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As the Clarksburg community continues to wait for the roads, stores and library it has been promised, the Clarksburg Chamber of Commerce is exploring the idea of home rule by incorporating the town.

Chamber representatives will meet Tuesday with leaders from Poolesville, one of the oldest incorporated towns in Montgomery County, to discuss the pros and cons of incorporation, chamber member Gordon Taylor said.

"Once Clarksburg becomes a tax district, the idea is to set up self-government," Taylor said.

The county is in the process of creating a special taxing district in Clarksburg.

Residents and business people have been frustrated for years over how the county has managed growth in the community. Taylor expects an incorporated Clarksburg would be able to direct funding where the town sees fit.

"It's like taxation without representation," Taylor said. "It would be better to self-direct it."

The meeting is a first step in the process.

"We wanted to just get the sentiment, the feel for it," Taylor said. "As a chamber, we thought we could be a facilitator."

Maryland has 156 incorporated municipalities, according to the Maryland Municipal League. Five communities have incorporated since state law changed in the 1950s and made incorporation more difficult, and all are in Montgomery County, said Tom Reynolds, the league's manager of research and information. The most recent was North Chevy Chase in 1995, he said.

Clarksburg is projected to grow to nearly 40,000 residents within the next 20 years as the community is developed according to the 1994 Clarksburg Master Plan.

Those newer municipalities all started out as special taxing districts, Reynolds said.

Municipalities get the majority of their revenue from property taxes, he said. They also receive a portion of local income taxes and some state revenue from such things as highway user fees.

"It's a challenging process to incorporate," Reynolds said. "It usually takes a good amount of energy from the community and time."

Clarksburg was an incorporated community until 1937, said Lynn Fantle, president of the Clarksburg Town Center Advisory Committee, who researched incorporation.

"They gave it up because they didn't have enough people who wanted to participate in government," she said.

Kim Shiley and Tim DeArros, Clarksburg residents and members of the Town Center Advisory Committee, also looked into incorporation for the community a few years ago.

"Clarksburg probably would have been better off if they had remained incorporated," Shiley said. "They would have been able to have a tighter hand in what was going on out here."

They concluded the process of incorporation was not going to be quick or beneficial, she said of their research a few years ago.

The Clarksburg Chamber of Commerce is not taking a position about incorporation until it has more information, Taylor said.