If we’ve learned anything from the recent kerfuffle over the Waynesboro woman who flouted the zoning law for six years with her event business in a residential neighborhood, it’s that we need to pay attention to how the rules are written.
Which gets us to the community open house that the City of Waynesboro has scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 4 p.m., at Fairfax Hall.
The focus: the ongoing update to the city’s Comprehensive Plan.
This plan is updated every five years, but I can tell you, from experience – writing about this stuff for the past 30 years – that a Comprehensive Plan isn’t something that sits on a shelf collecting dust.
When it’s done right, a Comprehensive Plan is meant to guide decision-making thinking ahead 20 years into the future.
“To create the best possible plan, one that best represents the desires and needs of residents, property owners, and stakeholders, the city needs input from as many residents as possible. I encourage everyone to come out and tell us what they think on the 28th,” said Alisande Tombarge, the city planner.
She’s the one who wrote the staff report recommending to Waynesboro City Council that it approve the request for a permit that would allow the lady who was running an event business in a residential neighborhood to keep doing what she was doing, only much more frequently, and on a much grander scale.
She did so without asking the opinion of a single neighbor.
It might be a good thing for folks to head out to Fairfax Hall later this month – so she can get acquainted with actual city residents impacted by the things that get written in the reports that she churns out.
For more information on the Comprehensive Plan update process, visit waynesboro.va.us/261/Comprehensive-Plan.
Share
Chris Graham
