As required by Virginia State Law, the City of Suffolk is in the process of reviewing the current Comprehensive Plan and preparing to make changes. Obtaining public feedback is an important part of the process and the Planning Department staff began doing so in 2022 by setting up booths with comment cards at various public events (like Peanut Fest). On November 17, 2022, Care4Suffolk initiated the first public forum style meeting between the City of Suffolk and the general public. After that, the city scheduled 8 town hall style “community engagement sessions” in early 2023. There was one session held in each borough, with two in the Suffolk borough. City staff asked specific questions and took notes on comments from the crowd. There were also 3 open house events in the spring of 2023 during which people could share their thoughts via “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” poster boards, sticky notes, and paper surveys. During this time, the survey was also available online for people to share thoughts on the same questions.
These fliers were distributed to solicit public opinion to include in the 2045 Comprehensive Plan.
In a recent write-up about Suffolk Planning Staff’s recommendations for increasing our Growth Areas to focus on supporting the Port of Virginia, we commented that it didn’t seem like the public was actually heard regarding what direction the City should go. We provided an example of a display board from one of the open houses that demonstrated people’s dislike for warehouses. However, that was just one small example. Many of us attended multiple meetings and open houses and heard a lot of disappointment about how Suffolk has handled growth and development.
Via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request, Care4Suffolk acquired a consolidated list of all comments either submitted online, written on comment cards, or annotated by staff at the community meetings. The comment list consists of 332 pages and just under 5,500 comments. If you scroll through the document, you will hear overwhelmingly from the citizens of Suffolk that there has been too much development and it is happening too fast.
Yet, despite thousands of comments from citizens, 9 engagement sessions, and 3 open houses, it looks like the professional planners in our city are trying to expand the growth area by more than 23%. They clearly aren’t listening to us, so who are they listening to? They’ve spent a lot of time and money to obtain public feedback, but the results of that feedback are not represented in this proposal, so what was the point? Is the City of Suffolk listening to its citizens?
Additional sources:
- Summary Memo
Preliminary Results, Round 1 Public Engagement
October 26, 2022 - Summary Memo
Preliminary Results, Winter 2023 Community Engagement
March 17, 2023 - Summary Memo
Preliminary Results, June-July 2023 Community Engagement
July 31, 2023
This isn’t the Suffolk we grew up in. Thinking we might move to NC