About Commissioner Candidate
Harold Craig
Tara E. Buck
Frederick News
Post
Harold Craig
Jr., 73, has been a resident of Emmitsburg for 37 years and
says he has the answers to problems the town now faces.
The Main Street resident is vice president of Citizens
Organization to Preserve Emmitsburg.
“We have a lot of problems here
that need to be addressed,” he said. “One of the major ones is
the sewer system, and that’s compounded by annexation and
development.”
He believes the town also needs a bypass to prevent its
“horse-and-buggy road system” from even more disrepair from
out-of-state traffic.
“It’s almost impossible for me to cross the street to go to
church or the restaurant or various places. I’m right there
where all the vehicular traffic from Pennsylvania comes
through.”
Mr. Craig said he is a proponent of “balanced growth.”
“We have exceeded growth, I think. At this point, we need to
concentrate on jobs and businesses that provide jobs,” he
said.
Mr. Craig said that one of his major plans is to develop an
adequate public facilities ordinance (APFO) for the town,
which currently has no such ordinance on the books. An APFO
typically demands that services, like roads or water, are in
place before development can continue.
He is against the proposed Bollinger annexation, up for a
referendum vote in May, which will only bring more traffic
congestion, greater water and sewer capacity demand and other
headaches.
The current commissioners, he said, “know what has to be done.
They simply haven’t done it. They are taking a major step
forward in having the Little Run sewer line replaced, but
that’s just a minor part of the problem. The whole system,
about 89 percent of it, needs to be repaired or replaced.”
Mr. Craig said the town’s drug issues have been constant since
the Vietnam War-era and that police and sheriff’s office
should be given more resources to combat it.
“I don’t think there’s any issue more important than solving
the drug problems, but the town can’t do that,” Mr. Craig
said. “The police and sheriff have to do that.”
While some may view Mr. Craig as an “outsider,” he said of the
town that “you can be a stranger for an hour, but an outsider
for life.”
Mr. Craig also attempted to dissuade some rumors that COPE is
a secret organization out to destroy the town, or to put
officials in hot water with the Maryland Department of the
Environment or the Environmental Protection Agency.
COPE, he said, is a public organization that holds public
meetings and has the best interests of the citizens at heart.
Mr. Craig said COPE was formed out of a need that the current
board of commissioners has not met.
Mr. Craig is actively campaigning with
William O’Neil, COPE’s
president.
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