I live on a farm in hanover and I am very concerned about the lack of any farm preservation programs in this county. Haven’t the ever heard of Purchase of Development Rights?
Hanover County should be congratulated in securing their designation as a Preserve America Community, and I mean this sincerely. They have talked the talk to get this credential and I “had” great expectations that they would now begin to walk this talk. But…
The action at the Board of Supervisors meeting on Dec. 15 dispelled that expectation. Business as usual boys, and by another unanimous decision at that! Not to worry, 56,700 total trips per day by 2009 through this area of Route 301 and Atlee Road. They still haven’t seen that development they don’t like!
Setliff is a real piece of work. Never mind that VDOT hadn’t had time to fully analyze the most up-to-date traffic data. I wonder if he thought that maybe VDOT might recommend more infrastructure because of the development? Could the taxpayers be short changed here and have to dole out more money in the way of eating road improvements through extra allocations when the developer could pay for it?
Now to the real issue for me. It seems the county didn’t learn from the Todd Rogers Pebble Creek grave desecration fiasco several years ago. The only difference here is that they know where the graves are. How many in each cemetery? Don’t know. How will HHHunt handle this? HHHunt says in full compliance with the law and respectfully! The “judge” will issue a lawful court order with no oversight by anyone except God, and off they go just like Pebble Creek.
Hanover County, wake up. Get with the program. With historical properties of this nature and final resting places of who knows how many, when are you guys going to require that the Virginia Department of Historical Resources (DHR) be a part of development planning? The judge sure won’t.
DHR can be a part of this by the judge’s order if he will step up to the plate. Hanover County, you need to write this into your development requirements for moving cemeteries, especially when you know there are slaves and manor house graves, especially of 100 plus years old. But, let’s don’t burden the developer.
Finally, relocating a 200 plus year-old home and remodeling it simply gives you a historical structure with no historical perspective of the whole. Never mind about J.E.B. Stuart’s training ground/headquarters, or the history of the Timberlake families and Rutland itself. And exactly where will the graves be relocated to? All of this for the sake of extending Atlee Road to Atlee Station Road. What a deal.
And before someone says something about not showing and voicing concern, it is a done deal before the hearing takes place. I have been a part of processes at these meetings where the vast majority speaks against it and in Jack Ward’s vivid imagination, he rationalizes his vote by saying he will represent the vast silent majority that didn’t bother to show and express anything. What a system and representatives we have!
And to really put this into perspective and forget what it costs us as taxpayers, remember Lockwood and Media General, go look at French Hay with nothing but the main house all jacked up to be moved (probably already moved), and envision what will happen to Rutland and the Timberlake family place and all of those souls resting in peace there, again, no one to advocate for them. And with what remains simply as “dust to dust”, what will HHHunt respectfully disinter and re-inter? A backhoe full of their dirt? Folks, even the families don’t care, nor does it appear those groups that can advocate for those long lost souls of slaves care enough to simply speak up.
It is very frustrating to have meetings held in the middle of the work week and the middle of the day. It is hard for citizens to even come and listen to what their elected officals are saying. And now the PC has a meeting TOMORROW (Sept. 19)and I only recived notice of it on Saturday. This process is not very friendly to Hanoverians.
Who or what is driving this push for economic development? I’ve been to several of the joint workshops and public comments sessions, and despite the purported citizen input gained from meetings between supervisors and consultants, the agenda moves ahead with no adjustment that takes into consideration the 71% majority opinion to retain the rural character of the county! Do we, or do we not, live in a democracy? It’s quickly becoming apparent that the citizens of Hanover really have no voice, that our county Supervisors prefer a “top down” government style. “Badger”
The County’s study and analysis of land needed for development, which forms the direction and basis for the new comprehensive plan, is fundamentally flawed in a variety of ways. The report jumps to certain conclusions, without ever establishing the reasons for making such radical assumptions. It does not provide information aboout the planning science, any experience in Hanover, experience anywhere else, or just simple evidence that would lead to the rather outlandish conclusions drawn. For example, it does not document the need to consume two acres for every acre desired for development. The proposed SSAs are can not be so jammed with wetlands and steep slopes as to necessitate taking double the needed land-area. Likewise the report does not explore “Better Site Design”, practices common among good planners, as a way to make more efficient and effective use of land. It leaps to spreading the SSAs, without any other suggestions, like increasing the density of the existing residential areas.
The report calls the 1:1 jobs to population ratio a policy decision endorsed by the Board. This means the Board endorsed far reaching policies without first getting any public input on them.
At the meeting when the Board was presented with proposed economic development policy, increasing jobs to match the population was presented as something “counties like Hanover should do”, one job for every resident. But what counties are similar to Hanover? Where are they? What makes them similar to Hanover? Why did the Board endorse approaching the comprehensive with a regional perspective, but completely look inward, and treat Hanover as an isolated island when it comes to the jobs? That is truly BAD planning.
It is now several days into November. The Board expects to adopt the plan early in 2007, as early as January they hope. Yet they still have not provided a definition of the rural preservation regions, and have not issued any documentation about the transporation components of the plan. They have acknowledged that the planning process has completely overlooked vital issues like Hanover’s natural resources, water quality, and open space needs.
I also cannot believe the stubborn arrogance of the Board and the planning commission. Obviously, some of you good Hanover residents have far better common sense than the current Board Members!
Regardless of the good these men may have done in the past, they have turned to the dark side!
As I am a temporary Hanover resident I have traveled these United States for 30 years in the Military. I have seen good and bad communities and corrupt Supervisors, Mayors, City and County employees, all jailed for corruption, It seems once you get comfortable in a job and the influence of Rich Contractors, looking to pad the decision making, turning to the Dark Side is inevitable. There must be some kind of quality Control office of citizens to review every plan and ordinance or code change coming out of the Board and planning office.
As much as I applaud your continued discussion with the current Supervisors, I feel they are in so deep they cannot change. They must be replaced and new people appointed to the Planning Department. I have had many instances when I was asked to read Contracts and Construction and Renovation plans while in the Military. What these people are doing is Criminal, not just wrong!
We are witnessing the same arrogance that we witnessed in Washington prior to the elections last November which changed the balance of power in the House and Senate. When all logic and science and common sense does not answer why someone would act this way then one can only deduct that the motivation be either greed or lust of power. The very things that career politicians are made of.
In light of no means to police the Board as they control the law, the only and best means to solve the problem lies November 6, 2007.
As we are in the age of change, and watching as obstruction still exists in Washington and in Virginia, I feel the anger of reasonable common sense people will once again prevail in November 2007 and 2008!
Wow, that was as painful reading as listening to the Fed Chairman!
Basically I guess if you want a quite rural county, you will suffer taxes. Or we will build, build, build, and suffer the exact same problems every overgrown community has! I really don’t understand the reasoning here. It’s almost like saying, We want to keep our county a quite rural community;……. But we can’t help ourselves!
Fiscal inadequacies; Don’t spend what you don’t have! Don’t build castle like structures like the County Supervisors Building and pay for all that technology only to not have it work properly. Was that expensive a building any way to actually be fiscally responsible? I don’t care if they say they budgeted for it, that’s just saying anything goes if we budget for it!
All of the problems you discuss will not be answered by “changing financial incentives for local governments, we can move away from fiscalized land-use policies, back toward policies that encourage community balance and responsible land-use planning that will be benefit all.” And maybe if we give Bush more time money and troops we won’t feel so bad about the ones he has already wasted!
There is but one problem here and one problem only. Without going into a class on social economics, I’ll use a phrase we use in the Computer Industry. Garbage in-Garbage out! The problem is the same we witnessed in Washington. Greed, power, and arrogance eventually changed the balance of power in Washington last fall. That work isn’t done because the 495 beltway does not hold all the warped ideas and cronyism within. Washington is merely the breeding place of the Ferengi, (The Ferengi were a race of aliens on Star Trek whose philosophy was based on Acquisition of riches. Anything was legal if it got you more riches.) It is a basic flaw in the Republican Party and their policy of repeating the same blatantly wrong, misleading and oft times incorrect information over and over until the masses believe it. Like, “Stay the course,” and “I’m the decider,” which was just so much incoherent mindless babble when he absolutely couldn’t come up with a whole sentence. All this and blocking of the Debate on the war is causing a few like John Warner to reconsider the Administrations Policies.
Like in Washington, we need to start fresh, and to do this we need fresh faces in Supervisors and in the Planning Department. The current occupants are so mired in the old ways they can’t see the forest for the trees they are cutting down. That is a beginning to fix the problem here in Hanover County! Government will not police itself; the citizens have to do that with their votes!
That very question has been asked about the financial supporters and the campaign contributors of the Hanover County Supervisors. Once again, Big money and Big business wins everytime. The best way to police it is to vote the Supervisors out! The culture of corruption is a way of life here in Virgina and must be prosecuted or move em out!
I was wondering how the meeting went? How many people, discussions, progress and so on. I plan to attend the school next school meeting here in Mechanicsville on Thursday.
I have to say that I am worried about the lack of info out to the public. If you do not visit either web site, one would never hear about the meetings. The very occasional comment/Letter to the Editor in the Mechanicsville Local is not enough and seems to never have anything about meetings.
And with the cut off for registration at the County Registrars Office for candidates getting closer, “April”, I feel the Supervisors are just leading the residents along with a carrot until the Deadline for candidates is past and then they will pull the rug out from under us. “Once Again”! I just don’t see any sense of urgency.
Last November I called the Richmond Democrat Headquarters and asked if they were even in the race for Cantors position since I had not heard a thing here. did not even find out there was a Democrat group in Hanover. The only signs I ever saw was a few for Cantor.
I tried for 18 months to discuss my problem with my property with the Board and Jack Ward. Everyone who has been to my house will tell you what the Board did and the Planning department makes no sense, no logic behind it, any and all science was completely ignored, and the end result served no one but the Developer!
This Board has no Honor and in the light of now logic at all one has to deduce, these guys are Bought! There just is no other explanation! Talking with these gentlemen is, I know, the polite thing to do. But when nothing seems to be getting through….well the only option is the one the one the founders put in place, VOTE THEM OUT!
But if the word does not get out to the people of Hanover County, of which I bet 75% have never seen either of the web sites, then all is lost. I still believe that the truth will always prevail but it has to get out there. THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRAT / REPUBLICAN thing! Really, it isn’t and I believe that people will vote either way depending on the circumstances and that these circumstances weigh in favor of a change. Just like last November, the job isn’t done yet, it was just a beginning. And if the Representatives and the Local politicians didn’t get the message, then we need to send it again, even louder!
I attended the Comp Plan “Work Session” at Patrick Henry High School and it was deja vu! The meeting was well attended, perhaps 100 or so residents, but the format and cafeteria settings were terrible! Unlike last fall’s workshops hosted by the PC, the BoS did have a P.A. system set-up. Still, it was hard to hear over the din of the vending machines lining one side of the cafeteria and the chatter from the crowd. After the pledge of allegience was said, Setliffe explained the format for the evening’s “work session.” At that point, a wise woman rose to suggest that we DON’T split into three groups and stick together. Setliffe said no and admonished the woman for not offering an alternative format earlier in the week when they had apparently held a meeting. It was at that point that another citizen stood up and asked if we could not vote on the format for the evening and a gentleman stepped up and said, “I would like to make a motion…” Well, all for not because, like prior work session, the BoS and PC CONTROL the entire evening adn thus the discourse. Citizens were allowded to ask questions on notecards – all of the questions/concerns weree read aloud by the second part of the meeting. By then, many residents had left already, in frustration. It was a poorly planned format and the County should be ashamed. I had no idea that the county’s attorney was also a professional planner (?!) because he was tag-teaming with John Hodges, as they explained how/why their flawed planning assumptions created this horrific expansion of the SSA!
On March 3rd, the Hanover Democratic Party is holding a pancake b’fast at 9 a.m. at Ashcreek Recreation Center (10854 Linderwood Dr., M’ville). I heard that candidates are going to be announced.
The Comp Plan citizen workshops February 20 and 22 demonstrate once more how intractable the county is on its planning assumptions. The many cogent, rational questions and comments put to the teflon Planning Department officials merely sloughed off of them. Citizens understand the policy of keeping growth mostly in the Suburban Service Areas–that’s not in question. But the magnitude of the expansions portends a runaway growth rate. Why not go slowly at a more measured pace? Who benefits from this type of development? Certainly not the citizens, upon whose backs–er, real estate assessments–much of the cost will ride. That’s a big raspberry to the monovision of Hanover County officials.
The February 20 and 22 Comp Plan citizen workshops at Patrick Henry and Lee-Davis High Schools were completely bogus. They were yet another opportunity for Hanover officials to pontificate about the flimsy planning assumptions. They didn’t genuinely want input from Hanover residents. A green infrastructure map created and distributed by two astute citizens showed various resource overlays–valuable considerations to be taken into account BEFORE development occurs. The map got a response typical of this whole update process: treat the citizens as if they are misinformed or delusional. This patronizing attitude really rankles.
Perhaps the goal of Hanover’s brand of county government is disempowerment…those two, astute citizens who created the green infrastructure map should be paid $200,000….
It is 7:30 PM and this is the first I have heard of this. And I checked this blog this AM. It sounds so much like surrender to the will of the County Supervisors. They are going to do what they want and not what the Community wants.
This is our second set of Military Orders that brought us to Richmond and we choose both times .to live in Hanover County. Hanover County was where crime was low, schools were good, and communities were not crowded. It was close enough to Richmond, Short Pump, and Fort Lee without having to live in those places.
Having lived in communities all over the United States for the last 35 years, I have seen the good, the not so good, and the great places to live. The planning and the direction of the County Supervisors and Planning Department is illogical, ill-conceived, and poorly applied. Contractors run this county!
Hanover County’s future is urban sprawl, crowed schools, police and fire departments stretched to far. It is headed into the concrete jungle that people move away from and look for less crowed places with good schools and low crime!
This BS that growth is inevitable and desireable is just that, BS. It’s time for more control, not less. The result of the proposed plan is that some contractors and politicians get rich and the county will be turned into a commercial wasteland.
On the bright side, we get to leave soon. One thing about the Military is if you don’t like a place, you will leave in 2 years.
I think Hanover County has time to stop the run away Board of Supervisors and elect new folks who aren’t in such a rush to make contractors rich! That’s my philosophy, if they won’t listen to the people, VOTE THEM OUT! 6 November 2007
Here’s what I think, even though you won’t post it. Hanover County Supervisors have been stringing you folkes along until the April cut off for Candidates to apply for the Election. Now that they know they are in NO danger, they will take your recomendations and say somtething like, we’ll let the planning department evaluate them. Stringing you along further like good shee. In a month or so they will say NO and do what they want. That’s just my opinion.
Fortunately, I’m selling and moving to Idaho, there isn’t a million people in the whole state and the mountains are bueatiful and untouched! When I was there last, there were days I was the only boat on the lake, just me and the Bald Eagles there fishing. There is more wilderness in Idaho than any other state. You get to live in the moderate climate of the treasure valey, but if you want snow in the winter you’re only 35 minutes away.
Plus, I can buy two homes there for what I paid for this low quality box.
Of all the arguments for slowing down development and growth here in Hanover County is Science. With 85% of the population of the United States living on or near costal areas and increasing at an alarming rate, it seems the cries from the Scientific Community here and around the world go unheeded!
Just this weekend CNN reported from the Scientific Meeting at Belgium:
“The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won’t have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium. At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press. Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive. For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised.”
I have to ask everyone to really sit down and think about this! Now is the time to rethink the future, we cannot wait any longer. We saw what happened after Katrina, is there any one of you who think the government will respond to this announcement from Belgium? Has government done anything yet; NO! In fact the United States is lagging behind, not leading, in measures to reduce Green House emissions. I don’t think our government has responded well to anything and I would ask every one of you to do the following, here and in federal elections. Republican or Democrat, we have to keep voting these career politicians out of office until someone gets the Message! It’s just no going to all of a sudden get Better!
Sadly the Hanover County Supervisors are taking the same tact as the Bush Administration! With no progress on Bio Fuels and Electric cars, Solar energy, Wind energy, Wave energy, all of which the Bush Administration could have created Incentive programs and tax relief that would speed up development of these life saving measures, nothing but catch phrases and Photo op handshakes and only tax breaks for the wealth.
If one really looks at the Future, 50 years from now, then growth is not the answer! This area already has a drought every other year or so and it will get worse, not better! And it’s really hard to explain the concept of larger more powerful storms and more droughts, but they do fall hand in hand! Then we have to consider what 2- 3 foot rise in Sea level means for Eastern Virginia? Where are all the people going to go?
The bottom line, the end result of this argument with the Hanover County Supervisors is; are we condemning our children and grand children by continued growth and development and not really preparing for the inevitable? The answer is Yes! Our children’s’ futures demand action!
I agree with the blogger who wrote that the Board of Supervisors are stringing citizens along. But it is not too late for citizens who want to run as independent candidates to file for the NOv. ‘07 election. That deadline is not until June. If you have a better vision for Hanover, you still have the opportunity to run for the Board of Supervisors.
WOW! Is there anyway the county and the taxpayers can get their $200,000 back?! Unbelievable! All along, the Coalition has been saying there were flaws, but after reading this report – it becomes really clear! How can the Supes accept FLAWED REVISIONS based upon FLAWED DATA?!
I heard that a copy of the report has been given to each supervisor. They owe it to the taxpayers to get the right data. There are too many recent examples in this world of really bad data being used to make big decisions. Let ’s hope the supervisors will rethink this plan. puzzled
Thanks to whoever located Mr. Siegle! After reading The Hanover Advocate and its “flawed data” article, let’s hope the BOS has the good sense to admit a mistake and shelve the plan for another 5 years. We need a plan that utilizes common sense and good data.
A new anthem for Hanover 2008… Where have all the flowers gone? Of course, we can substitute “farms”, “fields”, and “woodlands” for the flowers in this theme. If you want to see what your neighborhood is facing, take a drive to Rt. 301 and Atlee Rd. intersection. What was once Rutland, a nice rural property with an historic house is now bulldozed, logged, ready for pavement, homes and shops. How can this happen? It does when county officials disregard the vision of its citizens.
Alas, the definition of Politics and Statistics vs. Science. In science we do research and experiments to see what the results will be. In Politics you skew the statistics to prove what you want the results to be. Thus the argument becomes did the County Supervisors and/or Planning Department simply miss all of these glaringly skewed/wrong numbers and statistics? Or did they try to push it through on purpose, and for what motive? And if the latter is the case for some favor in the future or some other motive, do you want these people to remain in these sensitive positions?
