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July 27, 2006--Royce Hanson

Let me start by welcoming Mr. Hanson back to Park and Planning. And second, let me wish him luck. The problems at Park and Planning won't be fixed by the appointment of a new Chair alone, anymore than the existing problems can be laid in their entirety at the doorstep of the previous Chair. The problems at Park and Planning go deeper than any management issue.

Mr. Hanson is going to have to start by making sure that the agency is adequately staffed to carry out its mission. They currently do not have enough frontline employees to do the work that is necessary. Not only has the process of development review suffered, but the ability of the Agency to acquire necessary data is seriously deficient. One only needs to read the latest transportation update to note that the Staff is telling the Board that they're dealing with outdated counts, too little information and no capacity to get the information. This much touted report that shows "progress" actually uses some data that's older than 3 years, uses data that is inadequate and only samples a portion of the County's intersections. It's hard to do good planning with bad data.

Mr. Hanson is going to have to deal with more pressing problems as well and among them is the morale of the planners. The current growth policy and growth rate were invented by the Council in direct defiance of the recommendations of the planning staff. In other words, the non-professionals on the Council substituted their knowledge of planning and growth management for that of the professionals.

Whereas they argued for staging tools and to retain the ability to manage growth (and the fees to pay for it), the End-Gridlock Council members ignored the Staff's and the Planning Board's recommendations and opened the floodgates instead.

In 2005, the Council approved 20% more housing units and 250% more jobs than the Staff recommended and Staff reports that an even greater problem is that the excess growth will be focused in areas least served by infrastructure. You don't need professionals to manage the Council's growth policy, you just need a rubber stamp machine. This is especially egregious because it allows far more jobs than housing, thereby exacerbating the problem of people outside the County coming here for work - the very problem that End-Gridlock Council members claim to be the result of forces beyond their control.

On closer inspection, the jobs-to-housing imbalance is a deliberate creation of their policies, not an accident. And besides encouraging long distance commutes by non-residents into the County, it also acts as a lever to drive up housing prices. The Council acts as if these forces are a mystery to them, but in reality, it's just the market at work.

If that weren't bad enough, the Planners are tired of being beaten up by the community when they try to sell them on the notion that their schools and roads pass the Adequate Public Facilities Tests. Those tests are designed to let everything pass. The Council test counts school capacity differently than the programming objectives of the schools and they count road capacity without counting all the cars that the Planners and community know will be on the roads.

The Planners wind up offering what the public perceives as a lame defense: they're not misleading anybody, they're just following the rules as passed by the Council. So they take the public beating for transparently flawed policies that the Council implemented over the objections of the Board and Staff. When you keep professionals from acting in a professional way, from using their professional skills, and turn them into cogs in a development approval machine, it's not surprising that there's a morale problem.

So, Mr. Hanson, you inherit a broken growth policy that's the creature of politics, not planning; many of your staff feels disrespected and irrelevant in the sense that their opinions aren't wanted and they aren't given the tools to do the job right; and the public is increasingly suspicious of Board decisions that fly in the face of what people see every day. You indeed, as everyone says, inherit a mess - but I hope you quickly understand that the biggest part of the mess is not what's attributed to Derrick Berlage's management skills, but rather the inherent problem of broken processes imposed on Derrick, the Board on the Staff, rather than created by them.

I welcome you back and I wish you luck. We should be able to judge pretty quickly where your tenure will take us. I hope that you won't trade off silence on the policies in exchange for more generous treatment in the budget process. I hope that you'll expand the opportunities for public input, reassert that the Planning Board, not the politically motivated Council, ought to be more involved in constructing a growth policy with meaningful management tools, and I hope you can restore public confidence in this process.

I look forward to working with you and your Staff.

July 20, 2006-Growth Policy Report

About the fire and rescue services -- We have no excess capacity. In fact, 28 or 31 units are operating beyond the response threshold, meaning they're being asked to do more than they were designed, equipped and staffed to do.

