Care4Suffolk

Council Reduces Fire Safety Standard

Care4Suffolk — Thu, 29 May 2025 15:31:30 +0000

At the May 7, 2025 City Council meeting, Council approved an ordinance to amend Chapter 38 Fire Prevention and Protection of the Code of the City of Suffolk. The main purpose of amending this chapter was to make Chapter 38 “coincide with the Virginia Statewide Fire Prevention Code Act.” Only Council Member Wright voted in opposition to this ordinance.

The way that this was phrased made the change sound like Suffolk is changing its code to meet the State’s minimum requirements, which would not seem controversial. However, there was a VERY interesting exchange regarding this city code amendment during the City Council Work Session prior to the regular council meeting, at which Suffolk’s Fire Marshal, Christopher Cornwall, made it very clear that he is against a key part of the amendment that was being proposed: striking Section 507.3 regarding fire flow requirements.

While Suffolk cannot create less restrictive policies than the Virginia Statewide Fire Prevention Code Act calls for, it can put higher standards in place. The existing code was a higher standard, and by voting to make the change on May 7th, City Council LOWERED the standard regarding fire flows. Below is a screenshot of the ordinance amendments as presented in the City Council meeting packet. Take note that the existing code (that is lined out) says that “fire flows required shall be the cumulative amount” of internal and external demand (emphasis added).

By eliminating this section (which was based on the International Fire Code (IFC), Appendix B), Suffolk’s code defaults to the standards set by the Virginia Statewide Fire Prevention Code Act, which has a lesser requirement of just the greater of internal or external demand.

Council Member Wright astutely asked “can that formula ever produce a low, but potentially inadequate, fire flow?”

The Fire Marshal’s answer was:

“My stance hasn’t changed as it pertains to municipal fire code Section 507.3. That’s simply that I’m not in favor of repealing it at all for that very reason.”

Suffolk’s Fire Marshal clearly stated opposition to removing this section of the fire code and most of City Council chose to ignore him?!

He did make it clear that the proposed change is compliant with code, but “reverting back to that State code section, becoming less restrictive by standard, it is a reduction in the amount of flow that is available, therefore a reduction in the amount of water that would be available for the suppression personnel to fight fire with.”

So why did City Council vote to approve a fire code change that may reduce the amount of water that will be available to fight fires, and against the Fire Marshal’s strong opposition?

This change to the code regarding fire flow requirements came from the City Manager’s Office. Fire Chief Barakey stated he spoke to City Manager Al Moor regarding this change. Why did the City Manager’s office request this change? And why did City staff frame this change to make it look like it was bringing Suffolk up to Virginia’s State standards, when the Suffolk code was already more stringent than the State?

Interestingly, Fire Marshal Cornwell brought up large warehouses a couple times when explaining his concern about reverting Suffolk’s code to the State’s lesser fire flow requirements. He gave the example that in a 200,000 square foot warehouse, the same number of sprinklers as in the council chambers would use up all the water available for suppression if we just follow the State standards.

He also acknowledged that people ask how everyone else can do it (meaning follow the State code for fire flow requirements), but pointed out that they also have other types of safeguards. He gave the example of Virginia Beach having: “other provisions in place to ensure that their safeguards are met as far as building construction that ensure they don’t have million square foot warehouse complexes completely unprotected by any other provision.”

This caught our attention! Is he saying that Suffolk’s fire code will now have no other protective provisions outside of the reduced fire flow requirements in the State code? Did City Council just reduce fire safety standards to the benefit of warehouse developers without adding any alternative safeguards?

The Fire Marshal’s stance regarding this fire code change was very clear when he said:

“I feel like by reverting back completely to the state standard would leave us completely wide open to problems down the road.”

We should all take notice when a top safety official says something like this.

How much risk is City Council exposing the citizens of Suffolk to by lowering the fire flow requirements?

Suffolk City Council has recently approved some things that allow for warehouses and residential development in close proximity to each other, along with expanding the areas in which they feel warehouses are appropriate. If reduced fire flow requirements are a cause for concern regarding suppression capabilities at large warehouse sites, how could this potentially impact the people living in and around these areas?

In November 2023, City Council unanimously approved Ordinance Text Amendment (OTA) 2023-007, which added a section to the Unified Development Ordinance about warehouses. It established a mere 30-foot front, side, and rear setback from all abutting properties – including residential! This minimal setback was approved despite citizens voicing concerns.

In December 2024, City Council approved the City of Suffolk 2045 Comprehensive Plan, which vastly expanded the City’s growth areas and established large swathes that they desire for “Employment Centers.” (This is the new phrase they are using for warehouse/industrial areas.) These areas are colored in purple, as you can see on the below Land Use Map. These “purple” areas originally did not include allowances for residential use, but during the last few weeks of the comp plan development, “Residential” was added as an acceptable secondary use of “Employment Centers.” (Only Councilmember Bennett voted ‘nay’ on the 2045 Comp Plan and Councilmember Wright was not yet on council.)

In September 2022, City Council approved the rezoning of 540 acres to allow 5 million square feet of warehouse space in ten buildings along Pruden Blvd./Rt. 460 bounded by Kings Fork, Pitchkettle, and Murphy’s Mill Roads, close to existing homes, businesses, and a school. (Councilmembers Johnson, Butler Barlow, and Bennet voted ‘nay.’)

There are still many unanswered questions regarding the City’s decision to lower fire safety standards in Suffolk. Care4Suffolk will continue to follow this issue. As we investigate further, we will provide the public with more information.

A Slap in the Face to Suffolk Citizens

Care4Suffolk — Thu, 22 May 2025 13:17:13 +0000

At the State of the City, held on Tuesday, May 13, 2025, Mayor Michael Duman described how “cool” Suffolk is and touted many achievements in Suffolk over the past year, as well as many positive aspects of living in Suffolk. He also spoke about “a vision shaped by our community to guide Suffolk’s growth.”

Then a video entitled “Cool Opportunities” was played. Part of it focused on the 2045 Comprehensive Plan and emphasized the importance of agriculture in Suffolk. The video gave the impression that the 2045 Comprehensive Plan was designed around citizen input and would help preserve Suffolk’s agricultural lands. Neither of those two things are true.

The video shows images of beautiful farmland describing how the new 2045 Comprehensive Plan is at the “heart of Suffolk’s future.” The video stated that the plan was “shaped by extensive citizen input” that will preserve “our agricultural heritage”. It goes on further to talk about how agriculture is a huge part of our economy and the importance of rural landscapes as they “define our city’s character.”

In reality the 2045 Comprehensive Plan lays down a framework to destroy significant amounts of farmland, by increasing the growth areas by about 11.5 square miles. This growth will extend into what are predominantly agricultural lands. That is a 15% growth from the previous existing growth area. It makes for the largest comp plan growth area expansion in Suffolk’s history- that is NOT preserving farmland.

The video mentions citizen engagement. Yes, the City did get a tremendous amount of citizen input and kudos to the City for going out into the communities and obtaining all this feedback from its residents. Unfortunately, the City did NOT base the comp plan on that input. Instead, the City of Suffolk ignored the citizens, and focused the comp plan on serving the regional goals of providing more land for warehouses and workforce housing. This video is completely misleading and distorts both the 2045 Comprehensive process and its contents.

During the 2045 Comprehensive Plan process the City received more than 7,500 responses from citizens telling the City what they want for the future of Suffolk. The responses were documented and then summarized, and you can read those here.

WHAT THE PEOPLE ASKED FOR:	2045 COMP PLAN TO DELIVER
Small town feel	NO
Downtown Investment	NO
Open Space and Parks	NO
Well planned development	NO
Fix traffic issues	NO
Safe, walkable communities	NO
Invest in public transportation, trails, and rail	MAYBE
Well planned economic development	NO
More amenities	MAYBE
Affordable housing	MAYBE
Limit warehouses	NO
Preserve agriculture	NO
Engage public about their wants and needs	NO

With the demand from citizens to invest in downtown, City leadership could have focused economic development on downtown, but instead, they carved out new areas for even more warehouses (we already lead Hampton Roads in warehouses.) Instead of limiting warehouse development to existing space and fixing our traffic problems, the 2045 Comprehensive Plan will exacerbate these problems, destroy the open space and farmland that people want to preserve, and ruin that small town feel that Suffolk has.