Yes, I agree: the Supervisors have been stringing citizens along. Worse, though, is that many on the Board do not seem to be doing their own inquiry into the facts and implications, but rely too heavily on the County staff, who appear to have an ear tuned to the developers’ song.
A partnership isn’t possible because paternalism suffuses the Hanover County government. The Comp Plan update was never about partnership in creating a community vision.
In its monomaniacal pursuit of revenue, the County has panicked. If the Comp Plan update is approved, they have abandoned a position of measured, incremental growth that keeps expenses under control.
“Getting and spending we lay waste our powers. . .”
You folks keep trying to fight Greed, Kickbacks, and Lust for Power, with Logic and Common Sense. I have to think, based on my dealings with the Sith Lords, it will fall on deaf, Payed off, ears! Just my opinion, but short of voting them out, this plan is a done deal! They will simply say it’s a difference of opinion! Good Luck!
I may be too emotional but for the last two years our family is witnessing the unpresedented distruction of forests and rural communities in this area. Looking around I cannot come to terms with unability to people to recornize that they are part of nature and together with distruction of everything around humanity is doomed. Nothing is able to grows for ever. We do noot need extra thousands of feet of dead shopping acarage, empty office spaces and roads . We need fresh air, lush greenary around us to stay alive and human!!! Think about it!!!!
You would think that after getting strung along like this, people would get serious about the elections coming up in November. Wednesday will be the final blow. The Axis of Evil will sit there,”Not listening, just waiting”, and send you home while they meet in private.
If you should get them to postpone the vote, it won’t be for further consideration, it will be well to string it out past registration for party candidates and maybe even the June date for independents! They win!
They say we are different, smarter than the animals because of our ability to reason. However, a good dog can recognize a threat and act on it quickly!!!
The fact that only Real Estate developers and agents were the only ones to praise the plan should answer anyone’s doubt about the motivation of this plan, $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
Corrupt people don’t just change; they have to be voted out!
You would think that after getting strung along like this, people would get serious about the elections coming up in November. Wednesday will be the final blow. The Axis of Evil will sit there,”Not listening, just waiting”, and send you home while they meet in private.
If you should get them to postpone the vote, it won’t be for further consideration, it will be well to string it out past registration for party candidates and maybe even the June date for independents! They win!
They say we are different, smarter than the animals because of our ability to reason. However, a good dog can recognize a threat and act on it quickly!!!
The fact that only Real Estate developers and agents were the only ones to praise the plan should answer anyone’s doubt about the motivation of this plan, $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
Corrupt people don’t just change; they have to be voted out!
Just when we thought we had incompetence and lust for power confined to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue! And facts and logic hasn’t stopped Bush! Only one choice remains.
The BOS has been given every opportunity to do the right thing and has failed every time. This comp plan isn’t the only wrong decision made. They have been bombarded with Facts and Science and Math only to throw all aside and keep the plan! What could be the motivation??????????
In the absence of sound decision based on facts, logic, and scientific data, corruption is the only answer! It is basic deductive reasoning!
Remember the old adage, “In for a penny in for a pound?” They can’t turn back now! It would open them up to bigger Legal question and dismantle the entire,”Good ol Boy”, network!
So what do we do; The answer is in the Declaration of Independence:
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, IT IS THEIR DUTY, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The state of Washington, Minnnesota, Vermont, and some of Wisconsin and Maryland include citizen-based approaches to comprehensive planning. In fact, in Minnesota, its state law – fancy that!
Government Of the People, For the People, By the People, Sounds familiar! Actually having someone in County Government that shares and cares about what the PEOPLE want! Wouldn’t that be grand?
The current occupants of the BOS do not! They are otherwise motivated by something that makes them stark raving mad. They have to be mad to allow subdivision buffers to be placed on a single homeowners property and then to make that home owner responsible for maintaining 37 trees that have already died 3 times and a sidewalk that goes NOWHERE! ON HIS PROPERTY! Also a Comp plan that awards Developers and real Estate Agents, while straining the schools, the water system, and turning Hanover County into Henrico County, CROWDED!
And is no one paying attention to current events? As this planet changes to Global Warming, every citizen living within 100 miles of the costal regions are going to see changes in their living conditions as the sea level rises. 85% of the population of the United States lives in costal areas! GROWTH IN THESE AREAS IS NOT RECOMMENDED! And it’s not that far off, our children and their children will witness the results of Global Warming up close and personal. Or do we just throw caution to the raising wind speeds and continue to grow! The Federal Government doesn’t even recognize there is a problem!
The current occupants of the BOS are people who couldn’t work a regular job, and no talent or skills but Rhetoric and political spin. Using the Republican handbook of just keep repeating the same wrong information until they believe it.
Sadly, unless someone runs against all of them, we’re screwed for another two or four years, whatever it is! THE SOLUTION is to vote them all out, put new well meaning people in who will in turn fire the Planning department and start all over with fresh ideas based on what the voters want! Alas only a couple of people have come forward to run and that isn’t going to do the job.
Seating is limited, so how about a good ol tailgate party tonight at the courthouse, cook some burgers and dogs and support those inside! We can chant, blow our horns, throw a little tea overboard, you know!
Wow! Who saw that coming? Well, I did. I’ve been trying to communicate the illogic of these individuals for months. The only motivation has to be Kickbacks, pay offs, favors, and political contributions to campaigns. And with those contributions, the elections become difficult and especially if we do not take full advantage of every possible vehicle to get the truth out.
Voting the BOS out doesn’t solve the problem; it started with the Planning Department! The Planning Department is appointed by the BOS, and are the architects of this gross abuse of math, science, and logic. Once the BOS are out the Planning Department HAVE TO GO!
All of these people are career politicians, and career politicians are destroying this county and country as well. Voting Independent or Democrat doesn’t matter. Bad government is bad government! The Democrats bring more campaign money, but, whatever works!
From now until November, signs and flyers with the truth and candidates names must be on every street corner and in every mailbox!!! Lets show the BOS who is BOSS!
“Career Politicans” What a joke. Do you know how much they make for being on the Board of Supervisors?? 20K a year. Wow, big money. All of the members of the board of supervisors have full time jobs but still take the time to listen to the bickering of some pathetic people. Did you hear we have congress and a president?? I’m sure your just as upset at their policies that have innocent children dying. Oh you probably don’t care about that, only that your neighborhood stays quiet. WAKE UP PEOPLE!
The Board of Supervisors–actually the voting bloc of Setliff, McGhee, Ward and Gordon–are so far out of touch with the people. The Comp Plan was rammed though last night by this Gang of Four who purport to have the welfare of the citizens at heart. Their actions continue to bespeak disdain.
I’m not sure what anonymous was trying to say. I wasn’t sure if they were for Iraq or against. Let me assure you as a family that has seen up close, first hand, the blood of the injured soldiers at Fallujah and Mosel, yes I am concerned about Americas children dying in Iraq for an illegal war based on vendetta and oil! The same culture of corruption that plagues the BOS who ignore the majority and the facts for some other motivation. Hmmm, what could that be? When Science, Math and just plain logic are cast aside and decisions made that have failed in every instance since the 50’s, logical minded people want to see a serious slow down in growth.
Let’s see, build, build, build, crowded, move further out for quite, build, build, build, move further out. Then the places you moved from attract lower income families, the taxes are too much, the schools are crowded, crime, foreclosures, urban decay! And with the gas prices slated to hit $4.00 a gal within a year so Exxon Corp can have another Record year like the last two, no longer can anyone afford to move further out for quite.
I think it’s time for a change, here, just like Washington!
Let’s take a vote on this, citizens of Hanover County: How may of you are in favor of impeachment for four supervisors?
It appears that Mr. McGhee, Mr. Ward and Mr. Gordon, as well as Chairman Setliff think of themselves as dictators instead of representatives. I feel sure that when election time rolls around, they will learn better.
Thank you Mr. Stanley, Mr. Wade and Mr. Ernst for doing what you were elected to do, speaking for the citizens of your district.
I would think if a petition for removal of Board members and dropping the Comp Plan was signed by an overwhelming percentage of Hanover citizens, then they would have to respond and step down! I’d sign it in a heartbeat. I’m sick and tired of living in a political dictatorship instead of a Democracy!
Lets face the truth. They won. They got their plan no matter the motivation$$$$$$$. Between now and Novemeber everyone will forget. Why, because no one is doing anything now! There are no Candidates! And at the rate of speed the Hanover Social Club is moving,(Hanover County Democrats), There won’t be any candidates or no one will every hear about them. Get ready for Urban Spraw, crowed schools, and services stetched thin! The Republican way to the future!
Just to respond to the previous poster: they haven’t won by a long shot. I beleive that you will some very strong candidates get elected in November. We only need to elect ONE Supervisor to shift the balance of power towards favoring smarter growth solutions….I feel much more optimistic than you. If the Hanover County Dems are “social club” – it’s a club I’d rather hang with any day.
Supervisors don’t get impeached; but they ARE subject to a recall vote! And BTW, there ARE candidates stepping up. Three have already announced and there will be more. Promise. Watch the news.
Good luck with this problem, they have ignored mine for two years. The Planning Department and the BOS think only of Developers! Just as they ignored the citizens over the Comp Plan, I feel they will ignore you.
We moved here and bought a house in Mechanicsville two years ago when choices were few. A new house on a new street. Just 6 new house on a new street all on the left side surrounded by existing 3 – 5 acre properties. Little did we know we were screwed from the start. The Developer and the Seller and his agent all in on it , did not , ever, disclose that they had placed a “Sub Division Buffer on my actual property to keep from having to develop a common area! Developer and Sellers Agent both from Long and Foster. The DPOR failed to find fault so all I can do is litigate, “When we sell”! I pay taxes on a half acre yet I only have control of 1/3rd acre! They took 50 x 145 feet of my property and to rub salt in the wound, they planted 37 trees that have all died twice! There are always dead trees on my property. And now they say it is my responsibility to maintain 37 dying trees and a side walk to far from the road to do any good and starts at the base of a huge power pole.
There are no other sidewalks in the area and there are no other properties with dying trees planted in two rows buffering nothing! I never even have say in the type of tree and hired a National Arborist a year and a half ago who gave them a report saying, The trees are going to die! Nothing!
When asked if it was proper to allow Sub Division Buffers to be placed on private property and made the responsibility of the single homeowner, Jack Ward and the BOS said yes, it’s OK to take your property! And they have strung me along for two years, never meaning to do anything; sort of like the Comp Plan!
I have asked for it to be vacated, shown just cause and logic for doing so and the illogic of placing the buffer! But as we have seen in the Comp Plan, logic plays no part in their decisions. The current BOS will only change plans and ordinances or give exceptions on issues they want resolved quickly and have done so numerous times. But tell me they are working on it, for two years?
Obviously the motivations of the BOS are something more than what meets the eye! When Logic and Science are cast aside and skewed numbers used to prove their points and will not listen to the majority, well?
The answer to your problem, the Com Plan and my problem comes in November and requires every common sense resident of Hanover County to vote in a voice the BOS cannot ignore! Candidates are stepping forward. It’s time for a change, a fresh start in Hanover County!
Sadly and obviously, no one but a very very few even know this site exists and/or comments. And the Mechanicsville Local is being slowly but surely controled by someone! Must be an election year and money buys anything in this county!
Global Warming, I am surprised, shocked to see that kind of foresight in a political arena as this. But, I agree that this is the Beast. We only have a slight chance to maybe slow it down if we started today, worldwide. Ain’t going to happen and especially not with the Republicans in office and their policy of ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
Some facts to consider: 85% of the population of the United States lives within 100 miles of the/a coastal area. At the recent Global Warming meetings around the world, maps reflecting the changes in our coastlines after the continued melting of the poles by the end of the century were displayed. Most scientists agreed and added that it did not reflect the massive changes in weather and what chaos that would cause along with further erosion of the coastlines.
As the BOS has past planes to damn the torpedoes and build, build, build I would like to remind them that Hanover County no longer exists in the future maps! And 93 years from now our children’s children will pay the price for our short sightedness.
Believe me when I say we as responsible humans must make some sound and correct decisions during the next elections local and Federal! Or make plans to move.
I would sell before the country wakes up and says OH S$#@! House and land under water don’t sell quickly!
The provision “Urban Transportation Service Districts (UTSDs) may be created for counties of 90,000 or more people that do not maintain their own roads.” does not apply to Hanover. The population figure had to be as of the 2000 census when Hanover had 85,000 residents…
Yes, citizens who felt shut out of the process to envision Hanover’s future, and there are many, need to channel that energy and indignation directly to the voting booth. Take a look at a piece of land denuded of trees and scraped of topsoil if you need to experience that visceral reaction to development that is an environmental and aesthetic nightmare.
As a life long Hanover native I am disgusted with the comp plan. However, I am equally appalled at the suggestion that Hanover should join the Agenda 21 program. Anyone who has taken the time to thoroughly research the details of Agenda 21 and related spin-offs knows that doing so would be disastrous for our county as a whole and our property rights as individuals. Reshuffle the deck? YES! Join other counties and cities in their lemming like rush over the Agenda 21 cliff? Absolutely NOT!
for those of us who are not familiar with the details of the Agenda 21 plan, maybe you could explain how joining “Agenda 21 and related spin offs” would be “disastrous” for or so-called property rights as individuals?
Yes, a right wing conspiracy to rule Hanover County and get stinking rich off the good people. But they are the only wing! Democrats show no sign of life in the Supervisors race. Not one word in the Local. Nothing, What are we to do but to serve the Republicans?
Gee, didn’t you hear? The M-L reported that Jim Ellis for Setliffe’s seat in the Chickahominy District. Ellis already has a website up. Knock off Setliffe and break up the “Gang of Four” – Jim Ellis is the guy to do it!
One Democrat Candidate, wow! Won’t solve any problems in Mechanicsville. Jack Ward is a self proclaimed Big Business promoter. Sold his sole to the highest bidder. He has all but ruined Mechanicsville with his blind ambition.
If you want to make a statement, clean house. Or, as with the 06 election that gave majorities to the Dems in the House and Senate, a slight majority can’t get all the work done.
The Hanover County Social Club, “Democrats”, spend to much time promoting Social Events in Ashland, than speaking out on the demonic relations off the current BOS, unless you happen to be at one of their wine tastings. No one else in the county hears a thing! Win the local seats then you can win the state! Good luck with one candidate. Anything will help but doesn’t really announce an “awakening”.
love the pessimism…why would you need an “awakening” when getting rid of just one of the four supervisors will tip the apple cart? i suppose, in your mind, kevin damian doesn’t have a chance? debbie coats doesn’t have a chance? and, there is a guy in s. anna collecting signatures and i guess he doesn’t have a chance….i think you underestimate how pissed off folks are, regardless of party….much of the issues re: the comp plan update have nothing to do with party affiliation.
The fact that only two people read and comment on this blog speaks volumes about the lack of support of the Democrat Party of Hanover County! What’s the point?
If you can’t enlist but one Supervisor Candidate, and especially after an over whelming outcry from the citizens over the Comp Plan, that just speaks volumes of the lack of foresight/leadership in the local party! That’s a very, very sad commentary on the Democrats. You could have run Arnold the Pig from Green Acres against Jack Ward and won! In his recent ad in the Mechanicsville Local, Ward confessed his Big Business ties and support for them. Says he just likes working with the people. Yeah, as long as the people are Big Developers and Big business who have a history of destroying rural counties!
With this kind of ammunition you could run a dead man and win! But not the Dems, they’re to bust wine tasting!
What Agenda 21 really does is to make sure some one makes money off of programs that do little if anything to stem Global Warming. It creats more government to establish more companies that sound like they promote eclogical protection, but really do nothing but make sure more developers can still come in build, build, build. That’s what “improve the ecological health of communities across the nation while promoting economic vitality and social justice.” means!
Age-restricted housing is a way to discriminate against families AND against the disabled. I am disabled and and almost fifty and have tried to get in the age-restricted communities (for purchase and for rent) for several years, including within the past few months. Despite the fact my husband is over fifty, I have not been allowed to apply for any of the communities. The communities clearly are built with accessibility in mind, where other homes these days aren’t.
One-floor homes in Hanover with the accessibility assets aren’t readily available, and the disabled aren’t able to afford to custom build homes. We looked for homes that fit that description, as well as for land. The Board of Supervisors want to limit land use presently it seems to dense home use and to shopping centers everywhere.
do you know your posts are being stolen and posted at http://www.Hanoverliving.com please report his to Google and your webhost. this is a serious infraction.
First it was Jack Ward of Mechanicsville who announced his continued BOS campaign by a column in the Mechanicsville Local. Touting how much he likes working with the people. Yet voting against the people on the Comp Plan and in the same article stating his continuing work with the commercial real estate developers. That was bad enough and a Kiss of Death for the election in November, but then this article from Setlif.
The Setliff article in the Mechanicsville Local under “Accidental Supervisor”, which could’t be more appropriate, has so much distain and disregard for the citizens of Hanover County that it is just insane to print it! But he did! If for no other reason but to give these two guys the time they need for Mental Health Counseling, we will vote for their opposition in November!
Did you ever wonder why Republicans preach lowering taxes? Is it that hard to really grasp? The answer is that tax breaks affect the Rich much much more than the middle class and poor. Just tens of dollars to the poor equate to tens of thousands to the top 10 percent of the rich! So not only do they want to make money off of companies that do little and pay little to their workers, they don?t want to pay taxes that equate into social programs like public schools, law enforcement, health care, water plants to support their massive commercial developments, and on and on.
The Republicans want everything to stay the same. But we have learned both nationally and locally that the duty of the American voter is required to lead this county and country in a new direction. We can no longer sit back and expect intelligent decisions to somehow wake up in the incumbents. It?s not going to happen; they are broken and cannot be fixed. It?s just Money, money, money, to them. It?s time to educate them that it?s all about the People!
I think you need to take a closer look at hanoverliving.com. If a blog from Hanover North Carolina is copying your posts, and it indeed looks as if they are, Then I doubt very seriously they have any insight to handle the Comp Plan.
While we’re on the subject of the Comp Plan, you do realize that the main characters in the creation and responsible for the hasty implementation of the Comp Plan Vote, reside in The Planning Department of Hanover County. The BOS as lame as they are, are but puppets, maybe well paid puppets of the Plannimng Department.
We can replace the BOS, but the Planning Department needs a complete House Cleaning to get ride of the infestation of parisites! If the new Supervisors won’t fire and re-hire we will have accomplished nothing in November!