Police - The County has 1.1 officers per 1000 residents. This is below local, regional and national averages and, most importantly, below the number that they believe they need, which is 2.0 officers per thousand. They're getting about 50 new recruits a year, but losing veterans, so the ability to expand to meet the need is very, very slow.

Public Safety and AGP/APFO
Staff concludes that adding a Public Safety Component to the Adequate Public Facilities Test would lead to a moratorium on development. Fire and Rescue services says they "easily" need 12 additional stations beyond the 31, but even 12 aren't enough to insure a 12 minute response time throughout the County. We've got 4 opening in the next 4 years-- the first stations built since 1981.

Staff concludes that so much as been approved and we're so far behind that a moratorium would have no real impact on pubic safety for a considerable period.

Mobility
Mobility is decreasing. Speeds and travel times are decreasing County-wide except in areas that have had some improvements. But sometimes the problems are pushed down the road, and they don't know how long the improvements will last in the face of new development.

The number of congested intersections has increased to 22% from 16-19 % (why the range?), and this is by standards that already allow excess congestion. The bottom line is that the major arterials are getting worse - and these are the primary movers of people in the County.

This is both a growth and resource problem.

The Growth Problem: The County's continuing policy of allowing more jobs than housing, in a County with virtually no unemployment, means that more and more workers have to drive here from out of the County. In 2005, the first year of the Council's new growth policy, the Council approved 14,644 jobs - 2 ½ times the Planning Board recommendation, and they approved 4388 housing units - 20% more than recommended. Actual development was not only higher county wide, but higher in areas that are not well-served by transit.

They recommend a comprehensive approach to staging that this council refuses to implement. Under these policies we have the worst of both worlds, we can't control the amount of growth to our ability to support it and we can't control the location of growth to those areas that can or could support it and that we are supposedly targeting.

Writing in 2003 on how to deal with the Annual Growth Policy, "the Montgomery County Planning Board has determined that congestion on the County's transportation network and enrollment in the County's public schools have both reached capacity. To effectively implement the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance, the AGP should use a definition of "adequate" that conforms with the reasonable expectations of most County residents. The Planning Board believes that the County has reached or exceeded those levels for transportation and schools Countywide."

And in the same report they added, "Key to the Planning Board's concept is the idea that, because transportation facilities are over-utilized, the growth policy's allocations should give preference to the most efficient land use patterns first."

This Council doesn't need a Planning Board. They have, in fact, substituted themselves for the Planning Board by ignoring their key recommendations, recommendations that are the essence of a planning process. The Planning Board said that managing growth is difficult, but we need to do the best we can, while the Council has said, "why bother?" To the Council, there is no over-development and all facilities are adequate - the exact opposite of what the Planning Board has been telling them. They don't care where or how we grow, as long as we grow.

The resource problem: Park and Planning staff commented on the resource issue: How do we pay for it? They concluded that "resources are scarce and come nowhere near the levels required to address" the locations needing congestion relief." What they said applies not just to roads, but to schools, to public safety and, we could add, to parks, recreation, and health care and other social services.

This is a problem the Council has actually made worse. It is true that they added Impact Fees for developers. But what they don't tell you is what else they did and that was to get rid of the County's Policy Area Review. Under Policy Area Review developers had to pay for the infrastructure costs that were related to their project throughout the policy area, not just for the impacts on immediate nearby intersections. When you combine the new Impact Taxes with the lost revenue from giving up policy area review, the net effect is an annual revenue loss of $80 million dollars that will total %1.2 billion over the next 15 years. No wonder we can't find the resources to pay for the infrastructure.

Over-development: A self-inflicted wound. What we clearly have is a council, an elected body, that, not content with being able to appoint a Planning Board, has sought to render them irrelevant. The Council, the End-Gridlock Team, was not elected to pour development into the County adding to congestion and school over-crowding, they were supposed to relieve it.

