Leonardtown Mayor Dan Burris
Leonardtown, MD — St. Mary’s County Planning Commission member Susan McNeill called it “a multi-headed hydra” — a small fresh water animal that appears not to age. She was referring to the issue of whether to place the new Leonardtown Library, now that the county commissioners have decided to build new instead of renovating the existing facility.
Indeed the issue does have many heads:
• Two sites have been suggested: the county-owned Hayden Farm property where a new elementary school is being built or a donated site in downtown Leonardtown.
• The issue is further complicated by a discussion about possibly co-locating the new library with a new senior center to replace the Garvey Center.
• The Hayden Farm site decision is complicated by the question of whether the property is large enough to accommodate the library, senior center, a park and a proposed middle school.
• And that is muddied by a suggestion to locate the new senior center on property next to Cedar Lane Apartments.
• And then there’s the issue of whether the proposed site in downtown Leonardtown is large enough.
All of those issues swirled around discussions at three meetings on Monday, March 9x–a county commissioners’ budget work session, a town council meeting, and a county planning commission meeting to discuss the county’s Capital Improvement Plan.
But it was the town council meeting that really supplied the drama. At the other two meetings it was assumed that the council was in agreement in preferring the downtown location. That turns out not to be the case, and in fact there is a deep fissure among council members on the issue.
At the heart of some council members’ disagreement was a Feb. 23 letter sent on Commissioners of Leonardtown letterhead by Mayor Dan Burris to the county commissioners. In the letter Burris enumerated a number of reasons why the library should be located on a site on Lawrence Avenue across from Mattingley-Gardiner Funeral Home and reasons why the Hayden Farm property is less acceptable.
It was reported at the March 9 town meeting by Councilman Tom Combs that the letter caused a “personal and inflammatory” back and forth at a special March 4 workshop meeting. Combs said he agreed with the recitation of the facts by the mayor but a letter from the entire board should be signed by all members.
Councilwoman Leslie Roberts was more direct. She said the letter written on town letterhead must lead people to believe there was a vote and consensus, which hadn’t happened. She supports locating the library at the Hayden Farm. She said putting the library there allowed the much-needed project to proceed without the delay that would happen if a new site enters into the picture. She said the council had to not only consider what was best for the town, but the greater good.
Councilman Roger Mattingly identified himself as the one who got into it with Mayor Burris at the workshop session, He said what particularly upset him was the letter being sent on letterhead containing his name. “It should be on the Hayden Farm,” he asserted, noting the two new developments with 600 homes within walking distance of that site He also observed that most patrons of the library come from the Hollywood and California areas, with easier access to that site.
Councilman Jay Mattingly, who works for the county, said he also supported the Hayden Farm location.
Councilman Hayden Hammett raised the question about whether there was enough room on the Hayden Farm for everything proposed there. He said if that wasn’t the case then it was right for the town to step up and offer an alternative.
Combs said he felt the mayor was within his rights to send the letter and asked for cooler heads to prevail. The mayor, meanwhile, defended sending the letter and offered council members to expand on anything he said. Roberts said the letter only told one side of the story and not the benefits of the Hayden Farm site.
Burris said the land owner of the Lawrence Avenue property has said that he would provide whatever was needed to locate the library and perhaps a senior center there and not just the three acres often reported in the discussions. “I feel this is a win/win for the citizens of the county not have to fund a new school site,” Burris said.
But what will fit where still remains an undetermined issue for the county commissioners to be decided with further study.
Meanwhile the new library project has been scaled down from 44,000 square feet to around 30,000 square feet, at a total projected cost of $10 million instead of $16 million. The proposed senior center, right now a separate 17,800 square-foot building, would cost $5.7 million. Director of Public Works and Transportation George Erichsen says there could be savings with co-locating, for such as restroom facilities and meeting rooms.
Both projects are in the proposed 2016 Capital Improvement Plan for architectural design and engineering in the next fiscal year with construction two years hence.
The planning commission approved the county’s proposed CIP by majority vote, with two commission members balking over another controversial issue – county funding of the Naval Air Museum (The Bay Net will have a separate story on that controversy).
The commissioners will have a chance to listen to the continuing discussions at their budget public forum April 14. They are scheduled to make a budget decision by May 12.
Contact Dick Myers at news@thebaynet.com
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