(2/7) All Thurmont hoped to do was to
have the alignment of the proposed industrial
parkway moved on the county map. And the
Frederick County Planning and Zoning
Commission did move it …right off the map … at
least for now.
After slightly more than two minutes of
discussion during the Dec. 19 commission
meeting, the commission eliminated the parkway
north of Thurmont that had been planned for
decades.
“Bye, bye road,” Commission Chairman Joe
Brown III said after the unanimous vote.
The group laughed and then County Commissioner
Kai Hagen said, “It’s not there. There is no
road.”
Once the Thurmont town commissioners
learned that the parkway had been removed,
they asked Hagen to come talk with them during
a recent town meeting about why it was done.
“There’s a little trouble boiling here on
the horizon, in my opinion,” Thurmont
Commissioner Bob Lookingbill said.
Hagen said the parkway was removed because
it was unlikely to be built in the near
future, and the county was moving toward
“reality-based planning,” those projects
likely to be funded within the life of the
plan.
“All over the county we’ve planned growth
and supported growth without adequately
dealing with transportation,” Hagen said.
He explained that if there is movement
toward having a parkway, it could always be
added back into the plan. However, Chief
Administrative Officer Bill Blakeslee said
that it is the designation on the planning map
that helps create movement toward getting a
parkway.
“No one’s going to contribute to a road
that doesn’t exist on any map,” Blakeslee
said.
Thurmont Planning and Zoning Commissioner
John Kinnaird asked whether the town needed to
extend its growth boundary to encompass the
parkway, which it had originally done. The
town planning commission had pulled the
boundary back at the request of the county
commission; then the town was apparently
penalized for working with the county by
having the parkway removed.
During the Dec. 19 meeting, Brown started
the discussion to remove the parkway by
saying, “I don’t agree with a town that’s
putting a road on a map that’s not in their
growth limits. You know that’s county ground.”
Hagen encouraged the town to make its case
for leaving the parkway on the map to the
county planning commission. He also offered to
take a DVD of the town meeting with the
commissioners’ and citizens’ concerns to both
the planning commission and county
commissioners.
Following the meeting, the town planning
and zoning commission sent a letter to the
county planning commission asking that the
parkway be added back onto the map. The town
commissioners passed a resolution on Jan. 29
asking the county planning commission to do
the same.
