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FIVE HOURS after arriving at Wednesday night's meeting of the Spotsylvania County Planning Commission and taking her usual seat in the second row, Agnes McGee, a retired farmer in her 80s, stood and slowly made her way toward the exit in the still-crowded room.
A public hearing continued to crackle like a brush fire, so I figured Agnes was going home to feed her dogs. It was a half-hour before midnight.
When Agnes got to the door she paused, looked up at the wall and carefully straightened the photograph of Supervisor T.C. Waddy. Apparently someone in the standing-room-only crowd had pushed up against it, causing it to tilt to the left. She then departed.
That 8- by 10-inch picture wasn't all that was askew that night.
From the outset, the situation was close to intolerable. The room was so warm, stuffy and crowded that I felt like I was on a convention-hall elevator with too many people, sitting at a basketball game in some cracker-box gymnasium in hoops-crazy Kentucky or riding in the back of a canvas-covered "deuce-and-a-half" with too many other soldiers.
Claustrophobia sparked such metaphoric images in my numb little brain as I sat through the circus of a hearing held by the commission.
At issue was the proposed Town of Chancellorsville, a 789-acre development so controversial that 300 people turned out and tried to squeeze into a room designed for a maximum of 195. People spilled out into the halls and adjacent rooms, where TV monitors showed the proceedings.
The commission had known there would be a crowd, but chose not to meet in a school auditorium. That was the night's first act of inconsiderateness.
I arrived at 6:30 p.m. so I would be sure to get a seat.
The meeting began at 7:30.
The public hearing started at 8:30.
Proponents were allowed to speak for the ensuing two hours. Most then went home to sleep.
Opponents--including Civil War battlefield preservationists and citizens worried about sprawl--complained that they had to go last. They asked the panel to stagger the speakers for and against the proposal; the commission opted to keep its pro/con policy intact.
It was 10:30 before opponents got their turn. The audience's mood had turned sour, testy. The first opponent allowed to speak glared at the commissioners and said, "If you are trying to discourage public participation, I think you have succeeded."
I believe those were her exact words. I might have them slightly wrong because I was on the way to the men's room and to call my wife to tell her not to expect me home until early Thursday.
She was not surprised. In the mid-1980s, when I was the reporter on the Spotsylvania County beat, I seldom got home before 2 a.m. on meeting nights. A dozen or so developments would routinely be approved, and then a certain elected official would stand in the parking lot for two hours and tell me that my reporting was too cynical and that a wonderful and prosperous future was dawning for the county.
On Wednesday night, hardly able to move my feet or reach into my pocket for a fresh tape for my recorder, my low-on-blood-flow brain flashed back to those long-ago nights in the same meeting room, nights when public officials never saw a proposed development they did not like or a reporter they could stomach.
Back then, about 299 fewer people attended meetings. Agnes McGee was sometimes the only citizen in the audience.
I was yanked back into the present at one point by speaker Fred Kamieniak, who said, "I didn't know all the blood lost in our county [during the Civil War] was shed for neo-traditional planning and development."
The opponents applauded. As I said, the proponents were at home asleep by then.
I scanned the blank faces of the seven members of the Planning Commission. Each man seemed attentive, engaged, open to new ideas and suggestions.
Numerous speakers pleaded for the commission not to vote until they had given more scrutiny to the effects the development could have on water supply, traffic, school enrollments and adjacent Civil War battlegrounds.
When the hearing dragged to a merciful end around 12:30, one member of the panel, Hugh E. Montgomery Jr., said he would like the county's planning staff to report back on several issues so the commission could make a more informed decision.
That was the extent of the discussion. The chairman, Wayne Ervan, asked for a motion to adjourn. Suddenly, a motion was made, instead, to recommend that the Board of Supervisors approve the project. With no discussion, the motion passed on a 5-2 vote.
The dissenting votes were cast by Montgomery and Ervan.
It was 12:40 a.m. Not many viewers in the countywide TV audience saw that quick little vote on a project that is one of the biggest and most controversial the county has ever faced.
No vote had been expected; the commission seldom votes on a case the same night as the public hearing.
The live audience emitted a chorus of hisses, boos and utterances of frustration.
People felt the hearing had been a sham, that the majority of the commissioners had done what they came to do.
People felt like they had wasted five or six hours.
They had.
So had I.
I did learn one thing: The deeply rooted arrogance of power in Spotsylvania still flowers like skunk cabbage.
LARRY EVANS can be reached at The Free Lance-Star, 616 Amelia St., Fredericksburg, Va. 22401; by fax at 373-8455; by phone at 374-5409; or by e-mail at levans@freelancestar.com.