What these people are really saying is that since the current adopted plans allow for growth they need to be changed.

Every jurisdiction should have a comprehensive plan which directs how, when and where the community should grow. The plan should balance economic development and environmental protection objectives. It should also protect the public interest while still recognizing the inherent nature of our free-market economy and the strong individual property rights protections afforded under constitutional law. 

The Town of Easton and Talbot County have Comprehensive Plans in place for growth and development. These plans are each less than 5 years old and were adopted after an extensive amount of public involvement and participation in the late 1990s. The basic framework of the adopted plans is that the Town should grow in a manner consistent with Maryland's widely applauded "Smart Growth" legislation and policies. These plans are both currently being updated but the basic "Smart Growth" theme of the plans will not change. Easton and the other incorporated towns are the logical locations for growth and development within the county.

Whether we plan for it or not, compelling market forces will continue to dictate that Easton and the immediately surrounding development area will continue to be the major center for new housing, employment and shopping within the Mid-Shore region. Planning which attempts to significantly slow or stop development in and around Easton and Talbot's other towns will only serve to shift regional development pressures to rural and agricultural lands further and further removed from the towns. 

Shutting down development in the towns may seem politically popular in the short-term but ultimately it will cause severe negative fiscal and environmental impacts on Talbot County as a whole.

Anyone concerned about good growth management, agricultural preservation and environmental protection readily understands that it is better to have 400 homes located in a town setting on 100 acres served by public water and sewer than it is to have 400 homes scattered across 800 acres with private wells and septic tanks. The homes, stores and businesses are coming whether we like it or not. It is better to try to proactively manage this growth than to focus our efforts on trying to "just make it all go away."

Once adopted, a plan needs to be implemented in a fair and consistent manner as public decisions are made regarding private investments in the community. When a plan is adopted there must be good faith that if a development proposal is put forward that complies with the plan it will be approved. To act otherwise does a great disservice to the hundreds of volunteers and appointed boards who diligently worked to prepare and implement the current plan.

When local government does not follow its own plan it also sends a message to property owners and the business community that the jurisdiction can not be counted on to consistently apply its own rules. Arbitrary and inconsistent decision-making is never a hallmark of good government.

We need to stop using the "need for a plan" as an excuse to deny development and we need to focus on fairly implementing the plans already in place.

If these current plans can be so easily dismissed when some vocal minority speaks up at a public hearing, what is the point of updating those plans? Won't these new updated plans be subject to the same fate as the current plans once someone feels aggrieved and complains when a development is proposed in their back yard? 

Updating the Town and County Plans is an important endeavor to periodically undertake but it is not a sound reason to capriciously dismiss the currently adopted plans already in place.

Barry Griffith, a Wye Mills resident, is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) and is the Senior Planner for Lane Engineering, Inc. 
 
©The Star Democrat 2002 

                                           **************NOTE FROM KIDL:  Mr. Griffith was employed in QAC between 1994 and about 2000, served as Deputy Director of Planning & Zoning, and was involved with the preparation of Stevensville & Chester Community Plans.  **************************

In it he makes the oft-repeated smart growth point that "anyone concerned" knows that 400 homes on 100 acres is better than 400 homes on 800 acres. As always, it is presented as an either/or proposition involving just 400 homes. The logic of smart growth works, however, only if property owners on the remaining 700 acres are denied the right to any development of their land. That, of course, raises questions (as the commentator phrases it so well) involving "the inherent nature of our free market economy and the strong individual property rights protections afforded under constitutional law."

Under the kind of smart growth being pushed in Talbot on that given 800 acres, we get 400 homes on the first 100 acres plus another 350 on the remaining 700 acres for a total of 750 homes.

Rather than disparaging those who have the courage to be cautious with the planning process and say "we need a plan" in the face of intense pressures to build mega projects, they deserve our strong support.

Once Easton loses its designation as one of America's best towns, it will be gone forever. Intelligent growth sounds a lot smarter than "smart growth."

JEFF McGUINESS, St. Michaels 
 
©The Star Democrat 2002  

In the May 26 Sunday Star, Barry Griffith worries that those (like myself), who have uttered "we need a plan" during discussions of development proposals, really want no growth. This isn't the case.

When I say "we need a plan," I mean our current plan leaves many questions, the answers to which are necessary to see how pieces proposed by developers fit within the whole of a sound future Easton. Here a few of these critical questions:

* How big do we want to grow? We need to figure out how many new residents we want and where, think through the benefits of such growth, and pursue that kind of growth. For example, is there a critical mass of residents that would let Talbot County take our very good school system and make it one of the very best in the country? A similar logic extends to stewardship of the Bay, police and fire protection and shopping opportunities. With a plan we can harness the energy of growth, making it a source of optimism not consternation.

* How are we going to move traffic cross-town, while protecting our neighborhoods? We're poised to grow east of Route 50. Some want development west of the Easton Parkway. St. Michaels and Bay Hundred are growing. All the while retail needs are being met in bookend shopping centers on Easton's outskirts. In the breach, stand Dover and Goldsborough streets. Both residents and those sitting in traffic know this doesn't work. We need a plan that faces this problem, and solves it, because the longer we wait the worse it will get.

* What do we, not the state government, want out of Route 50? This highway cuts Easton in half, and one day Annapolis will decide to "reach the beach" with a true by-pass of Easton far to our east. With a plan we can make good of this inevitability instead of it becoming a disaster for those of us whose livelihood depends on beach-going dollars.

