Lynchburg City Council to talk Boonsboro proposal, LU voting
Lynchburg City Council is expected to revisit some controversial topics when it meets next on Tuesday. Officials will also broach a new issue concerning Liberty University voters and their polling precinct.
Council could cast the final vote on the contentious Grand Oaks at Boonsboro subdivision, which has drawn heavy opposition from its Mimosa Drive neighbors.
The Grand Oaks property spans nine acres near Bedford Hills Elementary School. The design calls for 26 homes — a reduction from the original made by developers in response to community concerns about density.
Neighbors continued to strongly oppose the plan during a second public hearing earlier this month. Concerns continued to center around density, added traffic and the environmental impact on a nearby stream.
A neighborhood spokeswoman suggested a compromise layout of 20 homes would be acceptable. Developers noted they’ve already cut back on the number of houses and made other concessions, including eliminating construction from the steepest part of the property.
Also on Tuesday, council will continue debate on the big box ordinance, which has been criticized by the local development community as overly restrictive.
The ordinance, as written, would eliminate all retail development exceeding 50,000 square feet as an automatically acceptable or “by-right” land use everywhere in the city.
Large-scale commercial developers would instead have to submit their projects to public hearings and an ultimate vote of council. A quicker, administrative form of review would be available for those willing to adhere to higher development standards.
The ordinance has been under debate in Lynchburg for nearly two full years. A vote is possible Tuesday.
Both the big-box ordinance and Grand Oaks development will be taken up during a 1 p.m work session at City Hall.
A regular business session is to follow at 5 p.m. Items on that agenda include the possibility of establishing a new polling place to accommodate the recent surge of LU student voters.
LU contributed to more than doubling the voter rolls at the Heritage Elementary School precinct following an unprecedented campus registration drive this year.
Ward III Councilman Jeff Helgeson has suggested opening a new precinct near the school to avoid future congestion at the polls.
If council elects to move forward on that plan, the city will face a tight deadline.
The state has decreed no precinct changes will be allowed after Feb. 1 due to the federal census pending in 2010. The freeze will be lifted in 2011 following the census’s completion.
It’s unlikely the city could get a new precinct formally ratified before the new deadline, given that all voting procedures in Virginia must be approved by the U.S. Department of Justice, which is known to take months to review a petition.
In a memo to council, the city attorney advises that officials could ask the state to adopt a “grandfather provision” validating all changes initiated before Feb. 1.
The city could then begin the process of creating a new precinct and await federal approval without fear of missing the deadline.
The city attorney also advised that another option would be to keep the current precinct as is and supply it with extra voting machines and poll workers in the future.
Helgeson said he continues to prefer creating a new precinct, acknowledging the process might be challenging but believing the obstacles can be overcome.
“There are hurdles, absolutely,” he said. “But I think it’s the right thing to do, considering the huge increase we’ve seen in that precinct.”
Helgeson added he’s heard numerous complaints from constituents about the long lines encountered at Heritage Elementary on Election Day earlier this month.
The elementary school precinct now has 4,762 registered voters, according to a city memo, making it the second biggest precinct in the city behind the Moose Lodge in Ward I, which has 4,883 voters.
Reader Reactions
Poor Damalama,
Is your little city being destroyed? Do you want to bring back the 60’s? Maybe some LSD, 8 track tapes, Vietnam war? Will that make you feel better?
I think it is hysterical because these brainwashed zombies, as you call them, are outwitting the LU haters at every turn! So who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows the fool? (by the way you are the latter because the extent of your involvement is to complain on a message board)
The effort to get McCain in office by the surge of LU voters was a completely failure, heck Lynchburg almost went Obama. So no I don’t care if these brainwashed kids who do whatever their leader tells them to votes or not.
They are all a bunch of hypocritical people, who think they are Godly because they go to TRBC every sunday but act in a completely different way on the other 6 days of the week, premarital sex, being a danger on the roads (like the deputy said in that article on the bypass, the biggest offenders are Liberty students, and everyone sees it everyday), vandalism, going to bars and getting drunk off their butts, on your walk into a Buffalo Wild Wings or a Cattle Annie’s look at the cars you pass to see how many LU stickers there are, all those people being loud and obnoxious in the movie theatre, when they get up guess what they have liberty university sweaters on, the school is an absolute JOKE…however back in the day when they had standards of admissions, it was respectable to go there.
Then these fools that are Liberty students actually think they have the right to look down their noses at anyone because they go to a nothing school, with a toliet paper quality degree? A GED and a year’s tution gets you in, so save it with your privilaged I am smarter than you because I go to Liberty, because it’s laughable.
Stop destroying my city that I was born and raised in with your golden calf ideas of monograms (that are crooked) on the mountain side, just work on the sub-standard admissions, and your poor morale student body before you get yourself into such a hole from spending that you have to accept everyone just to stay afloat finacialy, which is exactly what is going on right now….you think you are a BYU or an Arizona, HA who is Liberty is the answer you get from people that live in Virginia!
LU students voting will only be an issue during a Presidental election. Does anyone think they will see a big turnout next year?
As far as the development that is WAY to close to a grammar school and the Big Box Cloned Junk Stores—- JUST SAY NO ONCE in your life, councilmen! DO NOT ALWAYS THINK OF JUST $$$$$$$. Both these issues gravely impact the environment—look that up in the dictionary. I think all of you have forgotten its meaning.
And for LU voters, I truly am surprised you did not suggest sending someone to LU campus to pick up individual votes…
LU teaches the theory of evolution along with creationist theories and they let the students decide for themselves. If only secular schools were so open minded and less dogmatic. At those schools, they tell the kids what to think. They ridicule anyone who challenges their “beliefs” about the origins of the universe—even though those beliefs and theories seem to change every generation.
The big box ordinance is not restrictive enough! These developers should be being funneled to downtown! Leave the green space alone until we use some of our already available resources. We need to start rezoning these areas to prevent the missuse of our community!
Same goes for Grand Oaks! I suppose they will cut down the “grand oaks” it is named after in order to build the suburban clone housing! Yea. Progress!
As for LU and the kids voting…I could care less if or where they vote. So long as I do not have to have my tax dollars being used to build underground tunnels for them to get there! If people that are prone to “magical thinking” choose to believe in some space god, well…that is their choice. My problem is an institution being called a “school” that teaches outdated and wrong science…while still calling it “science”. It does a disservice to it’s own students and the country as a whole.
Cheers!
Wow. If Cosmo, BigJim, et al., have any guts at all they will show up and tell council they should not support a voting precinct for ‘zombies’ and ‘brainwashed’ kids. Have to use those words for it to count guys!
But, more than likely the outrage of the LU haters will be limited to random postings on the web.
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