PlanMaryland

PlanMaryland

People who wish to settle in the outlying regions of Maryland's counties have shown resistance to the PlanMaryland initiative. These people also have shown no willingness to bare the added cost of allowing for sprawl. In many cases they have denied the negative impacts of sprawl and hence the added costs.

Thoughts on PlanMaryland from a Kristi Allison blog

PlanMaryland is an initiative of the Governor O'Malley Administration to plan for Maryland's expected growth of nearly a million more residents in the next 20 years, more than 400,000 new households and 600,000 jobs.

It aims to preserve existing farm land, limit sprawl, and concentrate growth in existing infrastrucure regions.

Some people in these outer regions are critical of the plan, however the mayor of Bel Air, Dave Carey, is very supportive of the plan as reported in exploremaryland.com

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Bel Air Mayor Dave Carey, however, said the plan is reasonable and does not take any power away from the county or local jurisdictions.

Carey, a Democrat and past president of the Maryland Municipal League, has served on the Maryland Sustainable Growth Commission, which helped assemble the plan.

He said anyone against the plan has not read it. A county is still free to promote sprawl under the plan, he said, but the state simply will not fund roads, schools and other facilities when that happens.

Carey made supportive comments about the plan at the same meeting with legislators Wednesday. During a work session with other Bel Air officials Tuesday, Carey said Harford County's development patterns of the last decade are a prime example of what PlanMaryland is trying to address.

Despite Harford's supposedly well defined development envelope where higher density housing and commercial growth is encouraged, Carey said "three times as many houses" have been built in the county outside the development envelope than inside in the past 10 years.

"Growth on septic systems has proliferated in Harford County," he said.

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