sewer to the area, where the new county jail also is located. The town was slated to provide the area with utilities, but had balked, he said.

“I had to hold Crosstrail hostage to try to get water and sewer out there to take care of our expansion of the jail,” Clem said.

C. Kelly Burk (D), a Leesburg Town Council member who is running against Clem, said she was pleased that the project eventually was scuttled.

“The town did come forward right away and said that they were against it,” she said. “We made it very clear from the start.”

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