Editorial: PDRs get to the heart of planning

February 21, 2007

In Owen B. Robinson’s column Feb. 6, he pointed out his opposition to the PDR currently being considered in Washington County.

Establishing a PDR program is a slow, painful (for many) and always controversial process. One needs only to read the accounts of other communities, e.g. Dunn County in Wisconsin or Lancaster County in Pennsylvania. But Robinson misses the point in his editorial: the question is whether Washington County citizens want it to remain rural or be developed with houses, factories and offices.

As to whether the county supervisors are "wise and pregnant with foresight" about the future, it seems to me they are. Perhaps they realize that folks who aren’t farmers will still need food, which Washington County is good at producing.

Finally, a few decades from now, when gasoline may be selling for several times what it is now, urban sprawl will likely be a disastrous consequence of poor planning.

Fritz Domann, Platteville