County Road Plan Hitting Some Bumps

Some Supervisors Say It's Taking Too Long

By Derek Kravitz (Contact)

Thursday, July 23, 2009

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors and its Planning Commission are feuding over changes in the county’s transportation plan, an exhaustive blueprint for building and maintaining roads and highways over the next two decades, according to county officials and e-mail correspondence.

The Countywide Transportation Plan is the key policy document on land and infrastructure development. Updated every five years per state code, the CTP outlines how the county plans to address its transportation needs. Among the most notable changes in the latest plan is the widening of several major arteries, including routes 7 and 28, and safety improvements to Route 15 in Lucketts.

County planners started updating the document in 2006, and the Planning Commission began its work in March. The nine-member commission must vote on the transportation plan before the supervisors can take formal action on it. On Tuesday, the supervisors approved a timeline for completing work on the plan.

But some county officials, including Supervisors Chairman Scott K. York (I), have accused the Planning Commission of taking far too long to finish its revisions to the plan and of overstepping its authority. Supervisors have said that a handful of planning commissioners might have boycotted a June 25 work session. York’s office filed a Freedom of Information Act request this month to be granted access to the e-mails of Planning Commission member Sandra Chaloux (Dulles)

“What concerns me is what seems to be a big disconnect in the commission with their seeming inability to get the Countywide Transportation Plan together under the time frame the board has asked them to get it done,” said York, a former planning commissioner.

Peggy Maio, chairman of the commission, said supervisors and planning commissioners have been debating the amount of work left on the plan.

“There was an expectation that the same draft plan that had been used before we were elected in 2007 would be where we would pick up,” Maio said following Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. “But as any commission would want to do, we want to look at it with fresh eyes.

Chaloux said the commission’s hectic work schedule reduces the amount of time devoted to thoughtful long-term planning. She pointed to the 1,500 comments received from the public about the transportation plan.

“Transportation is one of the biggest concerns that residents have,” Chaloux said. “As a county, we need to really spend some time and think about our transportation network, beyond just the road plan.” She said that officials need to better plan for the possibility of a Metro extension into Loudoun County, which has not received federal funding but tentatively has been scheduled for completion in 2016.

Copies of the e-mails obtained by The Washington Post do not indicate a formal boycott but do show a displeasure by commissioners, including Chaloux, about the group’s work schedule, which has increased from two meetings per month to, at times, three meetings per week.

In one e-mail, dated June 20, Commissioner Michael J. Keeney (Sugarland Run) responded to a proposal to add a Saturday work session to the schedule, writing: “Adding additional work sessions does not to me seem to be an acceptable solution to a crushing workload that is already moving too fast to ensure quality. I have plans for that weekend, will be traveling during the next week, and do not expect to be available.”

Also at issue is a flurry of e-mails regarding a June 23 meeting at Rust Sanctuary between Chaloux, another planning commissioner, Gigi Robinson (Leesburg), and two Loudoun staffers of the Piedmont Environmental Council, Gem Bingol and Edward P. Gorski. The council is a land-preservation group that has helped shape outlying parts of Northern Virginia with its anti-sprawl efforts.

Chaloux said she viewed the council just as “any other stakeholder.”

But York said, “There seems to be a heavy connection between the Piedmont Environmental Council and some members of the Planning Commission. I don’t know the right or wrong of that. That’s something that needs to be evaluated by the public.”

Tagged: Board of Supervisors, environment, Loudoun Planning Commission, Lucketts, Northern Virginia, Route 15, Route 28, Route 7, traffic, transportation

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