We Saved Provinces Park!

 

 

We Saved Provinces Park!

June 14, 2023

 

It’s over. We won. We saved Provinces Park.

 

1,277 of you signed the petition to save Provinces Park from being paved over to build the West County Swim Center. 689 of you submitted letters and comments to the Anne Arundel County government expressing your opposition to their plan. And almost 300 of you showed up in protest for the first and only real public meeting the County held about the project.

 

They noticed. They listened.

 

Today the County Council unanimously passed a budget amendment to remove Provinces Park as the location for the West County Swim Center. They then passed the budget, officially enacting the change. The budget funds a new study to find a suitable location, and the County is currently in talks with Fort Meade to build the swim center next to Meade Middle School and Meade High School - a location where children of the local community will directly benefit without impacting neighborhoods or displacing organized sports.

 

At the beginning of all this, everyone said we couldn’t do it. That there was no way we would get the County to change course. They were wrong. When enough people speak in unison, we become impossible to ignore.

 

Thank you all for your support, your engagement, and your voice. We couldn’t have done this without you. And to the County Council, the Planning Advisory Board, and everyone else in the County government who heard us and helped make this happen - thank you for listening.

 

Sincerely,

Jonathan Max-Sohmer and Claire Greiner

saveprovincespark.org

 

 

About Provinces Park

 

 

Provinces Park is a 46-acre public green space in west Anne Arundel County. It is the largest public green space for miles. Hundreds of people from our local community use the park every day for exercise, recreation, and enjoying the quiet and peaceful scenery. It is also home to multiple sports leagues, providing weekend and evening activities for several hundred children.

 

The park is located at 1742 Disney Rd, Severn, MD 21144

The County's Plan

 

Anne Arundel County intends to pave over Provinces Park on Disney Road to build a Costco-sized, pay-to-access swim center and an 800-space parking lot. The swim center’s size is driven primarily by the County’s desire to host regional and state high school swim championships.

will turn into 

Save The Park

 

The County chose not to engage the local community for input when they selected the site in January 2021, nor did they notify residents in the surrounding neighborhoods. They didn't even put up a sign in the park! Despite the huge and constant demand for more public green space, they decided unilaterally to destroy the best free, public park for miles. Sign our petition to tell them NO and Save Provinces Park!

How You Can Help

 

Sign the petition! The more signatures we have, the stronger the message we send to the County that Provinces Park is not an acceptable location for their new swim center - and that we're not impressed with how they bypassed our community in planning. Every signature helps! Click here to signWritten comments make your signature especially effective!
 

Tell your friends! Tell your friends and neighbors that the County is trying to destroy the best green space for miles and that they tried to sneak it past us. Ask them to visit saveprovincespark.org and sign our petition.
 

Engage your community! Ask your community association, HOA, or leasing office to send a message to the community mailing list informing them of the County's plan and directing them to saveprovinces.org for more information and to sign the petition. For message content, your association can copy the petition verbiage from the paper flyers linked below.

 

Post on social media! Post a link to saveprovincespark.org on your local NextDoor forum and on Facebook groups for local communities and activities.  Note: The County probably won't give much weight to signatures from people outside Anne Arundel County and almost certainly won't value signatures from people outside Maryland.
 

Hand out flyers! We have printable flyers you can distribute on our behalf. Choose from our list below to match the flyer to your audience. Ask local businesses if you can put up flyers in their offices. Give them to your friends and neighbors. Post them in your community center or place of worship. Bring them to big events like youth sports games. Every person who signs a petition strengthens our cause!
 


Each petition flyer contains a QR code (square barcode) linking to the online version of the flyer. To scan the QR code, open your smartphone's camera app and point it at the code. The app will pop up a link you can tap to open the web form. This allows anyone with a smartphone to reach the online petition in just a few seconds, and it also allows a single printed flyer to collect many signatures. The bottom portion of the flyer can also be detached and mailed to the indicated address.
 

Write a letter! You can write a personal letter to County officials telling them how you feel about their plans. You can mail the letter yourself, but we strongly recommend that you also send a copy of the letter to us so we can present a big stack of letters all at once - and send it to multiple officials.

You can email your letter to help@saveprovincespark.org or mail it to:

Provinces Civic Association
P.O. Box 313
Jessup, MD 20794-0313