A Bad Deal for Loudoun
Everyone who has lived in Loudoun County for more than six months can agree with Laurie A. Shultz ["Creekside's Generous Plan," Letters, Jan. 20] that we are desperately trying to keep pace with schools, roads and parks. As a homeowner, I would add that keeping pace with rapidly escalating real estate assessments is also a challenge.
However, her solution to these infrastructure problems -- rubber-stamp the Creekside development and allow as many as 5,000 more homes and a million square feet of office space -- completely baffles me and proves both counterintuitive and wrong.
On its face, the proposal looks great: $200 million for transportation, schools and an improved park facility delivered sooner than could be otherwise built. It sounds too good to be true. Perhaps it is. Let's not kid anyone here. All of the roads proposed to be built are intended to provide basic access to the development site and make it a more desirable (and profitable) development. Good business sense. These road improvements, although "generous," are not intended to address the most pressing transportation needs in Loudoun, as she suggests.
Will there be benefits to existing residents of Loudoun? Yes, these new connections will benefit some, but the additional hidden costs of this proposal will once again be borne by existing taxpayers. Two schools are not enough to serve 5,000 homes. Additional traffic from this development on the Greenway, Route 7, Sycolin Road/Ashburn Farm Parkway and others will be substantial, further choking already congested roadways. Current taxpayers will once again be forced to shoulder the burden.
I applaud the innovative thinking behind the proposal. We should continue to look for new opportunities to fund school and road construction but not at the cost of having to add new mega-developments. As Shultz notes, the Public Private Transportation Act was intended to created -- and has created -- innovative thinking, but its application has always included choices for those affected.
Route 28 improvements are being partially funded by self-imposed taxes on landowners. Similar funds are being generated this way for rail to Dulles. High-occupancy toll lanes for the Beltway may give motorists a choice to pay a toll or continue on the free road. Here, the developer provides basic services for the property, and the taxpayers bear the brunt of the cost in escalating real estate taxes to pay for new schools and to address road issues made worse by this mega-development. Doesn't sound fair.
The Board of Supervisors should say thanks, but no thanks, to this proposal.
Nick Antonucci
Ashburn
Listen to the Citizens
Thanks to some recent publicity, courtesy of Barbara Munsey ["Political Overtones," Letters, Jan. 6], a growing number of Loudoun County residents are becoming aware of, and joining, two new citizen groups: the Eastern Loudoun Civic Network (ELCN) and the Eastern Loudoun Schools Association (ELSA).
The success of these groups, however, seems to be causing some angst among the establishment in Loudoun County. Obviously, it is because ELCN and ELSA are making citizens aware of the issues that may jeopardize their quality of life in terms of schools, traffic and property taxes. It also is because ELCN and ELSA are helping citizens voice their objections to the rapid rate of development proposed by the development community and some of our elected leaders. It appears that Munsey views an informed citizenry as a roadblock to unfettered development in Loudoun.
I realize that Munsey and her cohorts dislike the message being sent by the citizens of Loudoun, but don't shoot the messengers in an attempt to divert attention from the issues that matter most. They dismiss the fact that almost 14,000 eastern Loudoun residents signed a petition on Election Day telling elected officials not to double the size of Loudoun.
In a recent letter to another local paper, Munsey assailed several residents of eastern Loudoun who voiced their concerns about the impact of rampant growth on the suburban, eastern communities. And, of course, there is the attack on me, as founder of ELCN and ELSA. I wonder, who is next?
Perhaps it will be the Loudoun youth who were interviewed this past summer and fall as part of the Loudoun Youth Initiative. They identified community change as one of their top five challenges to growing up in Loudoun. They indicated that rapid growth and the cost of living in Loudoun have had a dramatic impact on their family life, in terms of longer commutes by their parents, lack of affordable housing and the disappearance of open spaces.
