This year is starting out as last year ended. We continue to see previously announced development projects ramp up, and brand new projects announced. This is a cycle with no end in sight and not necessarily a negative as long as the community is involved.
What are we able to do to ensure the community has a voice in this process? Shouldn’t we have a fair shake, along with government representatives, project proponents, and the planning, zoning legal/consulting establishment? We need to maintain an active participation, early and often. In previous posts (most recently 10/6/15 – Open & Transparent and Secrets) I suggested changes in the proposal review process. Unless we have an effect on these and other changes, we will always be on the short end of the process.
In many cases, citizen participation is relegated to the occasional town meeting. Have you ever been to one? They appear to be participatory meetings. Informed, interested community members do attend and we are given the opportunity to ask questions and to give opinions that are not recorded. Remember that. The sponsors of the meetings, alderpersons, give answers to the questions. The meeting concludes. There are no minutes of these meetings. There is nothing put down in black and white to build on, so they do not produce cumulative results. In my view they are not consequential. They ARE necessary, just not sufficient.
If you look over the locations of the multitude of projects proposed for Eastport and Annapolis they are all over the place, from City Dock to the Annapolis Yacht Club to numerous locations in Eastport such as Rocky Gorge and Crystal Spring, the Eastport Shopping Center High-rise, etc. You may be thinking, “Wow I’m lucky, no project I’m aware of is in my backyard, or impacting my commute, or causing parking problems in my immediate area, so what does it matter to me?” Well, quite possibly the people who are impacted by current projects had similar thoughts months or years ago. If you wait to become involved in the process until heavy machinery appears on your street or proposed projects are written up in the Capital it is already too late.
Most of us know about a prime example of a project that has generated significant community opposition – Crystal Spring Forest.
Crystal Spring is the poster child for a process that brings the proponent and local government into a negotiation mode, with the community largely left out in the cold. Why are the opponents out in the cold when they are reasonably well-organized and very vocal? They’re out in the cold because due to the current nature of the project review process their ability to influence the course of that process is barely hanging by a fingernail. The broader reason this should worry us is that the issue is not just their opposition to a project, but their reasons for opposing it, which are not only for the sake of opposition to development in general, but to actual concerns, for example, over more traffic congesting roads that are already operating at capacity. That alone should give pause to the development. But wait. There’s more.
The proposed Crystal Spring project will decimate a forest. It will impact the environment, affecting air and water quality. If none of these arguments trump the project proponents arguments (and so far they haven’t) then we are in the deep end of the pool of trouble.
But what’s a person to do? First, realize that the net impact of projects such as this affects us all. Traffic congestion on Forest Drive affects Eastport; air quality at Crystal Spring affects everyone; loss of open space at Crystal Spring and the Annapolis Yacht Club and everywhere else where development is running wild impacts nuisance flooding and impacts us all.
We need to harness the valuable and hard-won experiences of groups like the Crystal Spring advocates who should not just be Crystal Spring-centric. They, and we, need to be part of the fabric of an ongoing and enduring community support system to counter the influence of the project proponents of the world.
Another troublesome point involves the proposals discussed by the County Executive to change the planning and zoning process. These possible changes, or disproportionate support by certain government officials, may have positive results, but here’s the rub. How will we, the community, know what’s positive from what’s negative if we are not actively involved in the process? We can only help assure ourselves that our interests are being represented if we are engaged, and speak out, as citizens, and ensure that our elected officials are fully accountable to us.
I don’t want to promote a ‘sky is falling’ or a ‘hair on fire’ urgency, but the fact is, if we were keeping score, it would be: narrow interested project proponents(1); community/environment(0). And the clock is ticking. Is there a better or more critical time to involve yourself? It is not someone else’s responsibility. If we do not care enough to be actively involved in defining the future of our community, someone else will define that future for us.
So to get down to it, what’s my point? My point is that we cannot just pick and choose the projects we can see from the front door of our homes, or that we drive by every day. We need to commit to being involved in every project proposal. Their impacts will be irreversible and, over time, will coalesce to negatively touch each and every corner of the community.
We’re all busy. No one feels they really have time for one more commitment. But ask yourself, is the need to determine the future of the community, where we raise our children and live our lives, a great enough incentive and motivation to do something? Is it?
And when, if not now?
eastport defined 