Community activists across Baltimore County identified school overcrowding, slack code enforcement, eminent domain expansion and a proposed liquid natural gas plant as top priorities for 2007.
A new elementary school is expected to alleviate overcrowding in the county?s northeast corridor, but at least 27 schools are operating at 108 percent capacity or worse. Patapsco High School is the most overcrowded, with 351 students beyond capacity.
Responding to an informal survey, Bud Herb, president of the Linover Community Association, identified overcrowding and other problems associated with overdevelopment, such as stream degradation, as his top concerns.
“The county totally ignores the environmental impact to the stream, the total cumulative effect of these types of projects that has to be considered,” he said of a new housing project on Overton Avenue.
Other community leaders called a feared expansion of eminent domain use in 2006 disconcerting. In August, County Executive Jim Smith announced plans to seize a former Towson gas station for a park. It was the first use of eminent domain since the late 1990s, officials said.
But private homeowners such as Barbara Willick of Perry Hall said the county also threatened to condemn their property for road expansions when a price could not be negotiated.
“What I saw for a fair price, I couldn?t even stay in Perry Hall,” Willick said. “The county does what the county wants to do.”
County officials need to be careful not to invoke eminent domain rights for economic development, said Dick Parsons, founding member of the Greater Towson Council of Community Association.
To avoid the issue, county officials in March began to purchase 56 blighted buildings in Dundalk?s Yorkway apartment complex with plans to demolish them and offer the land to a developer.
But some leaders say the estimated $17 million investment could have been avoided if county codes were more strictly enforced ? something they said they will heavily lobby for in 2007.
Also in Dundalk, activists will continue to fight a proposed $400 million LNG plant at the Sparrows Point shipyard, which includes an 87-mile pipeline that will carry the gas through Harford County into southern Pennsylvania.
Leaders say the dredging required to accommodate the tankers will exacerbate harbor pollution, and the plant poses an unacceptable fire risk.
Examiner Staff Writer Ron Cassie contributed to this report.
OTHER EVENTS TO WATCH FOR
» Proposals in the General Assembly to tighten election finance rules
» Trial of Thomas Bromwell, former state senator accused of a complex racketeering scheme
» Baltimore County?s federal appeal of a county judge striking down its rules against medical clinics near residential homes
