Fairfax Supervisors Get Last Look At Draft Reston Comprehensive Plan
RESTON, VA — Fairfax County Board of Supervisors got its last chance to provide feedback on the draft Reston Comprehensive Plan Amendment before county staff releases its final version in May.
The general consensus among supervisors was that the version presented during the board’s Land Use Policy Committee meeting on Tuesday morning was an improvement over the document that they first reviewed last October.
At that meeting, Sully District Supervisor Kathy Smith, the committee’s chair, criticized the inclusion of topics like equity and community heath, saying that they belonged in policy plans and not the document that guides land use in the county.
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Although Smith told county staff that they’d done a good job of addressing the concerns she raised about the inclusion of equity and community heath, she still had reservations about some of the language around economic development.
“It’s that line of what should be in the comp plan and what other aspirational things that that people want to talk about with Reston,” Smith said. “Where is the place to put that? To me, I don’t want to create confusion when somebody’s going through the land-use process about what really is required and what’s not. I still don’t feel that clarity there.”
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Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn kicked off the Reston Comprehensive Plan Review process back in January 2020, at the same meeting he officially became a member of the board. What followed was nearly two years of discussions by members of a task force created by Alcorn to formulate a draft document for the planning commission to review and board of supervisors to review and adopt.
Since the task force completed its work last August, county staff has edited and shortened the document so that its language conforms with that of the county’s comprehensive plan.
“It was 180 some pages originally. It’s now in the 130s and still has new chapters and new comments,” said Hunter Mill Planning Commissioner John Carter. “That’s a credit to the staff because it’s more clearly written. Instead of sort of a creep of amendments since 1962, it’s now a reworking of the whole plan You now have one plan addressing all of Reston in a similar way.”
Now that the draft plan amendment is more in line with county policy, staff is still striving to improve the readability and accessibility of the plan, so that it will be accessible to a variety of people, according to Carter.
“There is concern that what seems to be a small change is maybe a big change, but those things are not occurring as my understanding,” he said. “We’ve met several times. We met with the [Greater Reston Chamber of Commerce] on this, and we’re working toward the May 14 coming out with the final staff draft. I think it’s time to move this forward.”
Once the final draft is released in May, the planning commission will host a public hearing, which is currently scheduled for June 14. That will be followed by a public hearing before the board of supervisors at the end of July.
Alcorn noted during Tuesday’s meeting that Reston has always had a set of planning principles that was specific to Reston. Those are being carried forward in the draft document along with some additions and updates.
“Overall, I want to make sure we balanced this in the right way, because I don’t want to dumb down Reston’s comprehensive plan,” Alcorn said. “Let’s move forward with it and make it a better plan. I think the planning commission has come a long way and, with staff’s support, to getting us to the point we need to be.”
John Farrell, who was recently elected as the new president of the Reston Association Board of Directors, came to the government center on Tuesday to watch the meeting.
“There’s a lot more work to do, particularly in the parks and recreation chapter, which is our number one concern,” he said. “We have some concerns about the transportation chapter, but we think they’re getting addressed.”
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