After a marathon four hour public hearing, the Charles County Board of Commissioners voted late on Tuesday night to send the Priority Preservation Area (PPA) back to the Charles County Planning Commission, with the recommendation they seek economic impact studies and incorporate it in to the 2012 Charles County Comprehensive Plan.  The motion, put forth by Commissioner Ken Robinson (D: 1st) passed on a 3-1 vote. 

Commissioner President Candice Quinn Kelly opposed the motion and Commissioner Vice President Reuben Collins (D) abstained from any discussion or decision making.  The vote was made after a public hearing that lasted over four hours where dozens of speakers spoke both in favor of and in opposition to the proposed PPA amendment.  Robinson and Kelly also called for a strong, viable Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) program.

“I wish I could take credit for everybody being a Facchina employee but I’m not sure everyone here is,” Charles McPherson of the Balanced Growth Initiative said.  “This proposal is unnecessary.  We’re making our goals; we need to focus on things that have worked.  The history of this, up to this point, is amazing. Personally, I have nothing to lose if you all downzone a large portion of the county.  That is a fact, contrary to popular opinion.

“You should not have a right to take someone’s land with just compensation.  You have not proven your point to the landowners, and that should be enough.  What right do you have?”

“With BGI, we have entered an altered dimension, an altered universe where the local one percent has become the advocates for social justice,” Linda Redding said.  “In this altered dimension, it doesn’t acknowledge a vast number of baby boomers stopped driving, current events, rising gas prices, adequate housing to 2040 is already in the pipeline, the loss of ecosystem services and the loss of ecosystem services.”

“It’s March and we have 70 degree weather,” Kevin Grimes of Nanjemoy said.  “Things are changing whether we like it or not.  We can’t keep doing things the way we are doing them.  Trees and Earth are gifts from God.  We need to focus on what’s important.  Everyone in the room could come together and come up with good ideas that doesn’t make us all rich but makes Charles County sustainable.”

“I’m coming to you as a young person,” Haven Carlson said.  “In my school, lots of people want to leave Charles County.  One of the biggest reasons is because Waldorf is kind of ugly.  There are too many housing units, strip malls, roads, it’s just ugly.  People really want walk able transit oriented development because walk able communities is what everybody wants and that’s going to keep people here and we have the opportunity to create the kind of community we want with this TDR.”

“We care because the county has suggested commercial projects should buy TDRs to compensate landowners from loss of value from downzoning,” Charles County Chamber of Commerce President Carlos Montague said.  “This proposal has the potential to harm owners of commercial land… This is not sound economic development policy…. The chamber urges commissioners not to pass the PPA.”

“I don’t need any bureaucratic agency to tell me it will reduce the value of my land,” David Hancock, Jr. said.  “The biggest concern I have with the PPA is how it will be funded.”  Hancock also said the state would not fund a PPA or TDR program because they are already strapped for cash, citing plans to increase the income tax on the top income earners in the state and a plan to raise the gasoline tax.

“If, at