Before getting public comments, the City met with ‘focus groups’ and staff. It is pretty clear that early on that staff and certain groups of people were able to sway this plan to their desires, and it definitely wasn’t the citizens.

Here are some highlights from those meetings (full summary is here):

WHAT ‘FOCUS GROUPS’ ASKED FOR:	2045 COMP PLAN TO DELIVER
Interest in expanding Growth Areas	YES
Vacant, rural land provides areas for transformative development projects	YES
Demand is there for continued growth	YES
Efficient and predictable review process, “speed to build” or will look at other communities.	YES
Infrastructure costs – water, sewer, and roads can become barriers for industrial development.	YES
Growth of industrial areas is what drives many of the housing developments.	YES
There is a shifting need to invest in infrastructure prior to building homes (initial investments for long-term returns) would assist developers.	YES
City should either allow for more industrial development or limit based on current boundaries; there is a demand so this is a choice for the City to make.	YES
Renewable energy is looking within the region, planning for this in rural areas is important.	YES

And in case there is any doubt about the Regional push to shape Suffolk’s 2045 Comprehensive Plan, here is Planning Commissioner Johnny Edwards proclaiming this document as the beginning of shaping Suffolk into a regional leader based on serving the needs of the Port of Virginia.

Planning Commissioner Johnnie Edwards discussing the Planning Commission retreat he attended with a presentation given by the Port of Virginia. (mark 3:55, clipped video from the Planning Commission meeting, August 20, 2024.)

“We are the future of the Region. And we have to start acting like we are the leader of the Region. Because guess what? Those other big cities, they don’t want to be leaders. And someone said in the room, ‘It should be Suffolk’. Well this is where it starts. Because you know what? The port is coming, and it’s going to be great – it’s going to change us forever. And we need to start capitalizing, because the whole world is trying to come to our area. And this plan, in my personal opinion, is the beginning. So yes, it’s time to vote and send this on to City Council.”

After a presentation by the Port of Virginia, the Planning Commissioner explains why this 2045 Comprehensive Plan is so important – it is needed for Suffolk to lead the region in supporting the Port of Virginia. The City chose to focus on the needs of the Port at the expense of the citizens. All of this is in the name of Economic Development.

Here is another video of the Comprehensive Plan’s lead planner, Keith Cannady, giving a presentation as a precursor to the first draft coming out in February 2024. He stated,

“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.”

Comprehensive Plan’s lead planner, Keith Cannady, giving a presentation as a precursor to the first draft coming out in February 2024.

We have the lead planner of the comp plan and a Planning Commissioner both stating that this plan is all about the Port of Virginia, and they should know because the former was in charge of the development of the plan and the latter was on the Planning Commission, the lead body in charge of the whole plan.

This 2045 Comp Plan is the opposite of what the citizen’s of Suffolk said they wanted.

Community Engagement sessions and Open Houses were held throughout the city and during these, the collective voice of the citizens was clear: people were frustrated with traffic and didn’t want any more warehouses. Time after time, the residents from all areas of Suffolk expressed concern that their quality of life was being negatively impacted by warehouses and the heavy truck traffic that comes with them.

The City wants to push warehouses as economic development but they flatly refused to do a fiscal analysis on the comp plan, something which is typically done and had been part of the original plan. There is absolutely no data to demonstrate that this plan is economically sound for Suffolk’s fiscal future, but plenty to suggest we could be running into financial troubles at the rate we are developing.

Just recently, the Smithfield Times reported on a fiscal impact analysis done for the Isle of Wight. The county was examining “at what point would increased tax revenue fail to offset the added cost to the county’s schools and other public services?”

They found that if they grow 2%+ then their expenses started to out pace their revenues. Suffolk has seen its population grow by 8.7% since 2021.

In September 2022, at a comp plan steering committee meeting, there was quite a lengthy presentation about the role of a fiscal impact analysis in the comprehensive planning process. One slide from the presentation shows a comparison of growth beyond the service area compared to growth within the service area, where infrastructure was already in place. It costs more money to extend into areas that lack infrastructure, like roads, water, sewers, storm water drainage, etc. versus building within areas that already contain many of these services. Suffolk’s “managed growth approach” for decades has been to extend growth areas into predominantly agricultural areas, which tend to lack the essential infrastructure needed for large residential neighborhoods and non-residential uses. This method of growth can be more expensive. This was known to those working on the comp plan, and still they refused to do a fiscal impact analysis.

Other data was presented to City Leadership during the comp plan process about how warehousing and distribution may not be a fiscal net positive. Considering how much area was being dedicated to warehouse development for economic development, the citizens felt strongly there should be a fiscal analysis to determine this. The City refused. You can read more about this here, here, and here.

This image is from the Cost of Land Use Fiscal Impact Analysis for the Town of Davidson, North Carolina (p. 17). The Town of Davidson is comparing the fiscal impact (surplus vs deficit) of various non-residential land use types from 2014 compared to 2020. Notice that the warehouses are net negative, from 2014 to 2020.

This is an excerpt from Fiscal Impact Analysis: Reader Beware: Some Caveats by Paul Tischler of TischlerBise. This excerpt states that a fiscal analysis should be completed prior to developing the plan.

It also states that it “does not advocate ‘sprawl’ at the expense of open space. In fact we completed a study for Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Planning Commission, in which we found that open space provided greater fiscal benefits than residential developments.”

Workforce housing is the counterpart to the warehouse development in this plan, with the majority of new uses being designated for these two components.

The 2045 Comprehensive Plan dragged on beyond its original schedule in part BECAUSE of public opposition. The plan went through several council leadership changes due to controversies. Additionally, it was an election year and the mayor and three other council members were up for re-election. The vote on the plan was continually pushed back through 2024. On November 20, 2024, AFTER the election, the City held the last public hearing on the 2045 Comprehensive Plan. However, they held off voting on it that night when the Council Chamber was filled with frustrated citizens. Council pushed the comp plan vote to the December 18 meeting, the last meeting that would have Council Member Roger Fawcett, Chair of the 2045 Comprehensive Plan, because he failed to win re-election and recently elected Ebony Wright would be taking his seat in January of 2025.

The City failed to give public notice before voting to approve the comprehensive plan, despite the requirement by Virginia State law.

The City claimed that no public notice was required because there was no public hearing scheduled for the agenda item “to amend the comprehensive plan for 2035 and adopt Suffolk 2045, The City of Suffolk Comprehensive Plan as the City of Suffolk’s

comprehensive plan.”

However, the law reads as follows:

“The local planning commission shall not recommend nor the governing body adopt any plan, ordinance or amendment thereof until notice of intention to do so has been published twice in some newspaper published or having general circulation in the locality, with the first notice appearing no more than 28 days before and the second notice appearing no less than seven days before the date of the meeting referenced in the notice;”

The Mayor, City Council, the Clerk’s Office, the City Manager, the Deputy City Manager, and the Lead Planner on the comp plan were all notified about the failure to provide the public with proper notice prior to the vote. Yet City Council proceeded as planned.

Not only did City Council fail to provide notice before approving the plan, they literally added changes to the land use map at the eleventh hour. They were presented with the changes at the Work Session which was scheduled at 4pm, two hours before the Council meeting when it was approved. They added about 3.5 square miles of land on Rt. 58 that would allow warehouses to be built to the north and high density housing to be built to the south, on land that is predominantly agricultural. This area was not part of the comp plan when the final public hearing was held, nor was there any public notice given that this 3.5 square mile was to be added.

