Meetings Provide Important Updates for Cape Residents

County Councilman Dick Ladd (R-District 5) attended last Tuesday's quarterly membership meeting of the to report on several subjects relating to the 2012 county budget.

Ladd, who is chairman of the Anne Arundel County Council, said that the budget will continue to be discussed for the next couple of weeks to review deep cuts that have been presented. He said the county is now operating "under a virtual spending freeze, with a four to four-and-a-half percent reduction of take-home pay for county employees."

Ladd reminded residents that officials will hold upcoming public hearing sessions on the budget on Monday, May 9 at 7 p.m. at Old Mill High School in Millersville and on Wednesday, May 11 at 7 p.m. at the Arundel Center in Annapolis.

Another of Ladd's concerns is the environmental impact of local pollution. Ladd rehetorically asked: "How are we going to pay for cleaning up the Bay?" He estimated that "a couple of billion dollars over many years" would be required to properly improve its health.

Leaking septic systems are a large source of local pollution, according to Ladd, and the best solution is to convert those homes with those systems to public sewers, an extensive and long-term move.

Ladd also indicated that cuts to infrastructure have been proposed, to include roads, schools and equipment replacement, though he emphasized that the long-anticipated for Cape St. Claire Road will not be affected. Funds have already been in place for some time and construction for the year-long project is slated to begin this fall.

Also at the community meeting was Anne Arundel County Police officer Jay Morgan, who serves as the main security patrol for Cape St. Claire. He explained the alternating shifts of two marked and two unmarked police officers, who are employed to patrol the neighborhood outside their usual shifts for the county.

The four officers work in four-hour time blocks between 3 p.m. and 3 a.m., and especially focus on the main beach and the Cape Plaza area.

Morgan reported that, though Cape St. Claire has been relatively quiet recently, they have encountered a fair amount of illegal activities behind the Plaza shops. "It's been graffiti central behind the True Value, and we've made some significant arrests for drug activities and vandalism," he said.

Even with minor offenses such as noise complaints, Morgan encouraged residents to call 911 since the service has sophisticated computers to track problem areas so that officers can include these areas on their patrols.

Additionally, Morgan said that residents can call their local police commander when traveling out of town so that officers may keep watch over temporarily vacant homes.

CSCIA President Sam Gallagher reported that the move to eliminate racially restrictive language from the community's covenants still needs more votes to pass.

"It sort of petered out even though we're only about 300 votes short," said Gallagher. "600 people still have not voted so we are recruiting a couple of volunteers to help gather the needed votes."

On Wednesday, Koch Homes representative Kevin Lusby presented to a small group of Cape St. Claire residents its plans to build the Deep Creek Villas development on Pennington Drive North, off Bellerive Road.

The housing development, which originally planned for age-restrictive housing, now will contain 36 single-family homes and 75 one- or two-car garage townhomes, all of which will be non-age-restrictive.

The new homes will back up to houses at the end of Poplar Hill Drive in Cape St. Claire and will sell in the range of three hundred thousand to six hundred thousand dollars. Groundbreaking for the five-year project will take place soon, in as little as a week.

Several concerned Cape residents, including those living directly next to the construction area who will face some clearing of trees for new sewer pipes, listened to Lusby's presentation that included several land plats of the upcoming development. Also in attendance were Councilman Dick Ladd and Broadneck Council of Communities President Patricia Lynch.

Of particular note was a two million dollar contribution that Koch Homes provided to to build an eight classroom addition that was completed earlier this year.

Lusby stated that, taking into account a state-set formula for calculating the number of students in a particular residential area, Deep Creek Villas is projected to have 27 students across all grades. He added that the high school expansion houses 170 students and, as a result, is larger than required for the new development.

The advantage to having Koch Homes provide the funding was higher-end construction on a more controlled budget. "Based on my experience," said Lusby, "if the county builds it, you're going to get a Chevy, but if a developer builds it, you're going to get a Cadillac."

Ladd said that the addition to the school was needed since the Broadneck peninsula "is a very attractive community and people come here for the schools."

Other concerns for Cape St. Claire residents included the number of trees to be felled for sewer line installation. In the renderings, Lusby showed a number of specimen trees that would stay and indicated which areas would be reforested. "We will try to keep the clearing to a minimum," said Lusby.

Several homeowners encouraged planting native trees, an idea which Lusby indicated that Koch Homes could consider.

Koch Homes is also planning to pay for an upgrade to the water pumping station located at the end of Poplar Hill Drive. The new Deep Creek Villas development will use the station and Lusby said it was important to prevent the possibility of sewage dumpage in a worst-case scenario of a power outtage coupled with a back-up generator failure.

A developer-provided engineer already has assessed the pumping station and Koch Homes will be installing an additional sewage holding tank to hold overflow in times of power failures.