Instead, they will provide minor comments asking for a handful of map and text changes on specific properties.

Commission members complained the county commissioners are changing too much in the plan as the process moves forward for them to provide a meaningful recommendation.

"It's kind of like giving them the ingredients and letting them figure out how to make the cake," said planning commission member Joan McIntyre.

The New Market region, with 46,800 acres, is one of eight planning regions in the county. County planners typically revisit region plans every eight to 10 years.

In this case, the Frederick County Commissioners want to replace a plan adopted just last year by the previous board.

In July, Jim Gugel, chief planner of the Frederick County Comprehensive Planning Section, said the new draft plan reduces the 20-year projection of growth in the region from 12,200 housing units to about 5,400 units, excluding the Lake Linganore development.

Developer Land Stewards is planning to build as many as 4,173 homes on 3,850 acres near Lake Linganore , under current zoning regulations.

The commissioners are considering a developers rights and responsibility agreement with Land Stewards LC. Their other alternative would be to reduce development capability by broad rezoning.

An agreement would be helpful, commissioners say, because they could permanently preserve parts of the land while allowing Land Stewards to build 2,600 to 3,600 homes, along with supporting roads, parks and schools over a number of years.

Land Stewards would not be subject to future rezonings at the whim of the commissioners if they enter into the agreement.

The commissioners are meeting with Land Stewards today to discuss the deal.

Planning commission members said the agreement could change the outlook for the entire region.

"Without the (agreement), the whole thing's a joke, in my opinion," said Joseph F. Brown III.

Members spoke favorably about the agreement, but decided by a vote of 4 to 2 not to make any recommendations on the New Market plan before the county commissioners make final decisions on the agreement.

Planning commission members also said they'd been bogged down reviewing traffic studies accompanying the New Market plan. The county commissioners asked for the studies and set their scope, so planning commission members said they left some of their questions unanswered.

Planning commissioners wanted to know how much a developer-funded bypass on the north side of New Market would help traffic congestion, given the increased traffic a new development would bring. That question was not addressed in the traffic study, or subsequent revisions.

McIntyre, who voted against the planning commission's decision along with Brown, said the commissioners wouldn't listen to anything anyway.

"Nothing we say has any credence. Nothing," McIntyre said.

The planning commission is not the only group talking about traffic. Traffic woes were one of the biggest reasons the commissioners decided to revisit the region plan.

Wayne Smith, representing the Smith and Cline farms off Boyers Mill Road, said his family is having discussions with New Market residents about extending Musseter Road as a bypass north of town. Bethesda-based developer Winchester Homes had proposed building about 925 homes on the 260 acres, and Smith said Winchester would consider fully funding the bypass to proceed with building.

The developers of the Smith-Cline properties stand to lose some of their ability to build homes under the draft New Market plan, which changes the zoning to agricultural.

The planning commission members did not take up the suggestion and said it was too late in the process for them.

"We can't respond to you other than to say good luck," Brown said. "I would like to see the road built. I think it would help the situation down there."

Friends of Frederick County, a nonprofit organization advocating better land use, also weighed in on traffic in the region.

The organization sent a letter earlier this week urging the county commissioners to study traffic problems further in the planning region before passing a final version.

Members said the most recent version of the traffic study shows development contemplated under the commissioners' plan would result in widespread failure of the road networks in 10, 15 and 20 years, even using a scaled back plan for 3,150 homes for the Lake Linganore development.

Friends of Frederick County wants the commissioners to ask a traffic planner to estimate how many homes need to be reduced to avoid widespread failure of the region's road network. Members don't think it would take very long to do so.

County Commissioner John L. Thompson Jr. said he does not need further studies on the region's traffic woes.

"Unless the developers are willing to open their wallets as wide as their mouths on the issue of alleviating traffic congestion, we should downzone most, if not all, of the vacant land current zoned for development," Thompson wrote in an e-mail.

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