Zoning Department

WHEN THE county commissioners stripped the zoning department of enforcement authority last month, they sent another message that they consider zoning laws an impediment to their absolute authority. Transferring enforcement responsibility to the Department of Permits, Inspections and Review preserved the appearance of zoning enforcement. After all, it is a legal requirement. But in reducing the zoning office's power and making the zoning administrator a part-time position, the county commissioners have signaled that they want zoning operations downgraded.

Residents wanting to slow the county's growth rate should get good news and bad news at tonight's County Council work session.Their good news is that a majority of council members plan to reduce the number of residential units to be built in the decade beginning in 1996 by at least 17 percent.Their bad news is that Councilman Charles C. Feaga, R-5th, has abandoned his proposal to delete a mixed-use designation for an 820-acre site in Fulton from the 1990 general plan.The council had intended to discuss the proposal at tonight's work session, but Mr. Feaga asked that it be taken off the agenda.

A dispute that has simmered for more than two years in a scenic Annapolis community is coming to a head -- again.The source of contention -- a simple wrought-iron fence.Residents of Shearwater Condominium, a community of 94 apartments facing Spa Creek in Eastport, want to erect a barrier to ward off the outsiders they say take their parking spots and dump trash in their neighborhood. But their neighbors say the proposed 6-foot-high fence will divide the community and obstruct their view of the water.

Elvis is watching.His blue eyes on the wall outside Miss Bonnie's Elvis Shrine bar follow you through the East Baltimore neighborhood. The 15-by-12-foot mural of Elvis Presley's face is yet another tribute to "The King" at this curious Fleet Street saloon.But the mural has become part of an ongoing controversy between at least one neighbor of the bar and its owner, Lavonda Hunt, known to everyone as Miss Bonnie.She may have to appear before the city's zoning board to try to persuade its members to let her keep the mural, which was painted by Raphael Pantalone, an art teacher at Canton Middle School.

A story in Monday's Anne Arundel edition of the Sun incorrectly identified the party affiliation of Annapolis Mayor Alfred A. Hopkins. Hopkins is a Democrat.The Sun regrets the error.For more than a decade, through three administrations, Eileen P. Fogarty led an award-winning planning and zoning department through a minefield of issues that changed the face of Annapolis.She left last week to take a similar job in Santa Cruz., Calif., with praise from critics and supporters for her work over the past 13 years.

Four public meetings are to be held this month and next in public school auditoriums around the county to discuss properties that are part of Harford County's 2005-2006 Comprehensive Zoning Review. Black-and-white signs on each property indicate zoning changes sought by its owner. The meetings begin at 7 p.m. Planning and Zoning Department staff members will be available at 6 p.m. at each meeting to answer questions about proposed zoning changes. Residents who want to speak must sign up before 7 p.m. and will be limited to three minutes each.

An Annapolis city council member's proposal to allow nonprofit organizations to purchase homes or apartments set aside by developers for "work force housing" has spurred a debate over the best way to modify a new city program. Alderwoman Classie Gillis Hoyle has said the amendment would make it easier for residents to ultimately buy homes and would keep moderately priced dwelling units, or MPDUs, on the market for a longer time. "This is an opportunity for a teacher or police officer who might need some extra time to repair their credit or get money together," she said.

About 40 Joppa homeowners plan to oppose at a hearing tomorrow a Fallston company's proposal to start a tree-grinding and gravel surface mining operation on a 56-acre tract off Mountain Road near their homes.The citizens, calling themselves the Mountain Road Defenders Association, will be taking their concerns to the county zoning hearing examiner during a public hearing in County Council chambers tomorrow at 7 p.m.T.C. Simons Inc. of Fallston is seeking four special zoning exceptions to the county zoning code to allow the company to move ahead with its plan.

Community activist John W. Taylor is angling for a large crowd at tomorrow night's Zoning Board hearing on the comprehensive rezoning of western Howard County.Taylor, president of the slow-growth lobby Howard Countians for Responsible Growth, said his group distributed 2,000 fliers during the weekend, urging residents to attend the hearing.The fliers were unlike those his group passed around three days before a public meeting last June, Taylor said. The June fliers were credited with producing an angry crowd that practically hooted the Rural Land Use Study Commission off the stage for suggesting clustered housing alternatives to the current one-house-per-three-acre zoning inrural Howard County.

Howard County's citizen planners grappled yesterday with the thorny question of whether new commercial zones could be added in the west without chipping away at those communities' rural character. The local Planning Board, a panel of five volunteers, will recommend ways to comprehensively rezone the county - a process that started with professional planners late last year and will end with a County Council vote in December, or thereabouts. Yesterday, the Planning Board began discussing the many proposed changes, some of which came from landowners and some of which were suggested by the Department of Planning and Zoning.