Highland Sups, Monterey Town Council Give Final Blessing To County Comprehensive Plan

Monterey, VA – Over seven years of work finally came to fruition Tuesday evening when the Highland County Board of Supervisors and the Monterey Town Council both voted unanimously to adopt the county’s new comprehensive plan. What began in 2003 with meetings of the Comprehensive Plan Review Committee and numerous public meetings ended with little fanfare and no comments by members of the public. Board of Supervisors Chairman Robin Sullenberger presented the issue to the Supervisors and Town Council members.

“We have been in the review process with this recently,” says Sullenberger. “Obviously our intention was to consider adopting it tonight but we wanted some input from the Town Council if you are so inclined. We’ve done all of our due diligence as far as we’re concerned and are prepared to vote, so I would even call for some additional comments or a motion and then comments to follow.”

Supervisor Jerry Rexrode offered some comments before the vote.

“I’d like to thank all the people who worked on the project over the years; a lot of hours and a lot of thought, several years of negotiations; you know I think it’s a good plan overall,” says Rexrode.

Following those comments Supervisor Sullenberger called the question. The plan was approved unanimously by the Supervisors.

Sullenberger track 2 – not in web story

After the Supervisors vote, the Town Council took up the matter and with no further discussion, Councilman Don Dowdy made the motion to approve the county’s comprehensive plan. The motion was seconded by Tony Stinnet and the Council voted unanimously in favor of the motion. With that vote a process that has taken more than seven years came to a close with the adoption of the new Highland County Comprehensive Plan.

Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, Robin Sullenburger commented that the end of the process seemed anti-climactic after all the meetings, discussions and deliberations that went into producing the plan. The process began over seven years ago with several public meetings and dozens of hours of work by members of the Comprehensive Plan Review Committee, including Bob Kelly, Caroline Smith, Betty Mitchell, Trent Burkholder, Georgeanne Armstrong, Don Hower, Jack Flynn and Valerie Hilliard. The work of assembling all the text and making the countless revisions and changes fell to County Administrator Roberta Lambert. So the new Board of Supervisors that takes office in January, 2012, will now have a comprehensive plan to guide their decisions on land use matters.

In other business, the Supervisors approved the request by the Recreation Commission for reappointment of Denise Simmons for another three year term on the Commission and the new appointment of Jason Newlen for a three year term.

The next meeting of the Highland County Board of Supervisors will be a joint meeting with the Planning Commission on Thursday, December 22, to consider the request from Meck Industries to rezone the Hooke Brothers sawmill property from A1 to A2.

The next regular meeting of the Supervisors and the first meeting of the new Board is scheduled for Tuesday, January 3 at 7:30 PM in the Modular Conference Center in Monterey.