Take a survey on the Fairfax County Strategic Plan
Fairfax County is again collecting feedback from residents on the proposed Countywide Strategic Plan.
A survey is available through April 15 in several languages.
The proposed plan was developed through extensive community engagement and lays out a community-based vision for the next 10 to 20 years.
Originally proposed to the Board of Supervisors in February 2020, the feedback process was paused when the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. Since then, the draft was revised to reflect the immediate and longer-term impacts of the pandemic.
The Strategic Plan is organized into these nine areas: health and the environment, empowerment and support for residents facing vulnerability, cultural and recreational opportunities, safety and security, housing and neighborhood livability, economic opportunity, lifelong education and learning, mobility and transportation, and effective and efficient government.
This Strategic Plan is an effort to cover the butts of the BOS for their decisions to "streamline" (eliminating public input) the building process at the bidding of the developers in 2015 per the Gartner Report. zMOD was an outgrowth of that effort and now this will provide the final phase to seek community approval for those efforts because they didn't bother seeking community input before they embarked on this effort. Watch the outcomes which are already predetermined. Making a decision to work with one segment (developers) of the population without approval by the other segments (taxpayers) feels a lot like corruption to me.
Hello, anonymous #1; Anony #2 here. Grateful to see someone else has nailed it. What a shame to shut out so many informed, educated, concerned Fairfax taxpayers.
People, start now to get candidates ready for BOS elections in 2023. Voting the bullies and autocrats out is our only recourse at this point. McKay and others have stooped so low as to infer that opponents of streamlining are stupid or lying. Just like McKay in the zMOD debate where he cited grossly inaccurate fees for ALU's as being $16K vs. the real $435 long standing ALU fee. I guess he recognizes liars as he is one and therefore thinks everyone does that? His 'leadership' is sad and irresponsible. Citizens working hard to keep Fairfax stable deserve more. HE and others who ignore democracy will get replaced in Nov., 2023. Clock is ticking…
This is a ridiculous survey. There are loaded words like equity in here that mean different things to the Board than to regular citizens. They are promoting zMod and other radical changes to our county and are going to use survey questions with multiple meanings to justify their actions. I didn't even understand most of the language that they were using since it was so obscure and loaded with doublespeak.
Be careful not to answer any age questions. Like on zMOD, the consultant dismissed those that expressed their concerns as "NIMBY's" and "old people don't like change" or "only younger people care about the environment"… they are deliberately skewing the results. It is a charade.
I participated in part of this survey process in 2019 before it was delayed because of the Covid-19 outbreak. I found it to be a pretty intense process (this was a session for members of Boards and Commissions) and one in which we had a chance to discuss and evaluate various options. As a strategic plan process, it is intended to get feedback from community members as to our preferences among a range of alternatives. We were also able to present some of our own ideas or engage with County staff around language, options, and hopes for the future. Feel free to participate or not, of course, but telling folks that because the survey exists that it is shutting out concerned taxpayers is fine gaslighting. It is a survey, not an attempt to subvert our democratic process. At the very least it allowed me to see what the County thinks are priorities and to have a tiny vote towards the establishment of community direction. While I agree that the language could be simpler on its face, it is pretty typical governmental language that allows for some nuance. Points for contortions to previous commenters for the good effort to tie the survey to zMOD!
The survey is the sales job that should have been done in 2015 BEFORE the deal with the developers was done. zMOD, admittedly a big job, "streamlines" the process for builders and removes public input. The end results have already been implemented by staff, the public is the last to be brought into the plans. And I also attended 4 of the strategic planning sessions including the one that you attended, in the hope that I was wrong. Since then it has been proven to me that I am not wrong. Departments in the county are already acting on both the strategic plan and zMOD. In fact, they were acting on it over a year ago. So much for public input. It's all a done deal… this is the CYA portion. Enjoy it.
I am now very cynical about these county surveys. I feel I am just being used. What citizens' groups participated in designing the survey? It's ridiculously long and meaningless.
This is a bunch of crap for Mason District. Nothing has improved in this district except for greater crime. zMOD will be ever so more destructive to this area; it will increase boarding house conditions, which are already exasperating the older neighborhoods. And what does the BoS and Penny Gross do, come up with a strategy that will make the situation much worse.
zMOD get lost. Penny Gross, I do not intend to vote you in for another term in November for you have done nothing for Mason except to receive a pay check.