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High court nixes joint planning in Purcellville
The Virginia Supreme Court has ruled on the long-running dispute between the Town of Purcellville and Loudoun County, but the ruling may not guarantee an end to litigation that has delayed building a second high school in western Loudoun.
The ruling released Sept. 12 upholds the 1995 growth management agreement between the two jurisdictions – the Purcellville Urban Growth Area Management Plan. At the same time, Justice Donald W. Lemons ruled that while Purcellville can "participate" in planning in the urban growth area, the county needs a permit only from its own Planning Commission to move ahead with building a high school on the Fields Farm in the northwest corner of the urban growth area.
The town has argued that commission permits are needed from both planning commissions – its own and the county's.
The ruling, said Purcellville Mayor Bob Lazaro, puts to death "the notion of two municipalities in Virginia engaging in a growth management contract."
Town will defend PUGAMP
Lazaro reiterated the town council's determination to go back to court should the county approve a high school there with its own on-site sewage disposal system. PUGAMP, said Lazaro, bans alternative and communal wastewater systems, and the town will defend PUGAMP.
In the meantime, the county has voted to ban alternative wastewater systems for five years while it collects data to establish their safety.
"This has never been about a high school," Lazaro said. "It's about managing growth in an area twice the size of the town."
Rob Lynch, whose ninth-grade son attends Harmony Intermediate School rather than Loudoun Valley High School because of crowding there, said he fears the ruling could end up delaying the school another year or more.
"I wish they could have come together before it got to this point," Lynch said. "There's a lot of hard feelings out there, and it's going to be difficult for us to get a high school built in a reasonable amount of time."
With only 10th through 12th grades, Loudoun Valley High School today – with the help of 10 trailer classrooms – enrolls 1,630 students. Next year's projected enrollment is 1,731.
The planned school – already named Woodgrove High School -- will open in September 1010, said Loudoun County Public Schools spokesman Wayde Byard. That fall, the 10 trailers will disappear from Valley's campus, and it will enroll 1,508 students in grades nine through 12.
Woodgrove, with no senior class for its first year, will enroll 1,023 that year, Byard said. Harmony Intermediate School – currently educating eighth- and ninth-graders -- will go back to being the middle school it was designed to be.
If Woodgrove does not open in 2010, a total of 2,531 ninth- through 12th-graders will be looking for a seat in a high school somewhere.
Looking for compromise
By midday Sept. 16, Board of Supervisors Chairman Scott York (I-at large) left his board's session to meet with Purcellville Council Member Tom Priscilla, and the town called an emergency council meeting for Sept. 17 at 9 p.m.
Several supervisors criticized York, from the dais, for meeting with Priscilla without having County Attorney Jack Roberts present.
Priscilla said the talk with York was "productive" but insisted that what was said in private will stay private.
"York has always been trying to find a way to solve the problem," Priscilla said. "Hopefully, his board will give him latitude to do that."
The council intends to go straight into a closed session Sept. 17 to discuss the Supreme Court ruling, legal actions related to the ruling, and the town's proposed settlement offer.
The town's offer to settle the dispute remains on the table, Lazaro said: The town will extend utilities to the high school if the county helps the town develop water resources on the Fields Farm, if the county acknowledges the town needs space to build a water treatment plant, and if the county acknowledges that the county must contribute more of the money it will take to cope with additional traffic from a 1,600-student high school.
Priscilla said during the last round of negotiations that failed in late May, just before the dispute went to the Supreme Court, that if the county wants to place public facilities – as is stipulated in the county's Comprehensive Plan -- near the towns in order to take advantage of central utilities, then the county can't expect the entire cost to fall on the taxpayers of the towns.
County rules in area
The ruling is clear, Supervisor Jim Burton (I-Blue Ridge) said, that "the county and the county alone makes zoning and commission permit decisions on the high school. The town will not have the authority they claimed."
The county will move quickly, Burton said, to get an application for a commission permit before its Planning Commission.
Burton declined to discuss the possibility of the county's moving forward with a request to bring the Fields Farm into the town's boundaries.
"But certainly," he said, "being on central utilities would be best for the public's health and safety."
An attorney involved with the case noted that it will be difficult for the county's Planning Commission to say the high school is consistent with the comprehensive plan.
Justice Lemons ruled that the town has no right to take part in planning decisions outside its current borders. Loudoun Circuit Court Judge Thomas D. Horne had ruled that planning is distinct from zoning, and the town has a right to take part in planning in the PUGAMP.
The Supreme Court ruling did not make it clear how the town could "participate" in planning in the urban growth area but not have any authority to make decisions.
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