Saltworks Creek

Saltworks Creek

I am a city planner, a conservation planner and an architect, by profession, with over 50 years of experience in these fields.

I worked in 1999-2000 with a group of prospective purchasers of property on Saltworks Creek to explore its development prospects, and we held workshops with the county and with the Generals Highway Council of Civic Associations and the Severn River Association plus other interested parties to see if there would be a possible development scheme all parties could agree upon for this property.

During those explorations, I had occasion to walk the entire site, down to the tidal area on Saltworks Creek. It is a beautiful area, undisturbed but for traces of an old track, and a former house site atop the knoll.

It is not a site for an 80-unit assisted living facility as currently proposed by Hogan Cos. and the commercial traffic such a venture would bring. It is forest bordering on the upper reaches of Saltworks Creek and it runs directly into the Severn River, a severely challenged environmental disaster. This would be a very bad project to further burden the creek and the river.

While the groups who agreed on a town center mix of development on Bestgate Road at that time, the densities were in exchange for not developing the portion of the site on Saltworks Creek. The agreement was contingent upon the county approving a small mixed-use development under current zoning. The county was unable to agree to it because such a category would not exist until the category and changes to the zoning map could be adopted.

Despite opening the door to a new concept of development on the site, the developer became impatient and told the working group they would just develop a grid of single-family homes on the southern portion.

This development is not by right and should not be approved "by right" or as a variance.

W.P. (DINNY) DINSMOOR

Annapolis

Spending on schools

Scott Shaffer writes that Anne Arundel County is receiving less money than all but two other counties (The Capital, Feb. 15). What he doesn't mention is a factor in the state education aid formula for local jurisdictions.

Anne Arundel County has failed to meet that foundation formula (which measures the capacity of a county to spend on schools) for years and years, and the state docks us for it. It is the choice the county has made in every budget that failed the test. The money we would otherwise receive has become an opportunity cost and lost opportunity.

Someone who doesn't understand how the aid formula functions or is withholding that information in public discourse seems a questionable candidate.

ELWYN JORDAN

Arnold

ICE teams

Is anyone paying attention to what's happening? We now have a president that has been told by a rubber stamp Senate that he can do anything he wants.

Who is governing this nation under the Putin form of government. President Donald Trump is destroying our rule of law and going after anyone who disagrees with him. He has a large group of red hat and red-shirted followers who dismiss the truth and believe whatever he tells them.

Now he is sending tactical trained ICE agents into our cities to seek out illegal immigrants.

The last time the world saw a leader who would be king and could do no wrong he was sending brown-shirted agents into cities to seek out Jews.

Does Trump have to abolish Congress and civil liberties before the people of this country wake up.

JOE GRUVER

Arnold