Time for a change

With the circulation of a draft proposal concerning the feasibility of offering certain tax and fee incentives, as we wrote about in this space last week, with elections on the horizon, including several contested seats on the board of supervisors, and with an economy that cannot seem to get back on track, business is at the top of everyone’s list of favorite topics these days.

There’s that, and there’s the always ongoing concerns in Fauquier about local government’s need for more tax revenue and the residents’ need for wider opportunities.

How do we foster growth without falling victim to our success?

We have never yet had a conversation with a Fauquier resident, even the most pro-growth advocates among us, who has ever expressed any enthusiasm for our becoming another Fairfax or Prince William or eastern Loudoun county.

And yet the need for so much of what they have to offer — jobs, recreation, services and amenities — grows more pressing.

How do we have growth and achieve those positives without also importing all of the worst of Northern Virginia’s ills?

One thing is clear: We cannot do it, as we proposed in a story in the spring issue of our Piedmont Business Journal, “without understanding by the man on the street — as a customer, as a consumer, as an investor and as a voter — that there is need to make a change.”

We noted then that the market is increasingly demanding “places to live where work, recreation, services, housing and amenities are within reach by foot, bicycle or public transportation.”

A just-released report from the Center for Neighborhood Technology reiterates that observation.

“In the end, this is the big question,” said Harriet Tregoning, director of the Washington, D.C. Office of Planning. “How can we grow the region and become more resilient to economic ups and downs — whether it’s a credit crisis or volatile fuel prices?”

How indeed? As we suggested in spring, it means here in Fauquier, we must “double the number of jobs and add 50 percent to the number of dwelling units.” More to the point, we need to do all that without expanding our development footprint.

We need, the CNT report argues, to “create complete communities.”

“Across the country and across economic strata,” we wrote in April, our preferences come down “to the kinds of things and places that people spend millions of dollars going to visit in Europe.

“There are not many parking lots. There are places where people walk and enjoy themselves. There are a lot of two- and three- and four-story buildings,” but very few that are taller.

The need for a “fundamental transformation” in our thinking grows more urgent.

Creating communities that are complete with jobs, amenities, services and recreation “helps residents be more economically resilient, and enables them to better weather economic adversity,” as CNT’s chief research scientist Peter Haas put it.

We can’t escape the feeling that economic adversity is headed this way. If Congress’ new “super committee” doesn’t come up with ways to cut the budget that will get past an up-or-down vote — pigs mastering levitation have a better chance — then $600 billion in automatic Department of Defense cuts will kick in.

DoD investment is the lifeblood of Northern Virginia and the inflation that has kept our employment cushion so comfy. Without it, fundamental transformation will be a necessity, not an option.

It behooves us to get ahead of that curve.