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Thurmont resident recently sent an unequivocal message to town leaders: Stop transforming our home into another Washington suburb.
The message was delivered through a 834 to 157 vote to reverse the annexation of some 16 acres of Frederick County into Thurmont town limits, which the town commissioners approved last year in a 3-2 vote.
The annexed land was to be used to build close to 200 town homes and other facilities, including a day care center and an assisted living home.
The landslide success of this effort proves that Thurmont leaders are not attuned to the wishes of residents they are supposed to represent.
In 2005, a survey of residents found that 86 percent valued Thurmont’s small-town atmosphere above all. This feedback was supposed to influence the process of Thurmont master plan revisions.
But when the updated plan was published in 2010, at least some specific wishes of residents were ignored, including widespread opposition to a planned development on Emmitsburg Road that was opposed in a 2006 petition signed by some 98 percent of area residents and at several boisterous town meetings.
The pre-2010 master plan foolishly designated the Emmitsburg Road area as suitable for medium density residential development, although many homes built there still suffer from periodic flooding.
The 2020 version of the plan does not reflect residents’ concerns, either, despite public meetings at which these concerns are voiced.
Master plan zoning designations are the lifeblood of developers, and have been used in Thurmont to push through project after project. The Emmitsburg Road development was finally approved last year despite almost 20 years of resident opposition.
Thurmont is slowly but surely losing its small-town atmosphere. The southern section of town is now dominated by car dealerships with huge parking lots, and new developments inexorably transforming the town.
Thurmont could be a great tourism destination for the Washington-Baltimore region. It sits at the junction of rolling farmland and the Catoctin Mountains.
The popular annual Colorfest confirms this potential, but the town has done little to make it a quality destination as gateway to the mountains.
One thing for sure, however: Weekend warriors and other visitors escaping urban and suburban sprawl will hardly be drawn to a town that looks just like the place they are trying to get a break from.
Thomas Cromwell
Thurmont
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(6) comments
Great LTE Mr. Cromwell! [thumbup][thumbup]
If elected officials refuse to listen to the citizens, they must be voted out.
Won't becoming a major tourist destination make the traffic far worse?
It can’t ever be “just another suburb.” Camp David is there.
Gosh, I lived in Hyattsville in P.G. County, Ashton and Silver Spring in Montgomery County and Columbia in Howard County from 1940 to 2008, during which time all of those nice rural Counties got swallowed up by Urban Sprawl and I never met anyone that lived there that was happy about it. Why is Thurmont and Frederick County any different? When most of the decent paying jobs increasingly are located around large Cities the people who need a job move to where they can make a living. As that has happened over the last 80 years or so the need for housing and infrastructure to meet the needs of the people expands in an ever growing circle around the Cities. No County, no town, not even Thurmont is immune to that fact. When it comes to development and property owners need to sell their land that they can no longer make a living on, the developers buy the land and build houses and shopping centers and schools to meet the demand. Thurmont isn’t different than any other town that met that fate. Time to move to some nice little country town farther away from D.C., 20 years from now Thurmont and Frederick County will look like Urbana and Rockville and Columbia, just another ‘burb.
Because of Yahoo's like you!!
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