CONTENTS

• Comprehensive & Strategic Planning
• Public Participation
• Public Facilities Survey
• Quarterly Report
  • Summary of Department Activities
  • Department Activities Report
  • Staff Activities
  • Building Permits
  • 2002 Work Program Update
  • Subdivision Report
  • Special Use Permits
  • Rezonings
  • Board of Zoning Appeal Report
• Coal Mining Heritage Park Science Center
• CDBG Grant
• Demographic Project

On April 25th, the Montgomery County Planning Commission held the first in a series of public meetings with the consultants from Herd Planning And Design. During the meeting, Milton Herd and Karen Gravilovic presented the results of their first study: a comparison of the County’s existing comprehensive plan and departmental and agency strategic plans. Unlike the comprehensive plan, which is county wide and is not related to the daily workings of individual departments, strategic plans are department and agency specific and detail current and future expansion of facilities for the given department or agency. For example, the Public Service Authority (PSA), the Montgomery/Floyd Regional Library, and the Montgomery County Public Schools all have strategic plans which detail their future growth and development, but which do not, necessarily, examine their impact on other departments or on the County’s development patterns. In addition to the strategic plans for the PSA, the M/F Regional Library, the Public Schools, and Economic Development, the consultants also examined the County’s Capital Improvements Program (CIP).

For each of the agencies, departments, or programs, the consultants provided a detailed examination of the strategic plans and the overlap between the individual plans and the County’s Comprehensive Plan. In their findings, the consultants noted both the discrepancies between the plans, as well as highlighting where opportunities exist for integration.

Results in the Herd Report

With the exception of the Public Service Authority’s six-year plan, the consultants concluded that, for the most part, the strategic plans currently in place are neither inconsistent nor openly conflict with the stated goals, objectives, and policies in the County’s Comprehensive Plan and are reasonably consistent with the comprehensive plan landuse map. Indeed, the consultants found that the strategic plans for the schools, for the library, and for economic development were consistent with many of the stated goals of the current plan and provided ample opportunity for drawing closer ties between departmental and county goals and objectives.

Montgomery/Floyd Regional Library

The consultants identified the Montgomery/Floyd Regional Library plan as a service or operational plan,which was intended to provide policy guidelines and levels of service (LOS) benchmarks for library development beyond primarily landuse decisions. Still, as the consultants noted, strategic or service plans, like the libraries, provide the county with invaluable information from which to make budgeting decisions just as the Comprehensive Plan should help to guide an agency’s facility expansion decisions by providing an accurate assessment of future landuse development patterns. By using consistent LOS standards, set either at the state or federal level, agencies can gauge potentials for growth and respond to additional community needs; however, these needs should be reflected in a far more detailed Comprehensive Plan.

Economic Development

As the consultants noted, much of the current Comprehensive Plan might better be located in the Economic Development Strategic Plan. In addition, as was suggested in the portion of the report covering the Montgomery/Floyd Regional Library, the vagueness of the current Comprehensive Plan works against some of the Economic Development Strategies included in both the Comprehensive Plan and the Economic Development Strategic Plan. In order to rectify the situation, the consultants made three primary suggestions: 1) updating the description of the County’s existing economic centers; 2) increase focus on the development of economic corridors and centers, especially in light of the emphasis on high tech industries which will need access to more sophisticated telecommunications needs; and 3) determine landuse needs based on future economic growth.

Montgomery County Public Schools

As with previous sections of the report, the consultants underscored the need for a more detailed Comprehensive Plan to provide much needed support for future facilities development and improvement. In addition, there may well be a need to incorporate design criteria into the Comprehensive Plan in order to the control the impact of educational facilities on the surrounding residential districts.

Public Service Authority (PSA)

Unlike the other plans covered in the Herd report, which the consultants found to have little negative impact on the County’s Comprehensive Plan, the plan and subsequent actions, according to the consultants, are often at odds with the landuse designations included in the 1990 Comprehensive Plan. Indeed, according to Herd Planning and Design, the PSA proposed projects often have the effect of expanding the Urban and Rural Growth areas into portions of Montgomery County designated as Rural, Agricultural, or Conservation, and “weakening the County’s ability to guide development to the most appropriate locations.” The consultants recommended more closely tying water and sewer line expansion to the Comprehensive Plan and establishing set service boundaries for controlled utility expansion.

In addition to the discussion of the existing strategic and program plans, the consultants also examined the use of the CIP to guide development and budgetary decisions. As noted in the previous issue of News and Notes, the Capital Improvements Program provides the County with a method for anticipating growth needs and budgeting for future expansion. If you are interested in reading the full report, it is is available in the Comprehensive Planning section of the Planning Department website.

Planning Department Activities

The first quarter of 2002 was marked by a major move and a number of personnel changes. Teresa Gantt left to take a position at Radford University; Don Martin joined the department as the new building inspector in January; and the Planning Department hired a new GIS manager, Robert Pearsall.

In January, after years in fairly cramped quarters, the Planning Department moved to the new Montgomery County Government Center, located in the old Imperial Reading jeans factory on Roanoke Street, in Christiansburg. The new offices provide the department with a lot more elbow room and storage space. Despite the move, work continued on both major and minor projects.

