1. How do you plan to address Loudoun’s housing affordability crisis?

When nearly 70 percent of our county’s employees cannot afford to call Loudoun home, our lack of affordable housing truly is a crisis.

For too long, our solution to this problem has been to require by-right developers to set aside a percentage of new development that is “affordable,” when building groups of large single-family homes on small lots in either the Transition or Rural Policy Areas. This method is wholly inadequate: Building large, single-family homes in the RPA and TPA maximizes the cost per unit for the county and provides minimal help with the affordable housing crisis. The cost to the taxpayer for developing in these areas is high: $1.60 in expense for every $1 in tax revenue. This situation is untenable for our county’s long-term economic viability.

We have to think bigger if we really want to solve this crisis and not just pay lip service to it. We need more units and more diverse affordable housing options. We need to restructure our zoning to allow for redevelopment of underutilized, incomplete, and unused areas of the Suburban Policy Area, where we have the infrastructure necessary to support development, with roads, water, and sewer already in place. We must develop workforce and affordable housing closer to public transit and to many of the employers on Loudoun’s eastern border. We need to work to limit by-right development in the Transition Policy Area to keep the cost to taxpayers low and preserve the 50 percent open space envisioned for this region. Working with developers to bring more housing variety to this region and to improve our infrastructure is vital to address these needs and to build inclusive, cohesive communities. (continued on the next page)

2. Currently, roughly half of Loudoun County’s Capital Investment Plan is dedicated to transportation improvements. Do you support this level of priority for transportation investment? Please explain why, or why not.

We have spent the last two decades approving an overwhelming amount of growth for Loudoun County and it is not surprising our road network is feeling the strain. Because we have relied on by-right development to accommodate this growth, we have added houses and commuters without the infrastructure to support them. Taxpayers are then left to foot the bill for necessary transportation improvements.

In addition to placing an unfair burden on taxpayers, an overreliance on by-right development has created dangerous road conditions. In my district, Evergreen Mills Road, an old country road that services thousands more cars every day than it was designed to hold, is a prime example. Evergreen Mills has still not been allocated money for complete improvement by the county, so not only will Loudoun residents be forced to pay for its widening and modernization, it will take at minimum seven years to work its way through the county’s CIP — a long time for more accidents to occur.

We must tighten our zoning to limit by-right development and build strong relationships with developers who are interested in building cohesive communities and not just disparate housing developments on rural roadways. We must also reestablish funding sources for NVTA, which were gutted to pay for Metro. Many of our major transportation projects are in line to receive NVTA monies. This would allow for much faster completion of transportation projects than is possible through the County CIP. The gutting of NVTA funding sources limits the number of projects they can take on to improve especially Loudoun’s and all of Northern Virginia’s road network.
 

3. Should Loudoun continue to encourage the future growth of our data center industry or do you feel certain restrictions are necessary?

The tax return for dollars spent on data centers is impressive and helpful. They have allowed our county to hold the tax rate steady for many years now and will continue to do so. They have a role to play in our county, but we are starting to lean on them too heavily, and I am wary of having more than 15 percent of our county’s overall income generated by data centers. I think it is dangerous to stake Loudoun’s economic future on one industry. We must be strategic about our reliance on data centers and have a plan in place on how to diversify our economy with other industries.

4. On June 20th the Board of Supervisors adopted the 2019 Comprehensive Plan. What are your thoughts on the adopted plan and how will you seek to improve upon it?

The new comprehensive plan was never going to please everyone. The county is large, the stakes are high, and the competing interests are intense and many. But there are some things that aren’t controversial, some things that benefit the whole county and just make sense, no matter which way you look at them. And they weren’t included in the plan.

There are three programs that represent the gold standard of conservation, used throughout the state and the country, that should have been included in this plan but were not: a Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) program, a Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) program, and an effective Conservation Easement Assistance program. I am extremely disappointed in our western supervisors’ lack of initiative and knowledge when it comes to advocating for these policies, which should have been included from the outset of the Envision Loudoun process over two years ago.

