Make Your Voice Heard!
Baltimore County voters will decide whether to strengthen protection of the county’s rural areas in 2026, as the County Council has agreed to put on the November 2026 ballot a question of whether to make it more difficult to move the county’s Urban-Rural Demarcation Line, known as the URDL. Soldiers Delight Conservation, Inc. believes it is important to vote in favor of this legislation, as it is of critical importance to protect the county’s water supply, farmland and natural spaces, including land surrounding the Soldiers Delight Natural Environment Area in Owings Mills.
The proposal would place in the county charter a requirement that a supermajority of council members is needed to change the URDL. Bill 19-25 will effectively limit the Baltimore County Council’s ability to develop rural areas.
“This pattern of unchecked suburban expansion drains resources from established neighborhoods, leaving them behind as attention and funding shift elsewhere,” said Josh Sines, president of the Essex Middle River Civic Council. “By limiting development on raw land, we can create a stronger incentive for reinvestment in places where infrastructure already exists and revitalization is desperately needed.”
Those who agree say that the new bill wouldn’t be a dramatic change of procedure since the council already considers recommendations from the county’s Planning Board, but rather will add “an extra layer of protection” to the process. Established in 1967, the URDL was the county’s response to mammoth population growth across the two decades before, some of which threatened, and eventually overtook, the rare serpentine barrens that SDCI has worked so hard to conserve and protect.
The URDL divides Baltimore County into two land categories: urban and rural. According to the Department of Planning, 90% of Baltimore County’s population lives in urban areas that make up one-third of its total land mass. The remaining 10% live in rural areas, mostly in the north up to the Pennsylvania border. This is the area in which Soldiers Delight Natural Environment Area is located.
SDCI hopes you will vote in favor of Bill 19-25 to strengthen protection of the county’s rural areas in 2026 and help keep SDNEA safe from encroaching development and the invasive plant species such development would inevitably bring.
