Faced with unrelenting pressure from the state and acknowledging that their land preservation programs have not succeeded as hoped, officials have proposed significant changes to further inhibit development in western Howard County.
The proposals were immediately greeted with skepticism and opposition from the development community, assuring a heated debate that will engulf planning officials and the County Council at a time when they already are targets of criticism over land-use policies.
Marsha L. McLaughlin, director of the Department of Planning and Zoning, which drafted the proposed changes, said they would protect the agricultural economy and enhance the county's ability to shield land from development.
The key changes would:
Reduce over three years to 150 from 250 the number of housing units permitted on land zoned rural conservation (RC), which includes most of western Howard County and is the primary focus of the county's preservation efforts.
Restrict cluster subdivisions in the RC district to one unit per 10 acres from one unit per 4.25 acres.
Prohibit the selling of density, or building rights, within the RC district.
The impetus for the proposals, McLaughlin said, has been insistence from the state to be more aggressive in preserving from development land in the county's western region.
"We have struggled for five or more years about the certificaiton of the agricultural preservation program," McLaughlin told a group of homebuilders, attorneys specializing in land use and the farming community at a meeting Wednesday. "We have resisted their pushes to turn us into Montgomery County."
But, she said, the county has until next spring to adopt more restrictive regulations or face removal from Maryland's agricultural preservation program.
The county, McLaughlin said, receives about $300,000 - and sometimes more - annually from the state for participation in the program.
But, she said, "This isn't about money. ... It's about the viability of the farmland."
An analysis revealed that farmland is being developed with about the same density as are properties zoned rural residential (RR), where the county has tried to concentrate most of the homebuilding in the west, said Elmina J. Hilsenrath, division chief of Environmental and Community Planning.
"We never envisioned that happening," Hilsenrath said after the meeting.
