For all the discussion of developer contributions a year ago, none of the four District 4 candidates last time had any record on the development issue. This year, two of them do. But to find out what those records are, we had to go back over a decade to one of Montgomery County’s most hard-fought development battles: the legendary throwdown over Pay and Go.
Prior to 1997, Montgomery County’s famously complicated development policy included two elements that were despised by developers. First, if a project caused traffic to exceed county congestion standards, the developer would have to either bear the entire infrastructure improvement cost or wait for the county to build it. Second, some areas were subject to outright moratoriums. At the time, residential development moratoriums applied to Aspen Hill, Clarksburg, Damascus, Fairland-White Oak, Montgomery Village-Airpark and North Potomac. Commercial moratoriums applied to Clarksburg, Derwood, Fairland-White Oak and Montgomery Village-Airpark.
Some in the county believed these rules held back employment and population growth and created a competitive disadvantage against Fairfax. In May 1997, At-Large County Council Member Gail Ewing introduced Pay and Go, a plan supported by the Suburban Maryland Building Industry Association that was intended to provide an alternative development process. Under Pay and Go, developers would no longer be required to bear the entire cost of infrastructure improvements necessitated by their projects, but could merely pay a fee to the county. The county would then be responsible for building new capacity. The fee system would apply inside areas subject to moratoriums, effectively ending them. The Gazette laid out the fees in the plan:Under the Pay and Go plan, developers would pay $2.50 per square foot for commercial space and $3.50 per square foot in areas where development has been halted. They also would pay $1,500 for a multifamily unit, $2,250 for a townhouse and $3,000 for a house -- but $2,500 for a multifamily unit, $3,500 for a townhouse and $4,500 for a house in areas where development is halted.
For months, debate raged over the plan. Supporters said it was necessary to jump-start the economy and would raise money for transportation projects. They claimed that Montgomery County had a reputation as “hostile to business” and that Pay and Go, as a four-year pilot, would be just one step in a different direction. Former County Executive and current County Council Member Neal Potter, an opponent, said this: “We don’t need more jobs. I don’t know that we need more housing, that's questionable,” said Councilman Neal Potter (D-At large) of Chevy Chase. He added the council should ask itself, “Is this a help in building the infrastructure? [Or] is it just a proposal for building developments in basically undesirable areas?”
Opponents also pointed to a proposed development in South Germantown that required $17 million in infrastructure improvements under the current system. Under Pay and Go, the developer would be allowed to contribute just $4 million in fees.
The County Council passed Pay and Go in October by a 5-4 vote. Voting in favor were Gail Ewing (At-Large), Ike Leggett (At-Large), Mike Subin (At-Large), Derick Berlage (District 5) and William Hanna (District 3). Voting against were Neal Potter (At-Large), Marilyn Praisner (District 4), Betty Ann Krahnke (District 1) and Nancy Dacek (District 2). Ironically, Republicans Krahnke and Dacek opposed a plan backed by the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce and a substantial portion of the county’s business community. Doug Duncan signed the bill the following month.
The Washington Post promptly proclaimed “Developers Win One in Montgomery” and Pay and Go became a big issue in the 1998 County Council elections. We’ll find out how big in Part Two.
Monday, March 02, 2009
Pay and Go and the Special Election, Part One
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4 comments:
For what it's worth, mark me down as pointing to Mr Potter and remarking "what he said". Astute observers and people who kept journals of the campaign will recall that in the last Special Election, part of my Campaign Platform (v 1.0) was "Refinement is Better than Growth".
Montgomery's population is actually declining slightly, according to the Census. Do we need more roads to enable more development, when people are moving out more than they're moving into Montgomery? I say we need to fix the chokepoints and deal with bottlenecks instead. [...]
Slightly different from Mr Potter's vision -- where the question was more one of "should developers foot the full cost of infrastructure improvements (else wait until the County built them), or pay anticipatory fees to the County" -- I have to question whether or not we should be doing any developing at all, to be considered as one issue. To be considered as a separable issue, to what degree do we need to upgrade infrastructure, in everything from WSSC matters to roads and intersections. That the two issues often travel as a pair doesn't mean they can't be considered separately. Did the infamous River Road main break of recent history have anything to do with development since 1997 when the "Pay and Go" policy was adopted? No; this speaks to the need for the County to think more about maintenance, about "hold what you've got", more than it thinks about building anything new. This is more true than ever in trying times when we will have Infrastructure Stimulus money coming in as a one-shot deal, with no idea at all from where such money might come in the future.
