Calvert County Commissioner Steven R. Weems [R] hosted a town hall meeting on proposed revisions to the St. Leonard Town Center Master Plan Monday, Aug. 20 at the St. Leonard Volunteer Fire Department. The two-hour session drew over 50 residents.
Weems, a St. Leonard resident and business owner, restated that he intends to abstain from voting on the plan’s modifications when it comes before the full board for adoption.
With the aid of Department of Community Planning and Building Director Charles Johnston and Principal Planner Jenny Plummer Welker, Weems spent most of the evening fielding questions and comments from the audience.
Plummer-Welker presented an overview of the revised document, which is currently in its third draft. “It [plan] is a vision, an overall policy document,” she said. The original master plan for the St. Leonard Town Center was adopted in 1995 and amended in 1998. Plummer-Welker said the plan is being reorganized so that it is consistent with the county’s Comprehensive Plan. Two changes to the town center’s parameters—an adjustment to the north boundary and expansion of the southern boundary to include St. Leonard Elementary School—are proposed. The latter change was proposed as a way to locate the school within the Priority Funding Area as a way to ensure the school obtains state funding should county officials want to expand or renovate it.
“This is a plan, it builds upon itself,” said Weems, who recalled attending the initial meeting on the St. Leonard Town Center Master Plan in 1993 at Mutual Elementary School.
Several residents weighed in on the plan to build a second road connecting the bayside communities of Calvert Beach and Long Beach to Route 765. Residents said any kind of second way out of the beach subdivisions in the event of an emergency would be helpful, even a road that wasn’t built to state or local government standards. “You bring up a good point,” said Plummer-Welker, who adde