The 2045 Comprehensive Plan is about providing land for warehouses and workforce housing for the Port of Virginia- not about what the citizens of Suffolk want for their city and future. The citizens’ feedback was ignored in favor of what staff and the ‘focus groups’ wanted. Then City Council went about approving the comp plan with NO transparency and a total disregard to the rights of the citizens: by refusing to conduct a fiscal analysis, by delaying, adding last minute changes of a drastic nature, failing to provide another public hearing, failing to provide the Virginia state mandated public notice, and then voting for the plan and against the will of the people.

For all of these reasons, this video from the State of City was an insult to the citizens of Suffolk. These images of farming, rural landscapes, and the agricultural aspects of Suffolk were the qualities the citizens wanted to preserve during the comp plan process, but we were told that in the name of economic development, we need to sacrifice this land. This video shows the beauty of Suffolk that the 2045 Comprehensive Plan will be destroying, not protecting. City Leadership knows Suffolk is proud of its agricultural heritage, and pays lip service to it on occasion, but when it comes right down to it, the 2045 Comprehensive Plan and the State of the City of Suffolk is all about regional goals. (You can read more here, here, and here.) The State of the City is not hosted by the City itself. It is sponsored and supported by the Hampton Roads Chamber, which does this as a series each year to highlight economic development throughout the Hampton Roads Region.

“You know, one of the things that we as a region take great pride in is the fact that we’ve got literally the best port in the entire United States, their CEO is with us today. I want to recognize him, Mr. Stephen Edwards is here.”

– Bryan K. Stephens, President and CEO of Hampton Roads Chamber, during the Suffolk State of the City

(mark 18:04-18:16)

It’s no wonder the presenter wanted to acknowledge the Port of Virginia and its representative- it’s listed as one of their strategic partners. This video may have played well in a room full of who’s who in the political and business nexus of Hampton Roads, but to the thousands of citizens of Suffolk who provided feedback to help shape Suffolk’s future, this video is a slap in the face. These images are what we wanted but instead we will be getting more warehouses, more traffic, more overcrowded schools, and more taxes to pay for the infrastructure. Those are the true images that will be the results of this new 2045 Comprehensive Plan, but then, most of these regional figures won’t have to deal with the aftermath.

Suffolk’s Leadership Lacks Vision

Care4Suffolk — Tue, 13 May 2025 19:36:40 +0000

Last year, Care4Suffolk talked about the lack of vision in the 2045 Comprehensive Plan which was still in the planning process at the time. The plan had no stated vision, but a read through the draft left no doubt that regional goals and efforts to support the Port of Virginia were at the forefront of the design. At the time, we were frustrated that the City failed to use the public feedback that they obtained to form a vision more in line with public desires.

It turns out that this lack of vision is very much still a reality for the City of Suffolk. We scoured the pages of the City’s website to find the official City of Suffolk’s Vision and/or Mission statements. It turns out, we as a city, don’t have one. Maybe that is part of the problem when we look at the interactions between the City and its citizens. There are competing interests and there is nothing documented to actually direct efforts, and hold leadership accountable to following an agreed upon direction. They do what they want, we tell them we don’t like it, and nothing changes.

Many think vision and mission statements are meaningless fluff, but in actuality, businesses, organizations, and yes, even municipalities use the vision and mission statements to help guide long term goals and set priorities.

A vision statement is simply a short statement, usually just a sentence or two, that describes what a long-term goal or direction they want to be working towards. A mission statement is also usually only a sentence or two and it describes the objectives the organization is working towards.

Here are some examples:

To create a better everyday life for the many people.

– IKEA Vision Statement

To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.

*If you have a body, you are an athlete.

– Nike’s Mission Statement

Our mission is to be a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives. As we move into the second century of our work, we are advancing health and hope for everyone, everywhere.

– American Heart Association Mission Statement

What we did discover during our search is that many of the departments within Suffolk’s local government have their own vision or mission statements. Here are a few we found:

Strive for excellence in education, celebrate diversity, and be committed to students, staff, and the school community.

– Suffolk Public Schools

We work to provide law enforcement excellence and public service through partnership with our community.

– Suffolk Police Department

The City of Suffolk Department of Public Utilities is committed to ensuring a quality of life for our valued customers by providing water and sanitary sewer services in a safe and efficient manner.

– Suffolk Department of Public Works

When a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request was made to obtain the City’s Vision and/or Mission Statement, the City sent us this:

You might recognize this as the giant banner that greets everyone as they enter City Hall. The thing is though, it isn’t about the City in general. In fact, right after it says Vision for Suffolk, it follows with the words “Suffolk City Council”. So is it Council’s Vision or Suffolk’s? It is unclear. It is also unclear how much public input was incorporated. Was the public involved at all? If not, then it definitely doesn’t represent the citizens or the City as a whole.

It’s also not a vision statement – it is way too long. At 327 words, and multiple paragraphs, it misses the mark to be a statement. Additionally, it doesn’t talk about what Suffolk wants to achieve. In fact it reads like a cheesy tourism excerpt detailing how awesome Suffolk is. That’s like asking what’s your vision for the future and you answering about how great your current job is. It misses the point of a vision statement entirely. Where does Suffolk see itself in the future?

Here are some examples:

The mission of the City of Charlotte is to ensure the delivery of quality public services and promote the safety, health and quality of life of its citizens.

– Charlotte, NC

The City of Richmond’s vision is to be a welcoming, inclusive, diverse, innovative, and equitable city that ensures a high quality of life for all residents. This includes creating a vibrant community that is a great place to live, work, learn, play, visit, and raise a family. The city aims to be a beautiful, well-functioning, and safe place that is affordable and accessible to everyone.

– Richmond, VA

To preserve and enhance the quality of life of the citizens of the City of Charleston.

– Charleston, SC

Note that many cities incorporate “quality of life” in their vision or mission statements? It’s the residents of that city that matter. The focus is its people, and the rest is there to support making the quality of life a reality.

Contrast that with Suffolk’s version – in all 327 words – it fails to mention ‘quality of life’ at all.

Out of 8 targeted areas, half of them mention fiscal and economic development concepts, even under the targeted area that is titled: LEISURE, HEALTH, AND WELLNESS. It follows with:

Implement programs and services designed to improve the health, economic and social wellbeing of citizens.

Why does their economic focus need to also appear in Leisure, Health, and Wellness? The answer is that Suffolk’s City leadership is intently consumed by the concept of economic development. Not the actual fiscal soundness of economic development. If that were a concern, they would incorporate fiscal analyses in the running of the city – they don’t. The focus is truly on the development part of economic development.

Somewhere along the way, our City turned into an agent for development. It isn’t even development for the betterment of the citizens. That rarely comes into play. It is simply the idea that development = money = good decision. All this despite the City never actually obtaining real data on the fiscal feasibility of specific developments. It is just stated as a maxim and anyone who questions the fiscal soundness of a development is categorized as a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) or anti-development. The closest thing that the City of Suffolk has for a vision is to develop. It’s not about the people at all.

Rector’s Development Disconnect

Care4Suffolk — Mon, 12 May 2025 17:37:32 +0000

“As you ride around the city, we’re 430 square miles of nothing but needs. And, um, we’re doing our best to try to keep the bandaids on the wounds that are open and prevent other wounds from occurring.”

This was the comment made by Councilmember Rector during the FY26 Budget public hearing on April 16, 2025. It’s definitely not a ringing endorsement of the management of Suffolk!

There seems to be a disconnect from some of our City Council Members. Who does Councilmember Rector think is responsible for all these “needs” and “wounds”? And how does he think we can “prevent other wounds” if we just keep forging ahead with the unchecked growth?

The City has been pushing for rapid development over the last decade or more. “Economic Development” is now almost a sacrosanct phrase. We are supposed to accept any and all development without concern for the long-term impacts, fiscal or otherwise. They don’t even provide supporting data that supports that these “Economic Development” opportunities will provide positive fiscal impacts. We are expected to take them at their word and not question the rationale.

