Adequate Public

The Harford County Council will hold a hearing Tuesday night on a bill seeking a 90-day moratorium on the construction of housing for the elderly. The panel wants to determine whether developers are using the housing designation to circumvent a law limiting residential growth in overcrowded school districts. "There has been a flurry of activity in the development of housing for the elderly in recent months," said Councilman Robert G. Cassilly, a Republican representing the Bel Air area.

Mount Airy Town Council members have asked the local planning commission to evaluate its limit on the number of building permits issued each year as a way of controlling future growth in the town that straddles Frederick and Carroll counties. Officials asked the commission members to report back by December. The request follows the council's approval in April of a master plan and a revised adequate public facilities ordinance. The revised ordinance requires that new developments not overburden services such as schools, water, sewers, roads, and fire and police coverage.

Harford Executive James M. Harkins said he will hold off on plans for a new middle and high school complex near Bel Air after the County Council's passage of a bill last week to limit homebuilding in crowded school districts. "I want to do Patterson Mill," Harkins said of the proposed $42.6 million facility, which is designed to eliminate much of the county's problem with crowded classrooms. "We need to do that school," he said, "but I have a fiduciary responsibility that I take seriously."

The County Council has already passed the optimum bill needed to address the hot-button issues of residential growth and school crowding, according to Harford officials. County Treasurer John Scotten Jr. said Wednesday that the county could afford to pay for the Patterson Mill middle and high school complex if there is no change in the adequate public facilities laws. Scotten's statement came after a council work session that included officials from the Department of Planning and Zoning and the school system.

A bill to be introduced Tuesday by County Councilman Dion F. Guthrie to address the problem of crowded schools would shut down the bulk of the southern half of Harford County to new housing development, according to county officials. The move to tighten the county's adequate public facilities laws as they relate to school enrollment is Guthrie's second effort in as many years. Last year he introduced similar legislation that was designed to help schools that were serving 15 percent to 20 percent more students than they were designed to handle.

Harford County lawmakers have rejected a series of recommendations from a task force that would have put more muscle into a bill designed to ease the crowding in public schools by changing the adequate public facilities laws to restrict new housing development. "I can't believe it. They voted against every single amendment made by the task force at its last meeting," Councilman Dion F. Guthrie said after the County Council meeting Tuesday night. "They turned their backs on the schoolchildren of the county, the teachers and the parents," said Guthrie, who represents Edgewood and Joppatowne.

The majority of the members of a task force looking at changing the county's adequate public facilities law to ease crowding in public schools rejected a suggestion that they end their work. Frank F. Hertsch, who represents the homebuilding industry, made a motion to adjourn the nine-member commission at its meeting Thursday evening. Peter Gutwald, manager of the comprehensive planning division of the Department of Planning and Zoning, seconded it. However, the task force voted to continue.

The way William Gmeinwieser Sr. sees it, the dream business he made a reality - building houses, a few a year - is in danger of being destroyed by a vote. The Howard County Council is contemplating eliminating an exemption that lets people cut one home lot off a piece of land without being held up by crowded schools or building caps. All other residential developments fall under the local growth-control law, the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance. Gmeinwieser says small builders can't afford to pay interest on a loan for the several years or more it could take to get a building allocation and a less-cramped local school.

The Howard County committee that spent months contemplating revisions to an ordinance limiting development to relieve school crowding has proposed just one substantive change, and some County Council members say it does little to address the law's basic flaws. County Executive James N. Robey has asked the standing advisory group - made up of county leaders, citizens, school representatives and business people - to reassemble next winter to study the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance.