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Haymarket struggles with growing pains
As the Town of Haymarket and its surrounding area have grown this decade, the town budget has increased too, just to keep up.This year, the council plans on adding a part-time planner to its paid staff roster starting in the next fiscal year.
In the 2009-2010 budget that has not yet been approved, $7,500 is being set aside for a certified planner, a first for a town that features an all-volunteer, citizen-based planning commission without any certified urban planners.
Planning commissioners are appointed instead of elected. According to the 2008-09 budget, the commission as a whole costs the town $3,800 to run annually.
Haymarket will need some help as experienced engineer Rich Gillan is resigning from the planning commission. He turned in his 30-day notice Monday night at the start of the regularly-scheduled commission meeting.
The town has previously operated without an engineer though, even during a robust economy with a lot of development springing up within one mile of its borders.
"I think this is important. And hopefully the residents do too," David Leake, the Planning Commission chairman and town council liaison to the commission said of the planning position.
While it may be a small portion of the budget, the addition comes at a time when the town is dipping into meals tax money to cover operating expenses.
All revenue from the meals tax was specifically designated for the town’s Street Scape project, which is designed to make Haymarket a more pedestrian friendly town, and to advertise for the businesses affected by the 4-percent tax.
With more spending being added to the budget, the odds are that the tax won't be used strictly for its intended purpose. It's also likely that the the tax will not sunset any time soon as it is essentially a reliable cash cow for Haymarket; the tax initially brought in more than $300,000 when it was projected to only be worth $240,000.
"I'm not going to promise you anything on that, but you have to start looking at the statistics too. How many restaurants have closed because of that?" said vice mayor John Cole, arguing that the meals tax hasn't hurt business in the town.
Cole said he favors bringing in a part-time planner. Before Leake took over as Planning Commission chairman, planning responsibilities had been handled at little to no charge by a number of town citizens, particularly Council Member Bob Weir.
While Weir is not a certified planner – he works full-time in trademark law – he knows more about land-use matters than anyone else on the town council.
“Well, I could always trust Bob to review everything in detail, to know how to read site plans, how to work with developers, what questions to ask, what the red flags were,” former Haymarket Planning Commission Chair Linda Landwehr said in January. “He also knew our zoning ordinances backwards and forwards. I had to learn all that.”
The town council typically relied on him to craft its responses to Prince William County officials regarding residential and commercial developments near the town’s borders.
Last summer, the council members ousted Weir as their liaison to the Planning Commission and installed Leake in the post instead. Since then, Weir has continued to write responses on the town’s behalf and has received help from volunteer Marchant Schneider, who works full-time with the Loudoun County planning office.
Weir's departure from the Planning Commission did not sit well with at least one member: now-former chairman Landwehr.
She submitted a letter to the Town Council on Aug. 4, 2008 stating, “I need to know how the Town Council intends to fill this huge support gap for the Planning Commission. In the meantime, I have relinquished the chair position on the Planning Commission as I'm not comfortable putting my name on projects that haven't been adequately reviewed.”
When Landwehr chaired the commission, she held business meetings the Wednesday before each monthly meeting to discuss the coming week’s agenda with town staff.
Leake has discontinued this practice.
"We haven't at this point,” said Leake.
That is one practice Landwehr would like to bring back.
No one else volunteered to take over as chairman when Landwehr resigned, so Leake offered to take the job.
Weir typically drafted submissions to the Prince William County government about land-use matters, writing in extensive “legalese” that can sometimes be hard to decipher.
Leake has opted against authoring letters on the town's behalf since he took over as chairman.
“At my own business and job, I have a letter-writer,” said Leake.
The town charter requires the county to accept input from the Town of Haymarket on any proposed development within one mile of the town's borders.
In the case of Haymarket Crossing, located near intersection of U.S. 15 and Route 55, Weir submitted a 2,340-word response on the town’s behalf even though he was no longer a member of the Planning Commission.
Schneider, the volunteer, drafted the town's response to the Market Center at Haymarket in January and Town Manager Gene Swearingen and Weir reviewed it.
In December, Weir asked town clerk Jennifer Preli for a copy of the comment letter from the town to the county regarding a rezoning request for the residential development Breyerton Estates just outside of town. Preli wrote back that her office “was not provided with any correspondence to forward to the county on this matter.”
Weir snapped.
In an e-mail directed to members of the Town Council, Planning Commission and staffers, he wrote, “All right guys, enough is enough. If you're not going to do the job then don't sign up for it. This is at least the third time in a row this has happened and I'm tired of spending multiple hours taking care of somebody else's responsibilities, usually at the last moment.”
All that being said, Cole still finds this council operates better than past councils, which could be straight-up dysfunctional at times.
“The mayor, not Pam (Stutz), but the previous mayor, would stand up and tell people to 'Shut up.' And he would tell citizens that!" said Cole.
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