Some City Council Members have consistently justified rezoning prime farmland (a limited natural resource), approving large projects on insufficient roadways and in overcrowded school zones – all in the name of “economic development.” There is a certain fear of missing opportunities and disappointing developers that overrides citizens’ concerns and wishes.

Mr. Rector’s choice of words about the budget seem especially obtuse in light of some comments he made at the March 5, 2025 City Council meeting, expressing concern about “competition” from other counties and keeping “our foot on the gas” with regards “economic development opportunities.” As a matter of course, these “opportunities” are not specified.

“… there are a lot of areas that are part of the Hampton Road Alliance that are very, very eager to accept economic development and one of the newer members is New Kent County. And I can promise you that once the 64 corridor, between Williamsburg and Richmond, gets completed, New Kent County is going to be in a strong position to compete with Suffolk, and some of the areas for some of these economic development opportunities. So we need to keep our foot on the gas.” [Emphasis is ours.]

Oh no! You mean somewhere else might try to compete with Suffolk for the label “Warehouse Capital of Virginia”? Let them. We have enough warehouses and do NOT need any more.

We have warehouses being built without committed tenants. Speculative housing developments are being sold to (and by) the City as necessary “extra rooftops” to attract economic development. The new 2045 Comprehensive Plan is designed around this whole speculative concept!

The real disconnect comes when some City Council members talk about the problems around Suffolk. They will acknowledge there are problems, but act like the cause is out of their hands and say there is just not enough money for everything. This is pretty much what Mr. Rector expressed in that first quote.

Traffic, road improvements, over-crowded schools, drainage and storm water management issues are some of the most common concerns. Many of these go unfixed until they’re at a point of critical mass, often getting that way because of new development that exacerbates existing problems. Who does City Council think is allowing this to happen?

Our own Public Works Department has declared our inability to pay for road improvements, stating that we need state or federal funds, for which we only qualify if the situation becomes severe. Attempting to shift this paradigm doesn’t seem to occur to anyone. Instead, they follow the old formula of more unchecked growth to increase tax revenue, which is NEVER enough.

So why are some so determined to stay in this stale, tired old cycle?

Is it possible that some on City Council just can’t connect that the former (extensive rezoning) is the reason for the problems we are experiencing with the latter? Their decades of rezoning for “economic development” and more rooftops has made the situation worse, not better. The citizens recognized this during the 2045 Comp Plan public engagements. The main thing citizens wanted was for the City to slow down its growth so that the infrastructure can catch up.

What we need is a responsible local government that will actually use the brakes sometimes when it comes to development in order to allow time to fix our roads, schools, and storm water problems, and establish higher standards for what we want for our City.

We need City Staff and Council Members who are brave enough to break the cycle of dependency on new development. Just because regional entities and developers keep telling Suffolk how lucky we are to have them, doesn’t mean we have to accept everything they send our way. This strategy has not worked and Suffolk needs to use its leverage to focus on higher-quality growth. Most importantly, we need growth that does not worsen any “wounds.”

Truth About Taxes

Care4Suffolk — Sun, 04 May 2025 22:42:25 +0000

Truth About Taxes – Not Everyone is Paying Their Fair Share!

We’ve all received our updated real estate tax assessments for next year, and if you are anything like the average Suffolk resident, yours went up about 6%, again. This week, City Council is going to have a public hearing on the Proposed Fiscal Year 2025-2026 Citywide effective real estate tax increase. The public hearing will be held in the City Council chamber at 6pm, Wednesday, May 7th at City Hall.

Before you make a decision on whether you want to speak or not during the public hearing, read on to find out how Suffolk residents are paying more than their fair share while large corporations, developers, and other businesses are getting a sweet deal with their tax assessments.

Below are just a dozen examples. We looked at hundreds of properties with these issues, and it was by no means an exhaustive search. This is definitely a prevalent problem of businesses being assessed below fair market value, for years in some cases. These combined assessments are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, which translates into tens of millions of dollars of lost revenue over the years. We are talking about enough money to build one of the new schools we so desperately need.

5860 Harbour View Blvd (home of Regal Theater)

This property has been sold multiple times: $12.4M (2003), $15M (2017), and $20M (2025). Its total assessed value has been $11.3M (2025 & 2026) and $13.3M (2022-2024), down from $17.6M (2021). Its market value land assessment (for the land portion only, without including any building or structure) has maintained at just over $3M since 2020, despite being in the epicenter of growth in North Suffolk.

5860 Harbour View Blvd Assessment

5860 Harbour View Blvd Assessment History

5860 Harbour View Blvd

3800 Bridge Road (Bridgeport)

Assessed at $68.8M (2026), this property is almost $3M less than the $71.2M (2025) assessment, and $7.2M down from $76M (2024). This busy mixed-use development, called Bridgeport, contains apartment buildings along with commercial space. Its taxes have been going down, despite its prime location on Bridge Rd in North Suffolk. Though its overall taxes have gone down, the assessed land market value for its 20.25 acres has maintained a $1,036,500 land value for 4 years at a rate of $51,185/acre. The vacant lot across the street, 3803 Bridge Rd (20.1 acres) has a land value of about $2.5M, a rate of $125,914/acres. Bridgeport is getting a real bargain!

3800 Bridge Rd (Bridgeport) Assessment

3800 Bridge Rd Assessment (Bridgeport) History

3800 Bridge Road (Bridgeport)

3575 Bridge Rd (Bennetts Creek Crossing)

This is the shopping center located in the same plaza as, and just to the west of, Harris Teeter. It has a total assessment of $6.3M, with the land value assessed at $1.2M. Neither value has gone up in 8 years!

3575 Bridge Rd Assessment

3575 Bridge Rd Assessment History

3001 Gateway Dr (Clairmont at Harbor View)

This is another apartment development that has seen its taxes decrease over the last 3 years from a high of $71.8M (2024), down to $63.3M (2025), with a further decrease down to $62M (2026).

3001 Gateway Dr (Clairmont at Harbour View) Assessment

3001 Gateway Dr (Clairmont at Harbour View) Assessment History

3001 Gateway Dr (Clairmont at Harbour View)

2400 Holland Rd (Shell & Pilot station)

This truck stop on Rt. 58 has an assessment of $3.86M (2026), down from a peak assessment of $5.5M (2023). It sold for $5.2M back in 2020. Its land value assessment has decreased considerably as well from a high of $3.7M (2023) to $1.6M (2026) for the 35.7 acres with frontage on Rt. 58.

2400 Holland Rd (Shell & Pilot Station) Assessment

2400 Holland Rd (Shell & Pilot Station) Assessment History

150 Judkins Ct

This warehouse is assessed at $81.5M (2026), down from $93M (2025) and $89.3M (2024). This is after its purchase price of $94M in 2023.

150 Judkins Ct Assessment

150 Judkins Ct Assessment History

6950 Harbour View Blvd

Another warehouse, this one sold for $11.2M back in 2020, but was only assessed at $7M for the next few years (2020-2023) until its assessment was brought up to $11.2 value. Its land value of roughly $1M has remained relatively unchanged for the last decade.

6950 Harbour View Blvd Assessment

6950 Harbour View Blvd Assessment History

1005 Obici Industrial Blvd

This warehouse sold in 2023 for $6.75M, yet a couple years later it is still assessed at about $3.8M, far below fair market value.

1005 Obici Industrial Blvd Assessment

1005 Obici Industrial Blvd Assessment History

1 QVC Dr

This warehouse sold in 2022 for $104.7M and is currently assessed at $107M (2026). However, in 2023, a year after the sale, it was only assessed at $42M. It increased to $83M (2024) and then $91M (2025), but those are three years of being assessed substantially under fair market value by $62M (2023), $22M (2024), and $14M (2025). That is a total of $98M in under-assessments totaling over $1M less in taxes paid.

