Our own city leaders have voiced this same opinion many times in the past. Have you ever heard ANY of the city mayors, including our own, state at their State of the City Address, that they couldn’t wait for that “joint” project with so and so down the road? Never. I’ve also watched many of those Hampton Roads Planning Meetings, sent letters to them regarding the need for Regional Planning when it comes to the exponential growth of logistics centers in Hampton Roads, and even sent an application in to serve on one of their boards and have heard nothing in return. It’s only now that these other cities are more overwhelmed with development and traffic than Suffolk is and the current Governor is waving state and federal $ in front if everyone to “regionalize” for the Port if VA that Suffolk is even in the conversation. Yes, past and current Suffolk leadership has a lot to do with this. They have always taken the isolationist position. Don’t bother us, we won’t bother you. It’s who Suffolk has always been. They’ve as much requested that we lobby our State Representatives to get rid of the Dillon Rule. Regional planning could be a good thing, but first they need to balance the score and then we can talk.

Duman seems to be most interested in being beholden to the Port. Suffolk should not have the quality of life for its residents impacted, as they are now, by the continued pressure the Port is putting on the surrounding communities. Additional rail vs trucks should be the answer.

Even if it is true that “nearly all new food production in the next 25 years will have to come from existing agricultural land” this is far from an insurmountable problem. Farmers have been increasingly producing more with less, and they’ve been doing it for longer than most of Suffolk’s residents have been alive. This phenomenon shows no signs of stopping.