A consultant’s analysis of the cost of population growth in Isle of Wight County reminds us that Supervisor Renee Rountree was spot on a year ago with her call for creation of a residential growth task force.

That unelected staff were able to brush off Rountree’s proposal and push a critically needed consideration of the impacts of residential growth into a broad, routine update of the county’s comprehensive plan was perhaps the most tragic outcome in local decision-making in recent memory.

In case you missed our Stephen Faleski’s reporting at the top of last week’s front page, consultant TischlerBise modeled out the breakeven points where various rates of population growth in Isle of Wight will or won’t pay for itself. Bottom line: If the county continues to see roughly 2% annual growth such as it experienced in 2022 and 2023, new revenue at current tax rates would trail new expenses by 2036 or shortly after. That reality undercuts a popular narrative from growth proponents who claim that population growth is needed to expand the tax base and allow elected leadership to hold the line on property taxes, currently among the region’s cheapest. 

TischlerBise’s estimates are conservative, assuming that labor and materials will continue to cost what they cost in 2024. They won’t. As the county’s fiscal 2026 budget demonstrated, the cost of government will get more expensive, in which case the day of reckoning will come earlier than 2036. 

Also plausible, if not likely, is an annual growth rate exceeding the maximum 3% pondered by the consultant. More than 2,000 new housing units are either under construction or have the necessary approvals for construction to begin. Isle of Wight and Smithfield have pending applications for an additional nearly 1,000 units in the northern end of the county.

At 3% annual population growth, TischlerBise projects that new revenue would no longer exceed the cost of services beginning in 2032, just seven years from now. A fiscal train wreck can be averted only by community resolve to get its arms around residential growth that threatens to overwhelm us.

A growth task force is sorely needed to help inform discussions such as the Smithfield Planning Commission’s recent back-and-forth over density rules and whether the town should enforce them or make frequent exceptions. At least one commissioner at the last meeting seemed more concerned about hurting the feelings of developers than heeding the clear, forceful message sent by town voters in last fall’s election: Control residential growth now before our small-town quality of life is irreparably damaged. If that means sending developers back to the drawing board to scale down their projects, so be it. The pro-developer sentiment of some on the Planning Commission shows that the growth machine is still running at full throttle in Smithfield and Isle of Wight.

We hope Rountree will speak up again and this time insist on what should have happened in early 2024: creation of a task force focused solely on the urgent challenges posted by rapid residential growth.