1 QVC Dr Assessment

1 QVC Dr Assessment History

We see this trend downtown as well.

100 N Main St

The seven-story professional office building at the corner of Main St & Washington St – the heart of the city – has maintained the same $2.4M assessment from 2022 to the present. Before that it was actually higher at $2.6M.

100 N Main St Assessment

100 N Main St Assessment History

100 N Main St

122 E Washington St

This downtown address has maintained its assessment of about $2M for five years running, which is down from a $2.1M assessment the four preceding years.

122 E Washington St Assessment

122 E Washington St Assessment History

122 E Washington St

165 N Main St

This property is described as mixed retail with residential units. Its highest assessment was in 2024 at $1.9M, even though it sold for $2.1M back in 2014. Its assessment hovered around the $1M mark from 2016-2023 and recently has been assessed at about $1.5M for 2025 and 2026.

165 N Main St Assessment

165 N Main St Assessment History

How many homeowners do we have out there that have been as lucky as these property owners? How many Suffolk residents have seen their assessments either go down or remained the same for several years in a row? The City seems to be very focused on squeezing every dollar out of residential properties – we see this in new assessments each year.

Why are they NOT this focused on commercial properties? Tax revenue is usually a main justification for approving rezonings for these types of higher intensity developments. It is the City’s duty to ensure that these businesses are paying their fair share of taxes.

If you decide to speak at the public hearing on Wednesday, May 7th at 6pm, consider letting City Council know how you feel about this.

The source for all this information comes from: https://property.spatialest.com/va/suffolk#/ ,which is a website that shows all the public data on property assessments for the last ten years. This is all public information.

The Virginia State Code requires that assessments be based on ‘fair market value’. Sale of a property establishes a fair market value (what a person pays for a property, who does not have to buy, but chooses to, from a person who does not have to sell, but chooses to).

Decisions Without Data

Care4Suffolk — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 16:05:03 +0000

When the first draft of the Suffolk 2045 Comprehensive Plan was published about a year ago, Care4Suffolk raised the flag about the missing Fiscal Impact Analysis (FIA). Our concerns were brushed off and we were told it wasn’t necessary. City Council went on to adopt the comp plan in December of 2024 with big changes and without a public hearing or public notice.

This is all old news, so why do we bring it up? The answer is because the City’s lack of concern about the fiscal analysis is very relevant right now.

Just last week, City Council approved the annual Capital Improvements Program (CIP) and this week our real estate assessments will be mailed out. How much the City receives in revenue, and what it pays in services and capital improvements, is at the very heart of an FIA.

(For context, land valuations for Suffolk residential properties are up over 6% this year and the ten year outlook for capital improvement costs has reached $2 billion–an increase of $1billion from a few years ago).

Back on May 1, 2024, City Council and Planning Commission held a joint meeting about the draft of the 2045 Comp Plan where they heard a presentation by city staff. (You can read more about it here.) It was at that meeting that Comprehensive Planning Manager Keith Cannady assured council members and commissioners that the City didn’t need to do a FIA for the comp plan because they are done at the “site level” for individual developments during rezoning requests. He also said that the City’s current fiscal analysis tool needs work, so it isn’t a useful tool at the moment. Additionally, he stated that since the City wasn’t considering changing its growth strategy, a FIA for the comp plan wasn’t necessary.

As a counterpoint to Mr. Cannady’s argument that FIAs are conducted at the site level, we did a FOIA request and received a copy of the FIA that was done for the Port 460 Project. A fiscal impact analysis is supposed to show the revenue that a development will generate and the costs of services that the development will require. However, this site-level FIA was done by the developer and did not contain the required costs of services portion. The City can not accurately understand if a development will be fiscally net negative or positive in the long-run without the essential costs of services component.

Port 460 was arguably the largest rezoning request in Suffolk in years, yet staff recommended approval and City Council voted to approve it without an accurate idea of what the costs of the project would be for the City in the long-term.

We do know that there was also no FIA done for the 2035 Comprehensive Plan (adopted in 2015). We know, via another FOIA request, that the original Request for Proposal (RFP) and the contract for the 2045 Comp Plan (signed in early 2021), included the task of updating the fiscal impact tool and a Fiscal Impact Analysis, considering multiple growth models, to be completed during the plan’s development. City staff at that point (late 2020) clearly knew that the fiscal impact tool needed to be updated and understood that it is typically used as part of a comprehensive plan process.

In May of 2022, a group of city staff and comp plan consultants held a Land Use Workshop, one of the three main purposes of which was to “determine fiscal model objectives and data needs.”

In September 2022 the comp plan steering committee meeting apparently included quite a lengthy presentation about the role of a Fiscal Impact Analysis in the comprehensive plan. We obtained, via FOIA, the attendance list for this and other steering committee meetings:

The slide presentation from this meeting was available on the 2045 Comp Plan website and most of it is about the FIA and its importance in both the comprehensive plan process and in aiding city staff with evaluating development.

Below are some slides from that presentation:

This slide, Fiscal Impact Analysis: Understanding Costs and Revenues, covers what a FIA is and why it is important – will the revenue generated by new growth be enough to cover the resulting services and facility demands? This is a very important question that city staff and City Council should be asking, not just during the comp plan process, but also during each rezoning request. If development requires more services or capital improvements than the development will raise in revenue, the shortfall has to be covered by the city – paid for by taxpayers.

In this next slide, Role in Suffolk Comprehensive Plan, a key talking point was how a FIA can be used in the comp plan process to see how changes will affect revenues and costs for city services and infrastructure. We know that the contract included comparing three development models for the comp plan, so that the City could compare different models on a fiscal level. By the time of the draft release, the staff had decided not to consider any other growth models than what it’s currently using.

In this slide, What Types of Questions Can Be Answered?, we can see how land use policies and development patterns affect fiscal impacts. It is clear that staff was presented with the idea that different types of growth models have different fiscal impacts.

This slide, Capacity of Infrastructure, contains a real life example from Champaign, IL and the two model types it was comparing. Champaign was comparing “Growth Within the Service Area” and “Growth Beyond the Service Area” and the fiscal impact analysis showed that “Growth Beyond the Service Area” created a $50 million difference in additional capital infrastructure costs. It costs more money to extend into areas that lack infrastructure, like roads, water, sewers, storm water drainage, etc. versus building within areas that already contain many of these services. Suffolk’s “managed growth approach” for decades has been to extend growth areas into predominantly agricultural areas, which tend to lack the essential infrastructure needed for large residential neighborhoods and non-residential uses. This method of growth can be more expensive than growing within existing infrastructure, yet the City chose not to consider other growth options.

Fast forward to that May 2024 joint meeting, and Council Members Johnson and Butler Barlow, along with Commissioner Baur, all asked the city planner questions about the FIA. They wanted to understand why it wasn’t done.

Mr. Cannady’s response is below:

“The original RFP, and this was November of 2020, actually recommended that the city evaluate the different growth strategies that could come out of this process, for their fiscal impacts. In other words, if we picked something very different from the growth management approach that we’re following, it would be good to evaluate that new alternative for its fiscal impact. As this plan developed, we realized we were gonna stick with our basic growth management approach, so it didn’t really make sense to evaluate something that we weren’t going to seriously consider.”

– Mr. Keith Cannady, Joint Session of the Suffolk City Council and Suffolk Planning Commission, May 1, 2024

According to Mr. Cannady, the FIA is only necessary if the city wants to change its growth strategy. However, the current approach was never fiscally evaluated in 2015 when the 2035 Comp Plan was adopted, so we don’t know if the strategy that’s been used for at least a decade is even fiscally sound.

The comprehensive plan is the single most important piece of policy for the City. It is a 20-year, long-range plan that guides all future development in Suffolk and city staff chose to be willfully ignorant to the fiscal impacts of this growth strategy AND refused to consider any other models for comparison.

