Posted by Phil Lee (216.250.238.150) on July 06, 2001 at 22:19:
CITY PAPER F E A T U R E By Michael Anft
A River of Trouble
A Revitalization Has Much of Essex and Middle River Fighting Mad--And Baltimore County Executive Dutch Ruppersberger Fighting for His Politcal Life
On a muggy Monday evening in early May, 85 people gather in a wood-paneled, high-ceilinged banquet hall near the waterfront, just as they have every Monday for most of the past two months. They talk, smoke, and drink beer bought at an adjoining bar. Many of the men, still in uniform from repair and maintenance jobs, interupt heated discussions to buy 50/50 raffle tickets. Women, in the midst of their own intense conversations, busy themselves with stapling printed papers into manila folders in one corner of the dimly lit, oversized room.
The mood is charged, but this is hardly a party. The folders contain petition sheets. The raffle is to raise money for the effort to get people to sign them. The winner this night, an elderly man, happily donates his $50-or-so prize back to the petition drive. Across the room, someone grabs a microphone. "We're having an effect," booms Rick Impallaria, owner of an Old Eastern Avenue body shop. "We'll pull Baltimore County together on this. I tell you, from what I hear, there are a lot of people in different neighborhoods who have interest in what we're doing who don't like Dutch Ruppersberger."
That thought has buoyed those leading the charge against Senate Bill 509, a measure passed by the state legislature in April allowing condemnation of 300 properties in three Baltimore County neighborhoods. The county would negotiate with the owners for purchase of the properties; if no deal can be reached, it could seize them via eminent domain for a court-determined price. In either case, the county would then sell the land to private developers, ostensibly for revitalization.
At this meeting in Commodore Hall, a few dozen yards from the shores of Middle River, activists devise ways to protect their homes and businesses from the law. SB 509 would give the county more sweeping powers than most eminent-domain measures, which typically involve condemning private lands for public uses: parks, schools, sewers, roads. Vilifying the bill's architect, County Executive C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger III, is part of the weekly agenda at the Commodore.
When the General Assembly debated the bill this past spring, Ruppersberger spent several days roaming State House hallways lobbying for its passage. Throughout the session and afterward, he was outspoken in his support. The Essex Middle River Community in Action (EMRCIA), the coalition leading the charge against 509, has singled him out for rancor, over and above that aimed at the bill's sponsor, state Sen. Michael Collins (D-Baltimore County); its chief County Council proponent, Vincent Gardina (D-5th District); and state Del. Michael Weir (D-Baltimore County), who labeled the anti-condemnation crowd "rabble-rousers." (In response, EMRCIA members take to wearing buttons proclaiming I'M A RABBLE ROUSER.)
But it's more than just Ruppersberger's call for a county takeover of the land that has the rabble roused. Opponents raise their eyebrows at the proximity to the SB 509 action of several figures tied in to the county's political and business leadership. A former county official's extensive waterfront parcel is not on the list of condemnable properties, leaving him free to sell to the highest bidder. An aging apartment complex owned by a Ruppersberger ally is on the list, making it possible for the county to take a potential albatross off his hands. A developer who stands to reap millions from an Essex-Middle River revitalization is also a Ruppersberger appointee to the county Planning Board.
These sometimes tenuous ties may mean nothing. The anti-509 crowd's suspicions are fed more by anger and anecdote than any evidence of wrongdoing. But those who have monitored Baltimore County government over the years say those suspicions may not be misplaced.
"There's been a systematic takeover of county government over the course of years that allows for big-money deals made against the backdrop of personal connections," says Kathleen Skullney, executive director of Common Cause/Maryland. "Senate Bill 509 outlines the tragedy that such deals wreak on the personal lives of citizens."
This early-May meeting, like the group's others throughout the spring, is focused and intense, determined to push EMRCIA's petition drive to put SB 509 to referendum on the Nov. 7 election ballot. For two months, activists' lives are consumed with the effort. Trips are cancelled and vacation time devoted instead to the battle. From Lansdowne to Towson to Bowleys Quarters, 300 EMRCIA members scour the county for sympathy and signatures. They get chased from a parking lot at a Wal-Mart. They hang signs outside their own businesses: HONK IF YOU'VE SIGNED THE PETITION AGAINST SB 509 AND STOP IF YOU HAVEN'T. They get signatures from a passel of county employees--including a high-ranking one nicknamed Dutch, who bows to political pressure and inks a petition in mid-May.
