The St. Mary’s County Planning Commission has a chicken or egg problem. Faced with a request by planning staff to come up with a plan to establish a citizen’s advisory committee for the Charlotte Hall/Golden Beach Master Plan, several commission members felt a decision was premature. They felt instead that some consensus needs to be developed about the thorny issue of public water and sewer in that area.
Public water and sewer in Charlotte Hall is highly controversial. At a recent county commissioners’ public forum the majority of the speakers spoke out against additional development in the area. See Bay Net story on that meeting: http://thebaynet.com/news/index.cfm/fa/viewstory/story_ID/33618
The opposition centers on additional development stressing the already failing roads and intersections, and forcing property owners to hook up to a central system when they have wells and septic systems that are working fine. Several speakers called for the area to be removed from its town center designation that has been in place for more than 25 years.
The opposite position was taken by several Charlotte Hall businesses that are being prevented from expanding. The commissioners recently removed one of the impediments by lessening Adequate Public Facilities requirements.
Planning Commission member Merl Evans has been vocal in the opinion that if Charlotte Hall is going to continue as a town center, with growth encouraged there, then there needs to be public water and sewer. So when Department of Land Use and Growth Management Deputy Director William Hunt suggested several alternatives for picking a citizen’s advisory committee to assist in developing a master plan for the area, Evans insisted it was premature.
The concern raised by Evans and several other members was that the planning process could be lengthy and time consuming and in the end the commissioners could balk at a key outcome of that process: the need for public water and sewer.
Hunt noted the public opinion division in Charlotte Hall about water and sewer. And he observed that there are three types of persons who have a vested interest in the outcome, residential property owners, commercial property owners and businesses. Thus outcome of a citizen’s advisory process could be slanted one way or the other depending on the makeup of the committee.
Planning Commission member Hal Willard was chairman of the citizen’s advisory committee that worked on the Callaway Master Plan. Willard said public water and sewer for Callaway
