Residents vote to keep land in town

Rosemont’s elected officials had earlier decided to de-annex several acres south of Md. Route 17

The referendum was made possible by a petition initiated by resident Kevin Coyne, who gathered signatures of more than 20 percent of the town’s registered voters — enough to put the burgess and board of commissioners’ decision before residents for a vote.

‘‘I think personally that it sends a signal to our commissioners and burgess that they really need to more actively solicit public comment on these significant decisions before they act the way they did,” Coyne said on Monday.

‘‘A couple good public meetings, where they were receptive to public feedback, hopefully would have eliminated the initial charter resolution and the need to go through with this referendum and the costs associated with it.”

But Burgess Jackie Ebersole said she is ‘‘not happy” about the outcome, and that the resolution would have benefitted Rosemont residents.

‘‘The biggest negative I see is the fact that Brunswick will not be able to gain control over Route 17 and have it in their jurisdiction,” she said. ‘‘It’s not negative for Rosemont, it’s negative for Brunswick. Because we have no police department, it doesn’t matter to us where the road is. It does matter to them.”

Ebersole also said the town will not take any further action to attempt to de-annex the land. The only remaining possible way for the land to be de-annexed, she said, would be if the land’s owners petitioned the burgess and commissioners to de-annex.

If they voted to allow it, the county would then have to approve the petition as well.

‘‘We would handle it just as a regular routine piece of business coming in and what our council would decide at that time is probably that we would not recommend that it be annexed because the people have spoken,” she said.