By June 30, the deadline for turning petitions over to Baltimore County's supervisor of elections, they collected more than 44,000 signatures--nearly 20,000 more than the 24,136 (10 percent of the county's registered voters) required to send the issue to a public vote. By July 20, elections officials will determine how many of the signatures are valid, and the rabble-rousers will know whether they've won or lost their first battle. And Ruppersberger--who has made the revitalization of eastern Baltimore County the centerpiece of his administration since winning office in 1994--will learn whether he will continue to fight the battle of his political life over the very area he has pledged most to help. (SB 509 also includes properties in the Liberty Road corridor on the county's west side and Dundalk, but its greatest impact would be in Essex and Middle River, and opposition has been strongest there.)
The usually voluble Ruppersberger has turned down requests by community newspapers and others that he debate state delegates (and 509 opponents) Diane DeCarlo (D-Baltimore County) and Jim Ports (R-Baltimore County) on the issue. (He also declined to give an interview to City Paper.) At least temporarily, the condemnation controversy has had some effect on the executive's political standing. "He knows it isn't helping him," says Baltimore City Council member Robert Curran (D-3rd District), a member of the state Democratic Party executive committee. "These bumps in the road happen to everyone. It's how you handle them that counts."
Others wonder whether fallout from SB 509, and Ruppersberger's very active stewardship of the bill, could derail a burgeoning gubernatorial candidacy. Ruppersberger was expected to offer a stiff primary challenge to Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in 2002. "He can run for governor," longtime Maryland political analyst Frank DeFilippo says, "but it's going to be awfully tough. If he ran right now, he might not even win his own county."
For those hoping to save the four owner-occupied homes, 40 businesses, and hundreds of rental apartments in the Essex-Middle River portion of the bill, Ruppersberger's political career is the least of their concerns. At stake for them are modest homes on the waterfront, family-owned businesses that have passed from one generation to the next, and fair treatment from a government they believe has either ignored or dumped on them in the past. At the root of SB 509, area activists say, is economic injustice: the use of public agencies to condemn private lands, which would then be turned over to private developers; the gentrification of a stretch of "working-man's waterfront" into upscale marinas, restaurants, and condominiums; the disruption of lives for the benefit of politicians and business backers of the executive; and the specter of a precedent that throws centuries-old property-rights laws out the window.
Not that EMRCIA favors leaving the aging neighborhood--roughly bordered by Stemmers Run Road to the west, Middle River to the south and east, and Eastern Boulevard to the north--the way it is. "We all want to see the area revitalized," says Bob Delsignore, an Essex activist and one-time candidate for the state legislature. "Basically, people just want the option of being part of the process instead of being subjects of the county. Nobody's against cleaning up the area. It's the way they've done it--by punishing the people who have paid their dues and didn't create the problem in the first place."
It didn't help Ruppersberger's cause, Delsignore adds, that those affected by the bill weren't notified of the county's intentions until early February--just days before the condemnation bill was introduced in the legislature.
For many Baltimore County leaders, SB 509 represents a chance to rescue a portion of one of its most depressed areas. The median household income in the planned revitalization area was $28,400 in 1998, compared to $41,800 countywide. Nearly one in three households in the SB 509 area had incomes of less than $15,000. County officials see 509 as the final piece of a badly needed redevelopment strategy--along with separate condemnations of the recently razed 548-unit Riverdale Village apartments and the 800-unit Village of Tall Trees, and the planned extension of White Marsh Boulevard to Eastern Boulevard--that highlights the waterfront and beckons middle- and upper-income homebuyers.
"There is a rare convergence of opportunity," says Robert Hannon, executive director of the county's Office of Economic Development. "This area had been bypassed by development interests in the past because of the physical and economic decline there. Our intention is to bring benefit to underachieving areas."
But residents wonder just what qualifies as "underachieving." Few dispute that Riverdale and Tall Trees, with their high crime and high vacancy rates, fit the term. The so-called "shore shacks" along the river, and the old storefronts and garages on Eastern Boulevard, engender more controversy. One of SB 509's stipulations is that "blighted" properties be targeted for acquisition--or, failing that, condemnation--and demolition. What constitutes "blight" is a question on which county officials and those whose properties they seek do not see eye to eye.
