Think “smart growth and sustainable development.” The TDR ordinance is just another tool that city and county planners can use to play SimCity with their residents. (Montgomery County, MD has been using TDRs for years.) They are trying to conserve “open space” and “agricultural land,” and they want to encourage a “sense of community” that supposedly can only be achieved by stacking and packing people into urban development areas. The only way local governments can incentivize people, especially families, to live in very close quarters near the city is to promote the sale of development rights by landowners in rural areas through manipulation of the tax code. The likely result: middle class folks who prefer single family homes on decent lots are priced out of the market. This is only my take on it, of course, but as one local resident remarked at the meeting: the government’s description of TDRs and Comprehensive Plans never mention the possible, and very likely, negative consequences of such government meddling in the real estate market.
The Winchester Watchdog 
That is very interesting.
Any chance you could post a couple-of-sentences-SYNOPSIS of the the plan and the TDR ordinance?
Think “smart growth and sustainable development.” The TDR ordinance is just another tool that city and county planners can use to play SimCity with their residents. (Montgomery County, MD has been using TDRs for years.) They are trying to conserve “open space” and “agricultural land,” and they want to encourage a “sense of community” that supposedly can only be achieved by stacking and packing people into urban development areas. The only way local governments can incentivize people, especially families, to live in very close quarters near the city is to promote the sale of development rights by landowners in rural areas through manipulation of the tax code. The likely result: middle class folks who prefer single family homes on decent lots are priced out of the market. This is only my take on it, of course, but as one local resident remarked at the meeting: the government’s description of TDRs and Comprehensive Plans never mention the possible, and very likely, negative consequences of such government meddling in the real estate market.
Oh, so they want to morph into the people’s republic of Winchester…
I have studied the County Plan and found it very disturbing that much of the content was lifted directly from the U.N. Agenda 21 documentation.
First, why is Frederick County plagiarizing another legal document published elsewhere?
Second, why is Frederick County concerned with ANY agenda brought forth by the United Nations?
This is America. We are The United States, not the United Nations. We follow the Constitution, not global mumbo-jumbo.