From the Editor
Virginia Ham and Ham-Handed Politics
By Mark Fausz
Sep 3, 2008 - 9:08:57 AM

While you’re flipping through the pages of the Village News this week, be sure to check out the free shopper section of the classifieds. There’s a great deal on a piece of cooked ham that is shaped like Virginia. What a novelty; it’s not Jesus, but it’s Virginia. Although if you decide to have a look at it and make an offer, you may decide it looks more like Kentucky or one of the mashed potato sculptures that actor Richard Dreyfuss constructed in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

It’s all in the eye of the beholder. What looks like a prized example of a Virginia-shaped ham is just another lunch if I add a little mustard and some artisan bread. I’ll be back in a minute; I just got a craving for some pork… So where was I?

It’s all in the eye of the beholder. I submit for your consideration: the Roseland zoning case. What’s that? As news media, Chesterfield County Supervisors, and most anyone who lives northwest of  Pocahontas Park will tell you, it’s the last development ever purposed in Chesterfield County and the largest traditional neighborhood development (TND) or new urbanism project to be considered in Virginia and possible anywhere east of the Mississippi River. What some are calling Chesterfield’s downtown, Roseland encompasses about 1,400 acres and will contain as many as 5,540 residences when completed.

Roseland will have an Innsbrook type business complex, an old town area with living space above shops, a hotel, and neighborhoods similar to those in urban and close-in suburbs built before World War II. Communities during years prior to the suburbanization of the United States were built with pedestrians and limited motor vehicles in mind. People accessed their garages not from a double overhead door on the front of their home, but from alleys that ran parallel to main streets laid out in a grid pattern.

New Urbanism is the buzz-word of today’s development community, and according to comments made during last week’s board of supervisors meetings, the new-urbanism-style Roseland will be a badge of honor for this county to wear far into the future.

But at least one supervisor, the supervisor whose district a majority of Roseland lies within, is not so sure. At least she felt that there were a few more issues with the rezoning that needed to be worked out. She said during the meeting during which the plan was approved, that a project as large as Roseland deserved going over with a fine toothed-comb.

She, her planning commissioner, and her district’s school board representative, wanted some additional study on the school, environmental, safety and transportation issues. The minutia, as some would put it, was put off until later. Matoaca Supervisor Marleen Durfee’s planning commissioner tried to defer the case in his district until some of those details could be worked out. He was overruled, outvoted by his peers.

It was obvious that Durfee would motion for a deferral or a denial of the case after she delivered a long explanation of her tenacious attention to the case. She was not permitted to offer a motion. Board Chairman Art Warren of the Clover Hill District offered a motion to approve the zoning. In every zoning case I have witnessed on both the planning commission side and at the board of supervisors level, the supervisor in whose district the case is located was offered by the chairman the opportunity to make the first motion. In my 10 years of covering board meetings, the chairman’s action was unprecedented.

It’s not county policy, an ordinance or even part of Robert’s Rules of Order, but it has been a common courtesy for Chesterfield’s board for as long as anyone I have talked with can remember: that the chair always recognizes the district representative to make the motion in his or her district.

It makes one wonder about the sincerity of a brave new day on the board of supervisors. This action seems to have been a good old boy move; a muzzling of a supervisor who has been a lightning rod of criticism lately.

The point is not whether or not the Roseland case had merit or should have been approved. I like the new urbanism concept. It’s not whether you like the politics of the Matoaca supervisor or not. It’s about being open, honest, and up front.

Why did the chair feel it important to usurp the authority of another district supervisor’s territory? What was the motivation? Is Roseland really so important that the decision could not have waited another 30 days for approval? Its fate was in the cards, it would be approved. What was the rush? Why risk deepening an ever-widening rift on the board with such a blatant attempt at control?

But then it’s all in the eye of the beholder. Would you like chips with your Virginia-shaped ham sandwich?

mfausz@villagepublishing.com | 751-0421

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