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Land Use Planning for Working Farms, Forests and Fisheries
In many communities, if the current zoning is built
out, there will be no farms or forests in the future.
The typical comprehensive plan provides a narrative about
protecting rural character while the zoning usually facilitates
and encourages eventual scattered rural build-out. The
effect is a pattern of fragmentation that undermines rural
economic activities: woodlots too small to harvest to
or to hunt, farms landlocked by development and fisheries
that suffer the effects of too much runoff from clearing
and impervious surfaces.
In the context of community planning, the future of agriculture,
fisheries and forestry has been left to chance. Rural
zoning typically allows uses that are unwanted in other
zoning categories and densities that are incompatible
with working farms and forests or with watershed protection.
Statistics show that in the last 50 years, America’s
population has shifted from metropolitan areas to the
suburbs and rural areas. In the 1950’s, 60 percent of
the people lived in 168 metropolitan areas; today only
one-third remain. We also know that we are consuming land
faster than the population is growing because lots are
bigger, more spread out and family units are smaller.
A comprehensive plan is a guide for the changes
that every community faces; but if other programs do not
complement it or it is ignored, it is merely a work of
fiction, a collection of colored maps with flowery prose
describing an imaginary community.
Virginia requires that each community prepare and adopt
a comprehensive plan and review this document every five
years. The law does not require that a comprehensive plan
be fiscally feasible nor does it require that zoning,
school or capital improvement programs be consistent with
the plan.
But Virginia does not require that a community look at
the specific implications of the plan like how many school
children will new houses bring, how much the tax rate
will have to increase to pay for new facilities and services,
or how many square feet of commercial space are needed
to serve the community’s residents. Too many communities
are facing revenue shortfalls because they failed to adequately
plan for future community expenses and under-estimated
the rate of community growth even though local zoning
allowed and encouraged that growth.
A community’s Comprehensive Plan should be based upon
maintaining the health, safety and quality of life of
community residents. This includes balancing community
revenues with expenditures and commitments through a land
use plan which meets that goal. This also means that zoning
ordinances, capital improvement plans and educational
programs must all be consistent with the comprehensive
plan. This means determining which services and facilities
are needed and deciding how to pay for and maintain them
at safe and adequate levels into the future.
Each community needs to ask, “How are farming, forestry,
fishing, hunting and rural life built into this plan?
How is our current zoning going to assure that farms and
forests will remain in our future? What are the specific
needs of those land-based industries and have we provided
for them in our planning and zoning?
- Conduct a build-out analysis and audit of the current
zoning to determine the result in your community; integrate
needed adjustments to compatible rural densities and
uses.
- Designate Important Farmland Soils in your comprehensive
plan and integrate that information into your rural
land use plans and strategies.
- Create a permanent Rural Task Force to advise citizens
and policymakers on rural land use issues and proposals.
- Participate in the review and update of community
programs and policies including the comprehensive plan,
zoning, transportation plans, schools, capital improvement
plan, open space programs, and tax and revenue programs.
- Urge state policymakers to adopt tools to assist communities
in preserving the working rural landscape and industries.
Contacts:October 2004
Mary Heinricht,
Ag Prospects
P.O. Box 1385 Culpeper, VA 22701
(540) 825-5418;
Fax (540) 825-8124
maryheinricht@earthlink.net
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