The Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors sent a proposed comprehensive land use plan back for more work, voting 4-1 to remand the document to the planning department during a work session on Wednesday.
The move came at the recommendation of Planning Director Kirk Turner. During a special 1 p.m. work session called so the board could discuss the plan, Turner asked that the 200-plus-page document be sent back for more work.
Facing a deadline to do something with the plan – the Board of Supervisors’ 90-day window to act after receiving the plan from the Planning Commission expired on Wednesday – no one on the board opposed the idea, though they did have to wait until the regular work session at 3 p.m. to formally vote.
Clover Hill member A.S. “Art” Warren voted against the motion. He’d offered a substitute motion that had a minor change in language. He wanted a reference to having the planning staff “seriously consider” changes removed and an ultimatum “to redirect” the process inserted. His motion died when no one seconded it.
“It’s a difficult read,” said board chairman Daniel A. Gecker, of the Midlothian District.
“It ought to set out the reasonable expectations of what we want in our community. ... At its core, [the plan] doesn’t recognize what we are.”
Per Turner’s timeline, the planning staff will have until July 24 to rewrite the plan to incorporate a list of wants, needs and desires expressed by the board. By that schedule, the Planning Commission would be able to vote on a new plan by Aug. 21. The Board of Supervisors could then take action by Oct. 10.
“I’d like to have land-use categories I could hand to a neighbor,” Turner said in explaining a variety of ills in the proposed plan. “We don’t want people to feel like they should have to come to a planning meeting” to understand what the county is doing.
Nearly three years in the making, the plan was an attempt to replace a series of more than 20 area land-use plans with a single document that would guide land use and development.
The county committed tens of thousands of man hours to the process and spent more than $700,000 on a consulting firm to help craft a plan from the ideas of a 33-member citizen commission, which worked for more than a year and a half. In the year since, the Planning Commission held a series of public hearings, work sessions and community meetings.
“We’re at another step in the process,” Gecker said. “Hopefully, we’ll reach the end by the end of the year.”
The board members sent the plan back with a list of items it deemed of importance in a revised plan.
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