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A group of protesters showed up for Tuesday’s Harford County Council meeting to oppose legislation that will set up a special loan deal for a residential development near Aberdeen.

All the seats in the council chamber in Bel Air, which holds 250, were full for a public hearing on the legislation, known as tax increment financing, or TIF. A few people were standing.

The legislation will help the developer of the former Beechtree Golf Course near Aberdeen to borrow $14 million at below market interest rates to construct water and sewer facilities and roads inside the development. A significant proportion of the property tax collected from the owners of the 768 homes that will be built in the development will be used to repay the loan.

The loan’s low interest rate is obtained by the county government’s involvement, even though county officials claim there is no liability to the taxpayers if the borrower defaults. The developer, Clark Turner, is a longtime close friend of County Executive David Craig.

Prior to Tuesday’s public hearing, a majority of the council members said they expected to vote for the TIF legislation, and some said they expected citizen opposition.

Craig spoke at the hearing, saying he would not be supporting the legislation “if it required the full faith and credit of the county,” nor would he expect the council to support it. He said the county would have further protection because it won’t hold the bonds underlying Turner’s loan and it will end up owning all the infrastructure built with the loan.

Turner also spoke and said the only risk from the loan was to him, the developer, and to the institution holding the bonds, not to “a single taxpayer outside Beechtree.”

“Beechtree is smart growth in the smartest sense of the word,” he said.

“This is the first TIF for Harford County; we don’t want anything to go wrong,” he said later. “We’re being very careful with what we ask for.”

Kenneth Dawfey, of Street, the first opponent to speak, asked the council to table the bill and put it to a referendum to let the voters decide. He also asked the council to ask the county administrator what are the negatives to the proposal.

Dawfey noted that presenters of the legislation kept using “the magic words jobs and BRAC and anytime anyone wants to do something, they say BRAC is coming and that it’s going to be good.”

The council had not indicated beforehand if it planned to vote on the TIF legislation following the conclusion of Tuesday’s hearing.

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