August 2008: Critical Data for All Howard Residents

Individual property values are deeply affected and quality of life is irretrievable in sporadic circumstances throughout the county but now citizen-residents are organizing into a voting bloc that will name names and use votes only for those who truly represent citizens.

Participate with a growing number of residents who stay informed on land use in our county by joining the google group for hclanduse: Visit http://groups.google.com/group/hclanduse and add your email address (more on that later).

• More than 90 homes in the county have been deemed worthless because of a design flaw that is being perpetuated in at least 7 more locations. We’re researching who is paying for the cleanup, but preliminarily it looks like at least one judge invested in the project and county funds are at risk of sinking into the failure that was predicted by at least one county attorney who also participates with the land use coalition (google link above).
• In another neighborhood, a land developer has decided that it would be more profitable to condemn property and take via eminent domain rather than build the infill using prescribed methods. Neighbors are fighting to keep what is theirs, but we know the history; citizens loose time, money, energy and usually the legal action as well.
• Meanwhile, residents in the West County are struggling with a conflict in the county zoning that would generate an unequivocally dangerous situation with tractor trailer truckloads of cars to a car lot being built in a residential area.
• And this happens regularly: Neighbors in Ellicott City saw a small ad in the back of the local paper that described countywide zoning changes to accommodate a single commercial property. This one may have been stopped but others continue to flow through without citizen knowledge regarding properties that are targeted for change. Too often no one is speaking for the many citizens affected and unaware.

No-Challenge Solutions

• Read Howard County Issues (howardcountyissues.org, click the link in the middle of the homepage to read the most current issue). Email editor@howardcountyissues.org to add your email to the notification list for this quarterly publication. Find out if you were planning to vote for a representative who took large campaign contributions and then paid millions in county funds to the same organization for unnecessary office space. See Spring 2008 issue for the first in our series.
• Visit the google group http://groups.google.com/group/hclanduse and add your email address to be notified when we embark on an email campaign to county and state representatives regarding supporting citizen interests. Select the frequency with which you would like notices. If you’d like to be included in all conversations, allow the default, but if you only want a weekly or daily single email update, go to ‘edit my membership’ in order to change the frequency with which you’ll receive notifications.

Our target is to send two-thousand emails to elected representatives when they prepare to vote on issues of importance to citizens. Engage Democracy - it’ll offset campaign funding that has paid for too many candidacies. Infuse focus into elected representatives, we’re still here, and we’re paying attention.

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