Brian England presented this speech at the May 13, 2015 HCCA Annual Meeting.
Over the last two years JD Smith and I have been working on understanding the New Town Zoning process. We have reviewed enough documents to fill several tables!
We have listened to many people and soaked up their ideas and opinions!
After all this work, we released the HCCA New Town report. But it wasn’t until recently that we started to understand why our “Planned Community” had started to disintegrate.
Spurred by a meeting with Mary Kay Sigaty who said, “seek out those with the institutional knowledge,” we contacted two people, Jervis Dorton, who worked for the Rouse Company from 1969 until his retirement and Lloyd Knowles, who was on the County Council from 1975 to 1986.
Both said the same thing.
“New Town is safe. Our planned community is safe if our government follows the rules.”
“The FDP’s are NOT vague if you read them, bearing in mind, the intent was to reflect the goals of a planned community”.
It should not be about our government facilitating development in Columbia; it’s about regulating it.
Our next step is to honor the County Commissioners who took the bold step of bringing a planned community to Howard County 50 years ago by promoting The “Planned Community” concept for the rest of Howard County…
…by updating APFO.
…by implementing the recommendations of the Fuel Station Task Force.
…by fully implementing the recommendations of PELU!
…by having a variety of housing options for everyone across the county.
…by writing regulations that will fully implement the 2030 plan.
And finally…
…by making DPZ enforce the rules!
I hope you will join the HCCA in our quest to make the whole of our county “a planned community”.