http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/14/AR2007031402817.html

Replacing vehicle fleets with hybrid cars and trucks.


· Putting up more environment-friendly buildings.


· Powering homes with renewable energy.


· Reducing paper use and increasing recycling.


· Planting trees

Wow what a bunch of hippy stuff! lol

There are reasons I do NOT belong to the Sierra Club and do NOT live in Seattle.

Frankly, I am disgusted that Fairfax County HAS bought Hybrid cars for ~ the past decade from toyota, as OUR local Govt. should be supporting OUR National economy, period.

I really try to stay away from dicussions on this fringe however, there are many folks in this county that are probably not even aware of this.

Ohh, and if we as a county were really concerned over trees, why does it seem we allow developers to rip them down at will? Maybe I am off subject now...

ffxn8v Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ohh, and if we as a county were really concerned
> over trees, why does it seem we allow developers
> to rip them down at will? Maybe I am off subject
> now...

No, that's a brilliant example. Here in Herndon they've recently ripped out almost all the wooded areas around spring street to build new McMansions, condos and retail. It's long been a standing joke that whenever someone spots an unmolested area in town they comment "look a tree, better tear it down and build a dozen townhouses!"

Posted by: ffxn8v

"Frankly, I am disgusted that Fairfax County HAS bought Hybrid cars for ~ the past decade from toyota, as OUR local Govt. should be supporting OUR National economy, period."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Perhaps you should tell Ford, GM etc... to stop moving their assembly plants to Mexico\Overseas and laying off American workers. There's a reason Toyota's are now raced in redneck NASCAR.

Toyota is hiring American workers, not laying them off and building more plants in America.

Toyota is proud to be building a new $800 million vehicle assembly plant in San Antonio, Texas. This new plant will be Toyota's sixth North American assembly plant. As the fourth-largest automaker in America, Toyota is committed to expanding our U.S. manufacturing operations, and we're thrilled to add San Antonio to the worldwide family of communities where quality Toyota products are built using many U.S. parts. The site will produce 150,000 Tundra full size trucks. The start of production will be in 2006. The new facility will employ approximately 2000 people including salaried and hourly positions.

Some of those cars or their component parts are made in Virginia as well as other local states. I'm not sure how local you want your support. I'd rather have it going to a Japanese company employing people here than an American company making cars in Honduras. I don't care about the company as much as I care about the workers.

Oh and on the issue of controlling development. This is a Dillon Rule state. If a power is not expressly granted to a county government the power is reserve to the state. The most amazing example of this was a couple of years ago when the county wanted to change the color of the tops of its buses from yellow to white for visability purposes. The county had to get permission from the house of delgates becasue bus color determination was not a power expressly granted to the county by the constitution. As such, it required the state to rule. So if you look back at the history of the County you'll see attempt after attempt to control development only to be blocked by the supreme court. At one point the county declined to hook up sewage systems to neighborhoods which it didn't approve because it was overloading the utility systems. The supreme court ordered the county to build new facilities and to connect the developments because it did not have the power to say no. Also the county doesn't own the roads so it can not control what roads are built. All roads belong to richmond, except for those in Heinricho and Arlington counties. Developers can build their own roads on property and then have them become property of the state thereby going around the county completly. So if you have a problem with the county doing what it can, which is to set criteria for what it buys (trucks and buildings ect.) then your painfully ignorant of the state in which you live. Your probably another Californian who moved here and assumes that every state is just like California and is too busy or lazy to learn.

Champion Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
...So if
> you have a problem with the county doing what it
> can, which is to set criteria for what it buys
> (trucks and buildings ect.) then your painfully
> ignorant of the state in which you live. Your
> probably another Californian who moved here and
> assumes that every state is just like California
> and is too busy or lazy to learn.

____________________________________________________________

Yeah, with a user name like "ffxn8v," that would certainly indicate California...

Also, Richmond does NOT tell or dictate what kind of vehicles Fairfax County buys, period.

Got any more ASSumptions?

Indeed it does not. I was indicating that purchase choice is one of the few power's the county does have.

As vague as it is, wikipedia does have its uses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forrest_Dillon

.