TDRs allow the county to transfer credits for development from rural areas to more developed policy areas, protecting our green spaces and active agriculture, which provide $1.7 billion in economic impact to our county annually and keep property taxes low for all of us, from Bluemont to Sterling. Both the Conservation Easement Assistance program and the PDR program benefit from cost-matching from the state, so not only are we failing to protect our rural lands by choosing not to make use of these programs we are also leaving real money on the table. My opponent touts a Conservation Easement Assistance program he proposed, but it is one for which barely anyone qualifies.

Loudoun’s western representatives are either familiar with these conservation programs and the process by which to implement them and are actively working to undermine them, or they don’t understand the legal and technical details of the policies for which they advocate.

I am running for this seat because the Board of Supervisors will be making incredibly important zoning adjustments next year, and we need strong, knowledgeable voices in the discussion, folks who understand Loudoun’s past, present, and future, the intricacies of these policies, and the impact they’ll have on our county for years to come at this critical moment. This new board will decide how closely our county adheres to the plan’s vision for a balanced Loudoun county with well-supported rural, suburban, and urban regions, or how far we stray from that goal.

5. How will you seek to address the scarcity of available Class A office space in Loudoun County?

Making a concerted effort to attract more companies to make Loudoun their home will provide an obvious boost to our local economy, increase our county’s national standing, and alleviate undue burdens on our infrastructure and traffic by lowering the percentage of commuters through Loudoun.

We need to adjust our zoning to allow for redevelopment of unused or underused areas of eastern Loudoun. Many sites in eastern Loudoun are surrounded by transportation options and infrastructure and are in close proximity to other businesses in the defense, aerospace, and technology industries that drive the economy of this entire region.

Too often, we give up prime office real estate to other industries. We must keep in mind the sacrifice we make each time we approve another use where office space belongs. data center. While the revenue generated from data centers is valuable, data centers don’t create jobs or provide many other positive externalities.

6. Please tell us why you are the best candidate for this office.

It is the job of our elected representatives to understand the issues important to their constituencies and to be proactive in finding innovative solutions that don’t just address the problems of today, but prevent the problems of tomorrow and acknowledge the impact each policy and decision will have on the future of our county decades down the line. Our representatives need to value substance over lip service and short-term political gain.

My family came to Loudoun County for its unique balance of rural and suburban lifestyles and economies. I wanted a sheep farm, my husband wanted to work for the federal government, and we wanted our children to have the best public education. This is a tall order, but Loudoun made it possible — that one region can be home to so many lifestyles, in close proximity to an abundance of jobs, and with wonderful schools for our children, is a balance rare and precious, and it is not going to survive by accident.

I am well-rooted in my community, I am an expert on the issues my district cares most about, and I have studied the solutions in depth. I see the bigger picture, the driving forces behind our affordable housing crisis, lack of office space, overburdened roads, infrastructure spending, loss of farmland and our struggling rural businesses. These issues are not independent of each other, and we cannot meaningfully improve one without improving the rest — we need to be proactive, creative, strategic, and collaborative to slow our growth and better plan our communities. We need real leaders who will put the county’s interests ahead of petty politics.

Rural Loudoun brought in over $1.7 billion in economic impact last year alone and employed 18,000 people. With the arrival of Metro and the potential to bring more weekend tourism from the District of Columbia, agri-tourism should provide an even greater boom to our economy, but only if we are proactive about preserving the rural destinations for which people come to Loudoun.

We need an advocate on the board who understands conservation legislation and can work to build partnerships with eastern representatives and developers alike to keep Loudoun’s economy thriving.

I serve locally on the board of Loudoun County Farm Bureau, am a founding board member of Save Rural Loudoun, an associate director of Loudoun Soil and Water Conservation District, and a Governor’s appointee to the Virginia Agricultural Council. I look forward to bringing my local and state expertise to the board next year.
 

Source: BizVotes Candidates Questionnaire