Related story: Search for place to build could pit parks against schools in Montgomery

The two parks once considered the best places to build a new Bethesda-Chevy Chase middle school are at the center of a debate over whether construction is permitted there at all.

Residents suggested this month that the use of federal funds to previously improve the parks prohibits altering the sites. But Montgomery County school system officials said Wednesday that the use of federal funds to support park projects at Rock Creek Hills and Rosemary Hills/Lyttonsville local parks will not prohibit them from building a school at either park. Both parks are among the more than 24 sites under consideration to house a middle school needed to relieve overcrowding at Westland Middle School.

Members of the Rock Creek Hills Citizens Association say that a school or any building cannot be located at the park because the State of Maryland improved the park with money from the federal Program Open Space, Land and Water Conservation grant program. These funds come with the caveat that land acquired or developed with them cannot be converted to any other use.

This land disagreement, in part, prompted schools Superintendent Joshua P. Starr to advise his staff to begin anew the site selection process, he wrote in a Jan. 20 letter.

Rock Creek Hills was selected, in part, because it was once owned by the school system, which retained the right to reclaim it for use as a school when it donated to the Parks Department more than 30 years ago.

The county’s Department of Parks used a $171,988.65 federal grant pay for improvements to Rock Creek Hill Local Park in 1992, according to a Nov. 4 letter from Department of Nature Resources Secretary John R. Griffin to the Rock Creek Hills Association. Such funds were also used to buy part of Rosemary Hills/Lyttonsville Park more than a decade ago, said the school system’s chief of Long-range Planning, Bruce Crispell.

Griffin’s letter notes that such limitations only last 20 years and that the parkland built in Rock Creek Hills “has lived out its useful life expectancy” and that he views use of the park as a county decision.

Jim Pekar, a Rock Creek Hills homeowner, said he believes the matter remains unresolved. He said he is seeking more information about the Open Space program and believes the DNR’s policy is subordinate to the federal programs rules.

Chip Price, Director of Program Open Space for the DNR, said the time limit was established more than 30 years ago and is common practice today.

Crispell said school system staff received the letter Jan. 17. He said the school system has decided that it validates the decision to consider building in Rock Creek Hills, but may prohibit them from using up to three acres of the 17-acre Rosemary Hills/Lyttonsville Park.

MCPS can develop on land acquired through the program if it offers to replace the land elsewhere, Price said. Such a trade would have to approved by DNR and state planning officials.

The B-CC Site Selection Advisory Committee is scheduled to meet Feb. 8.

aruoff@gazette.net