Instead they have adopted policies that exacerbate, rather than address our problems. Having had eight years of minimal infrastructure investment prior to their election with growth that strained our every resource, they have simply amplified the problem.

They will say that there's nothing you can do about growth - and that's not true. If it were, developers wouldn't be as concerned about the election of a Council that might apply a moratorium in areas where the roads and schools exceed capacity.

We do have tools, just not the tools developers want. The Council had a staging tool that allowed development to be released as resources were brought to bear on the infrastructure shortages -- and they got rid of that tool, too.

Some Council members have said that we can't stop growth, but we need to build the infrastructure. It sounds good, but it's not what's happened in the past twelve years. We have a backlog of infrastructure we can't pay for, let alone the demands for new infrastructure that this next growth wave will bring. And to make matters worse, bad as past policies were at generating revenues to pay for all of this stuff, the policies that this Council put in place have further increased the funding shortfall. This is no way to run a business, and no way to run a government. While saying you're going to build the infrastructure is easy, sounds right and sounds good, the fact is that they have made it more difficult than ever to do that, at a time when our problems are getting worse than ever. You could say they've created the perfect storm.

Investing in infrastructure: A final note The last thing I'd ask my patient reader to consider is this: What is the purpose of our infrastructure investment? Most of you assume that investments to fix our roads and schools are meant to relieve our problems. I wish that were the case. The problem is that all the conditions that we bemoan were the deliberate creations of policy. This level of congestion, this level school over-crowding is what is permitted by the current "Adequate" Public Facilities Ordinance.

What that means is that every improvement that reduces a problem below the adequate standard, simply opens up the road or school to more development so they can be filled back up to where they were. In other words, unless we change the definitions of what adequate facilities are, all of our investment will go for naught because the bad conditions we seek to escape will immediately be allowed to reproduce themselves.

I will work to restore reasonable standards to the definition of adequate so that when we fix a problem it stays fixed. If we're doing intersections for congestion relief, I will insist on standards that provide congestion relief. Ditto for the schools.

April 25, 2006-Beltway Widening

The Beltway widening, particularly with toll lanes, just creates two classes of travelers. Those who can pay, and those who stay. Tolls have to be high enough so that the toll lanes don't slow down, which means that non-toll lanes remain more congested than they'd be without the tolls. Not much of a break for the average tax payer. But there's a more insidious side to the expansion. At every major access road, the widened Beltway would provide more "capacity" for development. So roads like University Blvd., Colesville Rd., Georgia Av. and Connecticut Av.which are already overwhelmed by traffic, would get even more. And not only would that traffic come from new development, it would come from all the people trying to get on the Beltway, to take advantage of the toll lanes in some cases, or to use the non-toll lanes which experience temporary relief until they load up again. It is another non-solution to our areas traffic crisis and one that makes conditions for most of us even worse.

Creating even more congestion and making local conditions worse is a seriously flawed public policy.

April 7, 2006-Silver Spring is Unique

Today was a beautiful day for a tour of historic Silver Spring. I had the chance to walk along Georgia Ave. and received a real education in the history of the buildings and the town - many thanks to Marci, George, Mary and Jerry. There's a lot more to the architecture than you get from a from driving by, or from a quick walk down the street. I found that stopping to look at the buildings, the details and the way they fit together makes you realize that there's a lot more than you would think at first glance. It was particularly evident in looking at the old photographs of many of the buildings.

I grew up here, have seen Silver Spring go through innumerable changes. I had a lot of memories of my growing up that are rooted in Silver Spring. This is where my mother worked as a waitress (Hofberg's, Sirloin and Saddle, Hot Shoppes), my parents brought me to shop for clothes, where I hung out as a young teen, where I bought my first rock and roll 45's (Palisades Park, I think was first). I bowled in the duckpin lanes on Bonifant, ate death balls from the Little Tavern, played air hockey in the Quarry House, bought sheet music at Dale Music, went to movies at the Silver Theater and the Roth and, most fondly, I remember waiting on the train platform for the B&O that would take us to Chicago every summer. My life was pretty rooted between here and Wheaton.

