My gripe with the current Carroll County commissioners is their rejection of "smart growth" policies ("Carroll commissioners break with past on growth, housing, transit," June 23). There has been important support for smart growth in the county. The commissioners should recognize their lack of wisdom and relent.

Smart growth targets land use, which includes where housing and employment are located, their densities and types, transportation and overall development patterns. In Maryland in particular, smart growth can play a significant role in cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.

Moreover, smart growth suggests the basic questions we should be asking: Are we living too richly and squandering limited resources? Are essential elements of our daily lives too widely separated and disconnected for our own good? Are we making the best and most appropriate uses of the resources that are available, both physical and economic?

If followed, smart growth offers more careful use of our resources, less profligate mobility, less arduous and demanding access to jobs, school, shopping and recreation, and more effectiveness from public and private dollars.

The commissioners are obviously uncomfortable with the principles of smart growth. But only looking to the past for answers won't help.

Neil Curran, Baltimore