Strength of a Town

To the Editor:

Jack Kenny’s article [“Being a Player,” September 19-25, 2007] takes the Reston Citizens Association (RCA) to task for not taking positions on each of the development proposals presented to the Reston Planning and Zoning Committee. He seems to believe that RCA should duplicate the efforts of the P&Z committee in determining and presenting the community’s views to the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors on land use issues. We have tried the approach he suggested and found it to be completely ineffective.

Last year, RCA led the community effort to require a comprehensive review of the Planned Residential Community ordinance. The county had proposed to raise the allowable density in Reston on the dubious grounds of fewer people per household than in the 1960s, without any serious consideration of other factors, such as the near doubling of the number of vehicles and miles traveled per household and the already planned density increases near future Metro stations. The county recommendations put no controls on where the additional growth might go and made no additional provisions for affordable housing.

RCA testified before the P&Z committee; and RCA, the Reston Association, and the Alliance for Reston Homeowners and Clusters all testified before the county Board [of Supervisors] requesting that these issues be considered before making changes to the PRC ordinance and that a full review of Reston’s planning documents (after 40 years) was in order — not just adding random density to Reston. The P&Z committee voted 7-6 with 2 abstentions to approve the changes to the density factors in the PRC ordinance. The boards of RCA, RA and ARCH all voted against the changes in density factors without a broader review. The Board of Supervisors ignored the input of all the community organizations except the P&Z committee (which is at least technically a committee of RA) and increased the density allowed by the PRC ordinance.

What makes Mr. Kenny think the county is going to pay any more attention to RCA or any other community organization’s positions on individual projects than they did to RCA, RA and ARCH on the PRC? Our conclusion at RCA is that we need to spend our limited resources to push for an effective voice in discussions with the county — the voice of a town. Our town proposal does not have the town rise from nowhere as Mr. Kenny suggests; on the contrary it assumes that all of the functions of the RCC, RCA and the P&Z committee, and most of the functions of RA, would transfer to the town. A town would provide a far more effective voice in county affairs than RCA can hope to do, provide community control through accountable elected officials, the mayor and town council, for the recreational, cultural, and infrastructure activities currently provided by RCC and RA, and substitute an actual town Planning and Zoning department for the unsatisfactory mix of the P&Z committee and the county Planning and Zoning organizations that have been shown to ignore the input of Reston’s multiple volunteer community organizations.

If you want Reston to have an effective voice on land use issues, sign the on-line petition for a referendum on town status for Reston at RCA Reston Town Governance - Online Petition and write to your elected officials telling them your views (see below). By all means make your views known to the P&Z committee and county officials on upcoming projects as well, but don’t be surprised if your impact is a lot more limited than that of your fellow Fairfax county citizens in the towns of Herndon and Vienna.

Mike Corrigan
President, Reston Citizens Association

VA State Senator Janet Howell at SenHowell@aol.com
VA State Delegate Ken Plum at Kenplum@aol.com
Fairfax Co. Supervisor - Catherine Hudgins at camhudgins@comcast.net
Fairfax Co. Board of Supervisors Chairman - Gerry Connolly at chairman@fairfaxcounty.gov

© Copyright Reston Connection 2007

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