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Stafford asked to pursue selling special bonds to purchase Crow's Nest peninsula and protect its wildlife. Date published: 2/18/2004 By RUSTY DENNEN Stafford County supervisors may hold the key to preserving the Crow's Nest peninsula. Save Crow's Nest, a local preservation group, asked the board to consider purchasing the land though a special bond issue, which would have to be approved by residents through a referendum. "The bottom line is, we need to look at different options creatively," said Nan Rollison, who spoke on behalf of Save Crow's Nest during last night's supervisors meeting. She presented supervisors with some rough cost estimates to prove that it will cost the county more to provide services and infrastructure to the people who would live at Crow's Nest should it be developed than it would to just buy the land. "It's sort of an obvious answer, which, for whatever reason, was not explored," David Croteau, a spokesman for Save Crow's Nest, said before the meeting yesterday. Also at last night's meeting, preservationist Paul Milde announced the creation of another Web site, save crowsnest.com, which will be tracking proposals for the preservation of Crow's Nest and will allow visitors to sign an online petition for the peninsula's preservation. K&M Properties of McLean, which owns the 3,800-acre tract between Potomac and Accokeek creeks, had been negotiating to sell the land to the state for a nature preserve. But those talks fell through last November, and K&M now wants to revive development plans for the land. The company has discussed a cluster development with county officials, in which homes and shops would be built on less environmentally sensitive parts of the property, allowing the rest to be preserved. Supervisors have made it clear they want to see the entire tract preserved. Another option under discussion is a land swap in which K&M would be offered an opportunity to rezone another tract elsewhere in the county to allow for the development slated at Crow's Nest. It's unclear how such a swap would be accomplished. Croteau says that a cursory look at the county's probable expenses in shared costs for roads and infrastructure on Crow's Nest makes a bond issue an option.
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