After years of attending local, county and state road meetings with much one-on-one follow-up time spent, I am concerned with the Five Points/Coastal Highway North projects to come. As a local property owner, I ask, "Who's on first?" Are these projects ready for prime time?
Last-minute lobbying, to my view, is raging behind the scenes, pushing future commercial zoning of the Cave Neck/Coastal Highway corridor construction. These road plans appear to remain open to influence, peddling changes prior to the sunsetting of the existing Sussex County comprehensive plan.
A few public calls to action requiring transparent, clearly defined answers are:
• The political leg of the Cave Neck project stool appears to be selling “go commercial” now in attempts to change zoning. Draconian opportunism is skillfully spawning yet another Sussex land-use gold rush with some developer lobbyists singing similar tunes. This outside-the-Sussex-County-plan, 11th-hour push, allegedly, is unraveling the area groundwork for environmental, zoning and safety disasters recently punctuated with two souls being lost in a Cave Neck/Coastal Highway traffic incident
• Sussex Planning & Zoning Commission has now eliminated public comments by phone
• In my view, pre-construction forum answers are now at best evasive – "Not sure," “We will have to see” and “I will get back to you.” Where and who is the general manager who should know where the overall dots are connected?
• The General Assembly gave it up to certain builders this month. HB104 (already passed in rapid time) and the coming of HB101, HB102 and HB103 are future gifts to overbuilding. These throttle the state PLUS reviews for smart behaviors oversight controlling badly behaving builders. These mentioned bills are being sold with the wink and nod of streamlining government. To our new Sen. Russ Huxtable's credit, he was one of three senators who voted against HB104. Thank you, Russ. This was the right decision for the people of Sussex
• Credit also goes to Sussex County Councilman Mark Schaeffer. He is addressing the road approach speed limit. He and Huxtable are separately now looking for the responsible decision maker to address the importance of a Cave Neck Road plan that apparently has not been addressed
• What's up with eminent domain actions, and increased sound, dirt and bright lighting being a surprise to communities’ existing quality of life? All valid items important to the people up and down the corridor.
Tick tock, now is the time, not later, to amplify your involvement in smart planing with this particular road issue. There are so many specific decisions and so little time to get this one right before it is too late. The simple ask is: slow this timetable down and let the general public in one more time to see the final, transparent, unchanging plans.
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