The chance to confront Howard County Executive Ken Ulman face-to-face with their festering complaints brought a standing room-crowd of more than 200 people last week to a public forum at Glenwood Community Center in western Howard County.
"Isn't it fun being county exe cutive?" Hugh Flaherty asked to laughter as he rose to speak about one of the two issues that brought the majority of the crowd out Thursday night - a proposed used-car lot in rural Daisy, in far western Howard County. The other major topic was the failed septic system at the Villas at Cattail Creek, where construction is soon to begin on a new system.
"I enjoy this," Ulman replied to Flaherty, adding that he wants everyone to understand that "people 100 percent happy don't come to this."
The crowd was so big that Ulman asked his large corps of department heads and technical advisers to give up their seats to residents when the session began.
"If I gotta stand, you gotta stand," he said jokingly.
"I think it's important that I come out and demonstrate open, transparent government," he said at the outset.
He asked people who came for the used car lot and septic issues to rise as a group, showing that nearly everyone there came for one or the other.
Residents near Daisy, a rural crossroads where corner lots have been zoned since 1954, are vehemently opposed to a used-car business planning to open there.
Despite the zoning, residents say traffic on the twisting, two-lane roads in the area would become more dangerous, and their quality of life would be damaged by the lot.
"I fear for children and recreational users [of the roads]. Save the county from such blight," Wally Carson of Woodbine said.
Paul Eden, a Cattail resident, complained that residents' condominium fees could more than triple to pay for the new septic system once it is completed. Since western Howard has no public water or sewers, developers installed a community septic system to enable them to build townhouses. The system has never worked and trucks come as many as five times a day to pump and remove the effluent.
The County Council is ready to pass new regulations over such systems to prevent a recurrence, and the Ulman administration plans to amend the bill to cover Cattail Creek's new system. County government had no legal authority over the system until General Assembly passage this year of enabling legislation sponsored by Del. Warren E. Miller.
