Sussex County and Delaware Department of Transportation officials unveiled the final draft of the county’s much talked-about comprehensive plan update on Tuesday in Rehoboth Beach, to a moderate crowd of local officials, conservationists, large land owners and other interested citizens, in the first of two public meetings opening the final stages of dialogue on the plan.
Public comment on the latest draft of the 2008 Sussex County Comprehensive Plan Update is now being accepted. The public can view and download the full 120-page plan, as well as background information on its development, on the county’s Web site at http://www.sussexcountyde.gov/compplan/index.cfm. They can also submit their comments on the plan directly to county government through a form accessible on that Web page. Written comments can be submitted to: Sussex County 2007 Comprehensive Plan Comments, ATTN: Mr. Hal Godwin, Assistant to the Administrator, P.O. Box 589, Georgetown, DE 19947. The public will also be able to submit comments through public hearings planned for the Planning & Zoning Commission’s and County Council’s approval periods in the coming months. The five-year update process, which began in January with a series of five public meetings around the county, has incorporated elements of the county’s existing comprehensive plan, comments from the public, input from local and state officials, and coordination from planning consultants Urban Research and Development Corporation (URDC).
URDC’s Paul Driscoll led the assembled group through the freshly minted plan on Sept. 25, offering a 14-page summary of the finished 120-page planning document, in addition to commentary on the transportation portion of the plan from the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT).
Those attending the meeting had only a brief period to examine the document, and none at all to look at the full plan, before being allowed to ask questions and provide comments on it. The printed document was completed only hours prior to the presentation Tuesday and was uploaded to the county’s Web site at sussexcountyde.gov at the same time.
That drew criticism from some of the attendees, including Dan Wynn of Long Neck, who said, “A meeting like this would be more meaningful if the documents were available ahead of time,” with nods and verbal agreement from many in the audience.
Driscoll took the criticism under advisement and endeavored throughout the meeting to provide a brief summary of the content of the plan, which he summed up in a few brief statements.
“When you talked to us in January and February, we heard two main things: the county needs to take a tougher stance on growth, to reduce traffic and protect its agricultural lands… and that the county needs more growth, to protect the value of land, protect existing jobs, attract employers and protect agricultural jobs.”
“Those may seem like pretty opposite points of view,” Driscoll acknowledged, “but we took the best ideas from each and used them to develop this draft of the comprehensive plan.”
No wholesale change in planning policy
Driscoll said planning consultants had focused on trying to find methods and techniques that would allow the county bridge both concepts, but at the core of the new plan, he said, will be efforts to find new ways of doing things while retaining the same kind of policy and approach the county government has been using regarding planning issues.
“The county has been and is on the right track with development and planning,” Driscoll opined. “There will be no wholesale change in policy.”
Driscoll hung the core of changes to address complaints about growth and density on a new feature that planners are advising the county government to institute: transfer of development rights, or TDRs.
While the county’s AR-1 agricultural-residential district will remain unchanged in density allowances under the new plan, with two dwelling units allowed per acre without connection to central sewer systems and four with such a connection, Driscoll said TDRs would allow the county to permit potential additional density on some parcels of land and preserve corresponding space elsewhere in the county.
Driscoll addressed one key point of this proposal in response to questions on Tuesday, saying that TDRs would ideally be targeted at preserving open space within just 6 to 8 miles of the property for which added density is permitted.
That follows a last-minute change made to the county’s recently adopted density trade ordinance, which requires that funding collected from developers in exchange for additional density allowance be used to purchase open space within the same watershed.
That change mollified some of those who had opposed the ordinance, labeled as “density for dollars” by those who have sought to check development in the area and require developers to limit themselves to the density caps established in zoning code for particular zones.
The similar idea for TDRs was likewise greeted warmly by many of those at the Sept. 25 meeting on the comprehensive plan. Driscoll noted, though, that already some 27 percent of the acreage of Sussex County is being protected, through state, federal or other governmental control or ownership, or through protective easements, such as agricultural preservation.
Implementation of plan will hinge on ordinances
Driscoll did note that the comprehensive plan itself is only the framework from which the county will work to implement regulations that will put the plan’s vision into place. Early next year, the county is expected to begin to draft new ordinances to back up the policies espoused in the plan, in whatever form it takes when finally adopted.
“Those will put the teeth in the comprehensive plan,” he said. “That’s where the rubber meets the road.”
Joan Deaver, president of Citizens for a Better Sussex, pointed out during the meeting that the county council has yet to adopt eight or nine ordinances originally proposed to enforce policies under its last comprehensive plan, which was finalized in 2002.
She asked the county to institute a moratorium on development around the Delaware Inland Bays area until the Inland Bays Pollution Control Strategy is implemented — with the initially recommended 100-foot buffers around them — and that during the moratorium the county council pass those long-idle proposed ordinances that were required under the 2002 plan.
That includes creating a definition of “open space,” which has been a point of conflict among the council and many county residents.
“No development should take place until that is settled,” Deaver said.
Driscoll said Tuesday that the new draft comprehensive plan recommends that the county change how it calculates open space — most notably by removing wetlands from the calculation of open space so that lands that would not be built upon under any circumstances were not being credited to developers as part of their requirements for open space.
Deaver further challenged the county to put a halt to development in areas designated by state funding priorities as Level 4, with no state funding expected to be provided for any infrastructure improvements as a way to discourage growth in those areas, as well as to ensure that the records of the Sussex County Land Trust, which administers the funds collected to purchase and preserve open space, are available to the public at all times.