Later he adds:

“I think what we wanted to make sure is that you all understood what we recommended several months ago, and have been recommending actually for quite a while, the way to go forward with the fiscal impact analysis. I think there was some concern that, ah, we took out a step that we should have taken. Ah, that we um should have had this analysis done because it was in the RFP. Ah, and I don’t believe that’s the case. I believe we made a good recommendation based on the ah plan that was developing, um, and the strategies and priorities that we needed to set going forward. I think it would have been, frankly, a waste of our time and our money to evaluate options that were essentially all the same.”

– Mr. Keith Cannady, Joint Session of the Suffolk City Council and Suffolk Planning Commission, May 1, 2024

In the video above, we here Mr. Cannady talk about recommendations. This was not a recommendation as Mr. Cannady characterizes it. City staff that made the unilateral decision. When Care4Suffolk spoke with most of the City Council members and Planning Commissioners, not a single one said to us that they were aware of the removal of the FIA from the comp plan process, despite several of these individuals being on the comp plan steering committee. It was also surprising because the Planning Commission, according to Virginia state law, was the body responsible for leading the comp plan process.

Instead of listening to the expert advice that was already budgeted for and following the contract to analyze three different growth methods for their fiscal benefits and burdens, City staff decided to simply continue its current “strategy”– a strategy that is known to potentially increase costs. These are the kind of decisions that can cause budget shortfalls down the road, requiring taxes to be increased. Knowing this, staff still felt that the fiscal impact analysis would be, as Mr. Cannady said, “…frankly, a waste of our time and our money”.

The City staff, at some point during this process, decided that we, the taxpayers, don’t need or want choices for future growth in our city. There was a plan developing and those ‘strategies’ and ‘priorities’, that Mr. Cannady alluded to, made looking at alternatives unnecessary, possibly even inconvenient.

Maybe we can garner some insight from Mr. Cannady’s explanation below:

“I think one of the things that we were concerned about, um and I think the city is concerned about too, is um when it comes to those larger employment center types of uses, we realized that we just didn’t have room within the current growth area boundary to be a part of that growth opportunity that this region has. And so when we put some options out that we thought would allow us to do that. And that one, [Rt] 460, was one of those corridors. I don’t disagree with you that’s a significant change in land use and expansion of the growth area, but we felt like to take advantage of um that opportunity that the city has um providing an area that’s in a good location, you can effectively, cost effectively extend utilities to it and capture some of those economic development opportunities, was something we all needed to think about, recognizing that there are some trade offs there.”

– Mr. Keith Cannady, Joint Session of the Suffolk City Council and Suffolk Planning Commission, May 1, 2024

There’s that word: “Regional.” We keep hearing this over and over again. There are regional interests pushing to build here and to do that, the City of Suffolk has to expand its growth areas and drastically change land use. Mr. Cannady actually is in agreement that these changes are significant, which is in direct contradiction to his previous statement early in the meeting that we didn’t need to do the FIA because we weren’t really changing anything.

Let’s recap: Suffolk has had a growth strategy to expand its growth areas into agricultural areas. The City’s fiscal analysis tool has not been fixed in many years, so fiscal impacts of all development over this time period were not adequately evaluated. Staff had the opportunity to look at the costs of this growth, as well as compare it to some alternative growth methods, but decided it wasn’t ‘worth the time or money’. Staff stated the reason the growth areas need to be drastically expanded is for ‘economic development opportunities’.

How can staff, with a straight face, seriously say that it is NOT in the best interest of the City to analyze cost benefits and burdens, but then use the excuse that this is being done for economic development? That is essentially saying that we don’t need data about the money, but we are doing this for more money.

Decisions about taxpayer money should ALWAYS be based on data.

There is no data to support that the enormous growth laid out in the 2045 Comp Plan will be a net positive fiscal opportunity for Suffolk. This could just as easily be a boondoggle that burdens us with infrastructure costs for decades (like the latest $2 billion ten-year CIP!) Mr. Cannady doesn’t know, we don’t know, and no one knows, because staff chose NOT to do the fiscal analysis.

The City staff, who work on behalf of the citizens of Suffolk, didn’t want to look at what this development model will cost Suffolk residents, nor consider any alternatives that might be better for the taxpayers.

A large portion of the citizenry is not happy with the current development model the City is using. During the comp plan public engagement sessions, the majority of citizens specifically asked to slow development down, so infrastructure can catch up. But instead, growth will be accelerated with the 2045 Comp Plan. We are paying more in taxes, but our quality of life has deteriorated. Traffic is worse, more roads need repairs and improvements, storm water is a recurring issue, our waterways are ‘impaired’, and many of our schools remain over-crowded. As evidence of citizen frustration, last November, the council member in charge of the comp plan was voted out of office and the mayor barely made it back into office, receiving only one-third of the vote and winning by only about 100 votes.

Maybe the reason why our costs are going up and our quality of life is going down is because this growth model isn’t working. Maybe all the development that the City has been approving for a decade or more is costing more money than it’s generating in revenue. Maybe the FIA would have shown this. If the FIA showed a negative fiscal impact, that would have been very inconvenient for those that want to implement these Regional goals (read more about regional goals here and here.)

Let us be clear: – it isn’t that the City can’t know what all this development will cost taxpayers, it’s that the City chose to NOT know.

City leadership needs to acknowledge that they have been making huge land use changes without complete fiscal data. Those who are responsible for these poor decisions need to go. Suffolk can NOT continue to force the taxpayers to foot the bill for bad development decisions.

Citizens Criticized for Speaking Out

Care4Suffolk — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 13:49:09 +0000

We already discussed how Council Member Rector tried unsuccessfully to dismiss Care4Suffolk’s claim that the 2045 Comprehensive Plan is port-centric during the November 20, 2024 City Council Meeting. Now let’s talk a bit about the fact that we have City Council Members that sit on the dais and publicly ridicule citizens who have the audacity to send in public comments and to show up to speak.

Council Member Rector characterized opponents of the comp plan as having a ‘hangover’ from the Port 460 project. Not only is this an insulting comment to make about concerned citizens, Mr. Rector is ignorant of the people he is criticizing.

We feel the need to defend ourselves since Council Member Rector mentioned us, not by name, but through the comments we submitted. Care4Suffolk is a diverse group of concerned citizens who have varied backgrounds but a common interest. We come together to share information, our talents, and our time to learn about land use issues and share what we learn with the broader public.

Care4Suffolk had nothing to do with Port 460. We were just getting organized at the time when that was going through council and we were focused on a different land use issue. It turns out that there are a lot of citizens, and citizen groups, who are concerned with land use issues throughout our city. During the more than two years that we have existed as a group, Care4Suffolk has only opposed two residential developments and only one of those even came before City Council.

When Council Member Rector characterized us, and other concerned residents, as afraid of change, he was dismissive and hypocritical. We do want economic development, just not warehouses. Growth can be positive for a community, but it should be carefully planned and not negatively impact the quality of life of those already residing in Suffolk. Those are reasonable feelings to have about development. However, it was Mr. Rector himself, who wanted to close the barn doors behind him after he moved to Suffolk in the 1980s. Mr. Rector should not project his previous feelings (which perhaps changed after he became a realtor?) onto citizens and citizen groups.

“I know that if you are here, and settled, and you like where you live, which most folks in Suffolk seem to, I fully understand why changes can be upsetting, to say the least. When I moved here in 1986, 38 years ago, I wanted to pull the barn doors closed behind me.” November 20, 2024 City Council Meeting, mark 2:45:30 – 2:45:49

Care4Suffolk has never been against growth. Care4Suffolk advocates for responsible growth which is not the same as being against it, despite Mr. Rector’s comment. We want growth that is fiscally responsible and supported by infrastructure. Some of our members are life-long residents and some have moved here quite recently. We don’t weigh people’s concerns by their time spent living in our city. We are all entitled to share thoughts and concerns.

