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Council delays criteria for creating green neighborhoods
LATEST ON THIS STORYRelated Topics: Howard County
Howard County (Map, News) - As measures encouraging green building in commercial buildings moved forward, a similar push for residential neighborhoods has been set aside for more work.
“We may recognize we have a little bit more work to do on some of the aspects” of the package of green legislation, said Council Chairman Calvin Ball, D-District 2.
The County Council on Monday tabled a checklist of standards developers must meet to be deemed a “green neighborhood” and become eligible for building incentives.
The council will work with the administration during the next 30 to 60 days to improve the standards, said Councilwoman Courtney Watson, D-District 1.
The administration presented an updated version of the list, which divided the criteria into the neighborhood site and the house.
Builders who create these green neighborhoods are eligible for a chance to build additional houses. A pot of 100 houses from the county’s annual housing allocation would be set aside as an incentive.
Those 100 houses were taken from the rural West’s allocation, which drew concern that some projects waiting to be built would be delayed.
Instead, the council approved an amended version of the legislation, which takes houses from other areas, such as Ellicott City. In a few years, the 100 houses would come from the west.
The council also approved a limit that no more than 50 percent of the green allocations given to builders can be built in one region each year.
This addressed concerns that one area would see a boost in development.
Ulman said he had no problem with the tabling of the checklist, and since the council approved the enabling legislation for this list, it should be resolved in the next few months.
smichael@baltimoreexaminer.com
Comments from Examiner Readers
2:16 PM MST on Thu., Dec. 27, 2007 re: "Amicus Green Building makes being green easy"
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8:34 AM MST on Tue., Oct. 30, 2007
re: "Fairfax County planners mull how to foster green buildings"
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3:15 PM MST on Wed., Aug. 29, 2007
re: "Fairfax County planners mull how to foster green buildings"
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Would be Amicus Customer said:
Amicus is totally unprofessional and unreliable. For green building products, go to Capital Building supply. I have been trying to buy cotton insulation from Amicus for a while, but they are not open about their prices, and are difficult to reach due to their capricious operating hours (they are a shoddy mom-and-pop operation). They did not even remember to bring their price list to the Green Convention. After they bragged to me about their huge inventory of this product, I went down there, and lo and behold, they have been out of stock for several months. This is their core product, and they don't have it. I browsed their other products, and it is a lot of Chinese made junk and stuff with dubious environmental value (an inflateable rubber balloon to reduce the capacity of your toilet tank?). Plus, there is an annoying dog roaming their warehouse, which is a nusiance to people like me with allergies, and is a poor example of environmental responsibility.
158 agree | 126 disagree
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Man What said:
Regardless of the possible detrimental effects of illegal workers, a healthier environment is a healthier environment. You may as well complain about attempts to improve education, fight violent crime, or prevent government corruption. Not every effort can be spent on chasing people out of the country when there are so many other issues at hand.
152 agree | 159 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
I can not believe our Fairfax County officials are taking their valuable time to be get involved in fostering green buildings while the illegals aliens in are community are driving up the cost of living for tax paying legal citizens of this county. It's time to get involve in the effort to remove ALL illegal aliens from the county, state and the country.
190 agree | 172 disagree
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