[CGC] Meetings this week and other news

[Administrator]

MEETINGS

- The Centreville Planning Commission meets Wednesday, October 17th at 7:00 
pm at the Queen Anne's County Health Department meeting room A, 206 North 
Liberty Street.

- The Town Council meets Thursday, October 18th at 7:00 pm in the Goodwill 
Fire Department first floor meeting room, 212 Broadway.

Agendas for both meetings will be posted later this week on the CGC web 
site.


LETTER IN OPPOSITION TO GROWTH AREA EXPANSION

The Centreville Planning Commission and a Citizen's Advisory group spent 
nearly two years carefully determining the optimum growth boundary and 
greenbelt that would accommodate growth in our Town.
They ultimately decided that an expansion of our growth boundary established 
by the Town's 1998 Comprehensive Plan and the County's 2002 Comprehensive 
Plan was not needed.

As reported on the CGC website and in the newspapers recently, a developer 
now wants to expand our growth area so 700 houses can be built on two farms 
south of Town instead of the 24 houses that would be allowed under County 
zoning.

Also, an historic farmhouse (the John Cannon Yellow House) and 18th century 
granary on one of the farms apparently will not be saved under the developer's 
plan.

If the farms in question are added to our growth area as proposed, there 
will be no mention of workforce housing, purple pipes, open space, 
additional sewer capacity, trails, 300-foot buffers, or any other of their 
commitments in the Comprehensive Plan. The farms will just become a 
different color block on a map.

There is also no obligation for this or any other developer to provide the 
above-mentioned features under our current zoning and subdivision 
regulations once the farms are included in the growth area.

This is exactly what happened in Northbrook. The Town was promised a golf 
course community with 45 homes, but instead we ended up with a development 
of 600 homes due to changing economic conditions.

In this case, the potential exists for over 1200 homes to be built on the 
two farms if economic conditions should change.

I encourage the Town and County Planning Commissioners to reject this 
last-minute attempt to increase Centreville's Growth Area.

Dan Worth
Centreville