What was Potter implying by "basically undesirable areas"? Was he saying that all those places in moratorium wouldn't have gotten any development even if there were incentives? Ouch.
Dan, I seem to recall that this particular debate from which the Potter quote emerged was mostly over Clarksburg. I seem to recall that the King Farm development entered into considerations as well.
Possibly most prescient of the observations in that article -- which sadly doesn't give a more full list of projects pending at that time which would have "benefitted" from "Pay and Go" -- follows:
John Viner, a retired federal traffic engineer of North Bethesda, strongly objected to the proposal and predicted more traffic problems in the county.
"This transfers the responsibility from the developer who creates the problem to the public and creates a debt," Viner said. "The only reason people want to do this is because we have problem areas in the county. The way to solve that is not to burn the rule book."
We we've certainly got the excessive traffic problems. Yet there are traffic problems resulting from developments that weren't in moratorium areas, for example the development to the north of the intersection of Cashell Road and Bowie Mill Road. Anyone putting that many houses in that isolated a corner of the County really should have been required to upgrade at least some parts of Bowie Mill Road between Cashell Road and Muncaster Mill Road.
Some might suggest that letting the developers skate out from under building the infrastructure improvements allows overdevelopment at areas where there aren't any Master Plan highways sufficient to carry the traffic, which at politically opportune times, could create public sentiment backing calls to radically modify elements of the Master Plan. For example, the scheduled doubling of the development to the north of Cashell and Bowie Mill Roads, "Reserve at Fair Hill", will add so much traffic to the roads in the area that it will be almost inevitable that there will be an "Upper Rock Creek Parkway".
If you'd like to see my blog article -- and campaign position statement -- from last year, try here.
Dan, you and I have had this discussion before, and you concluded your input with "...people will do horrible and unspeakable things to live in Olney".
But as if we didn't have enough planned extrusion of "parkways" on the books already, I think it's time to open the debate -- this time with some seriousness -- a so-called "Upper Rock Creek Parkway" with a northern terminus roughly at the present-day intersection of MD-108 and MD-582, and a southern connection to the ICC at approximately where the ICC crosses Muncaster Mill Road.
Did I mention "horrible and unspeakable things"? Oops, my bad, that was you. ;)
Dan, I was a player in the battle against Pay and Go, Neil Potter wasn’t saying that areas in moratorium were undesirable as such, he was trying to say the areas in moratorium did not have the necessary infrastructure to support the growth that would follow with the adoption of Pay and Go. Therefore not a location people would be flocking to for new homes.
Eastern Montgomery County did not have sufficient road Capacity, School Capacity, Parks, rec centers. Nor did we have the necessary public fire safety to accommodate a significant increase in population. The nominal fee that was associated with Pay and Go addressed a small percentage of the overall costs associated with new home construction infrastructure. In 2002 Mike Subin had Park and Planning do a cost analysis on how much every new home costs the County in the way of infrastructure and services, I believe the cost associated was $36,000 per housing unit.
I wish the Journal Newspapers Archives were available on-line, there were many interesting debates. I wrote several back then myself, Interestingly Ben Kramer supported Pay and Go and it was his father that didn't support widening Norbeck Road at the time.
They said then and continue to say today that The ICC would be the mechanism that reduces congestion on Norbeck. I disagreed then and still do. As recently as the SHA focus group meeting addressing the Grade Separated intersection at Norbeck and Georgia I had to go head to head with Ben, he opposed the improvement http://www.gazette.net/gazette_archive/2002/200251/olney/news/135838-1.html saying that when the ICC was built there would be no need for that improvement. He also was concerned that an improvement at that intersection would have an adverse impact on his Shopping Center near the Subject Intersection. It’s all in the SHA minutes. He was wrong then and he is wrong today we need that improvement more than ever.
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