Our opinion

Tuesday night, the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to put the word “rural” back into the county’s comprehensive plan. Fine. We support that. We’re a rural county and likely to remain so for quite some time--whether the Wal-Marts of the world arrive or not.
The comprehensive plan is a road map for our community--a guidebook that offers our leaders information. It’s not binding. It’s not a mandate. It’s a reference tool offering insight and information.
That word “rural” generated a maelstrom of indignation and commentary in 2006 when it was removed from the comprehensive plan. Tuesday night, others suggested it had superceded more pressing concerns.
The important thing to note is that the county hasn’t become dramatically less rural since the word was removed three years ago and isn’t likely to grow more rural in the coming months.
Sure, it’s important for what it signifies, but our county is rural and will remain rural for quite some time.
Of course “rural” is open to interpretation. A superstore or shopping center or new industry on a couple hundred acres is unlikely to counteract the hundreds of thousands of acres of genuine, actual, rural land we call home here in Orange County.
In fact, they’d only help.
As we look at our upcoming school and county budget shortfalls, why wouldn’t we be open to those things that might generate additional tax revenues, create jobs and stimulate the economy locally?
Rural shouldn’t exclude reasonable growth--especially in a time when it’s this critical.
Orange County has, is and will be rural. But we need to recruit, promote and steer appropriate commercial and industrial growth to the areas that can accommodate it. That’s what being rural is all about. It’s not about closing the door on business or locking the gate to development. It’s about protecting those most important rural areas (which is, realistically, most of the county) and directing some growth (which absolutely is necessary) to appropriate corridors and regions.
Doesn’t some, properly managed and stimulated growth ultimately protect our rural way of life anyway?
Without commercial growth, a greater tax burden is levied on the individual property owner. In our rural community, many of us are farmers. We might be land-rich, but cash poor. As tax burdens increase, we consider our assets--the greatest of which gently rolls all around us. To ease our pain, we sell off chunks of those assets. The more that happens, the more rural Orange County becomes suburban nowhere, America and everyone loses.
So let’s remain rural by growing a little here and a little there--in the areas that can accommodate some tax-generating growth and that aren’t particularly rural anymore anyway.