This part of Silver Spring faces some serious challenges. It is home to an enormous number of small independent businesses. Some have been here forever, others represent people starting out. We would lose a lot if it were all replaced by new development. Few of the businesses could afford the rents, and few would find suitable places to relocate to. But they serve an important role in the community.

And beyond that, they're a part of OUR history, part of the process of becoming what we are today. Silver Spring didn't just happen and it wasn't successful by accident, but rather it reflected a vision of a community that people consciously tried to create. The values incorporated in that community, a sense of place and opportunity, are as relevant today as they were when Silver Spring first came into being. They survive because there is a market for what they do. We need to find a way to insure that the character of Silver Spring isn't lost, and that character is composed of the both the buildings and the people who work in them.

We have to be careful that a monolithic sheet of development isn't laid down from the revitalized heart of Silver Spring all the way down Georgia and Fenton to the railroad bridge and beyond. If this is transformed into one housing tower after another, we will wind up without a true downtown. As someone who served on the Revitalization Committee and who supported the development of the core that Foulger-Pratt undertook, I know that the hope was that the benefits of that development would spread out to the businesses along Fenton and Georgia. The discussion about the revitalization centered on which project in the core would be successful and have the best spin-off effect on the surrounding businesses. Leveling the blocks south of Wayne and displacing the businesses was not what we wanted. The hope was that the positive impact of this project would lead people to explore what we referred to as Fenton Village. I feel that some of our vision and hope is being erased, and I've heard from many people in East Silver Spring who are concerned at the density that is creeping down Fenton and I've heard the concern of small businesses who fear, rightfully so, that they won't have a home when this is done.

We should think carefully about where this is going. Our retail revitalized center is basically one square block bounded by Wayne and Coleville on the South and North, and by Georgia and Fenton on the West and East. If this is all that is allowed to remain of the downtown, Silver Spring will be left without a true downtown. It would be a shame to have come this far in bringing Silver Spring back, only to push it over by reducing the residential serving retail to a single square block. We have to be careful as we proceed with development. We need to leave enough commercial, small independent commercial, to retain a sense of vitality, scale and community.

There has to be room for businesses to start and grow, and sometimes fail, but the opportunities have to be there. Too small of a commercial area will be insufficient to serve the community that surrounds Silver Spring, and people will wind up going elsewhere to do there business. This is where we started from when we began our revitalization efforts and we have to take care not to end up back in the same place.

April 3, 2006 - Condo Conversions

Montgomery County Democrats in the General Assembly lost their nerve when they split a vote on a bill put forward by State Senator Sharon Grosfeld to place safeguards against the conversion of rental properties to condominiums.

This bill is a real loss. We are faced with thousands of units being converted to condominiums, displacing thousands of families in the County. Amazingly, this bill was killed by the Democratic County delegation on a 12-12 vote!

The bill would have required condo conversions to preserve a greater percentage of affordable units, it would have allowed tenants to vote on to approve condo conversions, giving them a better negotiating position vis-à-vis the condo developers. It would have only taken effect if the County, or a County municipality, declared a housing emergency and then determined that the conversion of a particular buiding would result in the loss of affordable housing.

It seems that giving lip-service to the needs of working and middle-class families, and a few statements about their concerns for affordable housing, is what passes for a commitment to affordable housing for a lot of Democrats in Annapolis.

Of course, we weren't helped by the efforts of the County Executive's Housing Department (and others) to pressure the delegation to kill the bill. I guess compassion and commitment only go so far if it crosses the interests of the development industry.