Praising the council on its efforts to expand its central sewer service, Deaver also said, “We want you to stop allowing so-called ‘central sewer’ in new developments. If the area does not have county sewer, then the lots should have a minimum of 5 acres.”
Farmers, land owners oppose restrictions
The comments raised the ire of Wayne Baker of Lewes, who said he owns a large parcel of land that is “my family heritage, my pension plan, my 401K,” and that he said he fears he or buyers would be prevented from developing in the future, “taking money out of my pocket.”
“It’s not fair,” Baker said. “Twenty percent of the people in this county own 80 percent of the land, and the other 80 percent of the people are telling us what to do. This all pertains only to the large land owner. He gets screwed every time, and I’m tired of it.”
Driscoll said the two sets of comments illustrated exactly the two disparate points of view that consultants and county officials had heard while developing the plan and from which they had been trying to pull the best elements.
“I feel we have pulled the best of both lines of thought,” he said, “with the two units per acre AR-1 and the TDRs. Where land is not suited for development or where there are extremely valuable resources, we can consider how to protect them,” he added, pointing to things like setbacks, buffers and well-head protection ordinances.
Offering a slightly different point of view but still representing many of the area’s large land owners, Ed Justice, president of the Delaware Farm Bureau, said he’d like to see the plan include agricultural-industrial areas where farmers could have close access to needed services, such as supply stores, as well as the ability to operate farm-based businesses, such as an ice-cream shop on a dairy farm.
He said such accommodations could help serve to keep farmers in the agriculture business and thus preserve their lands from sale for development.
Mobility element addressed by DelDOT
Much of Tuesday’s meeting focused on the impact of growth on the area’s roads and traffic, and DelDOT officials said essentially that they were already working to address the issue, providing no specifics of new projects or new timetables for existing plans.
Presented Tuesday were projections of population growth and shifts through 2030, indicating not only growth in the area’s overall population but also its aging as the Baby Boom generation settles into retirement near the beach.
That is expected to lead to a need for more services on the eastern side of the county, with workers needing to live farther to the west to find affordable housing, creating in turn a need for better east-west transit options for workers.
A DelDOT traffic congestion map show problems on many of the county’s major roadways now, with projections from 2030 showing many of those roads clogged severely in summer and some year-round, with other side roads also beginning to be severely impacted.
As Driscoll promised that the county would let growth lead the way for infrastructure expansion, to avoid encouraging growth in areas where there is not yet development pressure, DelDOT officials said they planned to let growth lead transportation priorities, focusing already with their 2008 transportation plan on existing and near-future transportation needs, while those expected to arise between 2013 and 2030 will begin to be addressed in the near future.
Transportation officials have also added air quality to their list of concerns to be addressed, with an expectation that county-wide air quality monitoring is on the near horizon, pushing the development and use of alternative fuel vehicles, alternative transportation methods and options such as ride sharing, as well as transportation aimed at serving that aging population.
Also now on DelDOT’s list of concerns is developing “sub-area planning,” focusing on smaller areas of particular concern, with the first four such areas being Bridgeville, Milton, Greenwood and the Ocean View-Millville area, which are growing rapidly and already have major traffic congestion problems.
State officials plan to work with the county on the problem on a sub-area level, while also encouraging county and local governments to put their focus on local roads while DelDOT prioritizes for main arteries.
Affordable housing, design issues tackled
The draft comprehensive plan also deals with other concerns, such as the aforementioned affordable housing shortage.
Driscoll said planners were encouraging county officials — and local ones — to give a close look at their ordinances to see whether they were being unfair to manufactured housing, as that could provide one option for more affordable housing. He defended a perceived pro-manufactured housing stance, emphasizing a desire to be fair and accepting a recommendation from the audience that the area’s susceptibility to high winds also be considered when addressing the advisability of manufactured homes as a housing option.
The county’s new Moderately Priced Housing Unit (MPHU) program was praised Tuesday as an apparent success as a two-year trial period heads into its second year, with three development applications using the affordable housing initiative though none have yet been approved or built.
Historical preservation is also addressed in the plan, with Driscoll saying that the county might consider a mandatory “cooling off” period before demolition of historic structures would be allowed. That time, he said, could be used by preservationists to work with a property owner to try to preserve a structure or location before the county would issue demolition permits.
The comprehensive plan draft also addresses community design as a major element of future growth, recommending that design standards be developed for requirement or recommendation for new communities.
Driscoll suggested developers might move away from a standard suburban design style toward a neo-traditional one, encouraging neighbors to become involved in their community with small front yards and front or side porches.
The standards could also possibly allow greater density from single-family units by using narrow lots instead of developing multi-family units.
He also mentioned new trends toward environmentally-friendly “green” housing design that would be aimed at improving a home’s “carbon footprint.”
New public input phases beginning
Though members of the public had only just gotten their first peek at the new draft comprehensive plan on Tuesday, the public still has time to provide feedback and comments as the planning process moves forward.
Driscoll noted on Sept. 22 that the county had already forward the new draft to state planning officials for their feedback, with an eye toward getting the plan approved and adopted perhaps as soon as January of 2008.
However, he noted that in addition to Wednesday’s public meeting in Laurel, with the same format as Tuesday’s Rehoboth meeting, the public will be able to comment through public hearing periods in both the Planning and Zoning Commission and County Council approval processes.
State planning officials’ comments are expected to be incorporated, along with those public comments, before a final plan is created and voted upon by the P&Z and council. Once both bodies have adopted the plan, it will be sent to Gov. Ruth Ann Minner for her signature.
See next week’s issue of the Coastal Point for an in-depth look at the full 120-page draft of the 2008 Sussex County Comprehensive Plan Update.