Election Year Jitters Fill Out Agenda

By Sandhya Somashekhar (Contact)

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Developers and other companies are rushing to have their projects approved by the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors before the end of the year, fearing a shift to a slow-growth board after the Nov. 6 election could hamper their plans.

In the six weeks between the election and the end of the term, the board is expected to consider more than 50 items, so many that at least one extra public hearing has been scheduled to get through them. Not all the items involve development, but the meeting agendas include six controversial cellphone towers and three large developments that could add thousands of homes to the county.

Plowing through 50 items in that period is unprecedented, and the timing of some of the more contentious projects is suspicious, said board Chairman Scott K. York (I).

“I think that some of this stuff — not all of it — has been put on hold by the applicant for the pure purpose to end up after the election but to be voted on before the end of this board’s term,” he said.

The projects could have a cooler reception in January if control of the board shifts from pro-growth Republicans, who make up the majority of the nine-member board. By acting after the election, the Republicans can support controversial proposals without worrying about a voter backlash, York said.

His concern is shared by other supervisors who support slowing the growth rate in the county, which has nearly doubled in population in the past seven years to almost 270,000 residents.

“It’s rushed,” Supervisor Sarah R. “Sally” Kurtz (D-Catoctin) said. “Good projects are going to be good projects even though they have public scrutiny. When they are controversial and appear to be rushed through, you’ve got to wonder.”

Developers said if they are rushing, it is because they have spent months, often years, to adjust their projects to fit the current supervisors’ demands. They said they want their projects on the agenda before the end of the year to avoid the uncertainty of having to deal with a different board.

Bruce E. Tulloch (R-Potomac), vice chairman of the board, said the heavy workload at the end of the term is simple coincidence. Although the chairman has traditionally had the power to set the agenda in Loudoun, the board’s Republican majority stripped York of that role and gave it to Tulloch.

“All the planets aligned,” he said. “I can tell you that staff didn’t plan it this way.”

Developers said they are concerned, in part, because recent elections have produced dramatic changes in Loudoun’s board and in the board’s approach to growth and development.

This time, six Democratic challengers are running on a slow-growth platform as they try to unseat a Republican majority that they say has approved too many homes, contributing to school crowding, traffic congestion and high taxes.

The Republicans contend that their pro-growth reputation is ill-deserved, noting that last year they rejected a proposal for as many as 33,800 homes south of Dulles International Airport.

It is not unusual for elected officials to rush to tie up loose ends as their terms finish. But 50 items is unusual; when the last board left office in 2003, it had fewer than 30 items on its post-election public hearing agendas.

Typically, when elected officials are leaving office, they will leave controversial decisions to their successors. But the board that left in 2003 — with York at its helm — decided not to defer a vote on a major tax break for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which was opening a research campus in Ashburn.

As their parting action, members of that board voted for the nonprofit tax exemption, which this year alone totaled $3.6 million. The vote was opposed by many incoming supervisors, including Mick Staton Jr. (R-Sugarland Run).

“For Mr. York to be complaining about this year, all I have to do is hearken back to four years ago when they rushed through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute tax exemption to make sure it got voted on before we got in office,” Staton said.

But York and others said this year is different. Among the more controversial items scheduled to come up Dec. 11 is Ridgewater Park, a project of homes and shops proposed by developer Leonard S. “Hobie” Mitchel that has failed before the board in two previous iterations.

Supervisor James Burton (I-Blue Ridge) said this version of the project has gone through the county’s system more quickly than is customary and would set a troubling precedent if approved.

“It has no business coming forward again,” Burton said of the project, which called for nearly 2,000 homes when it was rejected in March. “This is a slightly reduced version.”

Mitchel said his company has scaled back the project dramatically, from 4,200 homes in the first version to fewer than 1,000, to make it more appealing to county officials. He also removed a controversial plan to build houses alongside Goose Creek, a key source of water to Loudoun residents.

He acknowledged that he is hoping to get the project approved before the end of the year but said it has nothing to do with politics.

“I’m just anxious to get this done because I’ve been working on it for so long with this board and this Planning Commission,” Mitchel said. “I’d like to finish with a group that’s familiar with it so I don’t have to start all over again.”

Also controversial are six cellphone towers proposed by Community Wireless Structures for northwestern Loudoun. The towers would improve cellphone coverage and Internet service, but they have been opposed by residents who worry that they will mar the landscape.

Robert M. Gordon, an investor, said that the company would like to go before the board by the end of the term but that “it is not something negative or underhanded or something like that,” he said.

“The land-use process is a brutal, brutal process,” Gordon said, noting that his proposal has been percolating for more than a year. “Our concern is, you really don’t know what’s going to happen after the end of the year, especially if there’s a big turnover.”

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