Find a link to the draft regulations at monongaliacounty.gov/mon cpc/subdivision.php.
We all have our own ways of wasting time.
None of them is really a good way to waste time. After all, wasting time is wasting time.
But even worse is when you are wasting someone else’s time or an entire county’s.
Don’t call us naysayers, yet, but we are starting to think this latest effort to approve subdivision regulations in Monongalia County is fading fast, again.
This latest version of this ongoing saga began in earnest again following a new planning director taking office in May.
In August, the Monongalia County Commission was handed a 102-page draft of the newest subdivision regulations.
Several informational sessions for the public, a roundtable discussion with developers, presentations to other agencies and a lot of back and forth later the plan was to vote on the regulations in late November.
Of course, that vote would be contingent on a public hearing before the commission makes the call.
But wouldn’t you know it. That hearing was moved from late November to next year — early to mid-January. There’s no official date, yet.
That timeline might have not raised our concern or others if not for the history of proposals to pass subdivision regulations in our county.
For example, the last charge at winning passage for such regulations was four years ago. That time, it took the commission two years before two public hearings on Nov. 29, 2017. With much of the feedback being negative, the commission expressed it would meet with the former planner in a work session. And that’s the last we heard of that.
Before that effort there was another in 2013, which followed initiatives in 2009, 1994 and 1978 and even earlier. Knowing all that, we get the idea that January’s public hearing may end like others and the commission will retreat again.
Our newspaper was on the record long ago in support of subdivision regulations and remains so to date. Subdivision regulations help ensure safe and sustainable development — good development.
They mandate proper roads, stormwater management, utilities, right of ways and other infrastructure needs in tandem with the subdivision of land, be it commercial, residential or industrial.
Given developments have never been regulated in Monongalia County, no one expects a welcome mat to be put out for them. However, we urge the County Commission to stop wasting its time and ours and do the right thing.
Unless that is the goal is to just get re-elected while conceding anything at any time, and achieving zilch.
