The Brunswick City Council is facing the loss of its municipal authority to plan for growth outside its city limits.
That is the news Mayor Carroll Jones delivered after attending a workshop of the Frederick County Board of Commissioners Tuesday. What came out of the workshop to plan for growth in Frederick County amounted to "encroachments on the autonomy of municipalities," Jones said.
The workshop, while not an official meeting, included a vote by commissioners to eliminate all of the growth areas around Brunswick and designate them for agricultural zoning, Jones said. "In fact, we have no growth area now," he said.
Despite his attempts to explain the city's reason for the growth areas, Jones said the commissioners refused to hear him. He would have explained that the designated growth areas were not necessarily places the city would annex or provide utilities to anytime soon, but would generally be considered within range in the next 30 years.
While the county planners suggested that the removal of the city's growth areas is in keeping with "smart growth" strategies, Jones and other council members disagreed. They cited the planning guidelines for smart growth that recommend developing properties close to existing municipalities, and not in agricultural areas. Citing the tradition that a municipality plan according to its citizens' needs, Councilman Jeremy Biser disagreed with the county's display of authority.
"This is wrong," Biser said.
Jones and Council Member Karin Tome said they would not have objected so much to a suggestion that the city's projected growth area shrink some, but the county's complete overruling of the city's 2009 plan was too much. "It's the whole control issue," Tome said.
The county planners went so far as to include areas within the city limits for adherence to the county's plan for growth.
"We are not happy with what's going on," Jones said. At a future meeting, where official votes on the county's comprehensive plan will occur, Jones expects the result to be the same based on what he observed Tuesday.
"The county feels they have a better fix on planning," he said.
-- Patti S. Borda
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