Zoning Hearing

A top state environmental regulator is expected to testify on behalf of Harford County tomorrow when a zoning hearing continues on Spencer Sand & Gravel Inc.'s plans to resume surface mining next to its closed rubble landfill in Abingdon.The company is contesting a county zoning administrator's decision last fall to block a state permit that would have allowed the mining operation to expand.County Attorney Nancy Levy Giorno said she will call Edward Dexter, chief of the Solid Waste Compliance Division of the Maryland Department of the Environment, to testify about the history of the Abingdon company under state environmental regulation.

Michael Crable still recalls his first encounter with the twilight zone that is a Howard County land-use hearing. Crable had dropped by a county Board of Appeals meeting to hear about a proposed retirement complex on Route 144 in Marriottsville. Instead, he found himself wondering if he was in court and wishing he had brought a lawyer. After a consultant for the developer made his pitch, Crable, the only resident present, started to voice a concern about the project - only to be cut off in mid-sentence.

R ecently there has been outrage over the revelation that the pensions for retiring members of the Baltimore County Council, after serving in office for 20 years, are $54,000 per year, for life. Outrageous as this may be, when it comes to what is wrong with Baltimore County government, it is just the tip of the iceberg. There is great excitement over the possibility that several Baltimore County Council seats may be changing hands in this year's election. Thinking beyond the pensions issue, it is important now to frame the top issues of governance that citizens should be focused on before next year's elections.

Howard County Zoning Board hearings on Stewart J. Greenebaum's controversial plan to convert a turkey farm in Fulton into a community of homes and office buildings likely will continue well into the early part of next year.Last night marked the 10th hearing before the Zoning Board since it took up the case last month. Three of the developer's witnesses have testified, with others expected to be called to testify in support of the plan in the next few months.Greenebaum blames area residents -- many of whom remain opposed to his plans to develop the 507-acre farm -- for dragging out the hearings with extensive questioning of his expert witnesses.

The Howard County Zoning Board has agreed to allow a local cable channel to televise several of the hearings that start tonight on a proposal for a controversial Columbia-style village on a 522-acre site in North Laurel.The five-member board, which consists of the County Council, approved the request last week at the behest of the Howard County Citizens Association, which has been following the proposal since it was announced last year. It's the first time since 1994 that the board has approved televised hearings.

Claiming they were kept in the dark about a residential drug treatment center's expansion plans, residents of a Brooklyn Park neighborhood are launching an 11th-hour effort to block the project. Damascus House, a 17-bed center in the 4200 block of Ritchie Highway, is planning to buy a property nearly in its back yard on Edison Street, expand and renovate an existing house there into a 15-bed facility, and build a pair of four-bedroom transitional homes on adjacent lots. Damascus House's contract to purchase the property a few streets south of the Baltimore city line is contingent on rectifying a zoning anomaly: The home on the lot it wants to buy is split almost down the middle between residential and commercial zoning.

When Phyllis B. Brotman heard last fall that the Rev. Thomas Cobb had bought a brick, four-bedroom house on McDonogh Road in Owings Mills and planned to build a church on the surrounding property, she paid him a visit. Brotman's message was simple. First, the president of the McDonogh-Field Association wanted to welcome Cobb and his family to the area. Next, she told him that if the neighborhood association had its way, his church would never get built. Brotman, who has lived in the area for 42 years, called the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church's plans to build a 300-seat sanctuary, day-care center and Christian school on 7.8 acres in the Lyon Acres development "an invasion of privacy."

The paint is barely dry on Trinity House, East Towson's newest subsidized apartment complex for seniors -- and the waiting list is already up to 101.That's typical for housing projects for the elderly in Baltimore County, where 20 percent of the county's roughly 700,000 people are 60 or older. Their ranks are projected to top 200,000 in 20 years.Today, the county planning board will hold a public hearing on a proposed change to the zoning laws that could help ease that demand. The change would make it easier to build apartments for the elderly in residential neighborhoods.