Rural landowners protest plan to change zoning rules

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Rural landowners came out strong last week to condemn a proposed county zoning bill as a destructive, risky ‘‘death sentence.”

The bill, which proposes a Transfer of Development Rights program, drew residents to protest who said it threatens to drastically reduce the value of their land by drastically reducing the density allowed on it.

‘‘We’re being trampled on,” said Dent Downing, who owns land near Croom in the southeastern part of the county. ‘‘All the economic risk is placed on the property owners.”

The TDR program works like this: In the name of preserving rural land, property owners in the low-density Rural Tier are supposed to send, and sell, their ‘development rights’ to areas in the Developing Tiers. In exchange for preserving the rural tier, presumably indefinitely, developers in the receiving areas can build to a higher density.

One zoning change drew protest last week. It alters the zoning in Open Space land – the lowest density land in the county – from one unit per five acres to one unit per 25 acres, if property owners choose not to participate in the TDR program.

‘‘Every part of the bill hits us somehow,” said Stephanie Johnson DeVille Eugene, who owns 70 acres with her family in rural Brandywine.

Eugene’s great-grandfather bought the land more than 100 years ago, and for decades her family used it to grow tobacco. Now they raise cattle, which they sell for beef. About half the land houses their extended family.

Eugene is concerned that should the cattle business turn unprofitable, her family couldn’t earn as much money by selling their development rights through the TDR program. If they opt out by selling their land at the mandated zoning of one unit per 25 acres, she said they stand to lose a large sum.

Eugene said she thinks the bill hurts those who have preserved their land over the decades.

‘‘You’re penalizing the very people who are doing what you’re asking them to do,” Eugene said. ‘‘It’s just taking all of our freedom away.”

Another Brandywine landowner who testified last week said the legislation would take his family’s land from his wife and children.

County Councilman Samuel Dean (D-Dist. 6) of Mitchellville had to ask the audience to refrain from clapping after the crowd burst into applause once the first few speakers finished testifying.

But opinions on the legislation vary.

Friends of Croom, an organization in the Rural Tier, has come out in favor of the program.

‘‘In the face of all the countervailing pressures, we believe you have achieved as good an overall result as possible,” they said in a statement.

The Prince George’s County Sierra Club is also supporting the bill and its down-zoning.

Chip Reilly, chair of the county chapter, said in an e-mail that the bill was a ‘‘good first step” toward controlling runaway growth.

‘‘As usual,” Reilly added, ‘‘the homebuilders are shamelessly trying to avoid paying a fair share towards the public good.”

Councilman David Harrington (D-Dist. 5) of Cheverly said the comments would be ‘‘thoroughly reviewed.”

County lawmakers look at the TDR bill as a preservation tool that directs development to areas built to handle it and diverts development away from areas the county seeks to protect.

‘‘We don’t want to hurt anyone,” Dean said on Monday. ‘‘Nothing is locked in concrete. We will be considering everybody’s position.”

He said the purpose of the 25-acre zoning provision was to preserve as much land as possible, but that an updated draft of the bill may be coming soon.

The legislation was changed to make participation in the program voluntary for those rural properties in the Residential Agricultural and Residential Estate zones, which are slightly higher density zones than Open Space. The bill has also been changed so that the District Council would evaluate the effectiveness of the program before July 2010.

E-mail Judson Berger at jberger@gazette.net.