The shore shack at 1 Punte Lane has been Carmella Dahl's home for 11 years and part of her family's life for 23. The tiny, well-kept cottage seems unprepossessing enough when approached from the lane that ambles through the woods up to it. But on its other side Middle River beckons like a glittering jewel. "This," Dahl says, flinging her arm toward the calm expanse of the river as it opens toward the Chesapeake Bay, "is what Dutch wants: my million-dollar view." Adds her next-door neighbor, Bridgette Meekins, "These are our so-called slums."
One of seven shore homes slated for condemnation by SB 509, 1 Punte Lane provides all the comforts of a two-bedroom home, and at the right price: $200-a-month rent. Michael Dahl, Carmella's husband, built a shed where he makes stained glass, ties lures, and once performed taxidermy. The couple's 14-year-old daughter, Sara, attends parochial school just up the road on Old Eastern Avenue. Every facet of their lives is tied to the community, Carmella Dahl says. "We live with the river. My husband fishes every night, and we crab. When you live on the river, you become part of it."
The Dahls were married on the lawn that gently slopes from their front porch down to a shoreline replete with marsh grasses, tiger lilies, herons, and turtles. The same goes for Meekins and her husband, Gary, who married on their deck atop the river. "The county should know they're dealing with more than buildings here," Bridgette Meekins says.
Meekins' grandparents came to the area to work at the Glenn L. Martin Co. when its assembly lines churned out planes for World War II. "They lived in the Village of Tall Trees when it was called Mars Estates," she says. "For all of these years, my family has lived in the Essex area. We've fit into the county's vision. And now we don't?"
"The implication [is] that we're lesser citizens because we rent down here," Gary Meekins adds. "That's discrimination and classism."
Annabelle Vleck, owner of the seven rental homes, isn't happy with the fallout from SB 509 either. Her home, a well-kept rancher on the other end of Punte Lane, was initially on the bill's "hit list" before she and her neighbors convinced county officials that it hardly qualified as "blight." The nearly six acres on which the homes sit, on the eastern side of the peninsula between Middle River and Hopkins Creek, have been in Vleck's family since the late 19th century; now she wonders why she should be forced to sell it to the county so it can sell the land to developers. "If I want to sell something," she says, "I want to deal with the buyer, not the middleman."
Like Vleck's, Daniel Hubers' family has long owned a large stretch of waterfront land--about 60 acres, with 26 shore shacks. With its location (south of Vleck's property, along a deeper, wider portion of Middle River), and with many of its homes in an outwardly ramshackle condition, Hubers' property would seem both more attractive to developers and more "blighted" than Vleck's. But it is not among those listed for possible condemnation.
County officials say the reasons were practical. Size was one factor, Ruppersberger spokesperson Elise Armacost says. Hubers' parcel is large enough to be marketed to developers as is, whereas other, smaller tracts (like those targeted for eminent domain) need to be assembled by the county into large, developable plots. Economic- development director Hannon says there "are already developers interested in the [Hubers] site," eliminating the need for the county to get involved.
But anti-509 forces suspect that Hubers, a former county register of wills and the husband of state Del. Nancy Hubers (D-Baltimore County), is the beneficiary of preferential treatment--designed, they claim, to maximize his ability to sell his land. The critics note that sometime before the bill was introduced, the tax assessment of Hubers' property more than doubled--from $209,770 in 1999 to $525,550 this year, according to state records. That means a higher tax burden, but might also justify a higher sale price, activists note. Previously, the property had been classified for assessment purposes as agricultural--a designation that often results in lower assessments, hence lower taxes--even though there are few signs that it has sprouted crops in recent years. "I can't ever remember that land being farmed," says Vleck's daughter, Georgeann Lynch, who grew up nearby. (Neither Daniel nor Nancy Hubers could be reached for comment.)
Already, Daniel Hubers has turned down what sources familiar with the situation say was an offer of more than $700,000 from Ellwood Sinsky, one of five developers of the massive Hopewell Pointe project on the creek side of the peninsula, west of Vleck's and Hubers' land. (Sinsky confirms making the offer but not the amount. He does say the current asking price for Hubers' property is $4 million to $5 million, which the developer characterizes as prohibitive.)