I am an independent candidate challenging for the Board of Supervisors seat in the Chickahominy District (Mr. Setliff’s district). I spent some time last year trying to figure out just exactly where the push was coming from on this Comp Plan update — was it the planning department, the Board, the county manager, the economic development authority, the industry sectors? I honestly still don’t know.
Most analyses of failures end up revealing a series of otherwise relatively minor events that combine in just the right sequence to create a big problem. And as a social scientist rather than a bench scientist, I am used to analyses that show that the answer to whatever question we are looking into is “all of the above.” So I suspect there is no one center of total responsibility, just a series of decisions or lack of political will or paternalistic attitudes that snowballed.
When it became apparent that this was not the usual fringe element of complainers showing up at Hanover High on March 21 — 900 people were there! — there was a shortage of humility on the Board, and for their various reasons four men decided they knew better and plunged ahead. The public record shows that the Board, the planning staff and senior county administrators were in communication with developers since 2004 about issues that were deemed critical in this update, and that economic development staff were encouraging pro-update speakers during the process.
The idea that there would be an expansion of the suburban services area was under discussion with developers before the RFP was barely out the door for the update consultant who was supposed to lead the process of deciding what the plan would actually look like. The Board did not “get it” back then, they did not get it in March 2007, and their 4-3 vote was a direct challenge to the citizens of this county.
The incumbents still don’t realize how deep and real this groundswell is, rallying around the work that many dedicated Hanoverians have been doing for years and years. One thing is for sure — we have no chance of figuring this out unless we change the composition of the Board. Please keep spreading the word that there are viable, thoughtful candidates out there who have decided to step up on behalf of the citizens. Every friend and neighbor you talk to about this matters.
Mr. Ellis, As someone who has beat Reasoning, Logic, Science and just plan common decency to death over the last two years trying to get a Subdivision Buffer that was placed on my legal property, vacted, thrust me when I say, there is no integrity in The Planning Department. If you would like to call and hear the whole story, my number is 730-7361.
Better yet if you would like to come by and see this, misguided bordering on criminal, Subdivision Buffer that is only on my property and benefits no one or thing, again give me a call, we’re not on mapquest after two and a half years!
What is it about corporate development that thinks people need more than all stores within a 3-mile diameter of their homes? We don’t. There is no question why the phrase, “As beautiful as urban sprawl”, has never been coined. Ashland simply does not need this development, period.
This community has everything it could possible have within 5 to 10 miles. And then there is Short Pump and across the river.
Why start bringing all of it here and causing more traffic and runing the small shops in Ashland out of business, why?
It seems that the time has come when the laws meant to protect the citizen, are in fact destroying the small towns due to greed and the dishonesty of Corporate America. There will come a time when we will fight back using the, down home way!
I don’t live in Hanover, but I have read the Comp Plan. I understand how some of you feel. However, I would caution you to be sure you want what you are asking for. New supervisors, commissioners, planners. You won’t have anybody that understands land use and the development community will take more advantage than they can now. Make sure you elect people with a solid background in planning and its political dynamic.
This last post sounds like Cameron Wood…”I don’t live in Hanover, but do you mind if I profit from destroying your county and its rural character?” The assumption that intelligent citizens (1.) haven’t read the Comp Plan and (2.) just wouldn’t “know” how to deal with THOSE developers or land use planning is offensive! Gee, think of all of current Supervisors – maybe one had a *solid* background in land use planning, but the others?!
I can prove to you that the current supervisors don’t understand land use, “They only know what they’re told by Developers”, and the planning commission could pick a good plan if it was in front of their noses. The inspection folks accept some of the shoddiest work I have ever seen and wouldn’t know proper drainage if it ran over them. I’ve tried to work with these bums and they really don’t have a clue unless told by big developers! This county isn’t upset with the current occupants of the BOS and Planning Department, their Damn Mad! The word professional is loosly tossed around these days and has no business being applied to the folks at the County Complex!
Our small town is about to be smothered by this development. The town council took a courageous stand in denying Ashbury and they should get our support in denying this version of Ashbury. Some rumblings around town say the council should “cut a deal” I say keep you backbone coucil people and don’t let Wilton and developers like him pry open Ashland for the insane kind of development that is in short pump, Massaponax, and every other exit in NOVA. This is the time for citizens to fignt back or it really will be too late once we have two five story hotels, hundreds of town houses and homes & commercial districts at this exit. Tell your coucil members not to get weak kneed now!
The fearmongering regarding inexperience should be expected, and it will continue for some time. But if we want to see something truly frightening, let’s look at what the experience of at least some members of the current Board brought us. This Comp Plan update was supposed to be a bold initiative to plan the county’s next 50 years. But there was only ONE OPTION put out for the citizens to look at. It was essentially devised before the alleged process to create it ever began. And it was just more of the same sprawl-inducing worship of short-term profits over consideration of citizens’ voices and long-term consequences.
The county has continued to pretend that the Comp Plan update process was open to citizens when clearly it was not, at least not in any meaningful way. The process had no room for serious discussion of green infrastructure, rural preservation, agriculture as a real focus of economic development, transportation modes other than private automobiles, smart growth principles, green and sustainable building practices, and real-life examples of these things being done around the Commonwealth and around the country.
Citizens are ready to take the “risk” of electing relatively inexperienced supervisors who may appoint relatively inexperienced planinng commissioners because citizens have seen the certainty of what will happen if they don’t make this change now — not only will they continue to be pushed to the side as their beloved county is further exploited, they will have to endure the added patronizing insult of being told that their opinions are valued and it’s all for their own good.
Numerous citizens spoke at public meetings to inform the Board about what would happen in November based on the Comp Plan update vote. The die was cast in March 2007. The discussion ended on March 28. We have four months to make sure that in November the voters “send a message” so loudly and clearly that there can be absolutely no mistaking its strength or meaning.
Coats and Ellis are running as Independents!! Not Democrats. The Dems are still lifeless, no info, no posts in the Mech Local, NOTHING. And for that matter, not a word from Debbie Coats., no website, nothing again. Running is more than listing your name as a candidate.
So, just because these candidates are running as Indies, they’re not going to be better than what we have now?! They could run as martians and I would still vote for them – just to to change the present regime. Your anger seems misdirected…blame the Hanover Dems? You’ve got to be kidding. Finally, we’ll get some wise woman as Supervisors. Out with the dinosaurs…they’re stuck in the 20th century as are the Dem and Republican parties.
I’ve been working with four term BOS Jack Ward for almost two years now since we bought a new house in Mechanicsville. Instead of a Subdivision Buffer being placed in a common area, the Developer was allowed to forego a common area and place the 50 x 145 Buffer on my legal property. Trust me, being a military family here on orders, we asked all the right questions to the point of beligerence prior to closing. Still the Developer and Sellers Agents, both of Long and Foster would not, did not, ever state that the Buffer was actually on my property and it was never mentioned on the contract. We had to take the house at closing after being two months late. I noticed the rectangle on the platt but it did not identify it and also did not acknowledge the Restrictions and Responsibilities associated with it.
You see the Planning Department passsed this without loosing a breath placing the responsibility of maintaining 37 dying trees and a sidewalk to nowhere soley on ME! You see there are only 6 new houses all on the left side of a new street that deadends in a cul de sac! Obviously I live on the corner of Ellerson and Waldron Way.
The trees have died twice and will again, I hired a Nationally Aclaimed Arborist to do a report. It went to eveyone, County, BOS, Developer. Not a word from the Palnning Department, inspection office, or anyone, even Jack Ward. Even in the light of the roport stating the trees were planted wrong, Wire and baskets still on the root balls, restrictive twin tied tightley around the trunks, wrong species for the area and in a drainage are where this species will die!
Some have been replaced, same kind, (Dime a Dozen, Eastern White Pines), they continue to die.
How does the County think that placing a buffer on private property is right? I’m not talking about the utility easement, beyond that! A third of my haalf acre lot.
All of a sudden in an election year, Jack Ward changed his tact when I said I guessed I’d have to vote for someone else. Three times now he has told me , “It will get Vacated”!
Guess what, The Planning Department won’t put it on the aagenda! Won’t listen to him at all.
Experience isn’t working for me in what is another case of the Planing Department siding with the Developers. How are we susposed to think that integrity still lives at the County Complex when this kind of sleazy planning gets pushed off on the citizens? And then the Comp Plan, Jeeezzz!
Experience in corruption maybe, not in doing the “Right Thing”! Good people just don’t do this to good people. Vote the Bums out and new breath into the BOS!
Ellerson and Waldron Way. Feel free to come look at this crap. They even planted a tree with the top half broken off and the county inspectors OK’d it!
The reason why sprawl in the metro Richmond area all looks the same? The Wilton Companies. Will the green buildings movement ever take hold? From an aesthetic point of view, do planners, architects, and development companies enjoying looking at this crap that they build? I’m sick of hearing the term “anchor store”….why not just say Kroger/Ukrops/Food Lion surrounded by nail salon, chinese buffet, check cashing, or some other generic retail chain? If we don’t change these patterns of ugly development, they will change us!
I applaud the effort of the citizenry of Hanover County in signing all the Petitions for the candidates against the current BOS, Bravo! The way the Board completely ignored, (And in the case of Gordon and Stanley, did not strongly defend) the clear majority of citizens attending the Comp Plan work shops who opposed the Comp Plan, is nothing less that tyranny. I thank the candidates that want to cast off the old leadership and provide for a better future. But to think that new Supervisors alone will fix the problems we face is ignoring the real problem.
The Board of Supervisors do vote aye or no on the proposed changes, implementations, plans and so forth. But where do they come from. Usually they originate at the Office of Developers and presented for review bay the Hanover County Planning Department. If you want to really blame someone for the Comp Plan, I give you the Hanover County Planning Department!!!!
Michael E. Crescenzo is the Director of Planning. David Maloney and John Bender are the Deputy Directors of Planning. Planning Department personnel can be reached by calling (804) 365-6171.
The sheer lunacy of some of the plans they have accepted over the last four years is maddening. Some are completely void of the adult thought process and do more harm than good. The drainage in some Sub Divisions has continually been a problem and is not getting any better. Sidewalks where they are not needed, some dumb requirement for a secondary sewer drainage tube in the middle of yards, and buffer plants that are, (By all science) planted to close together, not draught resistant, and dead within weeks and never checked on! Roads built that are often to wide and lines painted that are strangely confusing causing two vehicles in one lane and often turn lanes that end up being, Not Turn Lanes? There is an inspection process in place with the county, but it is seldom enforced leaving the single homeowners with eyesores instead of views.
Fortunately, There are still Developers who have pride in their work and take care of their Sub Divisions for future considerations. These developers know who they are and often need no policing by the county, “True Professionals”. However there are plenty of just out in out Bums out there throwing plans together without any regard of the end result for the Homeowners. The County Planning Department is allowing Sub Division Buffers to be placed on a single Homeowners Property in small Sub Divisions, saving the Developers form placing them on common areas as in larger Sub Divisions. How are we as citizens to read anything else into this but lazy or completely corrupt?
A complete sweep in the BOS will not solve the problem; it’s a good start though. The new BOS have to take the Planning Department by the horns and either fix it or clean house! That is the solution for Hanover County!
Mr. Ellis, this job means getting your hands dirty. This “Good ol Boy” network is devious and condescending to the point of rude if not just totally thinking they are above the law. I think you can do it because I still think truth and justice eventually wins out. But we usually take a beating getting there.
Good Luck! The Planning Department at Hanover County are the Sith Lords of the Comp Plan. They pretty much do as they please. That’s why it is crucial that the new Candidates for County Supervisor know that reigning in the Planning Department is the only thing that will slow growth! Otherwise, we’re the new Henrico, overbuilt to please big Developers!!
Lets Face it, Hanover County is screwed! Big business is having it’s way and common sense is gone!The Republicans have won! I suggest moving out west to areas tha could sustain moderate growth for 40 years without destroying the natural landscape and you can see developers comming 100 miles away. Enough time to convince them it’s safer to turn around. We’re leaving, I’m sure more will follow when the schools fail!
Good Luck with that! If there’s no money in it to make someone in County Government rich, forget it. Current events don’t really show a logical or caring local Government. Dictatorship comes to mind!
Virginia, A Red State controlled by the Republicans for decades. Like sheep following each other off a cliff, voters continue to vote for the mighty Republican Party so they can think they to are rich and powerful to???? If anyone has a better description for this misfire in the synaptic relays of the brain, feel free!
As I sit in the traffic that continues to get worse daily and wonder about cities built on a grid system that actually gives alternate routes for citizens to drive to and from work, I begin to question the Planners of this none grid system and the whole zoning process. They are still building in already crowded areas???? To late here though, nothing could help Richmond and Hanover other than billions of tax dollars in layering overpass construction like San Antonio, Austin, and Seattle. But our schools and services will be woefully inadequate soon and the roads that are already in need of repair will cause more delays.
Every week another outcry by the citizens of Hanover County about zoning and new Construction of Commercial Development, and every month, completely ignored by the Town Councils or the BOS. And the Hanover Planning Department is stuck in a downward spiral of incompetence.
You follow the Red Party all the way to Washington and you see the same blatant disregard for the people’s voice. The Republican Party has lead this country from a leadership role to a laughing stock around the world.
24th in the world in healthcare for its citizens!
Education going down the tubes!
Ignoring Global Warming while 2007 is going down in history as the hottest and most erratic storms ever!
An Attorney General that has the memory of an Alzheimer Patient!
And a President who is above the law, is wrong about everything, and has run every business he operated and now our country into the ground!!
And the Republicans follow like sheep going off a cliff!
Web sites like this one are a conduit and a rallying point for the masses and yet no one reads or comments? Does Hanover County only have two – three computers at home in the whole county? Are the people that indifferent that they will just sit and watch as big business ruins their lifestyles and rural communities? It sure seems that is the case. Maybe the education problem in this country is already taking a toll.
As the last of our furniture is being loaded on the truck after my job at local credit card giant was sent overseas to the Philippines, I rest assured that I will not be living in this Red State much longer because it just saddens me at the apathy and blind unjustified obedience to the Republican Party in this state.
We’re headed to New Mexico. Fortunately with educations in science as well, my wife and I are marketable there and New Mexico has a lot to offer. Bill Richardson has done wonders with healthcare and education there and our kid’s will do fine. The mountains and rivers are pristine and we love the outdoors.
Our time here has taught us how we don’t want to live. And the politics here is just to overwhelming and only make the rich richer and the poor worse off. When will America wake up and realize that the percentage of poor and the middle class who cannot afford good schools or college potentially sit on the genetic scholars and scientists that could change the world for the better. The gene pool of the top 1% breeds only greed!
After watching the entire meeting, it is so obvious that the Hanover Planning Department is so distracted that facts, science, logic, surrounding esthetics, quality and preservation has no effect on decisions! The problems with the rezonning of Hudleys Corner were so obvious, there can’t be any logical thought process here. It seems if a Developers hands in a proposal, somehow the Planning Department doesn’t see anything but blueprints. Someone needs to get off their #@! ANd actually go look at the projects instead of rushing ahead blindly! There is something so wrong with the Planning Department decisions, deductive reasoning lends to the suspicion of bad ethics and more! Even at the end when Mr. Noe delivered an overwhelming argument of the Departments placing of Buffers and Sidewalks on individual home owners properties, Mr. Cresenzo actedd as if he hadn’t even spoke!
The new BOS after this election must clean house in the Planning Department. The current heads at the Planning Department are NOT WORKING FOR THE PEOPLE!
I am Debbie Coats and I am running for Mechanicsville District Supervisor and I do have a website: http://www.votecoats.com and I have been working very hard. If you’d like to help with my campaign, please let me know. I’d really appreciate your support and your vote. Thanks.
Voting in all new Supervisors this November will work as well as the Democratic House and Senate gains last year, the main problem still exists, George Bush. And with Hanover County the same problems will still exist, The Hanover County Planning Department! A body with such skewed views and plans that make no sense at all and yet fight to the bitter end to maintain failing and incompetent, if not illegal policies!
If the new Supervisors do nothing to replace or control Cresenzo and Maloney, then the election will have accomplished nothing! I have read where some of the challengers don’t know where the problems are; how could you be so blind? They don’t even attend the Planning Commission meetings.
During the last meeting on 16 August, I was compelled to attend by Jack Ward. After two years of fighting I finally have him agreeing that Sub Division Buffers should never be placed on an Individual Homeowners property! These buffers have to be maintained by one single homeowner and cannot be changed and the property owner cannot put up a fence on the property lines, can’t change the appearance and this never in the sales contracts or explained on the plats during closing. There is no HOA, the subdivision is not big enough and never will be. 31 low budget ugly trees, which keep dying and a sidewalk that is not beside the road and goes nowhere! Look around, you can find these disasters in planning all over Hanover County. I pay taxes on a half-acre; I have no control of 1/3rd of that! Jack Ward told me that the hearing would be about doing away with these buffers being placed on individual homeowners properties where there is no HOA. So I went.
That language was nowhere to be heard during the hearing! They did try to give people the right to remove the dead trees, but that would have to be requested and fell to the final decision of M. Cresenzo if the property owner met certain criteria…. That was not spelled out!
Make no mistake, the Power Lust of the Planning Department and the non-progressive decision making based on incorrect assumptions that fail all science and math is the problem and the source of the Comp Plan and the reign of big developers in Hanover County.
The challengers to the BOS must comment on this, understand this, and have a plan to change or replace them, or we are wasting our time voting!
You could fill the room with people against the re-zoning all wanting to speak and it isn’t going to change the minds of the planning commission. All Mr. King is considering is improving the building designs from the completely low budget developer who I wouldn’t let build a pigpen!
I wish you luck, but the incompetence of the Planning Department is overwhelming and they are afraid of no one. Jack Ward is not even here and not going to fight for Hundley Corner….Sad! The Hanover County Lawyer has everyone convinced that these developers will bring lawsuits if they don’t allow development. The deck is stacked and the people loose.
If there was ever a need for a new BOS and most likely new commissioners, just watch these morons tonight once again ignore the voters. These idiots would re-zone Arlington National Cemetery for Developers!
Back in the day, developers would be run out by a local “Welcoming Committee”! I actually grew up in a town in Western Virginia when a local development mandated by the Federal Government and totally against the wishes of the locals was redesigned by dynamite one night, no kidding! The Feds relocated to Tennessee!
