And speaking of referendums, western county residents are getting closer to having a Harris Teeter grocery store. The proposed 160,000 square foot Town Square at Turf Valley received Site Development Plan approval earlier this month finally clearing the way for construction to begin.
It was a little over a year ago that the petition effort to stop this development was sidelined by the Board of Elections. After the BOE rejected about 80% of the signatures that were submitted, the organizers then tried to stop the development through the courts. The latest attempt by opponents to have the BOE decision overturned was thwarted last month when Howard County Circuit Court Judge Timothy McCrone issued a ruling upholding that decision.
Site Development Plan approval is the last major hurdle before the developer can move dirt and begin construction. With an SDP in hand they are likely pitching this development to retailers at the ICSC convention in Las Vegas this week.
No word yet on a projected completion date.
Daily
17 hours ago
10 comments:
Yay!
YEAH!!!!.. the sooner the better... this development is definitely needed in the area. I can't wait!
We all love Harris Teeter, but that doesn't change the illegal actions by our county government.
What do you like more, Harris Teeter in 2011, or Democracy and Harris Teeter in 2012?
If this had gone to voters, they might have approved it. As it stands, the county illegally prohibited our right to vote on approval.
Actually, the actions of the Board of Elections were legal. Accepting petitions that did not meet the legal standards for referendum petitions would have been illegal.
Democracy and the rule of law are safe in HoCo.
Long ago our country outlawed literacy for voting access. Requiring someone to sign a middle initial is a literacy test.
Like it or not, Board of Elections is operating outside of any stretch of legality.
The right to petition our government to either intiate legislation or block legislation will not be found in the Constitution.
There is a First Amendment right to petition the government for grievances, but that right has nothing to do with the right to referendum.
If some court some day does finds such a right in the penumbra of the Constitution, then so be it. But any such finding, I am sure, will not occur for at least a generation or so (at least until Chief Justice Roberts leaves the bench).
Instead, you have the actual right to vote, which you may exercise this fall in the primary and general elections.
In the meantime, unless or until some court determines that a citizen has a right to sign a petition without actually having to sign their legal name, there is no violation of the law.
The "triple match" has nothing to do with your legal signature. Breaking with decades of past BoE practice, it is simply a way to disenfranchise voters and ask the BoE to become handwriting experts.
The right to vote is in the U.S. Constitution. The right to petition and challenge state laws by referendum is in the MD Constitution and the right to challenge local laws by referendum is in the Howard County Charter.
The legal procedure for placing a candidate, political party or referendum before the voters is through a petition. By placing unique requirements on signature certification, our government has stripped citizens of their right to vote.
I lived in the UK for several years. An English friend of mine asked me once why the exact same vehicle I bought in the USA cost three times as much to buy in the UK.
I told him it was taxes, and his government control on the electorate.
He asked me why there was such a difference between the US and the UK.
I told him, "Well if you want it to be different, take your rifle out and hide behind that rock. When the Redcoats come by, start with the officers and work your way down."
When a government denies a people the right to petition decisions...doh! You do the math. It happens.
How any person, judges in particular can say that referenda are NOT our METHOD of exercising the First Amendment right to petition the government is incredulous.
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