Meeting Summary: IPF Working Group, March 26, 2010

Dave Edwards, John Bowman, John Hanley, and Dick Stillson discussed primarily what the ultimate goals of the group should be, what some intermediate goals might be, and a tentative work plan.

A major objective of the group would be monitoring the implementation of the revised Comprehensive Plan, when there is a revised Plan. In this sense the group would be unlike other Reston 2020 working groups in that they are focused on the Task Force and revising the Plan.

More fundamentally, everyone at the meeting felt that there should be a longer-term goal of influencing the relationship between planning, zoning, and infrastructure financing so that phased and coordinated development would be more likely than under the current system. Currently, zoning decisions are supposed to lean heavily on the Comprehensive Plan guidelines and, to a certain extent, they do. Planning, however, considers relatively large sub-land units, but zoning is done by parcel as developers submit plans for specific projects. On top of that, request for zoning changes and approval for specific projects are not held up because projects for other parcels in the sub-land units have not been submitted, or that infrastructure ostensibly required by the Comprehensive Plan is not financed. The group considered Dave Edwards ideas in his papers on phasing and financing to be how we would like to see planning, zoning, and infrastructure evolve in Fairfax County. We realized that this would take us into county, and probably state, politics and economics, and would be a long-term objective.

The group discussed more intermediate goals and ways in which we might get the Reston public involved and excited about requiring change from our politicians. This is difficult because most residents of Reston are reasonably satisfied and do not get very upset until they perceive physical changes begin to affect their neighborhoods. This occurred this year with the stream restoration (which only got people upset when trees were cut in the stream areas), and building the huge recreation center more or less in the backyard of a community. Many people were angry at the cut in bus service (rightly so), but no one at the meeting was quite sure how we could use the issue to get people excited about our longer term and more abstract goals.

More immediately, the meeting decided that we would like to make direct contact with Walter Alcorn, who also has views on a fundamental change in the way planning and zoning could be done with respect to Tyson’s re-development. Also, we would like to talk to planners in Herndon, who have different procedures than in Fairfax County. Dave Edwards would contact Mr. Alcorn and people in the Herndon planning and zoning commission. Finally, Dick Stillson would contact the offices of Congressmen Wolfe and Moran about getting Federal money for Reston infrastructure.