American Dream

Plan to tighten zoning restrictions has farm family alarmed and angry

Martha and Harold Clark love the land and its traditions, but they are concerned that a proposal to further limit development will create 'mayhem' for their heirs and others.

By A Sun Staff Writer
Originally published July 24, 2005

Quotes:

Martha and Harold Clark learned the value of estate planning the hard way. They vowed never again.

Over three years, the Clarks got their affairs in order, certain that their three children and five grandchildren would be financially secure.

In the past two weeks, though, their confidence has turned to alarm, anger and a sense of betrayal.

The causes of their profound emotional shift are proposed changes to further restrict development in western Howard County.

Those changes, Martha Clark says, will produce economic "mayhem" for her heirs and for other farming families in the county.

Harold Clark (everyone calls him Bucky) avoids discussing the issue because he straddles two worlds as a property-rights farmer and as a member of the advisory board to the county's agriculture land preservation program.

So Martha Clark does the talking, and she is furious.

"It's a disaster," she says. "They're going to cause severe damage to people."

The proposals were drafted by the county's Department of Planning and Zoning under a threat from Annapolis of banishment from the state's land preservation program if stricter controls on growth were not adopted.

The department is recommending, among other things, a prohibition on selling density, or building rights, with the region zoned rural conservation, which includes the majority of land in the west. It further proposes to restrict cluster subdivisions in that area to one unit per 10 acres from one unit per 4.25 acres.