There is a Developer who thinks he is going to retire entirely by rezoning Hanover County and concreting over history. The BOS and the Planning Department are inept and unable to even try to stop this Developer. And legally, they probably can’t because the county has an inexperienced lawyer who is afraid of the lawyers of Big Developers. That’s how they win, scum sucking lawyers! Developers need to be motivated to build elsewhere.
Ah, here we go again. Let me see if I can predict the future…. hmm… The People loose to Big Business again! And Bucky may even try to vote against it, but guess what the other four will pass it, Again.
It’s just a game to them.
Vote all of these old tunnel visioned Bums out. We need new, fresh Ideas for the future, not the historic same old Republican game plan of, “Vote for nothing unless the contributors, (Big Business), make tons of cash on it.”
According to the public records of political campaign contributions, Martin Marietta Aggregates have sent him $500 toward reelection. Favors, anyone??? Vote him out! Vice Chairman, indeed!
That’s only the obvious drop in the bucket. Any grade school detective could find the out of state favors and properties used as monies under the table! No one seems really interested in investigating the local Mob?
Great comments and a strong level of excitement and passion. Those key ingredients are needed now! In order to affect change, Jim needs your support. Not only at the ballot box but thru letters to the editor, neighborhood canvassing, poll station manning etc. Please join in.
Great insight and a strong level of passion and excitement. Those key ingredients are need now! In order to make a change, action in the form of support is required by Jim! Not only is a strong turn out needed on election day but help today is required. We need letters going to the newspaper editor, poll station volunteers, neighborhood captains to spread the word and distribute flyers, telephone callers reminding people to exercise their democratic rights. Please join in, now is the time.
As one of many hard working individuals in Hanover County, who has very little spare time, I have yet to hear from any candidates running to oust the Incumbents. Very little in The Mechanicsville Local and what is really sad, of what I have read, not a specific platform other than, “I’m better”, or, “World Peace”! On the Comp Plan there is just disagreement but no real call for repeal or a real voice in the County such as, Public Votes, on Comp Plans like many other counties!
And then there is the Candidates, Republicans or Republicans running as Independents??? Can there really be any difference.
To win an election one must engage the opponent and detail the differences in platforms. There has been an absence of the challenging Candidates at BOS meetings, a prime stage to support the voters asking for change or to defeat Big Developers. But, no, that has not happened lately. In fact the BOS has been on an agenda of voting for anything that would appear like they actually have a ,Heart”! Right before the Election…….What BS!
So, who to vote for, The Republicans or the Republicans, hmmmm.
The BIG issue this year is the Comp Plan and uncontrolled growth! An article in The Mechanicsville Local reads of a population milestone of over 100,000 people in Hanover County. Let’s see if I can show a comparison on the problems of growth without proper planning. Droughts happen! Atlanta is in dire straights and it’s still growing. Are the droughts getting worse or are the droughts highlighting a growth problem! HOW MANY PEOPLE CAN DRINK FROM A LIMITED RESOURCE?
We had some rain lately but I find it irrational that the recent water restrictions favor Developers with recent plantings???? Want to see a green yard, just go to any recent development like the one on Atlee across from Windsor.
One day soon I feel the taps will run dry somewhere, there are to many people drinking, washing , watering, and not conserving our water. To many people concentrated in the coastal areas! In fact, 85% of the population of the US lives within 100 mile of coastal areas. It’s a ticking time bomb and the Feds will not come to the rescue if you’ve been paying attention to current events.
Of all the issues plaguing or County, it looks like there could have been one pure disagreement between the incumbents and challengers, but no, just slightly slow down growth!
And one has to question the ability of the Hanover Population to use computers! Obviously, you can count on one hand the ammount of people who read these blogs and respond. Also the lack of use of blogs. Blogs are usually updated weekly if not daily across the US. In Hanover County, Monthly is more like it and thus the inattention of the readers. The Mech Local most times won’t even post comments on blogs, then why have them? The word is not getting out because the word isn’t GETTING OUT!
“On the Comp Plan there is just disagreement but no real call for repeal or a real voice in the County such as, Public Votes, on Comp Plans like many other counties!”
I disagree. I believe the challengers will amend the Comp Plan to reduce the unwarranted expansion of the SSA.
“And then there is the Candidates, Republicans or Republicans running as Independents??? Can there really be any difference.”
At the local level, party matters very little. How the BoS chooses to manage growth is the only thing I care about. Everything is related to growth: taxes, traffic, school construction, police and fire services. In South Anna, Pattie Bland is a true Independent and frankly, I would rather have a candidate borrow ideas from both parties. The two-party system in this country in “the problem.” The hardcore Republicans paid off by developers to pass their “growth at any cost” mantra are enemies of the future IMHO. They seek to destroy the quality of life in Hanover County and that, to me, means they are enemies of the Future. The BoS is the most invisible, yet most powerful governing body in the County – it does make a difference who you vote for. And, instead of expecting to be “spoon fed” by the local media (which is biased toward the enemies of the future), why not seek out answers to your questions by calling a candidate?
“And one has to question the ability of the Hanover Population to use computers! Obviously, you can count on one hand the ammount of people who read these blogs and respond.”
Yeah – well, you could argue that Hanover County could strike a wifi deal with someone so more people had access to the ‘net without using dial-up. Other counties are creating free wifi for their citizens…some people are still on dial-up – is that their fault? Ever wonder why Hanover County doesn’t televise its BoS and Planning Commission meetings? The Republicans want to keep the sheep dumb, eh.
It totally matters who wins this election – all of the problems you mention are related to the irresponsible use of land and the mismanagement of growth. The BoS number one job is to manage growth, yet with developers in their back pockets, they find it hard to say no to denying anyone their right to destroy our quality of life in the name of profit-taking and greed.
OK, there are two interesting Section at Mechlocal.com on the election! One is the Opinion piece and the other a news item about the Low Key Election. Now lets see if any candidates take advantage of these campaign venues! They are free and might reach some voters!!! If this county doesn’t wake up, we’ll be stuck with the same old gang again!
In the actual Mechanicsville Local Weekly paper. Jack Ward is all over it and he even has people write in! That was available to every candidate! I am sure the write ins are from Real Estate Developers/Agents, but he did use it to the max! That’s campaigning! that paper will influence a great many voters! His pieces in the paper greatly outway the one from Debbie Coats.
Obviously Blogging is a technology watsed on the Hanover County Residents! Either the young folks all leave and the only ones that stay are the basement dwelling failures to launch, or they are simply not engaged in local politics and no one is trying to engage them! Not at all surprising in a State that still allows smoking in public buildings and Resturants? I am beginning to think rural is the wrong term associated with the Civil War reinactments collective mind here in Hanover County. Maybe “Redneck” is better and deserves the BOS it has!
I am a son of Virginia, left when I was a Sophmore in College and never came back untill 30 years had gone by and my work directed me here. I love the trees, but they are disappearing quickly and the traffic coupled with the droughts is like living in the suburbs of San Antonio!
Fortunately, I am leaving soon as we can sell our house in this massive houseing slump. Everything here is priced $50,000.00 more than it is worth now. Why is there more building in a glut market??? No control, that’s why! The Current BOS is incompetent! But when i can count on two hands the amount of people that will actually show up and vote, it isn’t going to change! Good luck to you all! I will vote!
Good Luck! If you have as many show up as for the Comp Plan or the Election, still won’t matter. 30% is no majority and means nothing to the BOS who have been passing every Development project “Hunt” has brought forward! They say growth is inevitable. The new Green Movement says ,”No it isn’t and must not be in already saturated areas of the East Coast!” One bad drought or Pandemic Flu will go through the 95 corridor of the east coast like fire through California! Like a fuse to dynamite the Pandemic flu will spark it’s way down the human thick chain of the east coast until it runs out of people! We have localized our population like planes on an aircraft carrier deck. When one is hit they will all go up. The only possible way to stop the spread is to keep rural areas between the big cities and even that is no guarantee and may only slow the spread of contagions with all the travel! The sad part is that it is not a matter of if, but when with a higher percentage of probability than another terrorist attack! But just keep on building, maybe all the Scientists are wrong!
We have made several email attempts to both Elton Wade and Joe O’Connor of the planning commission re. development in the Old Church area. No response. What does it take to get anyone’s attention in this county?
I live in Florida now but originally am from Lancaster. I miss its bucolic splendor every day. Protecting that area is vital work. Keep it up! I’m with you in spirit!
Gardner is right. Words travel out into the ether. As he and other citizens saw when the Martin Marietta hearing came to a vote, the County has “divide and conquer” down to an art form.
It is doubtful that the rural preservation bone would’ve been offered in the putrid Comp Plan update had there not been a citizen uproar.
I would like Parks and Rec to explicitly include some representation from citizens’ groups (CHF, HN, etc.) in the formal mechanism for updating the Parks and Rec master plan. Formally give them seats at the table, identified as such. Without having done my basic research yet, I would say offhand I would like to see in the revised Parks and Rec Master Plan:
1. More passive open spaces
2. More aggressive landowning by the county for future open space uses
3. A green infrastructure inventory including land in conservation easements
4. A new classification (or actual use of any existing classification) for small county-owned neighborhood and pocket parks
5. Working with neighborhoods to identify and buy private residences that come up on the market and raze them and turn them into passive pocket parks (the “vacant lots” of old) — obviously that would take a lot of coordination with folks in the neigborhoods
6. A workable plan for a biking/walking trail network
7. Tie-in to a PDR plan that covers the whole county, not just outside the SSA.
8. Pushing for the county planning department to look at putting buffers around each new development that are public linear parks with walking/biking trails. These could be pierced by road connections between developments in a way that walking/biking is the more direct route, the road connections are less direct and are located at the least dense areas of the development to hold down shortcut traffic through the existing developments they connect to, existing neighborhoods get some green space and trails in return for being connected (which no one wants when it comes up), and we get the connections we need to fight traffic congestion and promote safer, walkable routes to school, church, community centers, etc.
Just some ideas, maybe workable, maybe not, but worth some serious discussion I think.
Rutland finds will go to the Smithsonian
By Deborah Rider Allen
Nov 06, 2007
Above ground they could see the old plantation house known as Rutland. Below ground they knew there was a family cemetery that dated back to the 1700’s. And members of the Timberlake family who had owned the property for two hundred years pointed out the approximate location of an African American cemetery on the property.
But the significance of what developer HHHunt has discovered and preserved at the 202 acres they are developing on U.S. 301 in Hanover County, Virginia is of national significance. Data obtained from the graves and the cast-iron coffin of the plantation’s patriarch Archibald Burnett Timberlake, who died in 1863 will become part of the “Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th Century Chesapeake” exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. in November 2008.
“It is very valuable and we can learn a great deal of information that you will not find in the history books,” said Doug Owsley, division head for physical anthropology in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History who is conducting the research on the archeological finds from the Hanover County property. His group is analyzing burial sites across the Chesapeake including those from Jamestown, Virginia and St. Mary’s, Maryland for the exhibit. “When you are dealing with the 17th century there are a lot of gaps. You can tell a person’s story through their bones as well as learn about people that no one ever wrote a word about that survived to us today.”
The archeological investigation of the Timberlake family cemetery and the precise location and excavation of the African American cemetery were prompted when HHHunt needed a wetlands permit from the Army Corps of Engineers for the development. Virginia state law requires that any property that requires Federal permitting must also undergo an archeological evaluation.
Daniel T. Schmitt, president of HHHunt Communities first met with Donald Timberlake of the Timberlake family, when they purchased the property.
“He informed us that not only was the Timberlake family buried in the graveyard in front of the Rutland house, but that Timberlake family history indicated that there was a former slave cemetery on the site as well,” said Schmitt adding that the tangible and intangible information from the Timberlake family was invaluable to the research at the development site.
HHHunt then contracted Cultural Resources, Inc. (CRI) to conduct the initial required archeological review; then they kept the site completely shut down so CRI could do a more intensive study of the graves.
“The investigation process, obtainment of permits and ultimate relocation of the cemeteries caused at a minimum, a two to three month delay in obtaining plan approvals and starting construction,” said Schmitt. He projects that HHHunt’s total cost, excluding the cost of internal resource time and construction delays, will be about a quarter million dollars. “But the historical information that will be gained through this research for both Hanover as well as the nation is something you just cannot put a price tag on.”
It was during the work at the family cemetery and the discovery of the cast-iron coffin that first brought the Smithsonian into the picture.
“The Smithsonian put out an APB on all archeological sites producing cast iron coffins because the preservation of the remains is like a time capsule,” said Dane Magoon, bio-archaeologist and senior principal investigator for CRI, who is doing the osteological study of the human remains found at the site. Cast-iron coffins are rare because of the high cost to purchase them in the 1800’s – many times the cost of a wooden coffin.
“It is well preserved and not a common find,” said Owsley who asked permission of the Timberlake family to take the coffin to the Smithsonian for further study. The Timberlakes have since donated the coffin to be part of the museum exhibit.
When the unmarked African American cemetery was located, the Smithsonian along with CRI began extensive research on the remains. The Smithsonian is doing isotope research on the bones.
“From the carbon isotopes we can determine where a person is from – if they are from England or Europe or Africa or if they were American born,” said Owsley. “With nitrogen isotopes we can tell how much vegetable food they have in their diet as well as protein. And each of these skeletons can tell us a person’s age, sex, how tall they were and how much physical labor they did. We can also gain information about their health and sometimes the cause of death.”
“You usually do not get this type of resource window,” said Magoon about the rare find of two separate populations both living at the same time and place. “It is not just a single individual; we are actually looking at the entire cemetery as an entire population of people. We will do a period demographic reconstruction of both burial populations looking at age, sex of the individuals within the cemeteries and the pathologies. We will be looking at how they lived their lives and the interesting stuff will come out of the comparison of the two populations.”
“It is a very important series with both groups represented and one of our principal population samples of human remains to carry out this written bones initiative,” said Owsley about the museum exhibit..
Due to Virginia Department of Transportation guidelines and identified wetlands areas the two cemeteries and the Rutland House (circa 1790 to 1810 and used as headquarters by Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart) had to be moved. The 19 Timberlake family members have been reinterred in the post-Civil War Timberlake family plot in Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery. One more relative was reinterred in Franklin, Virginia. But when it came to deciding what to do with the 57 graves identified in the African American cemetery, HHHunt turned to the community for answers.
Reber Dunkel, professor of sociology at Randolph-Macon College and a member of the board of directors of the Hanover County Black Heritage Society, said his group was concerned about the preservation of the remains and having them handled with dignity.
The group presented a list of their concerns to the Hanover County Board of Supervisors at a meeting where HHHunt was in attendance. “HHHunt assured me after that meeting that they would do it in a proper way,” said Dunkel whose groups had asked that the remains be reburied in a protected area in a similar configuration to the original cemetery. “HHHunt not only did it in a proper and respectful way, they went beyond. They funded research for these people who are buried so that their analysis will contribute to our understanding of the lives and the way they lived. We also set up an ad hoc committee of people who will be the caretakers for these people who did not have a voice or descendants.”
HHHunt is consulting with the Black Heritage Society about the memorial at Rutland house that will be used as a community clubhouse. All materials associated with the graves – whether clothing, artifacts, jewelry or hardware from the burial containers – will be reburied with each individual. The Smithsonian’s research will also be available at the local libraries.
“It will give a voice to a group of individuals who until now have been without a spokesperson, and through them we will learn about their lives and their deaths,” said Jody L. Allen, PhD, visiting assistant professor of history at the College of William and Mary whose dissertation covers black history in Hanover from 1865 – 1969.
“I am so thankful that HHHunt went beyond the minimum and has become a real model for future developers in how developers should approach this issue,” said Dunkel. “They did it the right way.”
Owsley agrees that the way HHHunt handled the situation by engaging the services of an archeological firm and allowing the Smithsonian to participate “serves as an example.”
The property, now named “Rutland”, will be a mixed use, master planned community that includes single family neighborhoods, townhomes, active adult neighborhoods, retail shops, a Kroger grocery store, daycare facility and office park. Schmitt says that this is the first time the company has been challenged with such extensive archeology and removal of burial sites. “In our years of experience with community development, we have not experienced a situation like that at Rutland,” he said. “In the past, we have been able to design around any cemeteries that were discovered in the development process. I am glad we were able to preserve this valuable historical information and accommodate both the descendants and community to come up with the best and most honorable solution for everyone.” A public formal ceremony dedicating the memorial/burial area and the historic Rutland House (now a clubhouse) will be held this coming summer.
Alphine W. Jefferson, professor of history and black studies at Randolph-Macon College, president of the Oral History Association and a member of the board of directors of the Hanover County Black Heritage Society says HHHunt’s willingness to listen to a community group and merge its commercial interests with the interests of preservation will have a tremendous impact on the history of Hanover County. “Literally this slave cemetery is a record and we have been able to save it,” he said. “In some ways it becomes a kind of living history of a people who lived more than 150 years ago.”
About two years ago Hanover County turned down an offer of green infrastructure planning assistance — free — from Karen Firehock’s group. We’re too busy with other things, our county leadership said. So the help went to New Kent County instead. Our county leadership will not think very far outside the box unless there is strong and consistent citizen pressure for them to do so. This workshop should be very useful for citizens to see the potential that green infrastructure holds for building on some of the key strengths and unique places that Hanover County has.
I live on a farm in hanover and I am very concerned about the lack of any farm preservation programs in this county. Haven’t the ever heard of Purchase of Development Rights?
http://www.mechlocal.com/archives05/jan1205/opinion.html
Opposes moving Rutland graves
Hanover County should be congratulated in securing their designation as a Preserve America Community, and I mean this sincerely. They have talked the talk to get this credential and I “had” great expectations that they would now begin to walk this talk. But…
The action at the Board of Supervisors meeting on Dec. 15 dispelled that expectation. Business as usual boys, and by another unanimous decision at that! Not to worry, 56,700 total trips per day by 2009 through this area of Route 301 and Atlee Road. They still haven’t seen that development they don’t like!
Setliff is a real piece of work. Never mind that VDOT hadn’t had time to fully analyze the most up-to-date traffic data. I wonder if he thought that maybe VDOT might recommend more infrastructure because of the development? Could the taxpayers be short changed here and have to dole out more money in the way of eating road improvements through extra allocations when the developer could pay for it?
Now to the real issue for me. It seems the county didn’t learn from the Todd Rogers Pebble Creek grave desecration fiasco several years ago. The only difference here is that they know where the graves are. How many in each cemetery? Don’t know. How will HHHunt handle this? HHHunt says in full compliance with the law and respectfully! The “judge” will issue a lawful court order with no oversight by anyone except God, and off they go just like Pebble Creek.
