Life and times on the Mountain:

The yellow plane came this morning, for the second time this spring to spray for gypsy moths. We live in Spray Block 1 and the county mailed us a notice a few months back, so we knew it was coming. The surprise was the second pass at it, but it has been raining a lot lately. The plane came to spray, starting at 6:30am and was quite a spectacle buzzing impossibly low over the house as we listened, still in bed.

From the WaPo story in 2007:

The county has 15 target areas, or blocks, where it's spraying an Environmental Protection Agency-approved insecticide from a low-flying, yellow crop-duster-style plane. Residents living in and around the areas have been notified by mail, with advisories that people and pets should remain indoors for 30 to 45 minutes after the spraying is complete and planes are no longer buzzing overhead. The spraying will not occur during times when children are walking to school or waiting for school buses.

Check out some defoliation numbers over the years.

Oh, and we pay for the entertainment, cough, I mean moth control, some $ .0025 per $100 valuation added onto our real estate tax bill.

US 15, north of I-66, is being widened to a 4-lane divided highway. You can read the PWC Project Report.

This project was divided into two sections, a northern section and southern section. Both sections will create a four-lane divided facility with median that will widen approximately 19,639 linear feet of Route 15. The northern section will widen Route 15 north of Dominion Valley to the intersection of Route 234. This section will include the realignment of Route 234 & Waterfall Road to create one intersection with Route 15. The southern section will widen Route 15 from north of Route 66 to north of Utterback Lane. Improvements will also include extending Heathcote Blvd. from its intersection with Rt. 15 east to its existing intersection with Old Carolina Rd, and widening Old Carolina Rd. from Heathcote Blvd. north to the existing Old Carolina widened section.

Thanks to Supervisor Stirrup's office for sending this out.

Enjoy a weekend in the country experiencing modern farm life and the rich rural history of western Prince William County at the seventh annual Prince William County Farm Tour.

Seven locations are open to the public with fun and educational activities for the whole family. Visit as many of the tour stops as you like, traveling in the comfort of your own vehicle. You can follow the farm tour map and look for bright yellow directional signs along the way. Parking areas are designated at each stop. Thanks to our generous sponsors, this is a free event for all.

Oak Dale Baptist Church's Outreach Team will feed Farm Tour visitors at 11:30 am to 2:30 pm on Saturday, and 12 noon to 3 pm Sunday. Lunch fare will include hot dogs, hamburgers, chips, cookies, and drinks. There is no fee, although cost-covering voluntary donations will be welcomed.

Check out the site for a map to the seven stops and an activity book for the kids.

The day started damp, leftovers from the night's rain, but quickly cheered with an autumn sun peeking through the hickories. Breakfast, coffee-to-go, pawing at the BRO (the Bull Run Observer, not the bro) to find the location for parking, then we're off.

According to E. Bruce Davis, staff writer for the BRO:

The thousands of people who attend from 9-4p.m., rain or shine, will see from any vantage point the majesty of the town's past, alongside the new development and buildings designed to herald a future pedestrian-friendly town.

Cool, 58F, with an improbably blue sky and some light wind. Perfect for viewing the majesty of Haymarket. Ahem, right.

Parking was easy and after depositing one girl with her school group, we took up curbside residence in front of the uninspired Town Hall, waiting for the parade. I've missed the past three Haymarket Days for various reasons, but was glad to see strong (almost too crowded) attendance and plenty of parade entries. My favorites: the pug wearing campaign stickers, the high school band, and, of course, my kid waving with her preschool group.

The inimitable Bruce Roemmelt stopped over to greet his mountain neighbors, as did most of the professional politicians (it's an election year in Virginia), but it was odd to see Delegate Bob driving a car by himself in the parade. Laura suggested that I could perhaps join him to discuss our political differences.

Conspicuous by their absence, the Gainesvill Ruritans didn't organize this year's event. They'll be putting on the Pumpkin Pandemonium in a couple of weeks.

Post-parade, we dove into the scrum of booths and vendors in the lot next to Haymarket Baptist Church, and had nice visits with Bruce again, and Louise Jamison, Grand Marshall of Haymarket Day today and a Prince William educator for many, many years. We were soon to be ejected by fussing kids and wind-whipped balloons. It was declared, "this is no fun," so it's off to lunch with friends at a local pizza place, where we consumed half of the chairs in the place, along with some tasty pizzas.

All in all, a perfect small-town day.

I've posted before back when pwcitizen was running on the Antioch Church near my house. A woman contacted me via email from Arizona about checking the small cemetery for her ancestral surnames (Vermillion,Pomeroy), so I ran over there recently to help her out. It's a small cemetery and only takes about 15 minutes to walk the entire thing.

A couple weeks back we had several days of gusty winds and apparently this huge poplar had enough. The tree is broken off about 20 feet above the ground and came down on a number of graves. The damage is not widespread, but many of the gravestones under it are broken.

