Public meetings have been scheduled in each of the Sussex County Council districts and officials are ready to begin work on a long-anticipated comprehensive plan update.
Development — likely the touchiest subject in coastal Delaware, where developers have taken advantage of the attractive landscape to build colossal developments and attract new residents — has reached almost every corner of the county in the last decade. The state-mandated plan update “will serve as the standard for how development will proceed and how land use will be governed over the course of the next five years,” according to Sussex County’s Web site.
The plan is due to the state by the end of October. Public meetings will begin with the first of five from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Jan. 29 in District 2 at the Greenwood Fire Company. The first local meeting will convene from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Feb. 6 in District 5 at the Selbyville Fire Company on North Main Street. The fourth district’s meeting, the last in the series, is scheduled to last from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Feb. 15 at the Bethany Beach Fire Company on Coastal Highway in Bethany.
Joan Deaver, the president of Citizens for a Better Sussex, a non-profit organization promoting orderly and responsible growth, said she will attend each of the five public meetings to promote her group’s message.
“It’s a county run by developers,” Deaver said, disapproving of what she perceives as runaway growth in the area. “They’re making the decisions. We’ll come at them every way we can. We love this place. And we intend to take care of it.”
Deaver said she will call for the re-zoning of the entire county to protect open space and agricultural lands.
Rich Collins, executive director of the Positive Growth Alliance and a property-rights advocate, said that the solid foundation set by the 2002 plan should allow officials to only make minimal, if any, changes this year.
“The plan we’ve been operating under is, for the most part, reasonably acceptable,” Collins said. “There has been a big slowdown in the (housing) market and I fear that some governments — I don’t think it will be Sussex County — are chomping at the bit to control growth at the very time the market is controlling it for them. We don’t think it would be necessary to institute massive new measures to slow what home building is going to slow anyway.”
As a part of the contract, the county’s plan consultant, Urban Research and Development Corp. — a Pennsylvania-based company specializing in planning consultation — will help council draft ordinances shortly after the plan’s approval, to support the plan. Major changes to curtail development are not expected by council’s majority.
George Cole (R-4th), a consistent anti-high-density-development voice on council, might be in the minority. Cole, who has asserted for months that nothing major will change through the plan-updating process – particularly because of his minority status – said he would like to further protect environmental and agricultural lands from development.
The county’s AR-1 — agricultural and residential — and environmentally sensitive overlay zones have been sites of massive development recently. The Estuary, a recently approved 1,060-lot development off Camp Barnes and Double Bridges Roads, lies in an AR-1 zone and the Environmentally Sensitive Development District.
Vance Phillips (R-5th), though Cole’s only fellow Republican on council, is virtually his opposite. Phillips noted recently that he supports “additional density” in the county and he will likely champion further density-trade ordinances through the planning process.
Such ordinances — like one already in place — would allow developers to exceed density requirements by paying fees to the county. That money raised would then be used to buy and preserve open space. Cole acknowledged this week that Phillips’ plan is essentially the only practical one in place to preserve open space in the county. But it does face opposition within and outside of council.
“We don’t have to give them more density for anything,” Deaver said. “This land is very, very desirable. We need to be in the driver’s seat, not developers.”
Visit www.sussexcountyde.gov for more information on the planning process and how to comment. Public comments will be taken into consideration when drafting the document, county officials have said.