Hanover County, wake up. Get with the program. With historical properties of this nature and final resting places of who knows how many, when are you guys going to require that the Virginia Department of Historical Resources (DHR) be a part of development planning? The judge sure won’t.
DHR can be a part of this by the judge’s order if he will step up to the plate. Hanover County, you need to write this into your development requirements for moving cemeteries, especially when you know there are slaves and manor house graves, especially of 100 plus years old. But, let’s don’t burden the developer.
Finally, relocating a 200 plus year-old home and remodeling it simply gives you a historical structure with no historical perspective of the whole. Never mind about J.E.B. Stuart’s training ground/headquarters, or the history of the Timberlake families and Rutland itself. And exactly where will the graves be relocated to? All of this for the sake of extending Atlee Road to Atlee Station Road. What a deal.
And before someone says something about not showing and voicing concern, it is a done deal before the hearing takes place. I have been a part of processes at these meetings where the vast majority speaks against it and in Jack Ward’s vivid imagination, he rationalizes his vote by saying he will represent the vast silent majority that didn’t bother to show and express anything. What a system and representatives we have!
And to really put this into perspective and forget what it costs us as taxpayers, remember Lockwood and Media General, go look at French Hay with nothing but the main house all jacked up to be moved (probably already moved), and envision what will happen to Rutland and the Timberlake family place and all of those souls resting in peace there, again, no one to advocate for them. And with what remains simply as “dust to dust”, what will HHHunt respectfully disinter and re-inter? A backhoe full of their dirt? Folks, even the families don’t care, nor does it appear those groups that can advocate for those long lost souls of slaves care enough to simply speak up.
Art Taylor
Beaverdam
http://carolinejustice.blogspot.com/2006/07/great-letter-on-rutland-and.html
http://carolinejustice.blogspot.com/2006/01/just-reminder-this-is-getting-ready-to.html
http://carolinejustice.blogspot.com/2006/04/update-on-hanover-county-rutland.html
WOW! This tracks with the views of Hanover citizens as well! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing!
This should be one of those red flags for Hanover County! We need to make the vital link between developing new land use patterns and transportation.
It is very frustrating to have meetings held in the middle of the work week and the middle of the day. It is hard for citizens to even come and listen to what their elected officals are saying. And now the PC has a meeting TOMORROW (Sept. 19)and I only recived notice of it on Saturday. This process is not very friendly to Hanoverians.
Who or what is driving this push for economic development? I’ve been to several of the joint workshops and public comments sessions, and despite the purported citizen input gained from meetings between supervisors and consultants, the agenda moves ahead with no adjustment that takes into consideration the 71% majority opinion to retain the rural character of the county! Do we, or do we not, live in a democracy? It’s quickly becoming apparent that the citizens of Hanover really have no voice, that our county Supervisors prefer a “top down” government style.
“Badger”
Wow! Thank you Minnesota! If we are to improve this county we need to pay attention to the warning signs.
The County’s study and analysis of land needed for development, which forms the direction and basis for the new comprehensive plan, is fundamentally flawed in a variety of ways. The report jumps to certain conclusions, without ever establishing the reasons for making such radical assumptions. It does not provide information aboout the planning science, any experience in Hanover, experience anywhere else, or just simple evidence that would lead to the rather outlandish conclusions drawn. For example, it does not document the need to consume two acres for every acre desired for development. The proposed SSAs are can not be so jammed with wetlands and steep slopes as to necessitate taking double the needed land-area. Likewise the report does not explore “Better Site Design”, practices common among good planners, as a way to make more efficient and effective use of land. It leaps to spreading the SSAs, without any other suggestions, like increasing the density of the existing residential areas.
The report calls the 1:1 jobs to population ratio a policy decision endorsed by the Board. This means the Board endorsed far reaching policies without first getting any public input on them.
At the meeting when the Board was presented with proposed economic development policy, increasing jobs to match the population was presented as something “counties like Hanover should do”, one job for every resident. But what counties are similar to Hanover? Where are they? What makes them similar to Hanover? Why did the Board endorse approaching the comprehensive with a regional perspective, but completely look inward, and treat Hanover as an isolated island when it comes to the jobs? That is truly BAD planning.
It is now several days into November. The Board expects to adopt the plan early in 2007, as early as January they hope. Yet they still have not provided a definition of the rural preservation regions, and have not issued any documentation about the transporation components of the plan. They have acknowledged that the planning process has completely overlooked vital issues like Hanover’s natural resources, water quality, and open space needs.
I was unable to attend last night’s meeting. Can anyone describe the events and conclusions that the meeting brought forth?
I also cannot believe the stubborn arrogance of the Board and the planning commission. Obviously, some of you good Hanover residents have far better common sense than the current Board Members!
Regardless of the good these men may have done in the past, they have turned to the dark side!
As I am a temporary Hanover resident I have traveled these United States for 30 years in the Military. I have seen good and bad communities and corrupt Supervisors, Mayors, City and County employees, all jailed for corruption, It seems once you get comfortable in a job and the influence of Rich Contractors, looking to pad the decision making, turning to the Dark Side is inevitable. There must be some kind of quality Control office of citizens to review every plan and ordinance or code change coming out of the Board and planning office.
As much as I applaud your continued discussion with the current Supervisors, I feel they are in so deep they cannot change. They must be replaced and new people appointed to the Planning Department. I have had many instances when I was asked to read Contracts and Construction and Renovation plans while in the Military. What these people are doing is Criminal, not just wrong!
We are witnessing the same arrogance that we witnessed in Washington prior to the elections last November which changed the balance of power in the House and Senate. When all logic and science and common sense does not answer why someone would act this way then one can only deduct that the motivation be either greed or lust of power. The very things that career politicians are made of.
In light of no means to police the Board as they control the law, the only and best means to solve the problem lies November 6, 2007.
As we are in the age of change, and watching as obstruction still exists in Washington and in Virginia, I feel the anger of reasonable common sense people will once again prevail in November 2007 and 2008!
Wow, that was as painful reading as listening to the Fed Chairman!
Basically I guess if you want a quite rural county, you will suffer taxes. Or we will build, build, build, and suffer the exact same problems every overgrown community has!
I really don’t understand the reasoning here. It’s almost like saying, We want to keep our county a quite rural community;……. But we can’t help ourselves!
Fiscal inadequacies; Don’t spend what you don’t have!
Don’t build castle like structures like the County Supervisors Building and pay for all that technology only to not have it work properly. Was that expensive a building any way to actually be fiscally responsible? I don’t care if they say they budgeted for it, that’s just saying anything goes if we budget for it!
All of the problems you discuss will not be answered by “changing financial incentives for local governments, we can move away from fiscalized land-use policies, back toward policies that encourage community balance and responsible land-use planning that will be benefit all.” And maybe if we give Bush more time money and troops we won’t feel so bad about the ones he has already wasted!
There is but one problem here and one problem only. Without going into a class on social economics, I’ll use a phrase we use in the Computer Industry. Garbage in-Garbage out! The problem is the same we witnessed in Washington. Greed, power, and arrogance eventually changed the balance of power in Washington last fall. That work isn’t done because the 495 beltway does not hold all the warped ideas and cronyism within. Washington is merely the breeding place of the Ferengi, (The Ferengi were a race of aliens on Star Trek whose philosophy was based on Acquisition of riches. Anything was legal if it got you more riches.) It is a basic flaw in the Republican Party and their policy of repeating the same blatantly wrong, misleading and oft times incorrect information over and over until the masses believe it. Like, “Stay the course,” and “I’m the decider,” which was just so much incoherent mindless babble when he absolutely couldn’t come up with a whole sentence. All this and blocking of the Debate on the war is causing a few like John Warner to reconsider the Administrations Policies.
Like in Washington, we need to start fresh, and to do this we need fresh faces in Supervisors and in the Planning Department. The current occupants are so mired in the old ways they can’t see the forest for the trees they are cutting down. That is a beginning to fix the problem here in Hanover County! Government will not police itself; the citizens have to do that with their votes!
That very question has been asked about the financial supporters and the campaign contributors of the Hanover County Supervisors. Once again, Big money and Big business wins everytime. The best way to police it is to vote the Supervisors out! The culture of corruption is a way of life here in Virgina and must be prosecuted or move em out!
Sounds like the Mob moved from New Jersey to Virginia. On the other hand they are Republicans and that says a lot in itself these days!
Sadly, it seems I’m the only one reading these!
I was wondering how the meeting went? How many people, discussions, progress and so on. I plan to attend the school next school meeting here in Mechanicsville on Thursday.
I have to say that I am worried about the lack of info out to the public. If you do not visit either web site, one would never hear about the meetings. The very occasional comment/Letter to the Editor in the Mechanicsville Local is not enough and seems to never have anything about meetings.
And with the cut off for registration at the County Registrars Office for candidates getting closer, “April”, I feel the Supervisors are just leading the residents along with a carrot until the Deadline for candidates is past and then they will pull the rug out from under us. “Once Again”! I just don’t see any sense of urgency.
Last November I called the Richmond Democrat Headquarters and asked if they were even in the race for Cantors position since I had not heard a thing here. did not even find out there was a Democrat group in Hanover. The only signs I ever saw was a few for Cantor.
I tried for 18 months to discuss my problem with my property with the Board and Jack Ward. Everyone who has been to my house will tell you what the Board did and the Planning department makes no sense, no logic behind it, any and all science was completely ignored, and the end result served no one but the Developer!
This Board has no Honor and in the light of now logic at all one has to deduce, these guys are Bought! There just is no other explanation! Talking with these gentlemen is, I know, the polite thing to do. But when nothing seems to be getting through….well the only option is the one the one the founders put in place, VOTE THEM OUT!
But if the word does not get out to the people of Hanover County, of which I bet 75% have never seen either of the web sites, then all is lost. I still believe that the truth will always prevail but it has to get out there. THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRAT / REPUBLICAN thing! Really, it isn’t and I believe that people will vote either way depending on the circumstances and that these circumstances weigh in favor of a change. Just like last November, the job isn’t done yet, it was just a beginning. And if the Representatives and the Local politicians didn’t get the message, then we need to send it again, even louder!
Ronald L. Noe
I attended the Comp Plan “Work Session” at Patrick Henry High School and it was deja vu! The meeting was well attended, perhaps 100 or so residents, but the format and cafeteria settings were terrible! Unlike last fall’s workshops hosted by the PC, the BoS did have a P.A. system set-up. Still, it was hard to hear over the din of the vending machines lining one side of the cafeteria and the chatter from the crowd. After the pledge of allegience was said, Setliffe explained the format for the evening’s “work session.” At that point, a wise woman rose to suggest that we DON’T split into three groups and stick together. Setliffe said no and admonished the woman for not offering an alternative format earlier in the week when they had apparently held a meeting. It was at that point that another citizen stood up and asked if we could not vote on the format for the evening and a gentleman stepped up and said, “I would like to make a motion…” Well, all for not because, like prior work session, the BoS and PC CONTROL the entire evening adn thus the discourse. Citizens were allowded to ask questions on notecards – all of the questions/concerns weree read aloud by the second part of the meeting. By then, many residents had left already, in frustration. It was a poorly planned format and the County should be ashamed. I had no idea that the county’s attorney was also a professional planner (?!) because he was tag-teaming with John Hodges, as they explained how/why their flawed planning assumptions created this horrific expansion of the SSA!
On March 3rd, the Hanover Democratic Party is holding a pancake b’fast at 9 a.m. at Ashcreek Recreation Center (10854 Linderwood Dr., M’ville). I heard that candidates are going to be announced.
The Comp Plan citizen workshops February 20 and 22 demonstrate once more how intractable the county is on its planning assumptions. The many cogent, rational questions and comments put to the teflon Planning Department officials merely sloughed off of them. Citizens understand the policy of keeping growth mostly in the Suburban Service Areas–that’s not in question. But the magnitude of the expansions portends a runaway growth rate. Why not go slowly at a more measured pace? Who benefits from this type of development? Certainly not the citizens, upon whose backs–er, real estate assessments–much of the cost will ride. That’s a big raspberry to the monovision of Hanover County officials.
The February 20 and 22 Comp Plan citizen workshops at Patrick Henry and Lee-Davis High Schools were completely bogus. They were yet another opportunity for Hanover officials to pontificate about the flimsy planning assumptions. They didn’t genuinely want input from Hanover residents. A green infrastructure map created and distributed by two astute citizens showed various resource overlays–valuable considerations to be taken into account BEFORE development occurs. The map got a response typical of this whole update process: treat the citizens as if they are misinformed or delusional. This patronizing attitude really rankles.
Perhaps the goal of Hanover’s brand of county government is disempowerment…those two, astute citizens who created the green infrastructure map should be paid $200,000….
It is 7:30 PM and this is the first I have heard of this. And I checked this blog this AM. It sounds so much like surrender to the will of the County Supervisors. They are going to do what they want and not what the Community wants.
This is our second set of Military Orders that brought us to Richmond and we choose both times .to live in Hanover County. Hanover County was where crime was low, schools were good, and communities were not crowded. It was close enough to Richmond, Short Pump, and Fort Lee without having to live in those places.
Having lived in communities all over the United States for the last 35 years, I have seen the good, the not so good, and the great places to live. The planning and the direction of the County Supervisors and Planning Department is illogical, ill-conceived, and poorly applied. Contractors run this county!
Hanover County’s future is urban sprawl, crowed schools, police and fire departments stretched to far. It is headed into the concrete jungle that people move away from and look for less crowed places with good schools and low crime!
This BS that growth is inevitable and desireable is just that, BS. It’s time for more control, not less. The result of the proposed plan is that some contractors and politicians get rich and the county will be turned into a commercial wasteland.
On the bright side, we get to leave soon. One thing about the Military is if you don’t like a place, you will leave in 2 years.
I think Hanover County has time to stop the run away Board of Supervisors and elect new folks who aren’t in such a rush to make contractors rich! That’s my philosophy, if they won’t listen to the people, VOTE THEM OUT! 6 November 2007
I suspect the performance will not have the audience exclaiming, “Author! Author!”
Here’s what I think, even though you won’t post it. Hanover County Supervisors have been stringing you folkes along until the April cut off for Candidates to apply for the Election. Now that they know they are in NO danger, they will take your recomendations and say somtething like, we’ll let the planning department evaluate them. Stringing you along further like good shee. In a month or so they will say NO and do what they want. That’s just my opinion.
Fortunately, I’m selling and moving to Idaho, there isn’t a million people in the whole state and the mountains are bueatiful and untouched! When I was there last, there were days I was the only boat on the lake, just me and the Bald Eagles there fishing. There is more wilderness in Idaho than any other state. You get to live in the moderate climate of the treasure valey, but if you want snow in the winter you’re only 35 minutes away.
Plus, I can buy two homes there for what I paid for this low quality box.
Good luck
Of all the arguments for slowing down development and growth here in Hanover County is Science. With 85% of the population of the United States living on or near costal areas and increasing at an alarming rate, it seems the cries from the Scientific Community here and around the world go unheeded!
Just this weekend CNN reported from the Scientific Meeting at Belgium:
“The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won’t have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium.
At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press.
Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive.
For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised.”
I have to ask everyone to really sit down and think about this! Now is the time to rethink the future, we cannot wait any longer. We saw what happened after Katrina, is there any one of you who think the government will respond to this announcement from Belgium? Has government done anything yet; NO! In fact the United States is lagging behind, not leading, in measures to reduce Green House emissions. I don’t think our government has responded well to anything and I would ask every one of you to do the following, here and in federal elections. Republican or Democrat, we have to keep voting these career politicians out of office until someone gets the Message! It’s just no going to all of a sudden get Better!
Sadly the Hanover County Supervisors are taking the same tact as the Bush Administration! With no progress on Bio Fuels and Electric cars, Solar energy, Wind energy, Wave energy, all of which the Bush Administration could have created Incentive programs and tax relief that would speed up development of these life saving measures, nothing but catch phrases and Photo op handshakes and only tax breaks for the wealth.
If one really looks at the Future, 50 years from now, then growth is not the answer! This area already has a drought every other year or so and it will get worse, not better! And it’s really hard to explain the concept of larger more powerful storms and more droughts, but they do fall hand in hand! Then we have to consider what 2- 3 foot rise in Sea level means for Eastern Virginia? Where are all the people going to go?
The bottom line, the end result of this argument with the Hanover County Supervisors is; are we condemning our children and grand children by continued growth and development and not really preparing for the inevitable? The answer is Yes! Our children’s’ futures demand action!
I agree with the blogger who wrote that the Board of Supervisors are stringing citizens along. But it is not too late for citizens who want to run as independent candidates to file for the NOv. ‘07 election. That deadline is not until June. If you have a better vision for Hanover, you still have the opportunity to run for the Board of Supervisors.
WOW! Is there anyway the county and the taxpayers can get their $200,000 back?! Unbelievable! All along, the Coalition has been saying there were flaws, but after reading this report – it becomes really clear! How can the Supes accept FLAWED REVISIONS based upon FLAWED DATA?!
Will the Supervisors get this information? Will they read it in time?
I heard that a copy of the report has been given to each supervisor. They owe it to the taxpayers to get the right data. There are too many recent examples in this world of really bad data being used to make big decisions. Let ’s hope the supervisors will rethink this plan.
puzzled
Thanks to whoever located Mr. Siegle! After reading The Hanover Advocate and its “flawed data” article, let’s hope the BOS has the good sense to admit a mistake and shelve the plan for another 5 years. We need a plan that utilizes common sense and good data.
A new anthem for Hanover 2008…
Where have all the flowers gone?
Of course, we can substitute “farms”, “fields”, and “woodlands” for the flowers in this theme. If you want to see what your neighborhood is facing, take a drive to Rt. 301 and Atlee Rd. intersection. What was once Rutland, a nice rural property with an historic house is now bulldozed, logged, ready for pavement, homes and shops. How can this happen? It does when county officials disregard the vision of its citizens.
Alas, the definition of Politics and Statistics vs. Science. In science we do research and experiments to see what the results will be. In Politics you skew the statistics to prove what you want the results to be. Thus the argument becomes did the County Supervisors and/or Planning Department simply miss all of these glaringly skewed/wrong numbers and statistics? Or did they try to push it through on purpose, and for what motive? And if the latter is the case for some favor in the future or some other motive, do you want these people to remain in these sensitive positions?
Yes, I agree: the Supervisors have been stringing citizens along. Worse, though, is that many on the Board do not seem to be doing their own inquiry into the facts and implications, but rely too heavily on the County staff, who appear to have an ear tuned to the developers’ song.