Hopewell Pointe--which is slated to include 128 condominiums and 86 single-family homes priced in the $150,000-$200,000 range, a marina, and a 10,000-square-foot restaurant--has been publicly praised by Ruppersberger as the linchpin of the area's revitalization. (Sinsky says ground will be broken this year.) But ties between the developer and the executive go beyond admiration: Sinsky serves on the county Planning Board, a post to which he was reappointed by Ruppersberger in 1998 and which gives him access to inside information on private development proposals and county development policy. He pooh-poohs the notion of a link between his business and his board membership. "[The Planning Board] is strictly public service," he says. "We carry no political clout."
Carmella Dahl has lived in a Middle River "shore shack" for 11 years. Baltimore County, she says, wants "my million-dollar view."
While the Hubers may profit from being left off SB 509's acquisition list, bill critics claim, prominent Essex attorney Robert Romadka might benefit from being left on. Romadka, a longtime eastern Baltimore County political player who has raised campaign funds for Ruppersberger and County Council member Gardina, owns the aging Essextowne Apartments, a 65-acre complex Armacost says was included in the 509 roster "because of the shape those apartments are in." Built in 1968, the Essextowne development appears to be in need of cosmetic repairs at least.
Essextowne is run by Partners Management, a firm that owns or manages about 1,600 apartments in the Essex area. Both Romadka and Francis Knott, president of the management company, have been major financial backers of Ruppersberger campaigns, past and future. (In addition, Partners uses a Ruppersberger-owned collections firm, Rupp and Associates Inc., to deal with residents who are behind in their rent at some of its facilities, although not at Essextowne. The executive has removed himself from day-to-day operation of the collections company since his election in '94.) In 1998 and '99, Knott, his company, related companies, and members of his family gave $10,000 to Ruppersberger campaigns. During the same period, the executive received $5,063 in campaign contributions from Romadka, his relatives, his law office, and political campaigns run by his associate, John Gontrum. Both men are actively supporting SB 509, but not, they say, out of any potential personal gain.
"I'm backing [SB 509] because I think it will force people to keep their properties up, which can only be good for the area," Knott says. Says Romadka, "My feeling is that if our property is going to be part of the SB 509 plan, let's go for it. Communities don't get a second chance."
Brad Wallace wouldnšt mind a second chance himself. The Wallace Engine Co., housed in a small square building on Eastern Boulevard, faces the wrecking ball unless SB 509 is stopped. The shop, home for nearly 40 years to Wallacešs "engine revitalization" operation--the business was started by his father--sits in front of the home of his 80-year-old parents. The home is on the SB 509 hit list as well.
Wallace estimates that 80 percent of the businesses in the area, primarily small auto-repair shops on Eastern Boulevard just west of where the road crosses Middle River, are multigenerational family operations. Many of the merchants felt at odds with the county long before SB 509, he says, largely due to fallout from a $5 million 1997 "streetscape" plan designed to help traffic flow, widen sidewalks, and beautify what county officials call one of Eastern Boulevard's most dangerous and least attractive stretches.
Wallace says the plan, which has yet to be implemented, did nothing but alienate local businesses. For one thing, planned "islands" for parking would make it difficult for garages to maneuver cars in and out of their bays. But the heart of the issue, he says, is the county's refusal to seek shop owners' thoughts on the proposal. "We've never rejected an infusion of money from the county," he says. "But we couldn't accept a plan where we had no input. . . . There's been a perception that streetscape was designed to run us out."
Hannon doesn't deny that the county isn't particularly happy with the shops along the stretch. "Many of the same businesses that oppose SB 509 are the same ones who opposed the streetscape concept," he says. "Some of those people who own businesses along that strip should take a look at [the condition of] their properties, and also look at the shape of that area."
"The shape of that area" is what's uppermost in county officials' minds in their dealings with merchants and residents, activist Bob Delsignore says. "Automotive shops are not what the county wants as the gateway to their new development," he says.
"I'd like nothing more than to see this area come back,"engine-shop owner Brad Wallace says. "It'd be nice to be here to see it."
That distrust of government motives is something Ruppersberger inherited, and it has roots in a series a issues that predate his ascendance to the executive's office: the location of Baltimore City's wastewater-treatment plant in Essex, on Back River; the dumping of dredge spoils at Hart-Miller Island; the federally backed Moving to Opportunity program, which subsidized the relocation of poor city residents to suburbs. It is something Ruppersberger has not been able to overcome, despite pouring more than $146 million into the area's schools and roads and focusing so intently on pumping up its economy.
