Rescheduled Due To Overcrowding County Meeting On Reston Overcrowding Was Overcrowded, Resulting In Overcrowding Of Opinions (Updated)

If you get nearly 700 Restonians in one place and it doesn't involve paid parking at our favorite "stressful, city-like shopping center," you know something's amiss. Last night's county-held meeting on the fun zoning changes proposed for Reston, initially rescheduled because of overcrowding, was overcrowded -- people were shunted into an overflow room. It involved plenty of developmentsplaining and dozens of speakers, all of whom were critical of the county's approach. Your Restonian earned time-and-a-half "live twittering" the meeting, sharing trenchant insights like these:

Fortunately, others capable of thinking in more than sentence-long insights also were there, including our favorite correspondent, The Peasant From Less Sought After South Reston, who shared this account:

All that was missing were the pitchforks and torches.

Whether the appropriate analogy is that of the peasants marching on Dr. Frankenstein's castle, the French hoi polloi storming the Bastille, or the East Germans tearing down the Berlin Wall, Monday night's meeting at South Lakes High to discuss increased residential zoning density brought forth a huge crowd of amped-up Restonians ready to rebel.

No doubt the Fairfax County authorities in attendance found the huddled masses indeed revolting, in both senses of the word.

An SRO crowd of 600 or so Restonians showed up to hear our County Supervisor and several Fairfax County officials explain the proposed zoning ordinance amendment that would allow more than 10,700 new dwelling units in those parts of Reston designated a planned residential community. The existing village centers would be prime candidates ripe for such future redevelopment

Observing the sea of yellow Rescue Reston shirts, The Peasant momentarily thought that he had transcended the space-time continuum and somehow been transported back to circa-1986 Manila, where the "color revolution" that brought Corazon Aquino to power in the Philippines used yellow as a rallying point -- not that we would dare compare anyone on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to the autocratic Ferdinand Marcos and his 21-year rule.

After a few opening remarks from Commissar Cathy, a 'facilitator' explained the evening's format of short presentations by County officials for "clarity of information" followed by an open mike session for the audience. County officials used many exciting buzzwords in their presentations. Prioritize! Framework! Implementation! Front-loading! Perhaps as in, "Prioritize the implementation of a front-loading framework?"

Anyhow, judging from the two hours of the session that The Peasant attended, the basic takeaway from the County was that the new zoning proposals for the village centers were merely codifying what had been suggested by the Reston master plan in 1989. This did not sit well with the audience, one of whom simply asked, "Why this? Why now?"

We noted that throughout the Q-and-A session our County Supervisor was noticeably reticent, allowing the various department flunkies to be the sacrificial lambs bearing the brunt of citizen outrage, while she did a classic duck and cover maneuver, much like those Cold War civil defense drills schoolchildren practiced in the 1960s to survive any incoming Ruskie ICBMs.

But perhaps Commissar Cathy was merely attempting to avoid yet another communications miscue, such as the one she suffered in her recent attempt to invite herself onto the Next Door Neighbor website, where she announced her presence as one more way to communicate with, and we quote verbatim here, "the masses" (leading one irate Next Door user to note that perhaps the Commissar had mistakenly added the letter "m" to that collective noun).

Of all the excellent questions and comments made by audience members on Monday evening, the best came from one older man who, with a simplicity worthy of Hemingway, addressed the assembled officialdom thusly:

"You're reading your own talking points too much. Listen to the people. You don't get it. Why is it so hard for you to stand in our shoes and serve our community? I'd ask everyone here in the audience who doesn't think the rezoning is a good idea to stand up."

On cue, the entire audience stands up.

At the end of the evening, we were relieved that the Board of Supervisors at least had not secretly lined up a fleet of RIBS buses outside South Lakes to transport unenlightened Reston homeowners directly to a Khmer Rouge-style re-education camp in hip and edgy Clarendon so as to learn the joys of transit-oriented development -- or even worse, to exile in the particleboard wasteland of Ashburn to contemplate among the acres of vinyl siding their wrong-think until they are suitably "woke" and embrace their glorious TOD future with all the wide-eyed fervor of North Koreans praising Little Rocket Man.

Hudgins clearly believes passionately that development is important because it will keep Reston open to all kinds of people -- and good on her for that. But developers putting aside a tiny amount of apartments for affordable housing -- and grudgingly so at that -- in expensive condo complexes isn't going to achieve that goal. If she wants to push for affordable housing, Hudgins and the rest of the county could shame -- or flat out require -- developers to do more. Calling people with legitimate concerns NIMBYs and lumping them in with a handful of xenophobic Internet commenters isn't going to help.

Also, the format of the meeting and these comments painted this debate in very binary terms: these changes are just to fix what amounts to a rounding error in a previous master plan tweak, and you're either supportive of keeping Reston open to newcomers or a NIMBY. Frankly, we think this lets the county off the hook for its big failing here: approving massive development while being perfectly happy to let existing (and new) residents wait for a decade-plus for infrastructure improvements that are needed right now. Development is going to happen to some extent -- and to the extent it's focused in places where it can be served by mass transit, decent infrastructure, and open public spaces, that's not a bad thing. In all the supposed question-and-answer exchances last night, we didn't hear an answer as to why that was allowed to happen -- and why there's still no urgency to addressing it.

A commenter shared this account:

I never go to these things, but I went to SLHS and I wore yellow. As did nearly everyone else. The nice people from the county told us what we want. But everyone attending felt differently. Hudgins and co. said that we need more people on metro, and she closed with a stock impassioned plea for workforce housing. The parks person told us that she was actively making sure that we had enough parkland as we develop, to much laughter. And we had to wait over 20 minutes until the first invocation of Bob Simon's wishes, later than expected. But what was tonight's conclusion? Hudgins wagged her finger by hinting that this crowd was anti...something. Were we being anti-Restonian? NIMBYs and the developers recognize that they have overdeveloped, which translates to a recognition that more pigs at the trough will shrink the amount of food available to each pig.And yet she persisted! We need to increase our density, described in terms of avoiding some future debacle, while attendees see the density cap as a final failsafe. I admire Hudgins' willingness to tell this audience that they just don't get Reston. They just don't understand what it is to be in Reston. Wow, what stunning arrogance.

And there was this comment from a county planner, which we think will look great written in purple neon on top of a 96-story mauvescraper located atop of the transit-oriented node of St. John's Wood more than a mile from a future Metro station, or nearly anything else:

Update: Action McNews coverage:

And here's video of the full meeting:

Update: Reston Association Board of Directors formally requests that the county "defer further consideration of the PRC amendment until certain elements in the Reston Master Plan portion of the comprehensive plan can be reviewed."