Public Facilities

County residents will get their first chance this week to express their views on a draft proposal that would give the county's planning and zoning director the power to deny approval for a development if public facilities cannot support the growth.The County Council will conduct a public forum on the proposal at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 18 at Southampton Middle School in Bel Air. Public comment on the proposal is encouraged at the forum.The forum is not considered a public hearing because the draft law has not been formally introduced as legislation.

There's a P3 in your future. Maryland is poised to join 34 states and key federal agencies in transforming the way government works. The new mantra, "P3," is shorthand for public-private partnerships. Maryland's P3 legislation, championed by Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, enables state agencies to engage business in planning, financing, building and operating public projects, from roads and rail to schools and other infrastructure. These could offset up to 10 percent of the state's capital budget, or $300 million annually, and create thousands of jobs.

Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer is seeking to lift the building delay enacted last fall by the city council and to put off a public facilities bill - moves she said would streamline the planning process but that opponents say will thwart efforts to control growth. The adequate public facilities ordinance (APFO) would require that adequate fire, police, water and road support be in place before major new developments could move forward. The current development delay halted new projects until the legislation is put in place.

A few words on the death of Elwin Wilson. He passed last week in a South Carolina hospital at age 76. Wilson had endured heart and lung problems and had suffered a recent bout with the flu. There is little reason you would know his name, but as a young man, Wilson made a virtual career out of hatefulness. He was a Klan supporter who burned crosses, hanged a black doll in a noose, once flung a jack handle at an African-American boy. In 1961, he was among a group of men who attacked a busload of Freedom Riders at a station in Rock Hill, S.C. In none of those things was he unique, so no, his name should ring no bells.

THE CARROLL COUNTY Commissioners have laid the foundation for controlled growth in the county over the next six years, finally enacting the Concurrency Management Ordinance.The long-debated measure, rejected in nearly identical form by the commissioners just last month, aims to link residential housing growth with available public utilities and services.Some 6,000 building lots would be approved over the next six years, if the lots meet adequate public facilities standards.The intent of the new law is quite reasonable: to set minimum requirements for schools, roads, sewer and water, and public safety services in order to adequately serve new houses and developments.

Baltimore County wants to sell three government properties to developers to raise money for air conditioning and better technology at schools in Dundalk, Randallstown and Towson. County Executive Kevin Kamenetz is expected to announce a plan Tuesday to put the public facilities up for bid and find better spots for the government services located there. The buildings are the North Point Government Center on Wise Avenue in Dundalk, the Towson fire station on York Road, and the Randallstown police substation on Liberty Road.

When the Harford County Council meets Tuesday, members will debate at least a half-dozen proposed changes to a bill to ease crowding of public schools by changing the adequate public facilities laws. Four of the recommendations come from a nine-member task force that has been working since March to find ways to prevent schools from exceeding their designed capacities. The task force ended its work abruptly Thursday evening as tempers flared and shouting erupted across the table. Frank F. Hertsch, who represents the homebuilding industry, became upset when no other member of the panel seconded his motion that would have resulted in the redistricting of students.

A panel of Howard County education leaders, developers, activists and public officials met last night to discuss ways to improve the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO), a widely criticized law that tries to curb school crowding by slowing housing development. "I don't even really know if APFO has ever worked," said school board member Courtney Watson. "We have so many schools that are overcrowded." APFO, among other things, restricts construction for up to four years in areas where schools are projected to be 15 percent or more over capacity three years in the future.

There's a P3 in your future. Maryland is poised to join 34 states and key federal agencies in transforming the way government works. The new mantra, "P3," is shorthand for public-private partnerships. Maryland's P3 legislation, championed by Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, enables state agencies to engage business in planning, financing, building and operating public projects, from roads and rail to schools and other infrastructure. These could offset up to 10 percent of the state's capital budget, or $300 million annually, and create thousands of jobs.

A national organization dedicated to helping people with "shy bladder syndrome" -- a phobia known clinically as paruresis -- will hold a three-day workshop in Baltimore next week. The event will be a chance for sufferers to discuss and, perhaps, to overcome their fear of using public facilities. It's a phobia that causes some people to stay away from concerts, ballgames or other public events and even to avoid jobs in office buildings and other places that afford little privacy. The meeting, July 18-20, will be based at the student union of the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

At the Carroll County Senate Delegation's public hearing last week at the County Office Building in Westminster, state Sen. Joseph Getty, a Republican who represents District 5, opened the session expressing disappointment that the County House Delegation had decided to hold its own separate hearing the following day. "I invited the House Delegation to participate, (but) they chose to meet on Saturday (Jan. 19)," said Getty, the outgoing delegation chairman who recently handed over the chairmanship to state Sen. David Brinkley, a Republican who represents District 4. "I think that it's a disservice to the public to have to come out to two meetings," he said.

