Planning commish laments map creek miss
by Hawes Spencer
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Ever heard of Meade Creek? Charlottesville Planning Commisioner and longtime Woolen Mills neighborhood resident Bill Emory writes on his blog that he’s walked over it for 22 years, so he was a little stunned recently when examining a USGS map that didn’t show the thing.
We are destroying streams in the City and County at an alarming rate. Listen to the Monday Planning Commission Meeting, and listen to Mr. Emory fight to preserve and save streams in our community. Not mapping these streams is a tool developers use to destroy them without any repercussions. I applaud the efforts Mr. Emory is making to bring these streams into the light of day, let’s join him, and insist that the city enforce it’s steep slope ordinance in every neighborhood and save the streams.
The same issue just came up with the stream behind the old China Seafood Hut on Fontaine. The lesson to be learned is that if the City or County want a developer to build next to it, it’s no longer a stream, it’s a “drainage channel.” And a slope is no longer critical if you want to build something expensive on it.
Green city? Puh-leeze! NDS pays green lip service. Why are we always closing the barn door after the horses have escaped? Why are the citizens always having to run behind Tolbert & Co, trying to clean up and set the record straight?
We need to look at who is on the City Planning Commission and the parties they are beholden to–agree NDS is just that a development service.
Agree with Streamflow. There are too many Cville commissioners who are directly affiliated with developers, or who are flogging development projects themselves. Planning commissions across the country are getting clogged with developers and real estate agents, which is a serious conflict of interest.
Then there are the well-meaning but gullible commissioners who swallow the biased tripe being fed to them by the pro-development staff.
It is not enough to lament that planning commissioners have ties to developers. If they are the only ones who care enough to seek the office, then that’s what you’ll get. Now, if the city is choosing those folks over other qualified folks who have no conflict of interest, then there’s something to complain about.