Who has Hughesville’s best interest at heart

Friday, July 25, 2008

We seem to be having a little trouble though.

The plan is a guide to follow in order for us to fulfill our dreams. We all have homes in the surrounding area, some from as early as the 1950s (mine) and some as late as last week ranging up to $600,000 (not mine). Some are our dream homes. Our biggest dream come true would be to have nothing new outside the village of Hughesville until the revitalization of the village was implemented.

So far there have been two projects planned for Hughesville. One was the baseball stadium and the other is the Chaney Enterprises request to rezone their agricultural conservation parcel to heavy industrial. Neither was nor is conducive to a rural setting.

After all, Frank Chaney wants to sell off parcels of heavy industrial land in order to fulfill his dreams of a hall of charities and a branch of the College of Southern Maryland. Not so bad, right? But wait, what about the rest of the IH parcels?

Oh, Mr. Chaney says there is a slim possibility he will have to put a gravel washing plant in there. Umm, I guess after the county road from Post Office Road to Acton Lane goes through his property in Waldorf, he will have to move his washing plant to Hughesville. How else will he be able to develop the new growth corridor? And what would be built on the other IH parcels in Hughesville?

Oh, just your everyday, ordinary rural commercial endeavors ... asphalt plants, auto graveyards, machine shops, sawmills, scrap materials, junkyards, salvage yards and a few other nasty little businesses.

We met with Mr. Chaney a while back. At that time, he offered to have covenants drawn up whereby anything we did not want to have built would not be built, with the possible exception of the gravel washing plant. Since he plans to sell off the lots, how would these covenants have worked? I don’t know.

Now, you might say, as others have, that Preserve Hughesville is against everything. Until recently, that would have seemed to be correct ... it wasn’t, but it may have seemed so. But we have worked with Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative and with Ray Mertz off and on for about two years now. SMECO asked us to attend a presentation in its offices of a project to expand operations. Mr. Mertz has been in contact with us for a few years on his project, Hughesville Station. After a few meetings, he has come up with a solid plan which includes many of our ideas. As I said before, having nothing outside of the village until the implementation of the revitalization plan would be the best scenario.

But we realize that these projects may encourage that implementation. And we are convinced that SMECO and Mr. Mertz have the best interests of Hughesville at heart and will lend the corporate help that we need get our dream plan moving.

We feel that Chaney Enterprises does not have our interest at heart. In his letter to the Charles County Planning Commission, Mr. Chaney wrote, ‘‘Our location in Waldorf is a major key to our success at Chaney Enterprises since 1962, as it has a Sand & Gravel Plant that can run when needed and without restrictions due to its zoning and still be within an economical range of our aggregate reserves in Southern Maryland. If the expansion of Post Office Road and Acton Lane takes away that advantage (without its Capacity being replaced), it will be our company, and all it does, that could easily be lost.”

I suppose Mr. Chaney wanted us to pay particular attention to his thinly veiled threat to leave. Make note of this portion of the paragraph, ‘‘as it has a Sand & Gravel Plant that can run when needed and without restrictions due to its zoning,” because that describes what will happen in Hughesville if the parcel in question gets rezoned.

And one has to wonder, could this be a quid pro quo situation? I mean is there a possibility of Chaney donating the land for the road extension in exchange for a rezoning of their parcel in Hughesville?

So are the commissioners going to fold as did five of seven planning commission members or are they going to do the right thing?

Donna Cave, Hughesville

The writer is chairwoman of Preserve Hughesville.