Harford County officials are promising to continue working with residents upset about the plans to extend Cedarday Drive to Route 136, but have also made it clear the project is moving forward as planned.
At Tuesday's public meeting at Patterson Mill High School, public works and planning officials set up a traffic safety subcommittee to try to address residents' concerns about speeding and made themselves available for future concerns.
Many attendees, though, demanded to know why neither their county council representative, Mary Ann Lisanti, nor Harford County Executive David Craig was there.
Lisanti said Wednesday she felt it would have been "legislative interference" for her to be there, noting she nevertheless helped set up the meeting.
"I have been working on this issue now going on 34 days. Since that time, what I promised everyone is that I would work with the administration and DPW to ensure the community's voice and concerns were heard and responded [to] by the appropriate authority," she said, explaining she did not promise to attend this meeting.
"Early on I said I would if I needed to be there, but as this evolved… I answered all their questions," she said. "I have been a conduit. I sent [the questions] to DPW, and DPW has done two community mailings."
The extension project is definitely set to go through, and no other options are feasible, Lisanti said.
"Residents have contacted me and said, 'Why can't you look at paving Cedar Lane?' and [Cedar Lane property owners] said unequivocally that they will not sell the right-of-ways," she said.
On the county council's end, "once the budget is funded, I cannot reopen the budget for this project," she said. "The only person who could do that is the county executive."
Lisanti said Craig's administration "explicitly said, 'This road connection is important to the entire road network,' and that's what kind of gets lost here."
She criticized some residents who said extending Cedarday would increase traffic on "our road."
"'Our' is not Cedarday. The 'our' is every taxpayer in this county," Lisanti said.
Asked if she thought extending the road would lead to development spreading farther out, Lisanti said it was too soon to know.
"That's really a crystal ball thing," she said. "I think there will be plenty of time in those long-term planning avenues [to address development]."
A large group of residents who were gathered in Patterson Mill High School's hallway leveled questions and criticism at chief county engineer Jeff Stratmeyer, who was eventually joined by Craig's chief of staff Aaron Tomarchio and planning and zoning director Pete Gutwald.
Toward the end of Tuesday's meeting, Tomarchio told residents that although Craig could not attend the meeting, he would be sending them a letter in response.
One man, who would not give his name because he said he is a federal employee, said the county needs to "take a little break" to reconsider all options for the project based on present conditions, not those from 1987.
"The community would like to have a choice and a vote based on the conditions of today," he told Stratmeyer. "We talk a lot but we haven't accomplished anything."
Amy Jahnigen, of Cedarday Drive, also told Stratmeyer the community was still unhappy with county officials.
"They have been answering, but we don't like the answers we are getting," she said.
Tomarchio also told residents Craig is aware of their concerns.
"There's a lot of different points of view that are out there," he noted, adding that when the county executive makes a decision, he has to think about the county's 240,000 residents, not just those on Cedarday.
In response to that, one woman shouted, "What do 240,000 people have to do with us?"
Besides having an online petition, some Cedarday residents who call themselves "Friends of Cedarday" also created another Web site about the controversy, http://www.cedardaydrive.com.