A partnership isn’t possible because paternalism suffuses the Hanover County government. The Comp Plan update was never about partnership in creating a community vision.
In its monomaniacal pursuit of revenue, the County has panicked. If the Comp Plan update is approved, they have abandoned a position of measured, incremental growth that keeps expenses under control.
“Getting and spending we lay waste our powers. . .”
And having read the information, in the face of the Runaway Comp Plan train, will they untie the Fair Maiden Hanover from the tracks?
You folks keep trying to fight Greed, Kickbacks, and Lust for Power, with Logic and Common Sense. I have to think, based on my dealings with the Sith Lords, it will fall on deaf, Payed off, ears! Just my opinion, but short of voting them out, this plan is a done deal! They will simply say it’s a difference of opinion! Good Luck!
I may be too emotional but for the last two years our family is witnessing the unpresedented distruction of forests and rural communities in this area. Looking around I cannot come to terms with unability to people to recornize that they are part of nature and together with distruction of everything around humanity is doomed. Nothing is able to grows for ever. We do noot need extra thousands of feet of dead shopping acarage, empty office spaces and roads . We need fresh air, lush greenary around us to stay alive and human!!! Think about it!!!!
Irina Howell
Um… I think the number of speakers who signed up was closer to 140, rather than 40.
You would think that after getting strung along like this, people would get serious about the elections coming up in November. Wednesday will be the final blow. The Axis of Evil will sit there,”Not listening, just waiting”, and send you home while they meet in private.
If you should get them to postpone the vote, it won’t be for further consideration, it will be well to string it out past registration for party candidates and maybe even the June date for independents! They win!
They say we are different, smarter than the animals because of our ability to reason. However, a good dog can recognize a threat and act on it quickly!!!
The fact that only Real Estate developers and agents were the only ones to praise the plan should answer anyone’s doubt about the motivation of this plan, $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
Corrupt people don’t just change; they have to be voted out!
You would think that after getting strung along like this, people would get serious about the elections coming up in November. Wednesday will be the final blow. The Axis of Evil will sit there,”Not listening, just waiting”, and send you home while they meet in private.
If you should get them to postpone the vote, it won’t be for further consideration, it will be well to string it out past registration for party candidates and maybe even the June date for independents! They win!
They say we are different, smarter than the animals because of our ability to reason. However, a good dog can recognize a threat and act on it quickly!!!
The fact that only Real Estate developers and agents were the only ones to praise the plan should answer anyone’s doubt about the motivation of this plan, $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
Corrupt people don’t just change; they have to be voted out!
Just when we thought we had incompetence and lust for power confined to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue! And facts and logic hasn’t stopped Bush! Only one choice remains.
The BOS has been given every opportunity to do the right thing and has failed every time. This comp plan isn’t the only wrong decision made. They have been bombarded with Facts and Science and Math only to throw all aside and keep the plan! What could be the motivation??????????
In the absence of sound decision based on facts, logic, and scientific data, corruption is the only answer! It is basic deductive reasoning!
Remember the old adage, “In for a penny in for a pound?” They can’t turn back now! It would open them up to bigger Legal question and dismantle the entire,”Good ol Boy”, network!
So what do we do; The answer is in the Declaration of Independence:
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness….
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, IT IS THEIR DUTY, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The state of Washington, Minnnesota, Vermont, and some of Wisconsin and Maryland
include citizen-based approaches to comprehensive planning. In fact, in Minnesota,
its state law – fancy that!
Community-based planning is the opposite of top-down, developer driven planning.
http://www.mc-mncppc.org/community/about/about_cbp.shtm
Here are ways in which Hanover County could be building the capacity for its citizens
to understand the comp planning process.
Effective Approaches for Getting the Word Out to Citizens:
http://www.mrsc.org/Subjects/Governance/Participation/Effective.aspx
http://www.uwsp.edu/cnr/landcenter/tracker/fall2003/compplanset.html
Government Of the People, For the People, By the People, Sounds familiar! Actually having someone in County Government that shares and cares about what the PEOPLE want! Wouldn’t that be grand?
The current occupants of the BOS do not! They are otherwise motivated by something that makes them stark raving mad. They have to be mad to allow subdivision buffers to be placed on a single homeowners property and then to make that home owner responsible for maintaining 37 trees that have already died 3 times and a sidewalk that goes NOWHERE! ON HIS PROPERTY! Also a Comp plan that awards Developers and real Estate Agents, while straining the schools, the water system, and turning Hanover County into Henrico County, CROWDED!
And is no one paying attention to current events? As this planet changes to Global Warming, every citizen living within 100 miles of the costal regions are going to see changes in their living conditions as the sea level rises. 85% of the population of the United States lives in costal areas! GROWTH IN THESE AREAS IS NOT RECOMMENDED! And it’s not that far off, our children and their children will witness the results of Global Warming up close and personal. Or do we just throw caution to the raising wind speeds and continue to grow!
The Federal Government doesn’t even recognize there is a problem!
The current occupants of the BOS are people who couldn’t work a regular job, and no talent or skills but Rhetoric and political spin. Using the Republican handbook of just keep repeating the same wrong information until they believe it.
Sadly, unless someone runs against all of them, we’re screwed for another two or four years, whatever it is! THE SOLUTION is to vote them all out, put new well meaning people in who will in turn fire the Planning department and start all over with fresh ideas based on what the voters want! Alas only a couple of people have come forward to run and that isn’t going to do the job.
Seating is limited, so how about a good ol tailgate party tonight at the courthouse, cook some burgers and dogs and support those inside! We can chant, blow our horns, throw a little tea overboard, you know!
Wow! Who saw that coming? Well, I did. I’ve been trying to communicate the illogic of these individuals for months. The only motivation has to be Kickbacks, pay offs, favors, and political contributions to campaigns. And with those contributions, the elections become difficult and especially if we do not take full advantage of every possible vehicle to get the truth out.
Voting the BOS out doesn’t solve the problem; it started with the Planning Department! The Planning Department is appointed by the BOS, and are the architects of this gross abuse of math, science, and logic. Once the BOS are out the Planning Department HAVE TO GO!
All of these people are career politicians, and career politicians are destroying this county and country as well. Voting Independent or Democrat doesn’t matter. Bad government is bad government! The Democrats bring more campaign money, but, whatever works!
From now until November, signs and flyers with the truth and candidates names must be on every street corner and in every mailbox!!! Lets show the BOS who is BOSS!
“Career Politicans” What a joke. Do you know how much they make for being on the Board of Supervisors?? 20K a year. Wow, big money. All of the members of the board of supervisors have full time jobs but still take the time to listen to the bickering of some pathetic people. Did you hear we have congress and a president?? I’m sure your just as upset at their policies that have innocent children dying. Oh you probably don’t care about that, only that your neighborhood stays quiet. WAKE UP PEOPLE!
The Board of Supervisors–actually the voting bloc of Setliff, McGhee, Ward and Gordon–are so far out of touch with the people. The Comp Plan was rammed though last night by this Gang of Four who purport to have the welfare of the citizens at heart. Their actions continue to bespeak disdain.
I’m not sure what anonymous was trying to say. I wasn’t sure if they were for Iraq or against. Let me assure you as a family that has seen up close, first hand, the blood of the injured soldiers at Fallujah and Mosel, yes I am concerned about Americas children dying in Iraq for an illegal war based on vendetta and oil! The same culture of corruption that plagues the BOS who ignore the majority and the facts for some other motivation. Hmmm, what could that be? When Science, Math and just plain logic are cast aside and decisions made that have failed in every instance since the 50’s, logical minded people want to see a serious slow down in growth.
Let’s see, build, build, build, crowded, move further out for quite, build, build, build, move further out. Then the places you moved from attract lower income families, the taxes are too much, the schools are crowded, crime, foreclosures, urban decay! And with the gas prices slated to hit $4.00 a gal within a year so Exxon Corp can have another Record year like the last two, no longer can anyone afford to move further out for quite.
I think it’s time for a change, here, just like Washington!
Come on person, Wake Up!
Let’s take a vote on this, citizens of Hanover County: How may of you are in favor of impeachment for four supervisors?
It appears that Mr. McGhee, Mr. Ward and Mr. Gordon, as well as Chairman Setliff think of themselves as dictators instead of representatives. I feel sure that when election time rolls around, they will learn better.
Thank you Mr. Stanley, Mr. Wade and Mr. Ernst for doing what you were elected to do, speaking for the citizens of your district.
I would think if a petition for removal of Board members and dropping the Comp Plan was signed by an overwhelming percentage of Hanover citizens, then they would have to respond and step down! I’d sign it in a heartbeat. I’m sick and tired of living in a political dictatorship instead of a Democracy!
Lets face the truth. They won. They got their plan no matter the motivation$$$$$$$. Between now and Novemeber everyone will forget. Why, because no one is doing anything now! There are no Candidates! And at the rate of speed the Hanover Social Club is moving,(Hanover County Democrats), There won’t be any candidates or no one will every hear about them. Get ready for Urban Spraw, crowed schools, and services stetched thin! The Republican way to the future!
Just to respond to the previous poster: they haven’t won by a long shot. I beleive that you will some very strong candidates get elected in November. We only need to elect ONE Supervisor to shift the balance of power towards favoring smarter growth solutions….I feel much more optimistic than you. If the Hanover County Dems are “social club” – it’s a club I’d rather hang with any day.
Supervisors don’t get impeached; but they ARE subject to a recall vote! And BTW, there ARE candidates stepping up. Three have already announced and there will be more. Promise. Watch the news.
Good luck with this problem, they have ignored mine for two years. The Planning Department and the BOS think only of Developers! Just as they ignored the citizens over the Comp Plan, I feel they will ignore you.
We moved here and bought a house in Mechanicsville two years ago when choices were few. A new house on a new street. Just 6 new house on a new street all on the left side surrounded by existing 3 – 5 acre properties. Little did we know we were screwed from the start. The Developer and the Seller and his agent all in on it , did not , ever, disclose that they had placed a “Sub Division Buffer on my actual property to keep from having to develop a common area! Developer and Sellers Agent both from Long and Foster. The DPOR failed to find fault so all I can do is litigate, “When we sell”! I pay taxes on a half acre yet I only have control of 1/3rd acre! They took 50 x 145 feet of my property and to rub salt in the wound, they planted 37 trees that have all died twice! There are always dead trees on my property. And now they say it is my responsibility to maintain 37 dying trees and a side walk to far from the road to do any good and starts at the base of a huge power pole.
There are no other sidewalks in the area and there are no other properties with dying trees planted in two rows buffering nothing! I never even have say in the type of tree and hired a National Arborist a year and a half ago who gave them a report saying, The trees are going to die! Nothing!
When asked if it was proper to allow Sub Division Buffers to be placed on private property and made the responsibility of the single homeowner, Jack Ward and the BOS said yes, it’s OK to take your property! And they have strung me along for two years, never meaning to do anything; sort of like the Comp Plan!
I have asked for it to be vacated, shown just cause and logic for doing so and the illogic of placing the buffer! But as we have seen in the Comp Plan, logic plays no part in their decisions. The current BOS will only change plans and ordinances or give exceptions on issues they want resolved quickly and have done so numerous times. But tell me they are working on it, for two years?
Obviously the motivations of the BOS are something more than what meets the eye! When Logic and Science are cast aside and skewed numbers used to prove their points and will not listen to the majority, well?
The answer to your problem, the Com Plan and my problem comes in November and requires every common sense resident of Hanover County to vote in a voice the BOS cannot ignore! Candidates are stepping forward. It’s time for a change, a fresh start in Hanover County!
Sadly and obviously, no one but a very very few even know this site exists and/or comments. And the Mechanicsville Local is being slowly but surely controled by someone! Must be an election year and money buys anything in this county!
Global Warming, I am surprised, shocked to see that kind of foresight in a political arena as this. But, I agree that this is the Beast. We only have a slight chance to maybe slow it down if we started today, worldwide. Ain’t going to happen and especially not with the Republicans in office and their policy of ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
Some facts to consider: 85% of the population of the United States lives within 100 miles of the/a coastal area. At the recent Global Warming meetings around the world, maps reflecting the changes in our coastlines after the continued melting of the poles by the end of the century were displayed. Most scientists agreed and added that it did not reflect the massive changes in weather and what chaos that would cause along with further erosion of the coastlines.
As the BOS has past planes to damn the torpedoes and build, build, build I would like to remind them that Hanover County no longer exists in the future maps! And 93 years from now our children’s children will pay the price for our short sightedness.
Believe me when I say we as responsible humans must make some sound and correct decisions during the next elections local and Federal! Or make plans to move.
I would sell before the country wakes up and says OH S$#@! House and land under water don’t sell quickly!
The provision “Urban Transportation Service Districts (UTSDs) may be created for counties of 90,000 or more people that do not maintain their own roads.” does not apply to Hanover. The population figure had to be as of the 2000 census when Hanover had 85,000 residents…
Yes, citizens who felt shut out of the process to envision Hanover’s future, and there are many, need to channel that energy and indignation directly to the voting booth. Take a look at a piece of land denuded of trees and scraped of topsoil if you need to experience that visceral reaction to development that is an environmental and aesthetic nightmare.
As a life long Hanover native I am disgusted with the comp plan. However, I am equally appalled at the suggestion that Hanover should join the Agenda 21 program. Anyone who has taken the time to thoroughly research the details of Agenda 21 and related spin-offs knows that doing so would be disastrous for our county as a whole and our property rights as individuals.
Reshuffle the deck? YES!
Join other counties and cities in their lemming like rush over the Agenda 21 cliff? Absolutely NOT!
for those of us who are not familiar with the details of the Agenda 21 plan, maybe you could explain how joining “Agenda 21 and related spin offs” would be “disastrous” for or so-called property rights as individuals?
Yes, a right wing conspiracy to rule Hanover County and get stinking rich off the good people. But they are the only wing! Democrats show no sign of life in the Supervisors race. Not one word in the Local. Nothing, What are we to do but to serve the Republicans?
Gee, didn’t you hear? The M-L reported that Jim Ellis for Setliffe’s seat in the Chickahominy District. Ellis already has a website up. Knock off Setliffe and break up the “Gang of Four” – Jim Ellis is the guy to do it!
One Democrat Candidate, wow! Won’t solve any problems in Mechanicsville. Jack Ward is a self proclaimed Big Business promoter. Sold his sole to the highest bidder. He has all but ruined Mechanicsville with his blind ambition.
If you want to make a statement, clean house. Or, as with the 06 election that gave majorities to the Dems in the House and Senate, a slight majority can’t get all the work done.
The Hanover County Social Club, “Democrats”, spend to much time promoting Social Events in Ashland, than speaking out on the demonic relations off the current BOS, unless you happen to be at one of their wine tastings. No one else in the county hears a thing! Win the local seats then you can win the state! Good luck with one candidate. Anything will help but doesn’t really announce an “awakening”.
love the pessimism…why would you need an “awakening” when getting rid of just one of the four supervisors will tip the apple cart? i suppose, in your mind, kevin damian doesn’t have a chance? debbie coats doesn’t have a chance? and, there is a guy in s. anna collecting signatures and i guess he doesn’t have a chance….i think you underestimate how pissed off folks are, regardless of party….much of the issues re: the comp plan update have nothing to do with party affiliation.
The fact that only two people read and comment on this blog speaks volumes about the lack of support of the Democrat Party of Hanover County! What’s the point?
If you can’t enlist but one Supervisor Candidate, and especially after an over whelming outcry from the citizens over the Comp Plan, that just speaks volumes of the lack of foresight/leadership in the local party! That’s a very, very sad commentary on the Democrats. You could have run Arnold the Pig from Green Acres against Jack Ward and won! In his recent ad in the Mechanicsville Local, Ward confessed his Big Business ties and support for them. Says he just likes working with the people. Yeah, as long as the people are Big Developers and Big business who have a history of destroying rural counties!
With this kind of ammunition you could run a dead man and win! But not the Dems, they’re to bust wine tasting!
What Agenda 21 really does is to make sure some one makes money off of programs that do little if anything to stem Global Warming. It creats more government to establish more companies that sound like they promote eclogical protection, but really do nothing but make sure more developers can still come in build, build, build. That’s what “improve the ecological health of communities across the nation while promoting economic vitality and social justice.” means!
Age-restricted housing is a way to discriminate against families AND against the disabled. I am disabled and and almost fifty and have tried to get in the age-restricted communities (for purchase and for rent) for several years, including within the past few months. Despite the fact my husband is over fifty, I have not been allowed to apply for any of the communities. The communities clearly are built with accessibility in mind, where other homes these days aren’t.
One-floor homes in Hanover with the accessibility assets aren’t readily available, and the disabled aren’t able to afford to custom build homes. We looked for homes that fit that description, as well as for land. The Board of Supervisors want to limit land use presently it seems to dense home use and to shopping centers everywhere.
do you know your posts are being stolen and posted at http://www.Hanoverliving.com
please report his to Google and your webhost. this is a serious infraction.
First it was Jack Ward of Mechanicsville who announced his continued BOS campaign by a column in the Mechanicsville Local. Touting how much he likes working with the people. Yet voting against the people on the Comp Plan and in the same article stating his continuing work with the commercial real estate developers. That was bad enough and a Kiss of Death for the election in November, but then this article from Setlif.
The Setliff article in the Mechanicsville Local under “Accidental Supervisor”, which could’t be more appropriate, has so much distain and disregard for the citizens of Hanover County that it is just insane to print it! But he did! If for no other reason but to give these two guys the time they need for Mental Health Counseling, we will vote for their opposition in November!
Did you ever wonder why Republicans preach lowering taxes? Is it that hard to really grasp? The answer is that tax breaks affect the Rich much much more than the middle class and poor. Just tens of dollars to the poor equate to tens of thousands to the top 10 percent of the rich! So not only do they want to make money off of companies that do little and pay little to their workers, they don?t want to pay taxes that equate into social programs like public schools, law enforcement, health care, water plants to support their massive commercial developments, and on and on.
The Republicans want everything to stay the same. But we have learned both nationally and locally that the duty of the American voter is required to lead this county and country in a new direction. We can no longer sit back and expect intelligent decisions to somehow wake up in the incumbents. It?s not going to happen; they are broken and cannot be fixed. It?s just Money, money, money, to them. It?s time to educate them that it?s all about the People!
I think you need to take a closer look at hanoverliving.com. If a blog from Hanover North Carolina is copying your posts, and it indeed looks as if they are, Then I doubt very seriously they have any insight to handle the Comp Plan.
