"In reviewing the avalanche of Comprehensive Plan Amendments filed by developers, which could lead to tens of thousands of new residential units, I am reminded of the movie Wall Street and the lead character Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas. In that film Gekko exclaimed, "Greed is good"!

"That sentiment, however, is not good news for Loudoun's taxpayers and commuters as we face a frontal assault by developers scheming to rewrite the County's Comprehensive Plan in piecemeal fashion by adding tens of thousands of new residential units to an already overburdened County through Comprehensive Plan amendments. The irony of it is that if the Board of Supervisors accepts the Plan amendments we adopt them as our own meaning that the taxpayers will be paying to do the developer's planning work!

"Some simple questions to ask: Are we spending any less time in commuting on Route 7 or Route 50 or the Toll Road? Is opening 32 new schools over the past ten years not enough? Or the 17 new schools over the next six years not enough? Have your property taxes gone down due to all of the new residential development? Honestly, "Does the nation's fastest growing County need to grow any faster?

"I am intrigued as I review media reports on these applications that some developers are even promising that County taxpayer's will not be burdened for the cost of the construction of new facilities, mostly schools, needed for the tens of thousands of residents these new residential units will bring. Well my mom has always told me if something sounds too good to be true it usually never is. I find it hard to believe that taxpayers in these new developments will be willing to pay thousands of dollars a year more in taxes than their neighbors in other communities to pay for all these new facilities. The fact of the matter is they won't and I am afraid the developer promises are substantially empty words in an effort to curry favor with decision makers.

"Regardless of the infrastructure costs related to these developments, Loudoun's taxpayers will be forced to pay the additional operating costs for school teachers, sheriff's deputies, fire/rescue personnel etc. to meet the service demands of all of the new residents. For example, 10,000 single family houses is expected to generate 8,000 new students. At today's annual cost of $10,000 to educate a single student that is a hit of $80 million to our budget. Loudoun is already projected to add 30,000 new students by the end of the decade - that is 1/3 of all new students projected in the entire Commonwealth of Virginia. To add more to this burden will only force the County to build new schools faster, hire hundreds of new teachers, continue the disruptive practice of school boundary line adjustments, exacerbate our traffic woes and negatively impact our quality of life.

"Quite frankly this is not a choice between growth and no-growth. This is a choice about protecting all that we hold dear about our County and not going down a path that in piecemeal fashion unravels all of the work that the public has been involved with in the previous three years through our Comprehensive Plan revisions and rezoning project. However, if members of the Board of Supervisors want to undo that work, then they should be upfront about it and do a comprehensive review of the Comprehensive Plan. This would ensure that all citizens would have an equal voice with the development industry. After all, once the developers leave the citizens will be left footing the bill while sitting in traffic.

"What do you think?"