Could a serious conversation about the consequences of rapid residential growth in Smithfield and Isle of Wight County finally be occurring?

There are encouraging signs.

What county staff hoped would be a flimsy, cosmetic, check-the-box update of Isle of Wight’s comprehensive plan just might turn out to be more substantive. Some members of the task force charged with overseeing it are asking hard questions whose answers elected leadership have been allowed to avoid over the years.

Supervisor Renee Rountree isn’t on the task force, but she’s none too happy about the way her excellent suggestion in early 2024 to create a citizen task force singularly focused on residential growth was swept under the rug by county planning staff. Expect hers to be an increasingly forceful voice for accountability in county government.

Then there’s Town Councilman Darren Cutler, who is doing what Smithfield voters overwhelmingly demanded at the ballot box last fall: leaving no stone unturned in the important quest to preserve a quaint, historic community that does not allow itself to be stampeded by residential development. 

At last week’s Town Council meeting, Cutler advocated, and his colleagues approved, an in-depth study of the fiscal impact of residential growth. It is sorely needed.

Cutler was buoyed by a similar county-funded study that destroyed a popular narrative among proponents of residential growth: that it’s essential to growing the community’s tax base, pays for itself and helps elected leadership keep property taxes low. In fact, demand for new services can outpace the tax revenue from new homes, as Isle of Wight is about to find out if it doesn’t slow its rate of growth.

Kudos to the Town Council for approving Cutler’s proposal, thus doing what prior leadership should have done before blessing the monstrosity known as Mallory Pointe subdivision, which is under construction on ill-equipped Battery Park Road.

Town leaders, despite intense citizen opposition, relied on a rosy, developer-funded fiscal impact study before approving 800-plus homes. On that note, the Town Council must not take seriously Town Attorney Bill Riddick’s suggestion that town staff do the growth study using developer-funded analyses. The fox must not be allowed to guard the henhouse.

Aside from being the catalyst for a substantive study on growth, we appreciate Cutler for his willingness to persist when Planning Commission and Town Council colleagues, Riddick and town staff prefer that he shut up. He calmly but firmly makes important points and asks the questions citizens have been trying to ask for years. 

The growth machine in this community has for too long worn down and belittled dissenting voices. Times are changing, and not a minute too soon.