While we’re on the subject of the Comp Plan, you do realize that the main characters in the creation and responsible for the hasty implementation of the Comp Plan Vote, reside in The Planning Department of Hanover County. The BOS as lame as they are, are but puppets, maybe well paid puppets of the Plannimng Department.
We can replace the BOS, but the Planning Department needs a complete House Cleaning to get ride of the infestation of parisites! If the new Supervisors won’t fire and re-hire we will have accomplished nothing in November!
Yep, the “progress” of Rutland Commons pretty much shows that picture. “Prime parcels”? Of what?
Skinned earth?
I am an independent candidate challenging for the Board of Supervisors seat in the Chickahominy District (Mr. Setliff’s district). I spent some time last year trying to figure out just exactly where the push was coming from on this Comp Plan update — was it the planning department, the Board, the county manager, the economic development authority, the industry sectors? I honestly still don’t know.
Most analyses of failures end up revealing a series of otherwise relatively minor events that combine in just the right sequence to create a big problem. And as a social scientist rather than a bench scientist, I am used to analyses that show that the answer to whatever question we are looking into is “all of the above.” So I suspect there is no one center of total responsibility, just a series of decisions or lack of political will or paternalistic attitudes that snowballed.
When it became apparent that this was not the usual fringe element of complainers showing up at Hanover High on March 21 — 900 people were there! — there was a shortage of humility on the Board, and for their various reasons four men decided they knew better and plunged ahead. The public record shows that the Board, the planning staff and senior county administrators were in communication with developers since 2004 about issues that were deemed critical in this update, and that economic development staff were encouraging pro-update speakers during the process.
The idea that there would be an expansion of the suburban services area was under discussion with developers before the RFP was barely out the door for the update consultant who was supposed to lead the process of deciding what the plan would actually look like. The Board did not “get it” back then, they did not get it in March 2007, and their 4-3 vote was a direct challenge to the citizens of this county.
The incumbents still don’t realize how deep and real this groundswell is, rallying around the work that many dedicated Hanoverians have been doing for years and years. One thing is for sure — we have no chance of figuring this out unless we change the composition of the Board. Please keep spreading the word that there are viable, thoughtful candidates out there who have decided to step up on behalf of the citizens. Every friend and neighbor you talk to about this matters.
Well, that Lowes thing went well????
Mr. Ellis,
As someone who has beat Reasoning, Logic, Science and just plan common decency to death over the last two years trying to get a Subdivision Buffer that was placed on my legal property, vacted, thrust me when I say, there is no integrity in The Planning Department. If you would like to call and hear the whole story, my number is 730-7361.
Better yet if you would like to come by and see this, misguided bordering on criminal, Subdivision Buffer that is only on my property and benefits no one or thing, again give me a call, we’re not on mapquest after two and a half years!
What is it about corporate development that thinks people need more than all stores within a 3-mile diameter of their homes? We don’t. There is no question why the phrase, “As beautiful as urban sprawl”, has never been coined. Ashland simply does not need this development, period.
This community has everything it could possible have within 5 to 10 miles. And then there is Short Pump and across the river.
Why start bringing all of it here and causing more traffic and runing the small shops in Ashland out of business, why?
It seems that the time has come when the laws meant to protect the citizen, are in fact destroying the small towns due to greed and the dishonesty of Corporate America. There will come a time when we will fight back using the, down home way!
I don’t live in Hanover, but I have read the Comp Plan. I understand how some of you feel.
However, I would caution you to be sure you want what you are asking for. New supervisors, commissioners, planners. You won’t have anybody that understands land use and the development community will take more advantage than they can now. Make sure you elect people with a solid background in planning and its political dynamic.
This last post sounds like Cameron Wood…”I don’t live in Hanover, but do you mind if I profit from destroying your county and its rural character?” The assumption that intelligent citizens (1.) haven’t read the Comp Plan and (2.) just wouldn’t “know” how to deal with THOSE developers or land use planning is offensive! Gee, think of all of current Supervisors – maybe one had a *solid* background in land use planning, but the others?!
I can prove to you that the current supervisors don’t understand land use, “They only know what they’re told by Developers”, and the planning commission could pick a good plan if it was in front of their noses. The inspection folks accept some of the shoddiest work I have ever seen and wouldn’t know proper drainage if it ran over them. I’ve tried to work with these bums and they really don’t have a clue unless told by big developers! This county isn’t upset with the current occupants of the BOS and Planning Department, their Damn Mad! The word professional is loosly tossed around these days and has no business being applied to the folks at the County Complex!
Our small town is about to be smothered by this development. The town council took a courageous stand in denying Ashbury and they should get our support in denying this version of Ashbury. Some rumblings around town say the council should “cut a deal” I say keep you backbone coucil people and don’t let Wilton and developers like him pry open Ashland for the insane kind of development that is in short pump, Massaponax, and every other exit in NOVA.
This is the time for citizens to fignt back or it really will be too late once we have two five story hotels, hundreds of town houses and homes & commercial districts at this exit.
Tell your coucil members not to get weak kneed now!
The fearmongering regarding inexperience should be expected, and it will continue for some time. But if we want to see something truly frightening, let’s look at what the experience of at least some members of the current Board brought us. This Comp Plan update was supposed to be a bold initiative to plan the county’s next 50 years. But there was only ONE OPTION put out for the citizens to look at. It was essentially devised before the alleged process to create it ever began. And it was just more of the same sprawl-inducing worship of short-term profits over consideration of citizens’ voices and long-term consequences.
The county has continued to pretend that the Comp Plan update process was open to citizens when clearly it was not, at least not in any meaningful way. The process had no room for serious discussion of green infrastructure, rural preservation, agriculture as a real focus of economic development, transportation modes other than private automobiles, smart growth principles, green and sustainable building practices, and real-life examples of these things being done around the Commonwealth and around the country.
Citizens are ready to take the “risk” of electing relatively inexperienced supervisors who may appoint relatively inexperienced planinng commissioners because citizens have seen the certainty of what will happen if they don’t make this change now — not only will they continue to be pushed to the side as their beloved county is further exploited, they will have to endure the added patronizing insult of being told that their opinions are valued and it’s all for their own good.
Numerous citizens spoke at public meetings to inform the Board about what would happen in November based on the Comp Plan update vote. The die was cast in March 2007. The discussion ended on March 28. We have four months to make sure that in November the voters “send a message” so loudly and clearly that there can be absolutely no mistaking its strength or meaning.
Coats and Ellis are running as Independents!! Not Democrats. The Dems are still lifeless, no info, no posts in the Mech Local, NOTHING. And for that matter, not a word from Debbie Coats., no website, nothing again. Running is more than listing your name as a candidate.
So, just because these candidates are running as Indies, they’re not going to be better than what we have now?! They could run as martians and I would still vote for them – just to to change the present regime. Your anger seems misdirected…blame the Hanover Dems? You’ve got to be kidding. Finally, we’ll get some wise woman as Supervisors. Out with the dinosaurs…they’re stuck in the 20th century as are the Dem and Republican parties.
I’ve been working with four term BOS Jack Ward for almost two years now since we bought a new house in Mechanicsville. Instead of a Subdivision Buffer being placed in a common area, the Developer was allowed to forego a common area and place the 50 x 145 Buffer on my legal property. Trust me, being a military family here on orders, we asked all the right questions to the point of beligerence prior to closing. Still the Developer and Sellers Agents, both of Long and Foster would not, did not, ever state that the Buffer was actually on my property and it was never mentioned on the contract. We had to take the house at closing after being two months late. I noticed the rectangle on the platt but it did not identify it and also did not acknowledge the Restrictions and Responsibilities associated with it.
You see the Planning Department passsed this without loosing a breath placing the responsibility of maintaining 37 dying trees and a sidewalk to nowhere soley on ME! You see there are only 6 new houses all on the left side of a new street that deadends in a cul de sac! Obviously I live on the corner of Ellerson and Waldron Way.
The trees have died twice and will again, I hired a Nationally Aclaimed Arborist to do a report. It went to eveyone, County, BOS, Developer. Not a word from the Palnning Department, inspection office, or anyone, even Jack Ward. Even in the light of the roport stating the trees were planted wrong, Wire and baskets still on the root balls, restrictive twin tied tightley around the trunks, wrong species for the area and in a drainage are where this species will die!
Some have been replaced, same kind, (Dime a Dozen, Eastern White Pines), they continue to die.
How does the County think that placing a buffer on private property is right? I’m not talking about the utility easement, beyond that! A third of my haalf acre lot.
All of a sudden in an election year, Jack Ward changed his tact when I said I guessed I’d have to vote for someone else. Three times now he has told me , “It will get Vacated”!
Guess what, The Planning Department won’t put it on the aagenda! Won’t listen to him at all.
Experience isn’t working for me in what is another case of the Planing Department siding with the Developers. How are we susposed to think that integrity still lives at the County Complex when this kind of sleazy planning gets pushed off on the citizens? And then the Comp Plan, Jeeezzz!
Experience in corruption maybe, not in doing the “Right Thing”! Good people just don’t do this to good people. Vote the Bums out and new breath into the BOS!
Ellerson and Waldron Way. Feel free to come look at this crap. They even planted a tree with the top half broken off and the county inspectors OK’d it!
Ron
The reason why sprawl in the metro Richmond area all looks the same? The Wilton Companies. Will the green buildings movement ever take hold? From an aesthetic point of view, do planners, architects, and development companies enjoying looking at this crap that they build? I’m sick of hearing the term “anchor store”….why not just say Kroger/Ukrops/Food Lion surrounded by nail salon, chinese buffet, check cashing, or some other generic retail chain? If we don’t change these patterns of ugly development, they will change us!
I applaud the effort of the citizenry of Hanover County in signing all the Petitions for the candidates against the current BOS, Bravo! The way the Board completely ignored, (And in the case of Gordon and Stanley, did not strongly defend) the clear majority of citizens attending the Comp Plan work shops who opposed the Comp Plan, is nothing less that tyranny. I thank the candidates that want to cast off the old leadership and provide for a better future. But to think that new Supervisors alone will fix the problems we face is ignoring the real problem.
The Board of Supervisors do vote aye or no on the proposed changes, implementations, plans and so forth. But where do they come from. Usually they originate at the Office of Developers and presented for review bay the Hanover County Planning Department. If you want to really blame someone for the Comp Plan, I give you the Hanover County Planning Department!!!!
Michael E. Crescenzo is the Director of Planning. David Maloney and John Bender are the Deputy Directors of Planning. Planning Department personnel can be reached by calling (804) 365-6171.
The sheer lunacy of some of the plans they have accepted over the last four years is maddening. Some are completely void of the adult thought process and do more harm than good. The drainage in some Sub Divisions has continually been a problem and is not getting any better. Sidewalks where they are not needed, some dumb requirement for a secondary sewer drainage tube in the middle of yards, and buffer plants that are, (By all science) planted to close together, not draught resistant, and dead within weeks and never checked on! Roads built that are often to wide and lines painted that are strangely confusing causing two vehicles in one lane and often turn lanes that end up being, Not Turn Lanes? There is an inspection process in place with the county, but it is seldom enforced leaving the single homeowners with eyesores instead of views.
Fortunately, There are still Developers who have pride in their work and take care of their Sub Divisions for future considerations. These developers know who they are and often need no policing by the county, “True Professionals”. However there are plenty of just out in out Bums out there throwing plans together without any regard of the end result for the Homeowners. The County Planning Department is allowing Sub Division Buffers to be placed on a single Homeowners Property in small Sub Divisions, saving the Developers form placing them on common areas as in larger Sub Divisions. How are we as citizens to read anything else into this but lazy or completely corrupt?
A complete sweep in the BOS will not solve the problem; it’s a good start though. The new BOS have to take the Planning Department by the horns and either fix it or clean house! That is the solution for Hanover County!
Mr. Ellis, this job means getting your hands dirty. This “Good ol Boy” network is devious and condescending to the point of rude if not just totally thinking they are above the law. I think you can do it because I still think truth and justice eventually wins out. But we usually take a beating getting there.
Good Luck! The Planning Department at Hanover County are the Sith Lords of the Comp Plan. They pretty much do as they please. That’s why it is crucial that the new Candidates for County Supervisor know that reigning in the Planning Department is the only thing that will slow growth! Otherwise, we’re the new Henrico, overbuilt to please big Developers!!
Lets Face it, Hanover County is screwed! Big business is having it’s way and common sense is gone!The Republicans have won! I suggest moving out west to areas tha could sustain moderate growth for 40 years without destroying the natural landscape and you can see developers comming 100 miles away. Enough time to convince them it’s safer to turn around. We’re leaving, I’m sure more will follow when the schools fail!
Good Luck with that! If there’s no money in it to make someone in County Government rich, forget it. Current events don’t really show a logical or caring local Government. Dictatorship comes to mind!
Virginia, A Red State controlled by the Republicans for decades. Like sheep following each other off a cliff, voters continue to vote for the mighty Republican Party so they can think they to are rich and powerful to???? If anyone has a better description for this misfire in the synaptic relays of the brain, feel free!
As I sit in the traffic that continues to get worse daily and wonder about cities built on a grid system that actually gives alternate routes for citizens to drive to and from work, I begin to question the Planners of this none grid system and the whole zoning process. They are still building in already crowded areas???? To late here though, nothing could help Richmond and Hanover other than billions of tax dollars in layering overpass construction like San Antonio, Austin, and Seattle. But our schools and services will be woefully inadequate soon and the roads that are already in need of repair will cause more delays.
Every week another outcry by the citizens of Hanover County about zoning and new Construction of Commercial Development, and every month, completely ignored by the Town Councils or the BOS. And the Hanover Planning Department is stuck in a downward spiral of incompetence.
You follow the Red Party all the way to Washington and you see the same blatant disregard for the people’s voice. The Republican Party has lead this country from a leadership role to a laughing stock around the world.
24th in the world in healthcare for its citizens!
Education going down the tubes!
Ignoring Global Warming while 2007 is going down in history as the hottest and most erratic storms ever!
An Attorney General that has the memory of an Alzheimer Patient!
And a President who is above the law, is wrong about everything, and has run every business he operated and now our country into the ground!!
And the Republicans follow like sheep going off a cliff!
Web sites like this one are a conduit and a rallying point for the masses and yet no one reads or comments? Does Hanover County only have two – three computers at home in the whole county? Are the people that indifferent that they will just sit and watch as big business ruins their lifestyles and rural communities? It sure seems that is the case. Maybe the education problem in this country is already taking a toll.
As the last of our furniture is being loaded on the truck after my job at local credit card giant was sent overseas to the Philippines, I rest assured that I will not be living in this Red State much longer because it just saddens me at the apathy and blind unjustified obedience to the Republican Party in this state.
We’re headed to New Mexico. Fortunately with educations in science as well, my wife and I are marketable there and New Mexico has a lot to offer. Bill Richardson has done wonders with healthcare and education there and our kid’s will do fine. The mountains and rivers are pristine and we love the outdoors.
Our time here has taught us how we don’t want to live. And the politics here is just to overwhelming and only make the rich richer and the poor worse off. When will America wake up and realize that the percentage of poor and the middle class who cannot afford good schools or college potentially sit on the genetic scholars and scientists that could change the world for the better. The gene pool of the top 1% breeds only greed!
After watching the entire meeting, it is so obvious that the Hanover Planning Department is so distracted that facts, science, logic, surrounding esthetics, quality and preservation has no effect on decisions! The problems with the rezonning of Hudleys Corner were so obvious, there can’t be any logical thought process here. It seems if a Developers hands in a proposal, somehow the Planning Department doesn’t see anything but blueprints. Someone needs to get off their #@! ANd actually go look at the projects instead of rushing ahead blindly! There is something so wrong with the Planning Department decisions, deductive reasoning lends to the suspicion of bad ethics and more! Even at the end when Mr. Noe delivered an overwhelming argument of the Departments placing of Buffers and Sidewalks on individual home owners properties, Mr. Cresenzo actedd as if he hadn’t even spoke!
The new BOS after this election must clean house in the Planning Department. The current heads at the Planning Department are NOT WORKING FOR THE PEOPLE!
I am Debbie Coats and I am running for Mechanicsville District Supervisor and I do have a website: http://www.votecoats.com and I have been working very hard. If you’d like to help with my campaign, please let me know. I’d really appreciate your support and your vote. Thanks.
Voting in all new Supervisors this November will work as well as the Democratic House and Senate gains last year, the main problem still exists, George Bush. And with Hanover County the same problems will still exist, The Hanover County Planning Department! A body with such skewed views and plans that make no sense at all and yet fight to the bitter end to maintain failing and incompetent, if not illegal policies!
If the new Supervisors do nothing to replace or control Cresenzo and Maloney, then the election will have accomplished nothing! I have read where some of the challengers don’t know where the problems are; how could you be so blind? They don’t even attend the Planning Commission meetings.
During the last meeting on 16 August, I was compelled to attend by Jack Ward. After two years of fighting I finally have him agreeing that Sub Division Buffers should never be placed on an Individual Homeowners property! These buffers have to be maintained by one single homeowner and cannot be changed and the property owner cannot put up a fence on the property lines, can’t change the appearance and this never in the sales contracts or explained on the plats during closing. There is no HOA, the subdivision is not big enough and never will be. 31 low budget ugly trees, which keep dying and a sidewalk that is not beside the road and goes nowhere! Look around, you can find these disasters in planning all over Hanover County. I pay taxes on a half-acre; I have no control of 1/3rd of that!
Jack Ward told me that the hearing would be about doing away with these buffers being placed on individual homeowners properties where there is no HOA. So I went.
That language was nowhere to be heard during the hearing! They did try to give people the right to remove the dead trees, but that would have to be requested and fell to the final decision of M. Cresenzo if the property owner met certain criteria…. That was not spelled out!
Make no mistake, the Power Lust of the Planning Department and the non-progressive decision making based on incorrect assumptions that fail all science and math is the problem and the source of the Comp Plan and the reign of big developers in Hanover County.
The challengers to the BOS must comment on this, understand this, and have a plan to change or replace them, or we are wasting our time voting!
Ron Noe
You could fill the room with people against the re-zoning all wanting to speak and it isn’t going to change the minds of the planning commission. All Mr. King is considering is improving the building designs from the completely low budget developer who I wouldn’t let build a pigpen!
I wish you luck, but the incompetence of the Planning Department is overwhelming and they are afraid of no one. Jack Ward is not even here and not going to fight for Hundley Corner….Sad!