* How are working people going to afford Easton? This means jobs and affordable housing: The county says roughly a third of living wage jobs are in construction. This industry slowly puts itself out of business by building steadily toward the end of the recent construction boom. We need to move toward diversity in our job base now so we don't have to rely too heavily on one source of good work. As for affordable housing, the salary paid those who serve us as cops, teachers or public employees ought to be able to afford a well-built, well-designed house in Easton. We'll accomplish neither of these things without a smart comprehensive plan that foresees where and how, because piecemeal won't cut it.

It's not my intention to stop development until idealistic visions come to fruition. Nonetheless we need a plan so we don't just, bit by bit, lose what we have while not getting to where we want to be. It won't be easy to harness growth, but in our town and county staffs, in our talented volunteers, and in our unusually progressive development community we have the resources. Now as a community we need that collaborative spirit which, to borrow from RFK, doesn't just look down at things as they've been to ask "Why?" but looks to what we can achieve together and insists "Why not?"

Can we tap that collaborative sprit in the context of the heated debate about growth? We'd better. 

Scott Jensen is represents Ward II on the Easton Town Council. 
 
©The Star Democrat 2002  

Guest Comment:
Talbot County planning revisited
  
By: EUGENE B. MECHLING Jr. June 05, 2002 
 
In response to Barry Griffith's May 26 piece, "Talbot County Planning," I ask is he engaged in long range planning for Easton and Talbot or is he doing his planning for the large developers hiring Lane Engineering to help their cause locally? 

Naturally his interests lie with his benefactors, as opposed to his ridiculed "vocal minority," who are, in fact, a sizable dissatisfied public constituency, wanting some logical, long range community planning. 

In describing our concerns on current growth, Griffith omitted one key word "uncontrolled"!

It is uncontrolled growth that we object to. That's where we see lack of planning for the future. Current Comprehensive Plans are a vision, a wish list filled with "we should" do this and that. Not "we will" do this here or control that there to accomplish something logical in our future growth that will benefit the community.

Where was the long-range planning that anticipated Easton's growing traffic problems? Why is Route 50 growing into our Berlin Wall between East and West Easton? Schools, hospital, police, fire fighters, library, etc. are all on the west side. Major growth ( 900+ units approved ) is on the east.

Where is the road connectivity needed on the east side? Did we anticipate the impact that each of these new large developments would have on our roads, water, utilities, public services, environment and taxes before rubberstamping 900 of them?

Now we're having to deal with these problems, after the fact. Yet, Griffith wants to continue this insatiable development craze.

Queen Anne's County just declared a moratorium because it is being overwhelmed by an avalanche of building projects. Somebody woke up!

The whole Eastern Shore is being caught in a tidal wave of these outsized projects. That's why upgraded comprehensive plans are needed, along with implementing master plans, so that we residents can decide on our future growth, not have the big corporations decide our hereafter for us.

Times have changed since the 1997 Comprehensive Plan's publication. Today, developers see the Eastern Shore as their promised land. We're about to be run over by their bulldozers, if we don't build in controls fast! 

On June 3, 2002, it's not stop growth, it's control growth. How much growth is sensiblefor our small towns? Are 345 new units good for St. Michaels or good for the developer? Why 345? Why not 35? The same goes for Easton Village and elsewhere. Sure Smart Growth says grow in but that doesn't mean open the floodgates on Easton, St Michaels, Oxford and Trappe, etc.

We have never promoted Griffith's accusation of "just make it to all go away." We have no intention of causing "severe negative fiscal and environmental impacts on Talbot County as a whole." Well planned growth should accomplish just the opposite.

We want Easton, the other quaint towns of Talbot County and the Mid-Shore to continue to be Maryland's proud jewel, as a rural tourist attraction, business generator and farming haven, not the franchisee, big development parking lot of Delmarva!

Eugene B. Mechling Jr. is a retired military officer who lives in Easton. 
 
©The Star Democrat 2002 

FROM KIDL - F.Y.I. - A paragraph from the County Line Newsletter of December 21, 2001 (Vol 2001, Issue 3):
Did You Know? QAC Ranks 8th  State-wide in Growth Rate

There seems to be a misconception amongst many citizens about the rate of growth in Queen Anne's County. With the 2000 Census now completed and data released in April 2001, Queen Anne's County shows up as the eighth fastest growing county in the State of Maryland, with its population increasing 19.5% from 1990 to 2000. We now have an estimated 40,563 residents in QAC, up from 33,953 in 1990. 

Calvert County led the state, adding 23,191 new residents to increase their population by 45% from 1990 to 2000. QAC's increase of 19.5% over the last decade translates to about a 2% annual rate of growth, a fairly consistent and moderate rate. In fact, development in the county has remained fairly steady at about 400 new homes being built per year in QAC. Compare this to the 2,300 new homes that were built last year in Anne Arundel County (pop. 485,000). 

While we hear a lot of talk about new growth, and new developments are being proposed in our growth areas, the fact is that the rate of growth is remaining fairly steady in our county. With the new growth tools being put into place, such as the recently raised development review fees, the recent Interim Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO; the first county on the Eastern Shore to adopt an APFO and one of the smallest in the state with one), and the soon to be raised Impact Fees, QAC is well positioned to make growth and development pay its own way.