On Tuesday, February 25, the Board of Supervisors voted to approve the Oakcrest SEA. We thank two of our four Hunter Mill Road Supervisors, Supervisor Foust (Dranesville) and Supervisor Smyth (Providence) for standing behind the reasoning of the original SE.\u00a0 Their principled support for the only solution that had consensus means a great deal to those us who call this part of the county home.<\/p>\n
In the SEA, only one of the community concerns was effectively addressed; the rest were judged non-substantive or to have been mitigated by lesser means than sought. All <\/u>of the features that allowed for community support of the SE approved in 2010 have been stripped away.\u00a0 Nothing stands in the way of the eventual removal of all berms, to be replaced by vastly inferior transitional screening. A massive increase in rush hour traffic on Crowell Road is certain.<\/p>\n
In the end, all efforts to find solutions by working with the School, the County Staff, and the Supervisor\u2019s office were fruitless. Without the leadership of the Supervisor, one landowner \u2013 who was not the applicant \u2013 was behind the scenes making all the critical transportation configuration decisions that will affect the entire community.\u00a0 He did so by means of a lawsuit challenging the original approval of the 2010 SE (which he previously publicly testified that he supported), by pushing self-serving provisions of his \u2018Cooperative Development Agreement\u2019 with the School and ignoring his commitment to provide an easement to the School for Hunter Mill Road access.\u00a0 In fact, he was able to do all this with knowledge that the School would not enforce its contract rights and that County Attorney would not enforce the express requirements of the 2010 SE where right-of-way could not be obtained voluntarily for the roundabout.\u00a0 It appears to us that no one else\u2019s opinion materially affected outcome and no one else\u2019s vision for the community mattered.<\/p>\n
We believe no weight was given to the very land use protections safeguarded in the 2010 SE and eliminated in this \u2018amendment\u2019 that was just approved.\u00a0 As a community we are at loss to explain the meaning of the Comprehensive Plan language and the ordinances governing Special Exceptions as they allegedly were applied here. Our enduring impression is that both the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors have spoken out of both sides of their mouths in this case. They have approved that which was previously rejected and rejected that which was formerly approved. Can there be any wonder at the immense frustration in the community with the actions of its County government?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Tuesday, February 25, the Board of Supervisors voted to approve the Oakcrest SEA. We thank two of our four Hunter Mill Road Supervisors, Supervisor Foust (Dranesville) and Supervisor Smyth (Providence) for standing behind the reasoning of the original SE.\u00a0 Their principled support for the only solution that had consensus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landuse"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9kJxC-z","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hmdl.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hmdl.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hmdl.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hmdl.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hmdl.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hmdl.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36,"href":"https:\/\/hmdl.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions\/36"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hmdl.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hmdl.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hmdl.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}