By Michael Copley
Staff Writer

The planning commission directed the heads of county departments last week to go back and review the drafted comprehensive plan as it pertains to their departments, citing inconsistencies between the capital improvement project (CIP) requests the commission received and the content of the drafted plan.

The CIP is a budget document taken up yearly that exists “to provide a practical plan for the acquisition, development, enhancement or replacement of public facilities to serve the county’s citizenry,” according to materials provided by the finance department. Projects that cost less than $5,000 are not usually considered in the CIP process. CIP requests are meant to address major needs within the county.

According to the Code of Virginia, local planning bodies are directed to “prepare and revise annually a capital improvement program based on the comprehensive plan of the locality…” and to pass those recommendations on to the local governing body — the board of supervisors in Powhatan’s case.

But planning commissioner Richard Ayers said he cannot recommend a prioritized list of CIP projects because the drafted comprehensive plan does not reflect the major needs that county departments expressed in their CIP requests.

There was some frustration that department heads hadn’t analyzed the plan and reported its failure to identify their department’s needs prior to the CIP process.

Commissioners generally agreed that the CIP requests they received are appropriate for the county; they said the deficiency exists in the drafted comprehensive plan.

“The [drafted comprehensive] plan lacks specificity,” Ayers said, and added that requests made during the CIP were absent from discussions that went on during the draft revision process.
“We all bare some responsibility for the comprehensive plan being inadequate.”

Both Carolyn Bishop, County Administrator, and John Rick, County Attorney, said the plan could be more detailed and that, in their estimation, there need to be more links between the plan and the needs identified by department heads.

Rick said more detail could easily be added to the plan to clear up some “troubling disconnects.”

Brandon Stidham, County Planning Director, said the issue of specificity is one the county faces yearly, because he said the current and proposed comprehensive plans do not go into the level of detail Ayers said he wants.

And planning commissioner Roger Richardson questioned whether the comprehensive plan needs to explicitly state all the county’s needs. In stating desired conditions for the future, he said, it seems implied that improvements will have to happen.

But Planning Commissioner Karin Carmack said beyond routine improvements and repairs, there are contradictions between the content of the drafted plan and CIP requests.

Ayers said that for him, the problem goes back to the CIP requests that have no mention in the drafted comprehensive plan.

He said the plan doesn’t recognize the needs department heads are now saying they have.