is probably what gives: here is a way to pressure the Republicans in the House of Delegates, one in which their fellow Republicans are doing the pressuring. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"... Kaine needs all the help he can get at this point. As for slow growth, it is not, I believe, exactly correct to say that Kaine was advocating slow growth, but rather smart growth, of which local controls and creation of adequate infrastructure was a key part. This should make Hugo, Lingamfelter, Albo, Frederick (and even Speaker Howell) have second thoughts.  Scare 'em, in fact.

..but I work for a civil engineering firm in PW and I can tell you the guys here think it's smoke and mirrors.  There are a huge number of approved housing projects in the works and they will go forward as before.  The only thing I think that is being halted is applications for new zoning, and those things take a year to get approved anyway.  This isn't really going to have much effect, so I'm told.

I should say that I'm a network administrator here, so I am really not too well informed on the subject, but this is what I've been told.

This move from PWC is smoke and mirrors.
as it was explained today to me, prince william has 12 months to approve a growth plan. They just voted to use all 12 months!!!!! All the time... to slow things down in a legal way that they already had the means to do. The average has been 11 monthes!!!

So , it was all a political ploy to generate news on a slow news day.

Both republicans and democrats know how to generate news on a slow news day.....

...because, otherwise, there is a very serious potential legal issue here in regard to property rights if land is already zoned for residential use, etc., and the owner is denied the right to use/develop it for same.

However, the re-zoning process is a whole different matter, and that part of it makes sense.  In that instance, the locality has an obligation to its citizens, its future, etc. to consider all aspects of the proposed new land use - such as concerns about impact on current infrastructure - before giving approval.

It will be very interesting to see if this works.

Thanks again!

Steve

the effect of the resolution is to be determined.

essentially it is intended to have the BOCS commit to use the full 12 months max required by law to address rezoning requests.

requests sent in today will wait till 11.9 months from now to start being processed.

all the above is essentially what happens now, tho some of the rezoning requests are acted upon earlier.

the rub is that in PWC about 5000 dwelling units have been built in the past four years.  already approved (waiting for market readiness/financing etc. to start construction) are about 30-40 THOUSAND dwelling units that can be started tomorrow.  that's not a freeze. 

considering the election is next year, and the housing sales slump this is a innocuous move, probably designed more to start to develop some slow growth bona fides than anything else.

not much of a feeze or moratorium 'cause if the housing market was healthier, the sound of earthmovers would be deafening.

it was interesting to note that at the BOCS meeting where the resolution was approved there were wide differences with Jenkins calling out the Republican HOD members and Stirrup/Stewart blaming the Governor Kaine.

seems to me that without the R controlled HOD even allowing APF and Impact legislation to even be heard in the HOD committees and killing all slow growth legislation very effectively, the people responsible are not in the Gov's mansion!

b

Thanks for taking the air out of their balloon.  I had heard that there was enough backlog of permits that the effect would be insignificant.  But your details really nail it.  I recall a similar time here in the county, about 8-10 years ago, when there was such a glut of permits on the market that housing prices took a real dive.  It took five years for the market to recover.