Baltimore County wants to sell three government properties to developers to raise money for air conditioning and better technology at schools in Dundalk, Randallstown and Towson. County Executive Kevin Kamenetz is expected to announce a plan Tuesday to put the public facilities up for bid and find better spots for the government services located there. The buildings are the North Point Government Center on Wise Avenue in Dundalk, the Towson fire station on York Road, and the Randallstown police substation on Liberty Road.

Hearing aids have improved the quality of many people's lives, but most users have learned they are less than ideal in noisy environments. Going to the airport, store or doctor's office can be frustrating, said Dr. Frank R. Lin, a Johns Hopkins Hospital otologist and epidemiologist. For the hospital clinic, the Listening Center, he sought a special system that can cut out audio clutter and transmit a speaker's voice directly to a person's hearing aid or cochlear implant. In addition to helping the estimated 5,000 patients who pass through the clinic each year, he's hoping to spark interest from other hospitals and public facilities in such a system, called a hearing loop, for their buildings.

The Howard County school board, in the second vote this month, approved a measure that would determine which school communities are designated as capable of absorbing development. The panel voted to approve a chart that school officials craft to denote areas ripe for development under the county's Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance. According to APFO guidelines, school capacity must be deemed adequate before approve is given to residential projects, and the pace of such development must match elementary and middle school capacity.

The East Baltimore Development Inc. community will gain a prestigious new occupant - and about 250 jobs - when the state of Maryland builds a $180 million Public Health Laboratory there, officials said. Maryland's Board of Public Works this week approved $6.45 million in state funds to begin designing a 200,000-square-foot laboratory building to house state employees who now work at 201 W. Preston St., part of the State Office Complex in Baltimore. The building will be one of the next major projects to get under way on the East Baltimore property, an 88-acre tract north of the Johns Hopkins medical campus that is being developed as a $1.8 billion mixed-use community with housing, shops, offices, life science facilities, a school and a rail station.

Amanda Koss has grown accustomed to almost daily phone calls from people seeking a public swimming pool in Harford County. They ask where they can go if they just want to swim outdoors for the day with their family. She tells them Pennsylvania. "At least three or four times a week, more when it's really hot outside, people call me looking for public swimming pools," said Koss, who has managed the private North Harford Swim Club in Jarrettsville the past three years. "I tell them the closest one that I know is Shanbergers Pool in Fawn Grove."

A proposed law that would give the county's planning and zoning director the power to deny approval for a development if public facilities couldn't support the growth was unveiled at a County Council work session Thursday.The so-called adequate public facilities proposal was made by the seven-member county Services Study Commission, which has been examining the issue for about two years.After the two-hour work session, council members said it could be another year of public hearings and revisions to the proposal before the county decides what the law would mandate.

To discourage farmers from selling land to developers, county planners recommend that the county start its own program to buy developmentrights on agricultural land.That was one of several ideas planners outlined as they explained a rural plan to the County Council in aspecial presentation Tuesday.Michael Paone, an agricultural planner in the county Planning andZoning Department, said the county might consider paying owners of agricultural land with bonds instead of cash. Under such a bond-payment arrangement, landowners would be entitled to receive tax-exempt interest payments for 30 years -- the life of the bond.

NEAVITT -- If this unincorporated Eastern Shore village has a mayor, it is Joe Jones. That's him, flashing by in a green-and-yellow blur aboard an all-terrain vehicle on the main drag - the only drag - as if important civic business were at stake. Jones, 79, knows just about everybody here on this mile-long clump of marsh bordered by Harris, Balls and Broad creeks, a few miles south and a world away from the tourist spots of St. Michaels. There's not much need for a formal census in a place this size.

There was consensus among County Council members last week that Harford's rural landscape is threatened, that its schools are crowded and that current policies have failed. How that would translate into votes on a bill tightening the link between elementary school capacity and new development, however, was tough to predict. The bill revised the county's adequate public facilities ordinance, bringing the county's criteria for determining school capacity in line with the state standard.