That focus is what led over the past several years to SB 509. In the past five decades, the fortunes of the once-desirable neighborhoods of Essex and Middle River have waned as 20,000 industrial jobs left the area, leaving behind high concentrations of poverty and unemployment. Early attempts to prop up existing housing, such as pumping $52 million into the Village of Tall Trees for improvements, were failures, county officials say. In January 1996, Ruppersberger and his development staff decided to take a page out of the city's book, "floating the concept," as Hannon put it at the time, of a "mini-Harborplace" with a marina on Middle River's Dark Head Cove. A month later, Ruppersberger announced a "public-private blueprint" for revitalization of a 70-square-mile section of the county's east side. "The whole county is at stake," he told a crowd as he announced the plan, the key tenet of which was eliminating many of the decaying apartments and replacing them with affordable single-family homes.
Two years later, the mini-Harborplace idea died of loneliness--no developer came forward to tackle the plan. But there were signs of progress elsewhere. Ruppersberger trumpeted early plans for the $35 million development at Hopewell Pointe. The county's acquisition of Riverdale Village, which was razed late last year, marked a turning point, observers say. For once, the county could clear land and open it for the type of redevelopment that would bring home-owning families back to the region and hence rebuild its shattered tax base.
"The southeastern county was always the economic engine of the county," Hannon says of the area's glorious steel-, ship-, and airplane-building past. "Those high-paying industrial jobs will never come back, but that doesn't mean you give up."
Already, Hannon reports, the county has received feelers from developers regarding SB 509 properties. One wanted to take over the entire area covered by the bill and build 500,000 square feet of retail space, an idea the county rejected. "It would have taken away the residential flavor we want, plus the small-business dimension that the whole southeast area has," Hannon says. Other builders have come calling, but with the referendum battle, he says, those efforts are stalled as the county waits to see whether efforts to rebuild that "economic engine" will include greater powers of eminent domain.
Brad Wallace, the engine expert, also wants to see that motor humming again; he just doesn't want the parts to include what he views as the county's power to kick him out. "I'd like nothing more than to see this area come back," he says. "It'd be nice to be here to see it."
Robert Romadka's role in SB 509 transcends that of an affected property owner. Sensing last September that county officials could use some mentoring on the matter of rebuilding parts of Essex, the 70-year-old lawyer and powerbroker--whose political history dates back to the 1960s heyday of then-Baltimore County Executive Dale Anderson--decided to take them to lunch at downtown Baltimore's Center Club. There, community revitalization officials and Ruppersberger's chief aide would meet with two old masters at redevelopment, state Comptroller William Donald Schaefer and nonogenarian downtown-renewal expert Walter Sondheim.
"I thought they'd all make a good match," Romadka says. "The county people asked them how they did what they did." Although the political ramifications of revitalization didn't come up, Schaefer and Sondheim would have been able to tell them how to deal with it. "There was all that hullabaloo, including a referendum, when the Inner Harbor was being redone," Romadka notes. A longtime friend of Schaefer's--as a law student, Romadka worked at Schaefer's father's title company--the semi-retired attorney has spent time as the Democratic Central Committee chairperson for Baltimore County and was appointed by then-Gov. Schaefer to the State Ethics Commission. (City political watchers may also recognize Romadka as the man who, partly at Schaefer's behest, sold Kweisi Mfume a Harbor Court condominium last year when Mfume was considering a run for mayor and needed a city address.)
Besides being a matchmaker of sorts, Romadka has emerged as one of SB 509's--and Ruppersberger's--staunchest defenders. He cites aging commercial strips in Pikesville and Parkville that have been re-energized through eminent domain (although there were no condemnations in either case; the county negotiated deals with property owners). He believes "misinformation" disseminated by EMRCIA has fueled hysteria that extends beyond Essex and across eastern Baltimore County.
"Because of all this bad information out there, we're hearing about people who aren't even part of this plan becoming worried that the county will take their homes. That's ridiculous," Romadka says. "The plan gives the county seven years to deal with these specific areas only. The county needs that kind of eminent-domain power to make this whole thing work. If they don't have that tool, then they can't take care of all the blight. If the county doesn't have this enabling legislation to stop deterioration . . . things will go from bad to worse."
