Care4Suffolk has been watching the 2045 Comprehensive Plan process closely over the past couple years along with other city happenings and land use related issues. By observing and gathering information from various council meetings, work sessions, staff presentations, and the comp plan draft itself, we formed the opinion that much of the 2045 Plan is geared towards prioritizing the needs of the Port of Virginia.
During the November 20th City Council Public Hearing on the 2045 Comprehensive Plan, Councilman John Rector (Suffolk Borough) read a very lengthy, prepared lecture focused on dismissing citizen comments and concerns as emotional and hyperbole. One of the main things that seemed to bother him was that “one of the citizens groups” sent an email to council members asking them to vote “no” on the 2045 Plan because it focuses on the Port’s needs more than it reflects citizens’ input.
Mr. Rector attempted to shoot down this claim about the Port by telling everyone how many times the words “Port of Virginia” or “warehouse” appear in the 2045 Plan draft as compared to words like “rural” and “agriculture.” It’s interesting that he thinks a simple word count would be what a citizens group would base its claim on.
Speaking up to City Council and sharing ideas publicly are not easy things to do, so as a group, Care4Suffolk makes every attempt to look at the bigger picture and tie various pieces of information together. This is how we came to our conclusion about the Port’s influence in the comp plan.
During the January 17, 2024 City Council Work Session council received a comp plan update presentation from Keith Cannady as a precursor to the first draft coming out in February. We noticed that four of his slides were the same ones we had seen presented at the April 2023 City Council retreat. They pertained either directly to the Port of Virginia or to warehouse space comparisons. It really caught our attention when Mr. Cannady said this:
“Another major driver, and this is somewhat unique for this particular plan update, is really an historic investment in the Port of Virginia and growth in container traffic at that facility and really changing the dynamic for the state and for the region in terms of economic development and opportunities.”
He goes on to remind council members that they had this conversation at the retreat “trying to set the stage for what this plan, and what we, would ultimately recommend.”
The rest of Mr. Cannady’s briefing covered the new growth area boundary options they had considered and then what they were actually recommending. At this point he stated:
“Investments at the Port were creating opportunities for Suffolk; consider that as we looked at the growth area boundaries.”
Care4Suffolk actually wrote an article about this work session back in February: Port or People: What is the City’s Focus?
Since the 2045 Plan draft was shared in February, Mr. Cannady has included the slide below in multiple presentations. Clearly, they are looking at the Port as a key opportunity for Suffolk, despite the public’s negative view of warehouses. (Highlighting residential and utility scale solar as development opportunities are topics for another day.)
We also saw that city staff are labeling Suffolk as a “Port Centric Partner” during the March 20, 2024 City Council work session presentation about the Route 460 road improvement project funding.
Councilman Rector may not have liked or agreed with what we had to say, but we based our recommendation on two years of listening and observing along with the 2045 Plan draft itself, definitely not emotion.
He chose to ridicule two out of the thousands of public engagement comments as a means to dismiss our claims that the 2045 Plan is not prioritizing citizen feedback. Cherry picking a couple of comments is intellectually dishonest. The bottom line is that those thousands of comments show that people do not like warehouses or the loss of rural character. City staff’s own public engagement summaries say as much.
Key Takeaways from the first set of public engagements from May – Oct 2022, p. 18, 2045 Comprehensive Plan draft
Key Takeaways from the second round of public engagements from January – March 2023, p. 19, 2045 Comprehensive Plan draft. Importantly, these were the series of public engagement sessions that were held throughout the city and were well attended.
Care4Suffolk has been reiterating the public desires that the city itself collected and summarized. These are not themes that we projected on the public – the public has already shared these with the city. The city is choosing to ignore these to push forward the goal of supporting the Port of Virginia with more warehouses and accelerating growth – expressly against the wishes of the citizens.
Maybe sometime soon, instead of chiding concerned residents, Mr. Rector will use his speaking time to explain why he thinks this new plan is actually needed and what is so good about it.