Oh, and unless they're under that tree, there are no Vermillions or Pomeroys to be found there.

The Wellington project's commercial components could be well-received, says Sandy Paul, director of research for the mid-Atlantic region of Delta Associates (www.deltaassociates.com). The Prince William office market has a 4.7 percent vacancy rate; the flex/industrial market has a 6.4 percent rate.

After a bit of rooting around, I was able to find the rezoning document from the PWC Planning Commission online. The gist:

A. Request - This is a request to rezone +/-15 acres from A-1, Agricultural to O (F), Office Flex and +/-166.9 acres from A-1 to PMD, Planned Mixed Development to allow development of 624 multi-family dwelling units and either 1.2 million square feet of office space and 400 hotel rooms or an additional 230,000 square feet of potential office space in lieu of the hotel rooms. The application includes requests for waivers and modifications to allow private streets, to waive internal buffer requirements, to modify and waive perimeter buffer requirements, and waive the requirement for more than one dwelling unit type.

B. Location - The subject site is located on the north and south sides of Wellington Road, the east and west sides of Clayton Road, south of Hornbaker Road (see maps in Attachment A). The site is identified on County maps as GPIN 7596-63- 0490.

A. Planning Office Recommendation - The Planning Office recommends approval of Rezoning # PLN2004-00105, Wellington Glen, subject to the proposed proffers dated October 12, 2005. See Attachment B for the staff analysis and Attachment C for the proposed proffers.

The 69-page document is interesting reading, if you care about that sort of thing, since it notes a $6.68M proffer for the changes. The calculation for the proffer is interesting to me, in that schools have a recommended proffer rate of $3492 per dwelling and transportation garners $5258 per dwelling. I had no idea the county had a grasp on the dollar impact of new development. With traffic on many surface streets being so bad, I have to wonder if their calculations are realistic or whether the developers have gotten the upper hand too many times during the past decade.

The MSNBC article was light on the details of the project, which includes plans for 624 "dwellings", which are zoned as "small-lot residential/multi-family residentail." That says townhouses to me, but could include hotel rooms and apartments according to the Staff Report.

Wellington Glen looks to be a good project for the county, with substantial business and sales taxes to be garnered from businesses located there and limited impact to schools and traffic from the residential aspects of the project.

Google map, hybrid satellite and map of the Wellington/234 Bypass area.

Technorati Tag: Prince William County

The county recently conducted a telephone questionnaire, "Citizen Satisfaction Survey," which can be found on the County website. They didn't call me, but I'm somewhat aligned with these results:

The top five:

Citizen satisfaction with:

• Library staff -- 99.1 %
• Landfill services -- 98.8 %
• Medical rescue services -- 98.3 %
• Fire protection services -- 98.2 %
• Voter registration -- 97.0 %

The bottom five

• Citizen satisfaction with:
• Ease of travel around Northern Virginia -- 24.5 %
• Coordination of development and roads -- 34.9 %
• Getting around in Prince William County -- 38.1 %
• Planning and land use -- 44.8 %
• Efforts to preserve open space -- 45.1 %

Of course, PWC BoCS chairman, Sean Connaughton puts the spin on the bad ones:

In fact, said Chairman Sean Connaughton, the lowest satisfaction was with the ease of travel around Northern Virginia, something the supervisors can't really control at all.

Thus spake the Community Times.

Technorati Tag: prince william county

Civil servant unrest in our nearby burg:

Haymarket mayor resigning, but not in disgrace: David Taylor bought land outside of the town and plans to devote more time to his business and family. I'm of the opinion that Taylor's done a fair job as mayor in the aftermath of Jack Kapp's abrupt and ragged exit. The town's obviously outgunned by developers and in an untenable position regarding growth, with Gainesville breathing down its neck, but there is some amount of pride to be found there

But before he goes, Taylor and the town council suspended Chief of Police Roop and Sgt. Greg Breeden for an undisclosed offense. Their suspension was reduced to 15 days and now they are back on the job. Town reaction has been mixed.

"It's sickening," said Charles Leonard, a 32-year Haymarket resident, about the council's reluctance to disclose the basis of the suspensions. Roop and Breeden are two officers in a nine-officer police department, which the town funds.

The WaPo helps one of the officers dig himself a hole which will surely hurt him when Roop returns:

Haymarket police officer Robert Hoffman, 39, who has been with the force for four years, said the mayor told him a hostile work environment was the reason for the suspensions. Hoffman said the investigation began about four weeks ago when officers on the force ran into a council member at the town's Subway sandwich shop and began complaining about the department.

The Town Council soon hired an attorney, who interviewed most members of the department, Hoffman said. Hoffman said he told the investigator that the chief works only a few days out of the week and that he makes offensive jokes around the office.

"He's not worked more than three days [a week] for the last year and a half. If he's ever worked more than four a week, it's been a heck of a week," said Hoffman, who added that he had hoped the chief would have been terminated and the sergeant demoted.

Technorati Tag: haymarket