And Romadka defends the county's decision to target certain properties that even he acknowledges are not part of the "blight." "You see that in many urban-renewal plans. If one house on a broken-down block is in good repair, you don't necessarily save it," he says. "You work to incorporate that land into your overall plan," even if the owner doesn't want to sell or doesn't agree to the county's price. A $50 million public investment, he says, shouldn't be endangered by "people holding out for outrageous sums of money, essentially holding the county for ransom."
For all of his zeal for the plan, Romadka says county officials did bungle politically, especially by not publicizing their efforts before the bill was introduced. "We should have handled that better," he says. "I don't know what it's going to take to get it back on track. I guess there will have to be a lot of meetings [with affected communities]." Still, he says, the furor "is not fair to Dutch. . . . [Ruppersberger] has had a good association with the people on the east side. He's done more for the east side than most administrations have. He's made a strong commitment to this area and he's lived up to it."
Fair or not, Ruppersberger--whose second term as executive will be his last because of a term limit--may have to rethink his political future, analysts say. "Dutch was playing an insider's game in Annapolis, but he forgot what was happening with his folks back home," Frank DeFilippo says. "It's bad timing for him. He could have probably run for governor [in 1998] and got it. [Gov. Parris] Glendening was weak that year. But SB 509's going to make it tough for him this time."
Matthew Crenson, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, credits Ruppersberger with handling the fallout from the bill well, but says the executive may have shot his political capital in the state capital. "The constituency with which he may have hurt himself is state legislators," Crenson says. "He got them to vote for this bill, and then it backfired. If they're looking for someone to put up for [governor], they may think twice about him."
Armacost says Ruppersberger isn't spending a lot of time worrying the political ramifications. "I think he is far less concerned about his future than he is with the work that needs to be done to revitalize those communities," she says. And she and Crenson agree that Ruppersberger may be able to repair any perceived damage during a series of debates tentatively scheduled between Labor Day and Nov. 7, assuming EMRCIA is successful in getting SB 509 onto the ballot. "In the end, it could make him look good," Crenson says. "It could make him look like an executive who cares about economic development and can make it happen."
Anti-509 partisans say they have a contingency plan in case the referendum drive fails: They'll hire a lawyer and take the county to court, arguing that the condemnation scheme violates the state constitution. Their effort already has attracted the interest of the Institute for Justice (IFJ), a nonprofit law firm based in Washington that handles eminent-domain cases and testified against SB 509 during hearings in Annapolis.
"We're giving their case a very serious look," says Scott Bullock, a senior IFJ attorney. "Governments taking land in order to turn it over to private developers is increasingly a nationwide problem." He notes that IFJ successfully fought Atlantic City, N.J., when the city government attempted to take a woman's property so it could be turned over to Donald Trump to provide parking space for one of his casinos.
State Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. gave SB 509 the constitutional thumbs-up in late April, citing a paragraph added to the state constitution in 1960 authorizing the use of eminent domain to remove blight and a 1996 law allowing private land in Prince George's County to be condemned for development. "Even in the absence of slums or urban blight, the use of the power of eminent domain to promote certain types of development has been upheld," Curran's opinion states. "These cases recognize that where the development serves public purposes, such as providing employment opportunities and general economic benefit for the community, a public use is present even though the public may not literally or physically be able to use the property. . . . [T]he necessity of a particular condemnation is [an issue] for the legislative or executive branch and will not be disturbed by a court unless the decision is so oppressive, arbitrary, or unreasonable as to suggest bad faith."
But Common Cause/Maryland's Skullney, a lawyer, says the bill's opponents have some cause for legal hope. She cites a Maryland Court of Special Appeals ruling in a 1982 Baltimore City case that the judiciary can weigh in on whether an urban-renewal plan serves a public purpose, she says.
"The use of land is not merely public because the condemning body says it is," Skullney says. "It becomes a question for the judiciary. It's got to be a bona fide [renewal] plan, or it's unconstitutional. The plan that has been dumped on Essex clearly raises these issues."
Regardless of how it all ends, the Meekins and the Dahls say they'll hold down the fort--even if SB 509 survives and Annabelle Vleck's shore shacks are put on the chopping block. "I'm not going anywhere," Gary Meekins says.
"You'll see me on the national news," Carmella Dahl promises. "I'll be the one on top of the roof staring down a bulldozer."