DATE: Sunday, September 21, 1997            TAG: 9709190316

SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER      PAGE: 10   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Letters 

                                            LENGTH:   83 lines

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - CHESAPEAKE

Since June, the Clearfield community, including Clearfield and Clearfield Estates, has been attempting to stop a new development on Clearfield Avenue that will increase the impact to an already serious traffic situation on Kempsville Road and impact local schools in the area.

Kempsville Road is one of the worst traveled roads in Chesapeake, and Crestwood Middle School is at 130 percent of capacity. More than 250 students at Crestwood Middle are in 15 trailer units. Citizens from the community have attended civic league meetings twice, met with the developer twice, attended Planning Commission meetings twice and attended City Council meetings twice. A total of eight times citizens have put their families aside to attend meetings. To prepare for these meetings, many community leaders spent countless hours calling and visiting neighbors, calling city officials and distributing fliers to more than 300 homes door to door. Citizens have visited homes 2,400 times (eight meetings times 300 homes) in preparation for these meetings.

By now you would think that everyone would have all the information they would need on the issue and how deal with it, especially when the City Council just approved tighter level-of-service controls, which state that schools cannot exceed 120 percent capacity for a rezoning to be approved.

We thank council members John M. de Triquet, Dalton S. Edge, Alan P. Krasnoff and Elizabeth P. Thornton, who are not in favor of this rezoning and clearly want to follow level-of-service standards.

The primary question citizens are asking the remaining members of City Council is why continue a rezoning to ask the developer for more expensive housing and a slower building schedule when in 30 days the development will still not pass the levels-of-service test?

Crestwood Middle School will still have 15 trailer units and be at 130 percent capacity. A total of 3,200 building sites are approved for construction that can add additional traffic to Kempsville Road and add students to overcrowded schools in the area. A new school to relieve the congestion at Crestwood is not planned until September 2000, and no money exists to build that school.

This issue is to be re-heard on Oct. 21. If you get a chance, call the council members who did not vote to deny this rezoning and educate them on what their real concerns should be.

Gene Waters

President, Chesapeake Council of Civic Organizations Buyer beware

I love living in Chesapeake, but I came away from a citizens meeting Wednesday night quite distressed. It was about a landfill.

Did you know a landfill can be 200 feet away from a residence or a hospital? I am shocked!

After two hours of listening to the miseries and woes of beleagured inhabitants living near a landfill, I wish to relay a word of caution. Caveat emptor! Don't buy any house or condo in Chesapeake until you know exactly where a landfill or a highway of the future or any other annoying creation will be placed. You might as well throw your money down the drain.

The state official at the meeting said the city of Chesapeake had the responsibility. I called the mayor's office yesterday, and I don't feel the city cares to shoulder all the responsibility. At the meeting the men from the state didn't seem to think the landfill's owner is culpable.

I say again: Beware!

E.W. Barth

Timber Quay Lack of response

As a third-generation resident of the community of South Norfolk, I was offended by the response or lack of it by some of the Chesapeake School Board members at the Sept. 8 meeting regarding exploring options for kindergarten-through-fifth-grade schools.

With years of low test scores under our belts and the threat of losing accreditation for some of our schools if we continue with the status quo, our children will never be able to get the quality education they are entitled to.

i[sic] am concerned that the majority of our School Board members are not concerned enough to look past their own tenure and look to solve the problem of poor academic performance in our South Norfolk schools. We must look to the future!

As for L. Thomas Bray, who has obviously forgotten where he came from, ``Beware of the man who forgets where he came from; he's too concerned about where he's going!''

Pam Bowden

Kinglet Avenue

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