FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (7News) — After a marathon assembly Wednesday evening that lasted 5 hours, the Fairfax County Planning Fee is anticipated to vote Thursday evening on new stricter guidelines for future information facilities within the county.
Critics say the proposed restrictions don’t go practically far sufficient to guard residents, however others say they assist information facilities due to their constructive affect on the tax base.
Nowhere on the planet has as heavy a focus of information facilities as Northern Virginia, and as they’ve multiplied in quantity, controversy has multiplied too.
Fairfax County is contemplating stricter guidelines on future information facilities resembling mandating that they be not less than 200 ft from residential properties, requiring noise research earlier than one might be constructed, and limiting their measurement in some circumstances.
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Some who spoke on the five-hour planning fee assembly Wednesday evening need the county to go additional than that.
“These all produce noise. Fixed, stress-inducing noise,” stated Wendy Meeusen of the Nice Valley space. “An information middle is surrounded by a number of circles of hell so far as decibel ranges go, and the nearer you get the upper the decibel degree, and so the extra punishing the noise.”
“These aren’t your mom’s information facilities,” added Ann Bennett, a Fairfax County resident who’s with the Sierra Membership. “If the county begins from a premise that we’ve got to approve information facilities for income, then it additionally has to start out from the premise that it’s going to regulate them with a view to defend the county’s residents from hurt.”
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However others who spoke identified that, with the county’s board of supervisors just lately voting to lift property taxes but once more, the county is changing into tough to afford to dwell in, and information facilities are a strategy to broaden the tax base.
“They add to our tax base with out including the price of, say, a lot of college students in our colleges, with out including the price of extra site visitors needing new roads,” stated county resident William Walsh.
“In my 20 years, I’ve by no means had a venture that has had a noise criticism that I’m conscious of,” stated Brad Grey, a Fairfax County resident who has designed and developed information facilities. “I’m not on the lookout for my taxes to extend. And we all know that growth is in shambles in Fairfax.”
If the Fairfax County Planning Fee approves new zoning laws Thursday evening, the county’s board of supervisors would nonetheless must approve any new guidelines. The method to tighten information middle laws in Fairfax started greater than a yr in the past.
