By Ann E. Marimow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 15, 2007
In the past three years, the Central Union Mission has spent more than $200,000 trying to navigate Montgomery County's labyrinth of land-use policies to sell 80 acres of farmland in Olney. The mission, which runs a homeless shelter in the District and a summer camp in the suburbs for at-risk children, is counting on millions from the sale to sustain its programs.
Those plans would be put on hold if the County Council approves a proposal to temporarily freeze dozens of residential and commercial projects while it revisits Montgomery's approach to managing growth. Strengthening the county's checks on development is a top initiative for the new majority elected to the council in November.
On one side of the debate are developers and business representatives who say putting the brakes on such projects would cause financial uncertainty, unfairly change the rules for projects long in the works and send a hostile message to potential investors. They question the rationale for a moratorium when they say growth is relatively slow in Maryland's largest jurisdiction.
The moratorium would put the 120-year-old mission's plan in limbo and further strain its finances.
"We were sitting on the crux of approval, and now everything is in jeopardy," said the mission's executive director, David O. Treadwell. "Our assumption was that this was a two-year process, and now it's entering its fourth year."
Treadwell is among the development interests expected to weigh in at a public hearing tomorrow in opposition to a plan by council President Marilyn Praisner (D-Eastern County) that would delay 72 projects for eight months as the council considers rewriting Montgomery's growth policy.
On the other side are council members and civic activists who want to tighten Montgomery's land-use standards to do a better job evaluating the capacity of the county's roads and schools before signing off on new construction.
"I didn't get elected to continue this policy of piling kids into schools that have no room and cars on roads that have no capacity," said newly elected council member Marc Elrich (D-At Large), a co-sponsor of the initiative. "Why should we go another eight months with a policy that doesn't prevent that?"
The debate that will be on display tomorrow night was at the heart of the contest for county executive, in which Isiah Leggett (D) was elected in November, largely on his motto of slowing development to catch up on infrastructure.
Treadwell's case got a boost last week when the chairman of the county's Planning Board issued a stinging critique of the moratorium. Chairman Royce Hanson called it "extremely troubling" and "fundamentally a symbolic action" that would not affect the rate of construction in the county.
Hanson also said he didn't think it was worth the effort. "There is not an emergency," he said.
The five-member Planning Board, which regulates the development industry and advises the council, then took the unusual step of declining to take a definitive position on the proposal. Instead, the board intends to outline its concerns and suggest changes in a letter to the council.
At its hearing last week, the board expressed concern for projects that have been in the queue for several years and recommended that changes to the county's growth policy apply prospectively, perhaps to projects filed after Dec. 5 -- the day Praisner introduced the proposal.
Praisner disagreed with Hanson's assessment and took issue with rhetoric from developers that suggests "we've shut down the county."
"With all due respect to Royce, he has to look at the election returns," she said in an interview. "Voters are saying traffic congestion and development are a problem."
Leggett has said he is generally supportive of Praisner's initiative, which would last through August. He was out of town Friday and could not be reached for comment.
The moratorium would apply to 5,100 residential units and 2 million square feet of nonresidential construction. It would not affect certain small-scale projects, those near Metro stations or projects slated for construction this year that have been approved by the Planning Board.
Praisner said a "targeted timeout" is critical to preventing a crush of developers from winning approval of their projects before tougher rules take effect. A glut of projects approved under the current, less stringent rules, she said, would limit the effectiveness of the likely changes.
Praisner and Planning Board members said the rush to get in under the wire has often been a problem when the county tries to change its land-use policies. When the county announced it would begin imposing a new tax on development, for instance, builders rushed to beat the deadline, and tax collections fell significantly short of projections
As the council begins its formal debate tomorrow with a public hearing, members said they have taken notice of Hanson's critique and the Planning Board's lack of consensus. The measure could come up for a vote by the full council as soon as the last week of this month.
"What's the problem we're trying to cure here, and what's the goal we're trying to achieve?" asked council member Valerie Ervin (D-Silver Spring). "If either of those things aren't clear, then what is the purpose?"
Council member Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda), who campaigned as a slow-growth candidate, said he is grappling with whether the new standards should apply to projects before the Planning Board or to those that will be filed.
"The division that exists within the board," he said, "reflects a division within the larger community and potentially on the council."
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