Pathways Meeting Creates Emotional Community Reaction
June 22, 2009
Eric Villard

Tempers flared Monday evening as over 900 Carroll County citizens filled Century High School’s auditorium for an open forum on the draft form of the county’s comprehensive plan.

Being the second of three planned forums on the plan, the next being held June 23 at North Carroll High School, the turnout dwarfed the previous meeting at Francis Scott Key, which saw only about 80 attendees.

Concerned citizens, coy commissioners

The Carroll County Planning Commission remained silent for the majority of the night as a multitude of concerned residents came up to the microphones to speak. Even when asked questions directly by the audience members the commission did not respond except with an occasional shake of the head.

So many wanted to speak that Steve Horn, the commission’s director, limited each person to a three-minute time limit. Even with that in place, the meeting lasted well over its original 9 p.m. end time.

Horn started the event out with a disclaimer, seeming in an effort to try and quell the raucous crowd – the plan, as it currently stood, was a draft. Commission member Dave Brauning drilled the point in further. “I can’t emphasize enough that this is a draft,” he said plainly.

While the plan concerns all of Carroll County, the focus of Monday’s meeting was clearly on proposed developments in the Mt. Airy and Taylorsville area – the most controversial being the rezoning of about 1,700 acres near Taylorsville and a new 600-acre business park near Mt. Airy.

Taylorsville

The Pathways document calls for rezoning the Taylorsville acreage into office park and employment. Wayne Ehrensberger, a Mt. Airy resident, saw several problems with these plans. For one, he said Taylorsville lacks the necessary infrastructure to support such changes. Since the town relies on wells and septic systems it would be hard pressed to provide water and sewer for the new development. In addition to this, Ehrensberger stated that the Taylorsville area would not be able to support the increased traffic that such rezoning would bring without road improvements – improvements that as of yet are not planned.

“This major problem would create a traffic boondoggle if the area is transformed into an ‘employment center’,” Ehrensberger explained.

Ehrensberger also pointed out the contradictory nature of the Pathways document. While the plan calls for expansion of current growth centers, he explained that Taylorsville was far from such a center, being a predominately rural location. “Taylorsville is certainly not a growth center by any stretch of the imagination,” he stated.

In addition to this Ehrensberger said rezoning the area would label all current properties as non-conforming. This would mean no alterations could be made without an exemption from the county.

As he explained, “This would place the properties in an indefinite limbo, not only devaluing the properties, but making it virtually impossible to sell to anyone other than a developer.”

Mt. Airy

Residents brought up various reasons why they thought the 600-acre Mt. Airy business park would be a bad idea.. It seemed none of the audience was too keen to losing open land for increased business, and most did not see the point of more business.

“I do not want this to become the next Baltimore County or Howard County,” said Robert Collins, an affected resident – explaining later that he thought the business park would lead to more people moving in, which would lead increased crime.

Other residents were more controversial with their comments. Suzanne Connole was slightly more blunt with her opinion of the new business park. “It sounds great… but Communism sounded great too.” Her statement drew a thunderous applause from the audience.

Toning it down, she continued. “You have to consider that not everyone wants to live across the street from their jobs.”

Perhaps the most conclusive evidence of resident discontent throughout the night came when John Hamilton, another speaker, asked, “Is there anyone here in favor of this plan?” The answer, unsurprisingly, was a resounding “No.”

Of interest to Eldersburg?

While the focus was on one of Eldersburg’s neighbors, there was an interesting proposal put forth by multiple audience members throughout the night. Instead of a new business park in the Taylorsville / Mt. Airy area, why not place it near to the Springfield Hospital / Warfield complex near Sykesville? The argument was that these areas already had the infrastructure to support such new development and were correctly zoned to begin with, though the commission did not comment one way or the other about this.

Links:

Carroll County Comprehensive Plan (Pathways)
http://www.carrollpathways.org/

Other news coverage of the event (Carroll County Times)
http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/articles/2009/06/16/news/local_news/
2_carroll_rezoning_616.txt

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