Like a legislative version of the decade's greatest hits, the Howard County Council is to vote on nearly every hot button issue the county is facing before ending its legislative season next week.
The council heard witnesses on a range of topics — from land use issues involving the downtown Columbia plan and Doughoregan Manor to a major new tennis facility, school crowding and residential wind turbines — until nearly midnight Monday. Council members finished the hearing Tuesday afternoon. Votes are scheduled July 29 before the annual August recess.
Dozens of tennis fans, including many children, most carrying rackets, filled the standing-room-only hearing space at school board headquarters Monday night to support a long-planned private, championship-grade tennis facility at what will become Troy Hill Park in Elkridge.
"I'm a tennis player and I can't wait for this to come," said Grace Kubofcik, co-president of the county's League of Women Voters. The bill asks for council approval of a 40-year lease on 14 acres of county land near the proposed park's entrance, which will be on Mansion Lane next to a business park that sits between Interstate 95 and U.S. Route 1, just north of Route 100.
A private group called Howard County Tennis Patrons Inc. plans to build an 8,000-seat tennis stadium, 12 indoor courts, 18 lighted outdoor courts, a clubhouse and offices that they say will benefit the county in several important ways.
"It will bring high-profile tennis tournaments to Elkridge," said acting county recreation and parks director John Byrd. It will also help the county begin work on the large regional park much earlier, added another witness, David Grabowski, a county planning board member who lives in Elkridge. County high school graduations could also be held there free of charge, he said.
Art Tollick, president of the tennis group, said the project, "will be the premier tennis facility in the mid-Atlantic." He added that a major women's tennis tournament is already scheduled for next year, on July 25, 2011. He said the facility is expected to bring $69 million in income for county businesses such as hotels and restaurants in the first three years of operations, and could produce $4 million in rent for the county over a decade.
Every group represented at the hearing supported the plan except for the Columbia Association, which operates 24 outdoor and 9 indoor tennis courts throughout the planned town. Chief Operating Officer Rob Goldman said tennis earns CA $1.7 million in revenue annually in fees and he fears the loss of $500,000 a year after the new complex opens.
"I don't feel there's enough demand to fill all these courts," he said, adding that the county would subsidize the nonprofit by covering any deficit, taking only a percentage of revenues as rent and plowing half that back into the facility. That's unfair competition, he said.
Another bill that got strong support despite some criticism was one that would allow, in zoning regulations, for a popular farm stand to remain at Bethany and Old Frederick Roads, even though it is no longer part of an existing farm.
Kim Taylor, who runs the Harbin farm stand, said the family business began in 1958 with a few tomatoes and just grew over the decades. The family gave up farming a dozen years ago when fields were squeezed out by highways, new homes and hungry deer, which combined to make crops unprofitable.
"We love what we do," Taylor told the council, despite complaints from some neighbors that the stand has become too broadly commercial. Their old farm is now a highway interchange, her husband Michael Taylor said, and the produce stand provides the family's primary income.
Other bills involved much larger pieces of land than the 1.29 acres the Taylors use.
Some residents who live near Doughoregan Manor were critical of an agreement negotiated between the county and Camilla and Philip D. Carroll, who own the historic 892-acre colonial era estate, though the contract did get support from county officials, preservationists, civic groups and business interests. The agreement, called a developer's rights and responsibilities agreement, is the county's first of its kind. It would cement into place a complex deal that would allow the Carroll family to develop 325 new homes on 221 acres of the estate and preserve the rest. The county would get 36 acres to expand a park at the estate's northeast corner, just off Frederick Road.
The council has already approved extending water and sewer lines to the development property and paying $19 million over two decades to preserve 500 acres as farmland. In council members' other role as the zoning board, they are now considering a zoning change that would allow the project. But Harry Carnes, speaking for the Chateau Ridge Lake Community Association, and Christina Delmont-Small, another critic, said questions about traffic congestion, the cost of wastewater treatment and the agreement's technical sufficiency and longevity need to be answered.
"This will expire before the first house is built," Delmont-Small said, leaving the county open to whatever the Carrolls decide to build. Carnes said the Maryland State Highway Administration wants a second access point and residents fear it could go through their community at Burnside Road, despite a raft of assurances to the contrary.
Another dispute involves a series of three bills and resolutions designed to adjust the county's traffic and housing allocation levels in growth control laws to allow for the already-approved 30-year redevelopment of Central Columbia into a more urban-style downtown.
Those bills, which allow higher traffic volumes and a separate pool of housing allocations under the county's growth control laws, were supported by most witnesses Monday night and Tuesday as a necessary adjunct to the zoning the council unanimously approved for the project on February 1.
"Columbia Tomorrow supports the restoration of Columbia to its original promise," said Sharonlee Vogel, in a typical comment. Columbia Tomorrow is one of several private groups that have sprung up to support the General Growth Properties plan that aims to add up to 5,500 new apartments and nearly 6 million square feet of commercial and cultural spaces in central Columbia.
Groups representing low-income housing advocates and bicyclists also expressed support, though Cynthia Coyle, CA's board chairwoman, said the homeowners group thought the higher traffic standard of up to 1,600 vehicles per hour at rush hour peaks instead of the current 1,450 allowed under one bill, is too high for proper growth controls. Bridget Mugane, president of the Howard County Citizens Association, prepared testimony opposing a separate pool of housing allocations for Columbia as too large. Her group has opposed the 5,500 limit on new housing, saying it is far too high. She and others said congestion on Route 29 should also be part of any studies.
But William Erskine. A development lawyer, said that new ways of measuring traffic in the county that include wait times at intersections will force improvements more quickly. "that's the critical gain," he said during testimony Tuesday. McLaughlin also noted that for downtown, builders can get permission to go forward only if performance standards have been met, not just by waiting in line for housing allocations.
In other bills, a zoning regulation change to allow wineries in Howard County was opposed by western county residents from the Daisy and Woodbine area, who fear large crowds of people at social events that are allowed under the proposal. County planners, business interest and farmers all supported that idea, however.
"We've had Wine in the Woods for 18 years and it's increasingly popular," county planning director Marsha McLaughlin told the council, but none of the 31 wineries that participate are from Howard County. Ted Mariani, representing Concerned Citizens of Western Howard County, said allowing up to 500 people to gather for social events at wineries on over 25 acres would be "very disruptive" for existing rural residents. Wine growers said just the opposite, that Howard's proposed rules would be the most restrictive in the state and should be loosened to allow small wineries of about 5 acres to have more than 20 people gather at one time.
Mariani even more vehemently opposed a zoning regulation change to allow residential wind turbines, saying their size and movement would "create more problems than it solves."
No one opposed a bill allowing a solar energy farm at the closed New Cut landfill that would power Worthington Elementary School nearby.
Also discussed Tuesday was the annual chart that predicts school enrollment three years ahead and delays development on forecasts of overcrowded schools – one of the county's main growth control devices. After several years with no overcrowded schools, the entire Elkridge region would be closed to development in 2013 due to middle school crowding, though school officials are planning new buildings.