In Clarksburg Town Center, a group of residents grew upset with the developer, Newland Communities, over what they viewed as a failure to follow plans to provide grocery and other shopping. As they investigated how their neighborhood was built, they discovered that hundreds of houses were built too tall or too close to the street. County officials say they never realized the problem.
When the Planning Board held a hearing on those claims in April, a senior planner altered a site plan to reflect what had been built, officials say.
The planner, who contends that she was stressed and overworked, had been given the authority to amend a site plan after it was approved by the board. Newland Communities contends the planner exercised that authority.
Some planners say the county's recent growth has hampered its ability to plan in a rational way.
"The workload never decreases for the staff," said Joe Davis, former chief of the development review section of the planning department, an offshoot of the board. "You have a reviewer asked to comment on projects that are ongoing, and they last a long time. All the while they have new projects coming in the door."
Clarion made recommendations to county officials, among them that they codify unwritten procedures used by planning staff in reviewing developments, and that they draft more specific standards to be included in zoning laws.
When it came time to implement many of the recommendations, however, Davis wrote to the Planning Board that staffing shortages made that impossible. He said that a fourth of the staff positions in the 30-member development review section were vacant in fall 2002.
Council members were furious this summer to learn that staffing problems remained and said they should have been told long ago that the Park and Planning Department needed additional support.
On Tuesday, Derick Berlage, chairman of the Planning Board, is expected to ask the Council for more than a dozen additional staff positions to implement the zones and enforce the site plan agreements.
Civic activists, however, say the flaws in site plan zones go beyond adequate staffing. Some wonder whether they foster inappropriately close relationships between developers and planners. When discrepancies arise, as was the case in Clarksburg, they fear the developers are, more often than not, given the benefit of the doubt.
"This is all done in a vacuum because generally the citizens have no clue what is being proposed," said Norman Knopf, an attorney for the Clarksburg Town Center Advisory Committee, which uncovered the building violations in Clarksburg. "It's a blank check for the developer to have professionals constantly addressing the situation . . . constantly lobbying."
Developers downplayed suggestions that they lobby or pressure planners but said close working relationships are formed during the creation of site plans.