What Care4Suffolk has spent considerable time on, over the past two years, is the 2045 Comprehensive Plan. When we first heard from Council Member Williams about the new comp plan back in the fall of 2022, we were very excited and made a focused attempt to encourage citizen participation to help shape this document that will have a lasting impact on the future of Suffolk.

We were the group that hosted the first public forum for the city to meet with residents so the city could explain the process and the public could share their thoughts and concerns. That was back in November 2022. The event was so successful that the city decided to host a series of public engagement sessions throughout the city. Through the early part of 2023, Care4Suffolk’s outreach team went to great efforts distributing the city’s literature on the comp plan to community groups and churches, going door-to-door throughout neighborhoods, and handing out information outside the local grocery stores. We posted flyers in public places, wrote about it on our website and facebook group, and encouraged as many people to participate as possible. We were very much a part of the unprecedented community engagement that Council Member Rector mentioned when he stated, “In the three years that this process has been unfolding, the level of community engagement has been unprecedented.” (November 20, 2024 City Council Meeting, mark 2:44:07 – 2:44:25)

We were excited about the new comp plan and wanted the voice of the people represented in the new document. Our dismay was palpable when we finally got a chance to see the draft. Everything from the growth areas, to the objectives, to the focus on the economic development as it relates to the port was a huge disappointment. We bore witness to the public engagement sessions when the citizens said that they wanted economic growth focused on downtown, when they said they didn’t want any more warehouses, and when they said they cared about the character of the city they call home. If you look at the summaries of the public feedback from the city itself (not the cherry picked comments Mr. Rector shared) you will see what the citizens requested.

Despite what Council Member Rector says, we have not been advocating for “incorporating all of the changes that people want” but we certainly expected that the vision and direction of this plan would be a representation of the summary of the public’s feedback. Instead, Suffolk will be home to all the warehousing and workforce housing needed by the Port of Virginia, much to the delight of the developers. The citizens are upset this is the direction the city took, DESPITE all the feedback the public gave. It is Mr. Rector’s hyperbole, not the citizens’ comments, that mischaracterizes the situation.

Our criticism for the new comp plan draft did not materialize overnight, nor has it come from a place of fear, emotion, or ignorance, as some council members would have you believe. On the contrary, we have been a part of this process from very early on. We have been watching, participating, and most importantly, sharing. We have shared public engagement opportunities, facts and data about the draft and land use issues, and important information from City Council meetings.

Yes, we are organized, as are other community groups, and many of us do show up to meetings. Yet, we are not the citizens that Mr. Rector wants to represent. He chooses instead to represent those who benefit from growth and don’t vote in Suffolk (out of town developers maybe?)

Council Member Rector sat up on the dais and claimed the following:

“The folks that are against growth are here, established, and have organized their voices. They are also the ones, as we found out, who vote, so their voices will be heard. The folks that would potentially benefit from growth are not here. They are not established, and they probably do not vote in Suffolk. The reason is that these people don’t know who they are. They could be the high school sophomore that in six to seven years, when they graduate from college, might have a house and a job to come to. Or they are the folks maybe living outside the area that might get transferred here. So obviously they are not here to advocate for the plan.”

November 20, 2024 City Council Meeting, mark 2:47:57 – 2:48:37

Is Council Member Rector seriously suggesting that he is more interested in representing the theoretical interests of potential future residents of Suffolk and hypothetical individuals, from whom he has not heard and who may not even exist? Yet he seems sure they would be advocating for the plan.

Suffolk resident’s, especially those in the Suffolk Borough, note Council Member Rector’s words. Actual Suffolk residents, including those who vote, those who take the time to show up to meetings, and those who make the effort to write comments – you are NOT the people that Council Member Rector will represent with his vote.

Council Members Rector stated towards the end of his speech:

“When you have the diversity of interest that we have here in Suffolk, we should not as a council, let one group or one interest dominate the plan and the future of the city.”

November 20, 2024 City Council Meeting, mark 2:49:04 – 2:49:13

This was in fact the point of the public comments made by Care4Suffolk (see below for pdf attachment of our comments). The Port of Virginia and developers have had a heavy influence on the Suffolk 2045 Comprehensive Plan, more so than the citizens of Suffolk. (For more information see here, here, and here.) This plan is supposed to represent the needs and wants of people of Suffolk; any benefit to the port should be secondary to the will of the people. The citizens told the city what they wanted, but the city still refuses to listen.

Care4Suffolk has been very consistent with its message: this is not about being against growth or development. We want the city to listen to the wishes of its people:

The citizens are sick of warehouses – this plan will add millions, even tens of millions, more square feet of warehousing.
The citizens want economic development focused on downtown Suffolk – this plan encourages growth on the corridors.
The citizens want safe, walkable communities – this plan opens up more residential land use near warehouses.
The citizens want to preserve farmland – this plan allows for development on farmland.
The citizens want the growth to slow down and allow infrastructure to catch up – yet the city increased the growth areas to the largest of any previous plan, accelerating growth in Suffolk.

These were all part of the feedback from citizens during the public engagement sessions. We have been saying this since the draft came out. Of all the changes that Mr. Rector references, the only concession the city made was to scale back the growth areas, but they are still larger than the previous draft increases. The focus of this plan has not changed – it is still about the port, warehouses, and suburban sprawl.

The fiscal analysis for the comp plan, something done by previous Suffolk City Councils and done by other cities throughout Hampton Roads for their comp plans, is impossible for this council and this city staff. We ask too much to request it. We are presenting data and asking them to do the same, instead they are going by ‘feels’. They don’t care about having a data driven plan, yet they mock us and call us emotional. Why are Council Members so upset that the public keeps telling them what we want them, our elected officials to do?

It is completely inappropriate for Council Members to criticize the public while sitting on the dais. It is a form of intimidation. Many citizens are not used to public speaking and don’t write to the public on a regular basis. When they do take the time to exercise their right to do so, they should not be subjected to bullying by Council Members. Is the intent to make citizens think twice about sharing their views – especially if they differ from those on Council?

Just because some Council Members have already made their decision, doesn’t mean that the public should be discouraged from expressing their thoughts and concerns. It is our constitutional right to petition our government.

Except that right doesn’t extend to Wednesday, December 18, 2024. City Council has refused the citizens a public hearing on the comp plan during that Council meeting. City Council will be receiving a briefing of the comp plan changes, which may contain significant changes including to the growth areas. The public will have no chance to review these changes and share their concerns before Council votes on the comp plan.

But don’t worry, even if it passes, in the words of Council Member Roger Fawcett, “It’s not the worst plan in the world.” A ringing endorsement indeed!

It’s no wonder some Council Members feel the need to shove this comp plan vote through despite public opposition. They can never actually find anything good to say about it but want it anyway. Some would rather criticize citizens than justify their vote – just what citizens want in their public officials, right?

“It’s not the worst plan in the world,” says Council Member Fawcett, November 20, 2024 City Council Meeting, mark 3:07:50 – 3:07:53

Link to full City of Suffolk City Council Meeting, November 20, 2024

Link to Care4Suffolk’s August 2024 City Council Meeting public comment

Link to Care4Suffolk’s November 2024 City Council Meeting public comment

Rector Dismisses Claim of Port-Centric Plan

Care4Suffolk — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 19:47:38 +0000

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:

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.

Hot Mic Mike

Care4Suffolk — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 22:23:39 +0000

The whole point of a public hearing is so that the citizens can weigh in with their opinions and concerns on an issue before a decision is made and the votes are cast. The November 20th City Council Meeting was a mockery of that process.

Suffolk’s 2045 Comprehensive Plan is the controversial document that was on the agenda that night. The comp plan had previously gone before the City Council three months earlier on August 21st. At that meeting, Council Member Roger Fawcett (Sleepy Hole Borough), read his pre-written motion asking to table the comp plan vote, conveniently delaying it until after election day.

