Mathews County Planning Commission members appeared taken aback Tuesday night by the massive amount of resource material dropped on them by Lewie Lawrence of the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission, which is assisting the county with its mandatory five-year review of the comprehensive plan.

Lawrence gave commission members a three-page bullet list of possible “tools” they can use to shape future land use in the county, with recurrent flooding the underlying driver for many of the possible methods. The list included everything from the current range of ordinances to density development trading systems, special hazard taxing districts, transfer of development and septic rights, and natural resource business development RFPs.

Faced with a confusion of new concepts, commission member Bill Whitley, a retired county administrator, said, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I spent my career in this, and I don’t understand you.”
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