Cemile Bingol, a Leesburg resident, said development has become the hot topic in the county. When I talk to people, they say development is too much. They may not think the same on a lot of issues, but they are united on that. The new concern over pocketbook issues is a change from decades past, when most anger was directed at traffic or roads. Another new issue igniting local movements is schools, which often suffer serious crowding and funding problems in fast-growing areas.
Schools are now very much a flashpoint for unrest and dissatisfaction with the pace of growth.
The issue of school crowding was key to the moratorium signed into law last week in Prince George's, and it plays a crucial role in the growth debate in Prince William. Both counties, which have relatively few major employers and a glut of low-cost housing, have been wrestling with crowded classrooms for years. About half of Prince George's schools exceed capacity, and Prince William's are so crowded that the hallways of one high school are governed by traffic lanes. It's not clear whether the various anti-growth initiatives now on the table will do much to change things in the near term. Loudoun and Prince William have about 50,000 housing units each in the pipeline, although the latter is considering policies to lower that number.