Fawcett’s Failed Comp Plan Leadership

The last Suffolk 2045 Comprehensive Plan update to City Council happened on October 16th. It now appears that it is definitely going forward for a vote on November 20th, despite many controversial–and missing– elements. This is a good time to reflect on how the City got to where it is today with the 2045 Plan. It has been a bumpy few years to say the least.

The process of updating the Comprehensive Plan has been dragging on for almost 3 ½ years now. The contract with the consulting firm helping with it was executed in July of 2021 with a completion timeline of 18 months. Obviously, that timeline came and went and Councilman Roger Fawcett took over as chair of the comp plan steering committee in early 2023. (Read more here about the committee).

Mr. Fawcett has said recently that he is the only full-time city council member for Suffolk. 

That should mean he has the time to dedicate himself to being effective and knowledgeable about his duties. But this does not appear to be the case with his position as the 2045 Plan Chair. 

There has been a lot of contention over this plan update due to the very large amount of growth area expansion being recommended by City staff and managers (among other things). It has garnered much more public attention than a comprehensive plan normally would. In light of this, one would expect the steering committee chair to fully understand the contractual agreement with the consultant and take a diligent and proactive approach to ensuring transparency and that milestones and tasks were met. After all, the longer it takes to complete the plan, the more it’s costing taxpayers.

According to the steering committee attendance sheet obtained via a Freedom Of Information Act request, the committee only met a total of six times. They met only two times under Mr. Fawcett’s leadership! It is hard to understand why they held only one meeting in 2023, during the height of public engagements, surveys and open houses.  

The last steering committee meeting was February of this year.  Instead of seeking oversight of the first draft, the committee actually didn’t even meet until the day after it was released, simply abiding by the schedule dictated to them by the Planning Department.  We also found out that there were no steering committee meeting minutes available! What does this say about transparency and accountability?  

The agreed upon proposal from the comp plan consultant included conducting a Fiscal Impact Analysis (FIA) to compare different growth scenario options for Suffolk. This would be very useful data to inform these long-term land use decisions. However, City staff opted to leave out the growth scenario options and the Fiscal Impact Analysis and Mr. Fawcett and the steering committee were unaware that it was even a contracted task. 

Completion of a Master Transportation Plan was also part of the original comp plan development timeline. It was ignored until someone else brought it up at a joint meeting in May.  At the August City Council public hearing on the comp plan, the Master Transportation Plan was a main sticking point and Mr. Fawcett initiated the motion to delay voting on the comp plan until November 20th, which is AFTER election day, but before any council changeover might happen.

On October 16th, during a City Council Work Session update, when Council was informed by staff that the Master Transportation Plan, in fact, was not very far along and would not be completed by the November 20th comp plan vote, Mr. Fawcett said absolutely nothing! He did not ask any questions during the last work session prior to the vote.

VDOT is supposed to review comprehensive plans and localities are to submit their plans 90 days before anticipated adoption dates. Suffolk’s plan was only just submitted to VDOT on October 2nd–so why did Mr. Fawcett allow staff to push the comp plan forward for Planning Commission vote in July and to council for  approval in August if VDOT hadn’t even looked at it yet? Shouldn’t the steering committee have been tracking requirements and deadlines? 

If this plan were good, it wouldn’t be taking over 3 years to approve. It really only needed to be reviewed by Planning Commission in the first place (Virginia Code requires only review every 5 years, not a whole rewrite!)

This whole comprehensive plan process has been clumsy. It appears that no one was at the helm providing oversight and checks and balances of the process. Instead, that task has fallen on local citizens who continually get rebuffed. Is there anyone genuinely looking out for our best interests and use of our tax money?

Perhaps this is too much to expect from a committee led by the same person who publicly told citizens that “You can voice your opinion, but if you get the attitude that you are going to stop something, get a life.” (Sources: Sparks Flew at the End of Tonight’s Community Engagement Session and Suffolk News-Herald’s:
Tensions rise during second Winter Community Session Meeting)