This past Wednesday, the farce played out in a much more obvious way. After the public hearing, at which roughly a hundred citizens were in attendance, City Council Member Shelley Butler Barlow (Chuckatuck Borough) expressed her concerns and then made a motion to table the vote until January 15, 2025. Several of the 14 public speakers that night had made this same request to delay the vote until January in order to allow the newly-elected City Council Member, Ebony Wright, a chance to take her seat (and replace Roger Fawcett). Allowing Ms. Wright the opportunity to vote on this plan would give her the opportunity to represent the citizens who elected her.

After Ms. Butler Barlow made her motion and just as Council Member Leroy Bennett (Cypress Borough) was seconding the motion, you can hear Mayor Mike Duman on hot mic whisper the words “substitute motion”. About eighteen seconds later as the potential January date was being clarified, you can again hear Mayor Duman on hot mic whisper “Psst, Roger” while leaning back and looking in Council Member Fawcett’s direction.

Hear Mayor Mike Duman whisper on a hot mic, “Substitute motion.” (Time stamp: 2:12:54)

Hear Mayor Mike Duman whisper on a hot mic, “Pssst, Roger.” (Time stamp: 2:13:12)

The importance of the “substitute motion” is that it will get voted on BEFORE the first motion. And this is exactly what played out. After being reminded by Mayor Duman, Council Member Roger Fawcett did indeed make a substitute motion that the vote be delayed until December 18th, instead of the January date. The significance of this is that December 18th is the last meeting at which Roger Fawcett will sit up on that dais as part of council.

Council Member Lou Ward (Nansemond Borough) seconded Fawcett’s motion and then the December 18th motion passed 5-3. (Council Members Butler Barlow, Bennett, and Tim Johnson (Holy Neck Borough) voted in opposition.) Because Fawcett’s motion passed, Ms. Butler Barlow’s motion was moot and didn’t get voted on.

This was clearly orchestrated. Mayor Mike Duman needs to make sure that this comp plan passes and if Council were to vote in January instead of December, he risks losing the guaranteed ‘Yes’ vote of Roger Fawcett, the man who served as the Steering Committee Chair for this comp plan.

This is why we say that this Public Hearing was a farce. The Mayor of Suffolk and at least one Council Member (maybe more) had this planned in advance of the meeting. Members of our elected City Council had already determined how this would play out before the Public Hearing even began. Listening to all the citizen’s comments was just checking a box that is required by the State of Virginia.

When votes are decided in backroom conversations, democracy is not being served. When public officials manipulate the process to obtain the outcome they desire, democracy is not being served. When the city is no longer listening to its citizens, democracy is not being served.

We need our elected leaders to be better – and do better – than this.

More Comp Plan Confusion: Master Transportation Plan Recap

Care4Suffolk — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 06:55:00 +0000

The Master Transportation Plan (MTP) as it is associated with the 2045 Comprehensive Plan became a topic of discussion at the May 2024 City Council/Planning Commission joint meeting. There was concern that there wasn’t one included as part of the 2045 Plan draft.

At the August 21st City Council public hearing on the 2045 Plan, the Master Transportation Plan became a main topic of discussion and clearly was the main reason why council decided to delay voting on the comp plan until November 20th. Mayor Duman emphasized the need for it a couple times and City Manager Al Moore assured him that staff had been working on it.

After this August meeting, Care4Suffolk submitted a FOIA request for Master Transportation Plan documentation that had been done thus far. The response was a memo from VHB, a consultant used by the City, that included a cover letter, which you can see below, dated May 23, 2024, along with nine other pages of conceptual/visionary road alignment images and descriptions.

We submitted a second FOIA request in early September to learn what additional work had been completed on the MTP, but instead we received the exact same memo again. Was there really no additional work done since this May memo, even though it was intended to be part of a MTP and after it became a big issue at a City Council public hearing?

Considering that there appeared to be no new progress on the MTP in early September, we were very surprised to see it show up as a topic on the agenda for the September 24th joint City Council/School Board meeting. It actually ended up not being discussed. A few weeks later, we acquired an email that seemed to explain why they decided not to bring up the Master Transportation Plan at this meeting.

The email was from Public Works Director, Robert Lewis, to the city manager’s office stating that he was “at a loss as to what is desired.” How could this be if staff had been working on it and it was supposed to be “pretty solid” by November 20th according to City Manager Al Moore’s comments back in August?

Also around early September, we discovered that VDOT is supposed to review comprehensive plans, which should be submitted to them 90 days prior to adoption. A reminder had actually been put out at a September regional transportation meeting.

It turns out, Suffolk planners did not submit the 2045 Comp Plan to VDOT for review until October 2nd. Why wasn’t the comp plan submitted to VDOT before it went to Planning Commission in July? There were three public hearings on the comp plan before it went to VDOT! And why did they submit it before a Master Transportation Plan was done?

To top that off, City Council got a confusing presentation about the MTP during their October 16th Work Session that seemed to contradict the direction they gave in August. To summarize this meeting:

– No Master Transportation Plan was presented; the consultant (VHB) just provided a briefing with a basic outline of a plan

– Coucilmember Butler Barlow asked who VHB was; they were not part of the original comp plan consulting team; it turns out they are a firm that Suffolk has had an ongoing contract with for many years

– When Councilmember Johnson pressed staff on why the plan wasn’t ready, Public Works Director, Robert Lewis said that their vision was for the MTP to be a stand-alone document, that it still needed work and would need to be approved at a later time

– Mayor Duman also expressed concern that the MTP was not further along already

Despite having their guidance pretty much ignored, no one on City Council pushed back very much.

We actually already wrote about this work session and included a few video clips here:

https://care4suffolk.org/2024/10/26/city-councils-comp-plan-confusion/

Just two weeks after this work session, it appears that city Staff decided to take it upon themselves to change the goal posts on the Master Transportation Plan yet again. The suffolk2045.org webpage was updated, and an email to the public sent out, stating that new changes to the comp plan reflect Council’s directions from August to “provide additional project-specific detail and direction for the transportation policy” and that this additional work had been completed.

This is not an accurate reflection of City Council’s guidance and contradicts the comments about a stand-alone document from just two weeks earlier. It is also concerning that they were making yet more changes to the comp plan’s transportation chapter after it was already submitted to VDOT.

Deputy City Manager, Kevin Hughes, sent an email to city council members over a week after these changes were posted informing them that the MTP is now included in Chapter 4 of the 2045 Plan.

To top off all this confusion, we now see that City Council is supposed to be getting an update on the 2045 Plan during their work session on November 20th–the very same day that they are supposed to be voting on it!

Whether a Master Transportation Plan is a separate document or included as part of the comprehensive plan is not the main concern. It is the way this matter has been handled that is very concerning. It appears that City Staff are not following procedure and are also either very disorganized or not being forthright with City Council and the public. Perhaps it’s both.

Timeline of Master Transportation Plan Events:

May 2024

Parts of MTP worked on by consultant and shared as such with the Planning Department

MTP is a concern at joint City Council/Planning Commission meeting

June & July 2024

No discussion of MTP

August 2024

MTP is a main concern for City Council (Aug 21); they want one ready before they vote

Al Moore says it’s underway and will be solid enough by Nov; the vote is tabled until Nov 20th

FOIA request (Aug 22) – received memo/concept diagrams done by consultant in May

September 2024

FOIA request (Sept 9) – received the same memo/concept diagrams done by consultant in May, nothing new

MTP is on joint meeting agenda (Sept 24)

– Mr. Lewis unsure of vision for this agenda item

– MTP not discussed at the meeting

October 2024

2045 Plan initial submission to VDOT (Oct 2)

City Council work session: staff says there is no MTP yet

It will be stand-alone, living document and be approved at a later date

MTP page and visionary project diagrams are added to Ch. 4 of comp plan (Oct 29)

November 2024

Kevin Hughes sends an email to City Council telling them that the MTP is now in Ch. 4 (Nov 8)

November 20th City Council agendas are posted online (Nov14) and a 2045 Comp Plan Update is scheduled for their work session that same day