The following Opinion was written and submitted by Richard Tankard.
Thank you for providing an opportunity to speak to you about issues relevant to the County. Specifically, my remarks pertain to your ongoing Zoning Text Amendment process.
While the Planning Commission does its due diligence, I encourage you to seek more information concerning the incorporated towns, since their citizens will be the first affected by your desire to change the zoning text in the Town Edge areas. More information, as well as legal advice can help you make more informed decisions.
I offer some questions you need to be asking either yourselves and/or the towns:
- How many housing units (unbuilt) are allowed by right in each of the incorporated towns? What’s their buildout?
- What are the sewage and potable water capacities of each of the incorporated towns? Town Edge areas present and proposed, not presently served by sewer/water, what type of soils are present? Do these soils support intensive development?
- Do the towns envision themselves as the hole of a doughnut, where their lot size is greater than surrounding lands, and where they are surrounded by multi-family complexes?
- Will towns want to extend their sewer lines to these unincorporated lands? What incentive might they have to do that?
- More than one Supervisor has stated that the towns are doing nothing and are obstacles to affordable housing.+++ Is this based on actual meetings between this board and town councils? ***
- Have the towns been engines of growth in affordable housing? Some towns more than others?
- Would your Zoning Text Amendment doom future opportunities for cooperation between Towns and the County? What would the towns need from the County in the future? Or conversely, what would the County need from the Towns? Is interdependency a good thing?
- What is the likelihood that developers of these townhouses and apartments will expect the County to provide sewer and water? If developers expect this, how much is the County willing to spend for this type of infrastructure?
- Did the ZTA consultant, the Berkley Group, consider any of the aforementioned considerations, (1-8) or were they just strictly brought in to write text revisions?
- Are there documents that link the work the Berkley Group performed with the Comprehensive Plan? If no such documentation exists, is it likely that the County would lose a legal challenge?
General questions: - How much more capacity does the Town of Onancock have in their sewage treatment plant? Would they be able to spare more capacity for projects in Northampton County? Does Cape Charles (Va. Amer. Water) have spare capacity to share with the County?
- Do you favor individual wells and septic systems serving all of these housing units that the ZTA encourages to be built? Are you comfortable with DEQ having no tools to protect our sole source aquifer from such massive and high density withdrawals?
- Are Future Land Map revisions subject to town advice and/or approval?
- Is it likely that these new housing units will be occupied by people who are escaping higher housing costs in Hampton Roads, but continue to work and recreate in Hampton Roads?
- Are you willing to withdraw your zoning text amendment so that any future revision to the Zoning Ordinance follows logical and legally prudent methods?
- How much is Northampton County prepared to spend in defending a zoning text amendment that is not supported by the Comprehensive Plan? Are you confident in the process that you have followed?
Please submit my comments to the public record. Thank you.
+++ Phone conversation 07/08/26 with BOS member Dixon Leatherbury
*** From ES Post 3/26/25 Chairman Coker cautioned that relying on the towns to act could delay solutions for years.
“We’re not getting a lot of interest from the towns, because the towns are doing what the towns want to do,” he said. “We don’t have any control over the towns, and they don’t have any control over town edge. So we are just doing our own thing here… but I think the County needs to do something.”
About the Author
Actually Jacob, a majority of these events are created by recreational boaters pumping their holding tanks out into the water.…
From the spill in the Elizabeth River no doubt
"Pedestrians have the right of way." -Famous last words-
Pedestrians always have the right of way.
In other words there will be potential bike path injuries and deaths. Idiot drivers vs knucklehead bike riders vs 12…