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.