Bob Weir

DEVELOPMENT

 

Prince William County and the Gainesville District in particular have undergone dramatic changes over the past twenty years.  The certainty under which many purchased their homes has disappeared as a consequence of dozens of Comprehensive Plan Amendments and rezonings that have resulted in incompatible land uses, increased traffic, overcrowding in our schools and significantly higher residential tax bills to pay for requisite infrastructure. Many of those changes have dramatically impacted County residents quality of life, commuting times and drained resources that should have been targeted to the crumbling infrastructure in many parts of the County, particularly schools in the eastern magisterial districts.

 

DATA CENTERS

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Our current Board of Supervisors hold forth massive data center expansion as the Golden Goose that will address all of the County's fiscal woes and reduce the residential tax burden. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although data centers will provide some measure of increased revenue, historically, those revenues have not offset increased County spending.  Additionally, most data center development outside of the Overlay District will result in the significant expenditure of additional County funds on infrastructure to support those data centers, infrastructure that is largely not subject to proffers.  Further, most of the newly proposed data centers will require additional transmission lines and substations the construction cost of which is borne by the Utilities and passed on as rate adjustments and riders to the ratepayers, a subtle form of "tax increase" resulting from Board of Supervisors actions. Data Center developers and their attorneys claim that they will bear the cost of the substations, Dominion Power has categorically denied that such is the case.

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RESIDENTIAL SPRAWL

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Prince William County has adopted the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) analysis for residential growth in households between 2020 and 2040.  As one might infer, the study was conducted before the pandemic and recent interest rate increases.  I would argue that the pandemic is a game changer and that projections calculated prior to the pandemic are of limited value now.  Nevertheless, Prince William County has revised its plans for the construction of 30,000-40,000 additional housing units that may or may not have a demand.  The policies that have been adopted and are currently under consideration ignore the drastic market changes brought about by the pandemic.  Moreover, they largely ignore much of the unbuilt inventory, recently approved dwelling units and the capacity envisioned by many of the recently approved Small Area Plans. 

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As a result, the current Board of Supervisors supports the introduction of massive new residential development, primarily in the Gainesville and Brentsville Districts. The plan calls for many of the housing tracts to be far removed from public transit and on two lane secondary roads. Thus, as constituted, the plan will make it difficult to construct affordable housing, limit transit options, increase local and regional traffic congestion and mandate an enormous investment in new roads, schools and other infrastructure to support that development. As previously noted, increased investment of the County's limited resources will likely lead to higher residential taxes and the diversion of even more funding for existing infrastructure needs in the County.

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As a Prince William County taxpayer I have to question why Prince William County routinely cedes its sovereignty with respect to issues like development and transportation to a regional board that has no accountability to the taxpayers.

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TRANSPORTATION

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One of the unnoticed impacts of the County's development plan is the impact it has on our transportation network and plans for infrastruture spending. While the Board of Supervisors consistently maintains that they have removed the Bi-County Parkway from the plan, nearly a billion dollars of road construction projects that would enable or are part of the proposed Bi-County Parkway are contained with the Digital Gateway, most notably, the Battlefield Bypass and the Route 29 Alternate Road.  Similarly, hundreds of millions of dollars are being expendended on the widening of the 234 bypass and the construction of Interstate Grade intersections. If the Bi-County Parkway is indeed not in the plan, then why is the County building it piecemeal?

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With respect to the residential component of the Board's plan, the sprawl that is envisioned will require massive investment in rural road improvements and will lead to increased congestion on the collector and arterial roads. That doesn't sound like a plan for succes to me.