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Vote for change on Sussex County Council

September 3, 2020

Let’s take a step side-wise and not talk about COVID, mail-in voting, the new crew at Rehoboth Beach City Hall or why people are not all wearing masks and keeping safe social distancing. Instead, let’s talk about the continuing runaway development of the entire eastern half of Sussex County. Let’s talk about Sussex County Council who sees only dollar signs, perpetuating relatively low property taxes and, of course, the hen laying the golden egg: transfer tax money.  I.G Burton has insisted, in a personal phone chat I had with him months ago, that he has tried with no success to update and modernize local zoning codes and development proposals with more concern for those residents who already live here at the top of lists of concerns in any development.

This failure to create more stringent controls over matters such as protections for farmland, wetlands and open green spaces has resulted in the look and feel of a typically bland, ugly, charmless suburban sprawl with all the same stores and all the same strip malls as any ugly suburban stretch anywhere in the country. Let’s talk about the incessant development of any and all available lot or farm with little consideration for improving the infrastructure, developing new traffic patterns or taking into account the always-present congestion on routes 1, 9, 13, 16, 24 and 26.  Let’s talk about the ability of commercial interests to build just about anything they want on already pre-existing commercial properties without any community input, as was done with the the Holiday Inn Express as one of many examples.  Let’s talk about the once-treasured open green spaces and small wooded barrier areas. Some are now illuminated by 30-foot parking lot lights (with no light shields) with hotel windows allowing guests to peer into once-private backyards.  

Most small parcels of wooded areas are now paved over, allowing the roar of Route One traffic to permeate deeply into the once- quiet places we all live. In many places trees have been replaced by cheap white vinyl fences. Let’s talk about the lack of any restrictions about when construction can occur in Sussex County, allowing bulldozers and crews to start at the crack of dawn and continue even into the night with no regard for the neighbors. Something must be done, and the current makeup of the Sussex County Council seems to promise more of the same, and this is what is destroying the entire coastal community and making those of us who moved here, because of the charm, to now feel we are surrounded by suburban sprawl and endless noise and the glare of 30-foot parking lot lights. Vote out the present Sussex County Council members and let’s make preserving the quality of life, which has deteriorated so much in the last seven years, the most important issue for the future.

Ron Nicholls
Rehoboth Beach
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