Work continues on the revision of the Montgomery County Comprehensive Plan on three fronts: 1) working with the Herd Planning on a series of background studies for the plan, including comparing the county’s existing comprehensive plan and the existing departmental strategic plans; 2) setting up a series of public meetings in order to present the results of the consultants’ reports and obtain public feedback; and 3) working on a series of background reports, beginning with population. See the article on page 1 for additional information on the comprehensive planning process and a summary of the consultants’ first report.

After spending January providing back-ground data to Herd Planning, Planning Department staff met with the consultants, via speakerphone, to schedule four public meetings with the consultants during 2002. Work continued on the demographic elements of the comprehensive plan and the design of the community comprehensive planning program.

Other major projects include: the implementation of the 1999 Zoning Ordinance; establishing the GLOBE and science center program, with the Montgomery County Public Schools, in the Coal Mining Heritage Park; continuing work on the stream restoration project with Waste Policy Institute, also in the Coal Mining Heritage Park; conducting a public hearing before the Board of Supervisors on telecommunications towers study, and submitting a TEA-21 grant for the North Fork-Catawba Project and a CDBG grant for the renovation of 215 Roanoke Street for use by the Free Clinic.

Work continued on the Coal Mining Park, as well. The county is in the process of transferring the Coal Mining Heritage Park from the Planning Department to the Parks and Recreation Department, although the science center program and website will remain in Planning until the program has been established and can be taken over by the public schools. See the article on page 5 for more information on the Montgomery County Science Center and the GLOBE program. For information on the Coal Mining Park, call Mike Morris in the Parks and Recreation Department at 382-6975.

In addition to the major projects, the Planning Department worked on a wide range of minor projects during the first quarter of the year. In January, the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution requesting that the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDoT) include Natures Waye Road in the state’s secondary road system (which it did in February).

Also in January, the Agricultural and Forestal Districts (AFD) Advisory Committee met to discuss the Wall Creamery Proposal and the treatment of agri-business in the 1999 Zoning Ordinance. The discussion surrounding agribusiness and the Zoning Ordinance continued in the February and March meetings, as well.

Montgomery County decided to continue with the basic Virginia Base Mapping Program because of the program’s cost estimate, electing, instead, to independently map the county. One half of the county will be mapped at a 1 foot resolution (map scale of 1”=200’) and the other half of the county mapped at a 2 foot resolution (map scale of 1”=400’).

First Quarter, 2002 Summary Departmental Activity

Staff Activity

First Quarter, 2002 Building Permits

2002 Work Program Time Line

The Montgomery County Science Center and GLOBE Project

The Montgomery County Science Center and GLOBE Project is something of a misnomer. In conjunction with the Montgomery County Public Schools, the Planning Department is working on establishing a GLOBE program for the Coal Mining Heritage Park. The program would, essentially, provide the public schools with an outdoor environmental science lab for doing longitudinal environmental science studies studies (studies over a long period of time) using the protocol established through the GLOBE program. GLOBE is an international science program, sponsored in part of NASA and NOAA. The Montgomery County Science Center is a website, currently housed on the Planning Department site, that provides a place for collecting scientific data from the Coal Mining Heritage Park Property, including an ongoing wildlife survey, water test results, and materials generated by last year’s the geotechnical study. Information on both projects is available through the Montgomery County Planning Department website.

CDBG Grant for the Free Clinic Awarded

An integral part of the comprehensive planning process is establishing a series of baselines for comparison, including background research on demographics, environmental and economic conditions, and a county facility and program assessment. Some of this work is being performed by the consultants, who were hired to look at how the current programs and plans compare, both within county government and with other jurisdictions in the Montgomery County and to assess opportunities for expanding interjurisidictional cooperation. In addition, the consultants will be looking at the issues surrounding open space and agricultural preservation, as well as examining potentials for a cash proffer system.

Other work, however, is being done within the department. Currently staff members are working on a series of background reports which function as “ground truthing.” Ground truthing is a term taken from remote sensing (mapping and environmental studies using satellite and air photographs) and refers to establishing the actual conditions on the ground. In this case, the term refers to establishing the characteristics of Montgomery County and its residents. The first study in the series looks at demographic characteristics, as established in the 2000 Census, including information about population, gender, race, ethnicity, poverty, education, income, housing, and economic trends.

The demographic study uses three separate approaches: one longitudinal approach and two comparative approaches. In addition to examining how the county has changed between 1950 and 2000, the demographic study also examines how Montgomery County compares to surrounding jurisdictions, including the counties of Craig, Floyd, Giles, Pulaski, and Roanoke and the cities of Roanoke and Salem. Finally, the county uses a number of other jurisdictions around the state as benchmarks in order to assess how Montgomery County is faring. These jurisdictions include the counties of Albemarle (and Charlottesville), Chesterfield, Faquier, Hanover, Henrico, Rockingham, Roanoke, Spotsylvania, and Stafford.

The materials presented in News and Notes is a summary of the results and represents only a fraction of the information garnered in the demographic study. A longer version of the study will be available on the Planning Department website and as a hard copy report for the Montgomery County Planning Commission.