This petition is to stop the development of apartments on Clark Family Properties.

Clark Farm Properties is a small family farm located in Westminster, Maryland that is surrounded by single family homes. The owners of these single family homes, who live off of Mulligan Lane in Furnace Hills, were just notified via their quarterly water bill that the owner of this farm is selling a portion of his property (the part that surrounds the single family houses) to a developer who plans to build a 35-unit multi family apartment complex. 

In 2019, the City of Westminster Planning and Zoning Commission approved a leniency to allow the multi-family property to be constructed less than 200 feet from these single family homes, without even notifying the homeowners or homeowners associations surrounding the property of this project. The Planning and Zoning Commission had been meeting with the developer for several months, but the homeowners were only notified about this project after the leniency was approved.

To make matters worse, a member of the planning and zoning commission, Mr. Benjamin Yingling (who also happens to be a councilman for the City of Westminster) has a conflict of interest with this project. During the January 9, 2020, planning and zoning commission meeting, he admitted to having a business interest with the developers.

Now that this leniency has been approved, our understanding is that homeowners will not be able to stop the development of this project directly in their backyards that is absolutely way to close to their houses. The fact that they did not notify us of this was unethical and possibly illegal. 

There are many reasons that this is not a suitable location for an apartment complex. One of the major areas of concerns for these surrounding homeowners is that they already have significant flooding problems in their backyards. How will water run-off from this apartment complex impact flooding around these homes? Will their homes be flooded as a result of this project?

There is also a shortage of water in the City of Westminster. However, this developer had no problem getting an allotment of water approved as well.

This proposed development will cause a significant decrease in property values around it, especially due to the close proximity, which is less than 200 feet from several single-family homes. 

Mulligan lane was also not built to handle the traffic from another multi-family development.  This is a through street that already has serious traffic issues and complaints. There is already so much traffic, it's not even safe to let children play outside. In the past year, the city police have placed traffic cameras on the light pole outside of residents' houses to try to crack down on some of these issues. The proposed entrance to this multi-family project is currently an empty lot where the bus stop is for our street.

Another major concern that the residence have is regarding the overcrowding of schools in our area. Over the past few years, several elementary schools have been closed in the area. As a result, the class sizes of Westminster Elementary have increased significantly. In addition to this multi-family complex, there is also another proposal for another large multi-family complex in the same school district. Many preschools in the area are at capacity. 

If this apartment complex is built in the proposed location, it will destroy the neighborhood!