Lee County has a new long-range plan, and its own population table points down. The 2025 Comprehensive Plan, which the Board of Supervisors approved 5 to 0 on April 21, projects 18,490 residents by 2030. The 2020 census counted 22,173.
A comprehensive plan does not rezone land or set a budget. County Administrator Clint Carter told the board in April that it is “general in nature” and, in essence, a wish list of what officials hope would be best for the county. It still matters. State law requires every locality to keep one and review it at least every five years, and the plan is meant to guide land-use decisions by public officials and private developers.
The Lee Daily Register read the 83-page plan posted on the county’s zoning page and the board minutes that track its path to approval.
A table and a paragraph that disagree
The population section opens with a history: a peak of 38,296 people in 1940, then decades of loss as coal mining mechanized. The table that follows runs through the 2020 census. It then adds the 2030 projection of 18,490, credited to the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia.
The paragraph above that table says something else. “Though future population projections show an increase in the population estimates for Lee County, these increases are very minimal,” it reads. The newest figure in that paragraph is a 2016 Census Bureau estimate.
The plan’s projection is also not the newest one. The Cooper Center published updated projections in July 2025. Its current figures put Lee County at about 19,900 people in 2030, 16,400 in 2040 and 15,600 in 2050.
Other tables mix old and new data. The age table uses 2023 survey estimates, while the population density table uses 2010 census figures and the commuting tables cite 2016 estimates. The plan also notes that the county’s population total includes about 1,450 inmates at the U.S. Penitentiary in Lee County.
The west end and its schools
Much of the plan’s hope rests on western Lee County. It calls development there “a priority for the County” and names the reasons:
- Lincoln Memorial University’s veterinary teaching centers, which the plan says create a need for housing so more students and staff can live in Lee County rather than commute from neighboring states
- Constitutional Oaks Industrial Park near Rose Hill, which it calls the county’s largest industrial park
- The planned public sewer project for western Lee County
The education section ties that growth to the schools. It counts 2,702 students enrolled for 2025-26 and notes “recent discussions of another possible consolidation of schools.” If the west end grows and enrollment rises, the plan says, it would become “financially feasible to keep each of the schools in the Western End of the county open.” Among its education policies, the plan also lists investigating, with the School Board, “the cost savings and feasibility of consolidating smaller schools.”
Board Chairman Mike Kidwell said in April that the plan does not decide school closings. That authority belongs to the School Board, not the supervisors, he said, according to the April 21 minutes.
What changed on the land use map
The plan’s future land use maps do not rezone any property. In February, Carter told the board that the only difference in those maps was a proposed Village Commercial area along the corridors of the four-lane highways. The planning commission had discussed adding more industrial land, he said, but decided not to extend the M-1 and M-2 districts, according to the February 17 minutes.
The plan describes Village Commercial as small, well-defined areas mixing homes, light commercial use and community services such as churches. It is meant to encourage compact development and discourage strip development, and most non-residential uses there need a special use permit or planning commission approval.
The transportation section changed too. At the March hearing, Carter said a Virginia Department of Transportation reviewer had recommended removing language about bypasses of Pennington Gap and Jonesville.
Tabled once, then approved
The plan went through the planning commission and then to the board’s public hearing on March 17. Carter said the full plan had not been updated since 2020. He had hoped to finish the update by the end of 2025, he said, but weather, scheduling conflicts and a lack of quorum pushed it into this year.
Debbie Artrip of Keokee asked the board not to sign it. She called it a “School Board Christmas list,” said its numbers were inaccurate and said it left out Keokee Lake and the trout stream that draw visitors to Keokee. The board voted 5 to 0 to table the plan, according to the March 17 minutes.
By April, Carter said, the tourism and recreation section had been updated to include Keokee Lake and the streams the state stocks with trout. The posted plan now describes Lake Keokee’s fishing and the rainbow trout the state stocks in the North Fork of the Powell River and in Martins, Indian and Hardy creeks. Artrip asked for another public hearing. The board instead approved the plan as presented, with all five supervisors voting yes.
The plan can be amended later, after public hearings before the planning commission and the board. Before the vote, Carter told the board that if it wants another update within the next year or so, it can direct the planning commission to start one.