The Hanover County Lawyer has everyone convinced that these developers will bring lawsuits if they don’t allow development. The deck is stacked and the people loose.
If there was ever a need for a new BOS and most likely new commissioners, just watch these morons tonight once again ignore the voters. These idiots would re-zone Arlington National Cemetery for Developers!
Back in the day, developers would be run out by a local “Welcoming Committee”! I actually grew up in a town in Western Virginia when a local development mandated by the Federal Government and totally against the wishes of the locals was redesigned by dynamite one night, no kidding! The Feds relocated to Tennessee!
There is a Developer who thinks he is going to retire entirely by rezoning Hanover County and concreting over history. The BOS and the Planning Department are inept and unable to even try to stop this Developer. And legally, they probably can’t because the county has an inexperienced lawyer who is afraid of the lawyers of Big Developers. That’s how they win, scum sucking lawyers! Developers need to be motivated to build elsewhere.
Ah, here we go again. Let me see if I can predict the future…. hmm… The People loose to Big Business again! And Bucky may even try to vote against it, but guess what the other four will pass it, Again.
It’s just a game to them.
Vote all of these old tunnel visioned Bums out. We need new, fresh Ideas for the future, not the historic same old Republican game plan of, “Vote for nothing unless the contributors, (Big Business), make tons of cash on it.”
Remember the Comp Plan on November 6th!
According to the public records of political campaign contributions, Martin Marietta Aggregates have sent him $500 toward reelection.
Favors, anyone???
Vote him out! Vice Chairman, indeed!
That’s only the obvious drop in the bucket. Any grade school detective could find the out of state favors and properties used as monies under the table! No one seems really interested in investigating the local Mob?
Great comments and a strong level of excitement and passion. Those key ingredients are needed now! In order to affect change, Jim needs your support. Not only at the ballot box but thru letters to the editor, neighborhood canvassing, poll station manning etc. Please join in.
Great insight and a strong level of passion and excitement. Those key ingredients are need now! In order to make a change, action in the form of support is required by Jim! Not only is a strong turn out needed on election day but help today is required. We need letters going to the newspaper editor, poll station volunteers, neighborhood captains to spread the word and distribute flyers, telephone callers reminding people to exercise their democratic rights. Please join in, now is the time.
As one of many hard working individuals in Hanover County, who has very little spare time, I have yet to hear from any candidates running to oust the Incumbents. Very little in The Mechanicsville Local and what is really sad, of what I have read, not a specific platform other than, “I’m better”, or, “World Peace”! On the Comp Plan there is just disagreement but no real call for repeal or a real voice in the County such as, Public Votes, on Comp Plans like many other counties!
And then there is the Candidates, Republicans or Republicans running as Independents??? Can there really be any difference.
To win an election one must engage the opponent and detail the differences in platforms. There has been an absence of the challenging Candidates at BOS meetings, a prime stage to support the voters asking for change or to defeat Big Developers. But, no, that has not happened lately. In fact the BOS has been on an agenda of voting for anything that would appear like they actually have a ,Heart”! Right before the Election…….What BS!
So, who to vote for, The Republicans or the Republicans, hmmmm.
The BIG issue this year is the Comp Plan and uncontrolled growth! An article in The Mechanicsville Local reads of a population milestone of over 100,000 people in Hanover County. Let’s see if I can show a comparison on the problems of growth without proper planning. Droughts happen! Atlanta is in dire straights and it’s still growing. Are the droughts getting worse or are the droughts highlighting a growth problem! HOW MANY PEOPLE CAN DRINK FROM A LIMITED RESOURCE?
We had some rain lately but I find it irrational that the recent water restrictions favor Developers with recent plantings???? Want to see a green yard, just go to any recent development like the one on Atlee across from Windsor.
One day soon I feel the taps will run dry somewhere, there are to many people drinking, washing , watering, and not conserving our water. To many people concentrated in the coastal areas! In fact, 85% of the population of the US lives within 100 mile of coastal areas. It’s a ticking time bomb and the Feds will not come to the rescue if you’ve been paying attention to current events.
Of all the issues plaguing or County, it looks like there could have been one pure disagreement between the incumbents and challengers, but no, just slightly slow down growth!
And one has to question the ability of the Hanover Population to use computers! Obviously, you can count on one hand the ammount of people who read these blogs and respond. Also the lack of use of blogs. Blogs are usually updated weekly if not daily across the US. In Hanover County, Monthly is more like it and thus the inattention of the readers. The Mech Local most times won’t even post comments on blogs, then why have them?
The word is not getting out because the word isn’t GETTING OUT!
Does it really matter who wins?
j.n. said:
“On the Comp Plan there is just disagreement but no real call for repeal or a real voice in the County such as, Public Votes, on Comp Plans like many other counties!”
I disagree. I believe the challengers will amend the Comp Plan to reduce the unwarranted expansion of the SSA.
“And then there is the Candidates, Republicans or Republicans running as Independents??? Can there really be any difference.”
At the local level, party matters very little. How the BoS chooses to manage growth is the only thing I care about. Everything is related to growth: taxes, traffic, school construction, police and fire services. In South Anna, Pattie Bland is a true Independent and frankly, I would rather have a candidate borrow ideas from both parties. The two-party system in this country in “the problem.” The hardcore Republicans paid off by developers to pass their “growth at any cost” mantra are enemies of the future IMHO. They seek to destroy the quality of life in Hanover County and that, to me, means they are enemies of the Future. The BoS is the most invisible, yet most powerful governing body in the County – it does make a difference who you vote for. And, instead of expecting to be “spoon fed” by the local media (which is biased toward the enemies of the future), why not seek out answers to your questions by calling a candidate?
“And one has to question the ability of the Hanover Population to use computers! Obviously, you can count on one hand the ammount of people who read these blogs and respond.”
Yeah – well, you could argue that Hanover County could strike a wifi deal with someone so more people had access to the ‘net without using dial-up. Other counties are creating free wifi for their citizens…some people are still on dial-up – is that their fault? Ever wonder why Hanover County doesn’t televise its BoS and Planning Commission meetings? The Republicans want to keep the sheep dumb, eh.
It totally matters who wins this election – all of the problems you mention are related to the irresponsible use of land and the mismanagement of growth. The BoS number one job is to manage growth, yet with developers in their back pockets, they find it hard to say no to denying anyone their right to destroy our quality of life in the name of profit-taking and greed.
OK, there are two interesting Section at Mechlocal.com on the election! One is the Opinion piece and the other a news item about the Low Key Election. Now lets see if any candidates take advantage of these campaign venues! They are free and might reach some voters!!! If this county doesn’t wake up, we’ll be stuck with the same old gang again!
In the actual Mechanicsville Local Weekly paper. Jack Ward is all over it and he even has people write in! That was available to every candidate! I am sure the write ins are from Real Estate Developers/Agents, but he did use it to the max! That’s campaigning! that paper will influence a great many voters! His pieces in the paper greatly outway the one from Debbie Coats.
Obviously Blogging is a technology watsed on the Hanover County Residents! Either the young folks all leave and the only ones that stay are the basement dwelling failures to launch, or they are simply not engaged in local politics and no one is trying to engage them!
Not at all surprising in a State that still allows smoking in public buildings and Resturants? I am beginning to think rural is the wrong term associated with the Civil War reinactments collective mind here in Hanover County. Maybe “Redneck” is better and deserves the BOS it has!
I am a son of Virginia, left when I was a Sophmore in College and never came back untill 30 years had gone by and my work directed me here. I love the trees, but they are disappearing quickly and the traffic coupled with the droughts is like living in the suburbs of San Antonio!
Fortunately, I am leaving soon as we can sell our house in this massive houseing slump. Everything here is priced $50,000.00 more than it is worth now. Why is there more building in a glut market???
No control, that’s why! The Current BOS is incompetent! But when i can count on two hands the amount of people that will actually show up and vote, it isn’t going to change! Good luck to you all! I will vote!
The voice of Hanover County is obviously for the Comp Plan! This will become the County to leave!
Good Luck! If you have as many show up as for the Comp Plan or the Election, still won’t matter. 30% is no majority and means nothing to the BOS who have been passing every Development project “Hunt” has brought forward! They say growth is inevitable. The new Green Movement says ,”No it isn’t and must not be in already saturated areas of the East Coast!” One bad drought or Pandemic Flu will go through the 95 corridor of the east coast like fire through California! Like a fuse to dynamite the Pandemic flu will spark it’s way down the human thick chain of the east coast until it runs out of people! We have localized our population like planes on an aircraft carrier deck. When one is hit they will all go up. The only possible way to stop the spread is to keep rural areas between the big cities and even that is no guarantee and may only slow the spread of contagions with all the travel! The sad part is that it is not a matter of if, but when with a higher percentage of probability than another terrorist attack! But just keep on building, maybe all the Scientists are wrong!
We have made several email attempts to both Elton Wade and Joe O’Connor of the planning commission re. development in the Old Church area. No response. What does it take to get anyone’s attention in this county?
I live in Florida now but originally am from Lancaster. I miss its bucolic splendor every day. Protecting that area is vital work. Keep it up! I’m with you in spirit!
I hope citizens will respond. Has Parks & Rec made this plan and survey generally known? The time to plan is before development snatches up the land!
Spread the word! Forward this website to all your green friends. Don’t just “hope” – act!
What a breath of fresh air – as in “do the right thing” – they done the right thing!
Gardner is right. Words travel out into the ether. As he and other citizens saw when the Martin Marietta hearing came to a vote, the County has “divide and conquer” down to an art form.
It is doubtful that the rural preservation bone would’ve been offered in the putrid Comp Plan update had there not been a citizen uproar.
I would like Parks and Rec to explicitly include some representation from citizens’ groups (CHF, HN, etc.) in the formal mechanism for updating the Parks and Rec master plan. Formally give them seats at the table, identified as such. Without having done my basic research yet, I would say offhand I would like to see in the revised Parks and Rec Master Plan:
1. More passive open spaces
2. More aggressive landowning by the county for future open space uses
3. A green infrastructure inventory including land in conservation easements
4. A new classification (or actual use of any existing classification) for small county-owned neighborhood and pocket parks
5. Working with neighborhoods to identify and buy private residences that come up on the market and raze them and turn them into passive pocket parks (the “vacant lots” of old) — obviously that would take a lot of coordination with folks in the neigborhoods
6. A workable plan for a biking/walking trail network
7. Tie-in to a PDR plan that covers the whole county, not just outside the SSA.
8. Pushing for the county planning department to look at putting buffers around each new development that are public linear parks with walking/biking trails. These could be pierced by road connections between developments in a way that walking/biking is the more direct route, the road connections are less direct and are located at the least dense areas of the development to hold down shortcut traffic through the existing developments they connect to, existing neighborhoods get some green space and trails in return for being connected (which no one wants when it comes up), and we get the connections we need to fight traffic congestion and promote safer, walkable routes to school, church, community centers, etc.
Just some ideas, maybe workable, maybe not, but worth some serious discussion I think.
As a follow up:
http://www.mechlocal.com/index.php/news/article/rutland_finds_will_go_to_the_smithsonian/
Rutland finds will go to the Smithsonian
By Deborah Rider Allen
Nov 06, 2007
Above ground they could see the old plantation house known as Rutland. Below ground they knew there was a family cemetery that dated back to the 1700’s. And members of the Timberlake family who had owned the property for two hundred years pointed out the approximate location of an African American cemetery on the property.
But the significance of what developer HHHunt has discovered and preserved at the 202 acres they are developing on U.S. 301 in Hanover County, Virginia is of national significance. Data obtained from the graves and the cast-iron coffin of the plantation’s patriarch Archibald Burnett Timberlake, who died in 1863 will become part of the “Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th Century Chesapeake” exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. in November 2008.
“It is very valuable and we can learn a great deal of information that you will not find in the history books,” said Doug Owsley, division head for physical anthropology in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History who is conducting the research on the archeological finds from the Hanover County property. His group is analyzing burial sites across the Chesapeake including those from Jamestown, Virginia and St. Mary’s, Maryland for the exhibit. “When you are dealing with the 17th century there are a lot of gaps. You can tell a person’s story through their bones as well as learn about people that no one ever wrote a word about that survived to us today.”
The archeological investigation of the Timberlake family cemetery and the precise location and excavation of the African American cemetery were prompted when HHHunt needed a wetlands permit from the Army Corps of Engineers for the development. Virginia state law requires that any property that requires Federal permitting must also undergo an archeological evaluation.
Daniel T. Schmitt, president of HHHunt Communities first met with Donald Timberlake of the Timberlake family, when they purchased the property.
“He informed us that not only was the Timberlake family buried in the graveyard in front of the Rutland house, but that Timberlake family history indicated that there was a former slave cemetery on the site as well,” said Schmitt adding that the tangible and intangible information from the Timberlake family was invaluable to the research at the development site.
HHHunt then contracted Cultural Resources, Inc. (CRI) to conduct the initial required archeological review; then they kept the site completely shut down so CRI could do a more intensive study of the graves.
“The investigation process, obtainment of permits and ultimate relocation of the cemeteries caused at a minimum, a two to three month delay in obtaining plan approvals and starting construction,” said Schmitt. He projects that HHHunt’s total cost, excluding the cost of internal resource time and construction delays, will be about a quarter million dollars. “But the historical information that will be gained through this research for both Hanover as well as the nation is something you just cannot put a price tag on.”
It was during the work at the family cemetery and the discovery of the cast-iron coffin that first brought the Smithsonian into the picture.
“The Smithsonian put out an APB on all archeological sites producing cast iron coffins because the preservation of the remains is like a time capsule,” said Dane Magoon, bio-archaeologist and senior principal investigator for CRI, who is doing the osteological study of the human remains found at the site. Cast-iron coffins are rare because of the high cost to purchase them in the 1800’s – many times the cost of a wooden coffin.
“It is well preserved and not a common find,” said Owsley who asked permission of the Timberlake family to take the coffin to the Smithsonian for further study. The Timberlakes have since donated the coffin to be part of the museum exhibit.
When the unmarked African American cemetery was located, the Smithsonian along with CRI began extensive research on the remains. The Smithsonian is doing isotope research on the bones.
“From the carbon isotopes we can determine where a person is from – if they are from England or Europe or Africa or if they were American born,” said Owsley. “With nitrogen isotopes we can tell how much vegetable food they have in their diet as well as protein. And each of these skeletons can tell us a person’s age, sex, how tall they were and how much physical labor they did. We can also gain information about their health and sometimes the cause of death.”
“You usually do not get this type of resource window,” said Magoon about the rare find of two separate populations both living at the same time and place. “It is not just a single individual; we are actually looking at the entire cemetery as an entire population of people. We will do a period demographic reconstruction of both burial populations looking at age, sex of the individuals within the cemeteries and the pathologies. We will be looking at how they lived their lives and the interesting stuff will come out of the comparison of the two populations.”
“It is a very important series with both groups represented and one of our principal population samples of human remains to carry out this written bones initiative,” said Owsley about the museum exhibit..
Due to Virginia Department of Transportation guidelines and identified wetlands areas the two cemeteries and the Rutland House (circa 1790 to 1810 and used as headquarters by Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart) had to be moved. The 19 Timberlake family members have been reinterred in the post-Civil War Timberlake family plot in Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery. One more relative was reinterred in Franklin, Virginia. But when it came to deciding what to do with the 57 graves identified in the African American cemetery, HHHunt turned to the community for answers.
Reber Dunkel, professor of sociology at Randolph-Macon College and a member of the board of directors of the Hanover County Black Heritage Society, said his group was concerned about the preservation of the remains and having them handled with dignity.
The group presented a list of their concerns to the Hanover County Board of Supervisors at a meeting where HHHunt was in attendance. “HHHunt assured me after that meeting that they would do it in a proper way,” said Dunkel whose groups had asked that the remains be reburied in a protected area in a similar configuration to the original cemetery. “HHHunt not only did it in a proper and respectful way, they went beyond. They funded research for these people who are buried so that their analysis will contribute to our understanding of the lives and the way they lived. We also set up an ad hoc committee of people who will be the caretakers for these people who did not have a voice or descendants.”
HHHunt is consulting with the Black Heritage Society about the memorial at Rutland house that will be used as a community clubhouse. All materials associated with the graves – whether clothing, artifacts, jewelry or hardware from the burial containers – will be reburied with each individual. The Smithsonian’s research will also be available at the local libraries.
“It will give a voice to a group of individuals who until now have been without a spokesperson, and through them we will learn about their lives and their deaths,” said Jody L. Allen, PhD, visiting assistant professor of history at the College of William and Mary whose dissertation covers black history in Hanover from 1865 – 1969.
“I am so thankful that HHHunt went beyond the minimum and has become a real model for future developers in how developers should approach this issue,” said Dunkel. “They did it the right way.”
Owsley agrees that the way HHHunt handled the situation by engaging the services of an archeological firm and allowing the Smithsonian to participate “serves as an example.”
The property, now named “Rutland”, will be a mixed use, master planned community that includes single family neighborhoods, townhomes, active adult neighborhoods, retail shops, a Kroger grocery store, daycare facility and office park. Schmitt says that this is the first time the company has been challenged with such extensive archeology and removal of burial sites. “In our years of experience with community development, we have not experienced a situation like that at Rutland,” he said. “In the past, we have been able to design around any cemeteries that were discovered in the development process. I am glad we were able to preserve this valuable historical information and accommodate both the descendants and community to come up with the best and most honorable solution for everyone.” A public formal ceremony dedicating the memorial/burial area and the historic Rutland House (now a clubhouse) will be held this coming summer.
Alphine W. Jefferson, professor of history and black studies at Randolph-Macon College, president of the Oral History Association and a member of the board of directors of the Hanover County Black Heritage Society says HHHunt’s willingness to listen to a community group and merge its commercial interests with the interests of preservation will have a tremendous impact on the history of Hanover County. “Literally this slave cemetery is a record and we have been able to save it,” he said. “In some ways it becomes a kind of living history of a people who lived more than 150 years ago.”
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suggest that if you are looking for wasteful spending in the county.. look at the cost of the new ems building on Mountain road at Farrington road
About two years ago Hanover County turned down an offer of green infrastructure planning assistance — free — from Karen Firehock’s group. We’re too busy with other things, our county leadership said. So the help went to New Kent County instead. Our county leadership will not think very far outside the box unless there is strong and consistent citizen pressure for them to do so. This workshop should be very useful for citizens to see the potential that green infrastructure holds for building on some of the key strengths and unique places that Hanover County has.