After winning approval from the Harford County Council Tuesday as the county's new director of planning and zoning, Arden C. Holdredge said she would make community participation in the planning process her chief priority for the next two years.
Ms. Holdredge said the local planning councils, which County Executive Eileen M. Rehrmann began last summer, should play an instrumental role in the review of the master land-use plan and subsequent comprehensive rezoning, which are to begin later this year.
The county zoning code requires that the two-part process, which can take two years to complete, be initiated every eight years. The update is coordinated by the Department of Planning and Zoning and approved through legislation by the County Council.
"The planning councils will ensure that we have citizen input and comments from the very beginning of the [zoning review] process," the new director said. Traditionally, planners would "write the plan and draw the maps" of zoning changes before holding a public hearing, she said.
"Now, we want to bring new groups into the process early, before the plan is written, to ask them what they want to see in their communities. We want to get citizen involvement in the big policy decisions related to the land-use plan."
Mrs. Rehrmann created the first community planning council in May in Edgewood to advise the Department of Planning and Zoning. She said there would be 13 councils in all but did not say when they would be created.
Typically the councils will consist of seven to 14 members representing neighborhoods, businesses, employers, churches and schools, the executive said. They will be trained in planning and zoning and will work closely with an individual planner/liaison in the department.
Last fall, two more councils were established, in the Abingdon-Emmorton area and the Whiteford-Cardiff-Norrisville area. Ms. Holdredge said their members have been briefed on planning but have not yet begun functioning as advisers.
"We're still working on how we can best get the widest representation of county citizens to have input in this process. It will be a learning process for all of us," she said.
Holdredge, 43, has been acting director since November, when William Carroll resigned to join the Maryland Office of Planning in Baltimore.
She joined the department as a planner in 1984, became chief of development review in 1987 and chief of current planning in 1988. Since her arrival in Harford, the county's population has grown 30 percent, from about 156,000 in 1985 to 204,000 this year.
As the chief administrator in charge of reviewing development proposals for more than seven years, she has been in the middle of one of the long-running controversies in Harford: How much development of rural landscape is healthy for the county?
When Ms. Holdredge was appointed to the post by Mrs. Rehrmann on Jan. 12, she immediately came under fire from critics, including former council President Jeffrey D. Wilson, who asked the council to conduct an audit of Ms. Holdredge's personal finances and a hold public hearing on her appointment.
He and others who had championed slowing residential growth feared she had become too close to those who would profit by increased development.
But council members who approved her appointment Tuesday said they found no substance to allegations about Ms. Holdredge.
"The citizens who raised questions were asked, 'Where are the facts?' And the facts have not come forward," said council President Joanne Parrott.
"There's nothing in my personal finances to be hidden and no inappropriate contributions or support" from developers, Ms. Holdredge said.
The vote was 5-1. Councilwoman Susan Heselton voted against the appointment without comment, and Councilman Mark Decker was absent.