Marc Elrich on Growth Policy

Marc Elrich wrote the following letter regarding the changes to the County's growth policy proposed by the Planning Board:

The Planning Board has handed its draft of the Growth Policy to the County Council and it’s decision time. Now is the time for you to get involved. Now is the time for you to contact the Council about why the rate of growth and development and how we pay for it is important to you.

There are some good proposals, some bad and one very bad recommendation in the Planning Board’s Final Draft Growth Policy.

GOOD - The impact fees are higher. For the first time, the proposed development impact fees generally reflect the true cost of providing the needed roads and schools to support new development.

GOOD - The school test is a vast improvement over the current test and is based on the class size reductions that the County is trying to make.

BAD - A School Facilities Payment would allow developers to buy their way into overcrowded school districts and dump more students into schools already at 110% - 135% capacity.

GOOD - The draft Growth Policy explicitly focuses on facility, fiscal, economic, environmental and social sustainability.

BAD - The environmental factors need to be much stronger. It doesn't matter how much traditional infrastructure and services we provide if our air is poisoned, our streams are dying, our farms are being paved, and our planet's baking.

BAD – It acknowledges the importance of police, fire & rescue, and other facilities (such as parks, libraries, recreation and health) but only recommends guidelines - not real tests - for determining adequacy.

GOOD – The Policy takes the quality of development design into consideration as a factor in our quality of life.

VERY BAD – The proposed transportation test is no test at all. It is virtually impossible to fail no matter how bad the roads are. The new Policy Area Mobility Review (PAMR) is so bad that it may negate all the good in the Policy. Unbelievably, the PAMR test declares that the current transportation system throughout the entire County is adequate! We know that just isn’t true. The PAMR test disregards the congestion which locks up most major County roads because you can always ride a bus. So the draft Growth Policy would allow developers to pour more and more traffic on a non-functioning road system, simply because someone might ride a bus. For example, a street with a speed limit of 40 mph is considered adequate if it averages 10 mph in the rush hour and buses average 7.5 mph! As far as this test is concerned, congestion is not a problem.

There’s one test it doesn’t pass –and that’s the laugh test. It tells County residents that the problems they face everyday don’t exist and don’t matter. We can and must do better.

It is true we wanted to collect higher fees that reflect the cost of infrastructure, not for the sake of collecting money, but in order to build the necessary infrastructure. The guiding principle of a sound growth policy isn't how to soak developers, but how to insure that we have the infrastructure that we need. If we can’t provide the infrastructure, no amount of money will make it better. We need realistic fees, but more than that, we need realistic tests. We need tests that allow development to proceed only when the infrastructure is truly adequate. If all we do is collect money, then we fail.

This is a call to action. You need to let the Council know that you want a Growth Policy that makes a more livable County, not policies that trade off our quality of life for a pile of cash. We need a growth policy that reflects three basic principles.

1) Impact fees that reflect the cost of providing the infrastructure for new development.

2) A school test that makes it possible to achieve the school systems goals for class sizes that help our children learn.

3) A transportation test that allows development where the infrastructure is adequate using standards for adequate that meet the community’s expectations. And in places where the roads don’t work, then development isn’t allowed to proceed.

What can you do? Again three easy steps.

1) Write your councilmembers and tell them what you expect in the Growth Policy. Send an email or letter to the Council President, your four At-large and one district representatives. Write in your own words even if it is very short. Form letters and forwarded emails are not effective.

2) Write letters to the newspapers and let them know you care.

3) Attend the public hearings and make sure your voices are heard. The Growth Policy is much of what the 2006 Council elections were all about. Public hearings are June 19, 8:00pm and June 26, 7:30pm. PHED committee deliberations are June 27, July 2 and July 9.