Moratorium hearing further highlights division over proposal

Standing-room crowd turns out for Tuesday night session with County Council

Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2007

by Janel Davis

Staff Writer

The first evening public hearing for the new council drew the usual civic association and business community representatives on its lengthy speakers list, as well as private landowners involved in development deals and nonprofit agencies hoping to expand their programs.

Advocates of the moratorium plan, sponsored by Council President Marilyn J. Praisner (D-Dist. 4) of Calverton, told council members that a building stoppage is just what the county needs to stem the flow of unchecked development going on right now in the county. Those opposing the plan said a moratorium sends a negative message to the business community and would accomplish very little in easing the county’s congestion.

Praisner, and several other council members who also support a moratorium campaigned on slow-growth platforms, and vowed to change the county’s growth policies.

If approved, the moratorium would remain in place through while the county’s Planning Board and council revise those policies.

‘‘We need to have a policy in place that allows the Planning Board to look at things in the big picture,” said Rocky Lopes, a member of the Layhill Alliance neighborhood group.

But the proposal may have taken a blow when the county’s chief planner said the moratorium was unnecessary.

When asked by Councilman George L. Leventhal whether the moratorium in its current form is a good idea, county Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson said, ‘‘I do not think so. My view was that is was not an emergency.”

Hanson said he has no problem with moratoria if there is a ‘‘major kind of problem that will be solved by it.”

If approved, Praisner’s plan would stop the Planning Board from approving any preliminary subdivision plans through the Aug. 15 cutoff date. Developments in Metro station areas and enterprise zones would be exempt from the rule. About 72 planned developments would be affected, which make up about 5,400 residential units and 3 million square feet of commercial development. Included in those developments are 288 affordable housing units, which would also be delayed.

Several speakers with involved in the pending projects — such as the Sandy Spring location for Aunt Hattie’s Place boys home and the Central Union Mission’s fund-raising land sale in Olney — petitioned the council for exemptions if the moratorium is approved.

Hanson said the Planning Board’s consensus was that the moratorium ‘‘will have no short term affect on the rate of growth because it applies only to subdivisions,” which take about three years to complete the development process — much longer than the eight months that the freeze would be in effect.

Hanson’s concerns were echoed by several developers and chambers of commerce representatives, said that a moratorium would be bad for business and would portray the county as unreliable in its development process.

‘‘[A moratorium] would leave a negative image on Montgomery County that indicates that you can’t rely on the council or its words. ‘Ex post facto’ becomes the word of the day,” said William Kominers, a Bethesda land use attorney, who equated the proposal to a trip to the grocery store where all the checkout lanes were suddenly closed and the prices changed.

‘‘This sends a message that Montgomery County is closed for business,” said Marilyn Balcombe, a representative of the Gaithersburg⁄Germantown Chamber of Commerce.

The proposal now moves to the council’s Planning, Housing and Economic Development committee for discussion Monday afternoon.

Janel Davis, Staff Writer

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