Think Before You Vote!

Thomas Hinnant’s “Keep Rockland Rural …” (Royal Examiner, 7/9/23) was a whistle calling a crowd to overwhelm another meeting, not unlike the library brouhaha, in my opinion.

“Stand together to keep National Developers off of our agricultural land” — they’ll turn “farmland into high-density housing” and “developers rarely use local labor,” he writes.

The only Rockland project seeking rezoning isn’t “our” land, nor is it “farmland”!  It is an 18-hole golf course downsizing to 9-holes and converting 104 acres (of 195+ acres) into a quiet, over-55 community that will create jobs, stimulate the local economy, and leave behind housing near job centers east of us for younger families.

Hinnant authoritatively claims, “Housing developments rarely, if ever, contribute as much tax revenue as they end up costing the county in infrastructure development.” Wow, is that half-baked! No time frame, no mention of the existing infrastructure, no discussion of permitting requirements, and no hint at the type of development — not what one should expect from an “Industry: Real Estate Developers” person, as he was listed on the Virginia Public Access Project (vpap.org) website notation of his $500 state campaign contribution to Supv. Oates before becoming her “consultant” at $4k a month up to $20K!

Had people spent as much time studying the budget as they did in the children’s section of the library before overwhelming that public hearing, we might all have seen that the three largest expenditures in Warren County’s budget are public education, public safety, and debt service. It is the increased population of children, not retirees, that will increase our taxes!

Now that women no longer have reproductive choices, taxes have to go up! Think — More children, more schools, more mouths to feed, more domestic stress, more social services, more police — but no worries!  Retirees will share the bill without further stressing those three main budgetary line items.

Hinnant is demonstrating mob rule. The way to make yourselves heard is not by overwhelming a county meeting in response to inflammatory claims, it’s at the ballot box. If you don’t want to look at housing developments, and you don’t want taxes to go up, then stop voting for people with positions that guarantee population growth!

C.A. Wulf
Warren County

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