The following letter was sent to Kevin Scott at P&Z concerning the AYC Special Exception request for their parking lot. My wife, Michele and I fully support Mary Anne’s opinion and will be stating our support in an email to P&Z later today. Voices matter! End date for receipt of comments is September 8, 2016. Email address for Kevin Scott: kcscott@annapolis.gov
Please make your voice heard. This is a safety issue!
Petition for Judicial Review by the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County
RE; SE2016-004: Special Exception request by the Annapolis Yacht Club, Inc, property owner, to allow proposed parking and access to be located in the R2-NC zoning district to serve uses located in the adjacent nonresidential (WME) zoning district, on property located at 321 Burnside Street.
We are very concerned about the Special Exception and wish to appeal SE2016-004. Residents of Burnside Street reject the notion that an exit onto Burnside is needed.
This conclusions reached by the Annapolis Yacht Club for this Exception did not provide an accurate reflection of problems that will be encountered by Burnside Street residents with regard to parking and the use of the Burnside driveway.
As stated in the meeting with the City Council the traffic expert’s study did not reflect the parking problems encountered by residents.
If future study is needed, another expert that can provide an accurate report of traffic should be used.
The traffic study did not acknowledge that in essence Burnside Street is a one-way street. Cars are always parked on both sides of the street. Some of the cars are left for days at a time.
Many use parking on Burnside Street rather that paying for parking in downtown Annapolis.
It is true there are signs that state “Resident Parking”. The police cannot enforce the parking signs as they explained there is no way for them to determine the residents from the non-residents. So the signs do not prevent parking on Burnside Street.
The result is that residents are not able to park in front of their homes and guests are unable to find parking.
The construction will not be of benefit to homeowners on Burnside Street. This will create more parking problems and that is the least of the problems.
The construction will lower the value of our homes as the traffic and congestion following the building. The traffic will be out of control.
There is grave doubt that the AYC members will honor the emergency use only provision. Once there are events and members need to get home after the events they will use the emergency exit. As residents we will be unable to get out of our homes and will be prisoners.
The solution is for the Yacht Club is not to built an exit onto Burnside Street. This will remove some of the concern of the residents. The pain of all of the traffic and noise from construction will be unbearable.
As stated in the meeting with the City Council by a resident of the condos explained that it is already difficult for emergency vehicles to get through the street parked with cars on each side. This would be impossible in a traffic jam when the AYC members exit onto Burnside Street.
In effect this exit will create a health hazard for residents of Burnside Street. Emergency and Fire trucks would not be able to get to patients needing care. Fire fighters will have a delay when needed. Emergency vehicles and Trash trucks do not have enough room to turn around and must back up to reach the street. This creates a time lag that is important when treatment for strokes or heart problems.
We urge the Circuit Court to take the safety of the Burnside Street residents in consideration when they make their ruling. The residents do not have the might of the Annapolis Yacht but we hope your decision will keep in mind the health hazard an exit will present to the residents.
Guy Tourault Mary Ann Tourault
eastport defined 
Wasn’t this already decided? The Board of Appeals (BOA) heard this case a month ago and granted AYC’s application for special exception after duly posting public notices and receiving comments from a number of residents. I may be wrong but it doesn’t appear that the Touraults sent comments to P&Z at that time, nor testified at the hearing. Mr. Sherman did both however and one presumes he made the same arguments then as he and the Touraults are making now. Their arguments amount to fears that emergency vehicles and trash trucks won’t be able to service Burnside St. residents because of traffic jams caused by AYC vehicles. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, BOA naturally relied on the traffic study by Sabra, Wang that concluded no significant adverse traffic impacts would result from the AYC plan. If that traffic study is wrong, what evidence exists to contradict it? Many of the more heavily traveled streets in Eastport are just as narrow as Burnside and many of them allow parking on both sides. Perhaps a solution to some of the problems the Touraults et al imagine would be to ban parking on one side of the street so that vehicles may more easily pass in both directions. If the issue is really about non-resident parking, the CIty has solutions for that, too (e.g., 2-hour parking except for residents displaying a permit). Thus, contrary to the claim that the only solution is to prevent AYC from having an exit onto Burnside, there are several ways to address residents’ concerns. Finally, I’m no lawyer, but I suspect the only reason the Circuit Court might get involved in “judicial review” of the BOA decision is that some law or procedure or process was not followed by AYC, city officials or BOA. What legal or procedural rules weren’t followed? Bottom line: Simply repeating arguments previously offered in a public hearing–arguments unsupported by evidence, mind you– would be a waste of everyone’s time including that of the CIrcuit Court.