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KI project to referendum? By MARGOT MOHSBERG, Kent Island Staff Writer The Kent Island Defense League is launching a petition drive today to allow county residents to have a bigger say over the controversial 1,350-home Four Seasons project. Two weeks after the county commissioners voted to allow intense development in the Critical Area, members of the grassroots organization announced they plan to collect enough signatures to force a referendum on the issue to be held during the 2002 election. The effort could delay if not halt the age-restricted project planned for 562 acres on Castle Marina Road. "This is not a pro and con petition. This is a petition to let the voters decide," said League President Rick Moser. The group needs to submit to the county about 2,200 signatures, or 10 percent of the county's registered voters, by Sept. 30, Mr. Moser said. Specifically, the referendum will ask county voters if they believe the county should have granted the growth allocation. He said the league's lawyer was drafting the petition yesterday and the group planned to circulate copies throughout the county in public places and neighborhoods. County Commissioners President George O'Donnell, D-Queenstown, said he had not heard about the petition but was "not surprised." "It's their right," he said. Mr. O'Donnell said the last petition for a referendum was circulated in the mid-1990s over the incorporation of Kent Island. Organizers failed to collect enough signatures, he said. "It's quite an undertaking," he said. "There's a rigid format which the petition must follow in order to be verified. But if it becomes a referendum, I think that any decision can be binding." County officials will review all collected signatures to make sure they are valid. On Aug. 21, the three commissioners voted to revise the Critical Area maps to change 293 acres of Resource Conservation Area and about 80 acres of Limited Development Area to Intense Development Area. The county Planning Commission gave final approval to the project -- the biggest ever planned for Kent Island -- in June and the Chesapeake Bay Critical Area Commission did so last month. In response, the Kent Island Defense League filed a petition asking the county Circuit Court to review the project plans, arguing that the state and county improperly approved it. An attorney representing the commission has since filed a motion asking that the league's request be thrown out. Published September 12,
2001,
The
Capital, Annapolis, Md.
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