FREDERICK, Md. — Ordinances regulating growth in some Maryland counties could work against the state’s Smart Growth policy and push development into rural areas when an influx of new workers arrives by 2011, Maryland Secretary of Planning Richard Eberhart Hall said yesterday.
The regulations, called adequate public facilities ordinances (APFOs), attempt to prevent over-development by halting growth in areas where schools are crowded or sewage-treatment systems are at capacity.
That can cause urban sprawl by pushing development out of the state’s “priority funding areas,” which are designated for growth, and into areas where infrastructure does not support the expansion.
“We’ve got to worry about how to accommodate growth within the priority funding areas … making sure we don’t spill out into the rural areas,” Mr. Hall said.
Anne Arundel County, home to Fort Meade, and Harford County, home to Aberdeen Proving Ground, are the two areas most at risk of urban sprawl because of their APFOs when thousands of new jobs come to the state by 2011 with the military’s Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) plan, he said.
Mr. Hall was speaking at the third meeting of the BRAC sub-Cabinet created by Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, to coordinate and plan the state’s response to BRAC growth.
The planning department does not have a specific plan for dealing with county APFOs, Mr. Hall said, but will work with local governments to try to get rid of the ordinances.
“We want to make sure communities know that there are potential drawbacks to APFOs, and make sure people get into it with their eyes wide open,” he said. “Some people use them as a panacea.”
Maryland is expected to gain as many as 60,000 jobs from BRAC, with the majority of the jobs arriving in 2010 and 2011. BRAC expansion will account for 23 percent of the state’s household growth from 2009 to 2015, according to the planning department.
Baltimore city is the only Maryland jurisdiction the department expects to have enough capacity in its priority funding areas to meet development demands by 2030. Demands are expected to exceed priority funding area capacity in Carroll, Cecil and Harford counties, while the rest of the state could have “some capacity” left.
Mr. Hall and Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, who leads the sub-Cabinet, said BRAC growth alone should not be the group’s only focus.
“We all know that we’re really just talking about growth in many ways,” Mr. Hall said. “When it all comes together there isn’t going to be that obvious BRAC increment.”
During the meeting the group met with officials from Frederick County, which will gain about 1,200 jobs in the next few years at Fort Detrick. Most of the jobs are from growth at the base that is not related to BRAC.
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s BRAC or non-BRAC, it’s families, it’s jobs, it’s important,” Mr. Brown said.
That could come as good news to officials at Fort Meade, which is slated to gain nearly 5,700 jobs from BRAC and as many as 16,000 non-BRAC related jobs in almost the same time frame.
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