After the Virginia Supreme Court nipped ’em in the bud, members of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors next month are expected to hold new public hearings on a massive zoning rewrite.
Justices last month declared the supervisors’ early-2021 zoning-modernization effort – dubbed zMOD – null and void, because public hearings did not meet Virginia’s requirements.
Fairfax supervisors had believed they were acting under COVID-era authorization from the state level to hold “virtual” hearings, but the justices concluded that power, except for very limited circumstances, had not been bestowed on local governments until mid-2021.
Under a schedule announced April 6, hearings on readoption of zMOD likely will be scheduled for the Planning Commission on Wednesday, May 3, and the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, May 9, if the Planning Commission has reported its recommendation by then.
Most likely, the hearings will be pro-forma affairs no matter what input is received, as the supervisors can opt to go back and ratify the exact same zoning package they had adopted in 2021.
“The ordinance was built on a foundation of thorough and comprehensive public input over three years,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay said.
zMOD is the first attempt to comprehensively rewrite and reorganize Fairfax’s zoning system since the late 1970s.