But many thanks to the twelve delegates who supported the legislation and made impassioned pleas to their colleagues during the debate. Those would be ( Sen. Grosfeld, Del. Madaleno, Del. Franchot, Del. Hixson, Del. Guitierrez, Del. Murray, Del. Mandel, Del. Lee, Del. Goldwater, Del. Gordon, Del. Montgomery, and Del. Lawton.) Thank you for your spine and your courage.

March 26, 2006 - Planning Board

Now the Planning Board has started on its new path of involving the citizenry with a campaign of outreach, starting with a survey to ask for your priorities. There is one problem: The survey begins with the assumption that the county will add 213,000 people in the next 25 years, so all of the questions ask how you'd like to accommodate that growth.

So the Planning Board is starting out by assuming that we can and should grow by another 200,000 people. A realistic look at the County begs the question: Where on earth will they fit? We have, and rightfully so, taken the Agricultural Reserve off limits to future growth. That means that within the existing occupied areas of the County we would be adding about one person for about every 4.5 people who are already here. We ought to be asking the questions how and why.

We do not have abandoned urban centers, waiting to be repopulated. We're no DC or Baltimore that lost hundreds of thousands of residents. We have some relatively small urban-like centers (Silver Spring, Bethesda, Wheaton, Rockville) but their downtown cores aren't large and don't have large tracts of undeveloped land. Surrounding them are more suburban neighborhoods. The only way to accommodate another 200,000 people would require essentially the destruction and massive rebuilding of the small downtowns, accompanied by major encroachment into the surrounding neighborhoods. It is the only way possible to fit those many people in.

The problems associated with that process would be enormous. These parts of the County already are densely populated, have serious traffic problems, overcrowded schools, and little open space. Population increases of the magnitude envisioned would put enormous stress on an already overburdened infrastructure. While a higher proportion of new residents might use Metro, many would not, and that means huge increases in congestion in the most congested areas. And when we are already unable to pay for existing needs in transportation, schools, libraries and other public services, this scale of development will only dig a deeper hole for us to try to climb out of.

HOW we'd accommodate this increase is problematic. WHY we'd try to achieve this increase is baffling. We're not the Rust Belt--we don't have significant unemployment and we're not desparately in search of more jobs. We have affordable housing needs, but almost none of the growth will provide affordable housing. If the goal is to produce affordable housing units, there are more sensible ways to go about doing it.

The accompanying plans for non-residential development are such that the demand for housing will exceed supply even under this growth scenario, so that there will be constant upward price pressure on housing, while those who can't afford to live here will be driving in from ever farther out locations. In short, the growth plan doesn't solve any "need" or any problem that we currently have. It doesn't address the shortage of affordable units, it doesn't take the pressure off home prices, but it does mean that more, not fewer, people will be added to our daily traffic counts.

Supporters will argue that because people want to live here, growth is inevitable, and this is smart growth. I'll respond by saying that Montgomery County is not an island. It is not as if there aren't other places that can be developed more sensibly and more intelligently. Both Prince Georges County and the District could handle much of the projected growth without such a negative impact. If the lines on maps didn't separate those jurisdictions from Montgomery County and we were having a "smart growth" discussion, we wouldn't be talking about paving over Bethesda and Silver Spring, we'd be talking about reinvestment in the District and in Prince Georges. This is about Montgomery County developers bleeding every last potential dime out of the County, regardless of the environmental, social, and economic costs to the rest of us. Park and Planning has said that growth is costing the County more than the revenues it is generating. Isn't it time we thought about what we were doing instead of plunging forward without regard for the consequences on our lives and in our communities?

We need to think about how we grow, where we grow, when we grow, and why we grow. We should make choices that will lead to a better County, not just a bigger County. To say that you're growing says nothing, in itself, about the quality of life in your community. Growth is not a "good" in and of itself. Growth is a change that we need to manage, not some inevitable machine that we have to accommodate. It's difficult and challenging, but it will define our future. Some growth may be inevitable, but how we manage it is not the product of invisible forces. Instead, it is the result of deliberate decisions we make. We should make those decisions carefully and wisely.