Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens is moving forward with legislation to set new development rules for the Annapolis Neck area despite a request by residents to delay introduction of the bill to give them more time to review it.

Philip Dales, who headed up a committee that reviewed zoning for the Annapolis area, requested the delay Friday. He asked that the bill not be introduced to the County Council until after the holidays. Yesterday, however, Dales received word from Owens' office that the bill would be introduced, as planned, at a council meeting last night.

"It's the holiday season, and we are a committee of volunteers," said Dales, who is chairman of the Annapolis Neck Small Area Planning Committee, which had yet to review the legislation as of late yesterday afternoon. "It would have been nice if we had a little more time."

Introduction of the Annapolis Neck small area plan has been long delayed. Dales' committee finished its draft proposal a year ago. County officials submitted a bill to the council in February, but it was withdrawn when residents complained they were caught off guard. County officials said last summer that they wanted to unveil design standards for the deserted Parole Plaza and the Annapolis Neck plan at the same time.

Yesterday, county officials confirmed that design standards for the Parole Growth Management Area would also be introduced soon - perhaps next month.

A month ago, Owens was criticized for approving building permits for a commercial and residential project within the Parole area before design standards had been set. Owens said a promise she had made about the matter applied to the Parole Plaza site only.

Some of the residents who criticized Owens on that issue said yesterday that they were glad the county was moving forward with land-use plans for Parole and Annapolis Neck.

"I'm glad they are on the move," said Donald Yeskey, president of the Generals Highway Council of Civic Associations. "At least we are getting things back on track."

County officials said yesterday that the Annapolis Neck zoning plan was complete and that there was no need to delay introduction to the council, which has final say over zoning changes. Dales' committee, which began meeting five years ago, serves in an advisory role.

"We don't see any reason to delay it," said Rich Josephson, the county's long-range planning administrator. Josephson said that changes to the zoning document had been reviewed with members of the committee. "It's essentially the same plan," he said.

Josephson said the county's planning and zoning staff agreed with "95 percent" of the committee's recommendations, but that several had to be dropped because they would have been next to impossible to implement. County officials, for example, rejected a proposal to set up a regional planning board with representatives from Annapolis, the county and the Naval Academy. Another rejected proposal would have subjected new development proposals to a population limit.

"There were a couple of what I would call areas of disagreement that we went back and forth on a lot," said Josephson, who has coordinated the small area planning process. "We had to tell them some things weren't appropriate. ... We had to tell them that the population ceiling was impossible to enforce."