Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Should Staff Reports to Local Boards be Reliable Documents?


Montgomery County Planning Board Agenda
June 21, 2012

Public Comment from Janis Sartucci

Subject Property:  Pleasant View Elementary School site
       3015 Upton Drive, Kensington
Property Owner:  Montgomery County
Property Lessee:  Housing Opportunities Commission

The above information shows the legal owner and lessee for the subject property according to Maryland and Montgomery County public land records.  

Before the Planning Board today is an Agenda Item with the names Montgomery County Public Schools and Crossway Community, Inc. as Applicants.  Neither Montgomery County Public Schools, nor Crossway Community, Inc. has a legal right to this property.  

Further, the Staff Packet is titled:  Crossway Community Montessori Public Charter School.  There is no such entity in Montgomery County.  

It is virtually impossible for the public to observe and participate in the public decision making process of local Boards when the documentation of the local Boards is defective.  Further, when entities with no legal standing to a property are permitted to come before a Board they tie up valuable Park and Planning staff and Planning Board time.  Defective applications for Mandatory Referral complicate the ability of the public to track Board actions.  In addition, the creation of non-existent entities as parties creates confusion among all interested parties and the public.  How is the public expected to take the planning process seriously when the Planning Board and their staff show so little regard for the legal ownership of properties, or for the actual titles of legal entities?

Reports submitted by Board staff should contain nothing but verifiable facts.  Anything less is a huge disservice to the public process.

This is not the first time there has been a proceeding where the applicant before a local board had no legal right to the property in their application.  Last year, T-Mobile filed for a Special Exception to build a cell phone tower compound on the playground of Sligo Middle School. T-Mobile had no legal right to build on that property and did not have the consent of the property owner, the Board of Education.  Yet, Board of Appeals staff spent an inordinate amount of time on an application that had no legal basis.  While the Special Exception Application had called for the Applicant to submit a signed lease for use of the property, a signed lease was not submitted with the Application.  Board of Appeals Staff allowed the incomplete application to go before the Board of Appeals.  The application was withdrawn when the defect in the application was made public.   

Likewise, if an Applicant for a Mandatory Referral has no legal basis to occupy the property in question, the application should not advance to the level of Planning Board review.  Incomplete Special Exception or Mandatory Referral Applications should never get to the point of taking up valuable Planning Board or Board of Appeals time.

If, at some point in time, an actual Applicant with a legal right to occupy this building comes forward, the information in the Staff Report for Agenda Item #2 is troubling.   Planning Board staff propose a condition on the public charter school that would violate Maryland State law.

Staff states that the Charter School would set aside 10% of the seats in the school for children that attend the day care center as part of a plan to mitigate traffic.  A special set aside would violate the terms of Maryland Charter School law.  The charter school applicant already tried to set up a set aside for on-site children and asked the State Board of Education for a waiver of state law. The State Board said "no" to this request.

"Because the charter school law does not authorize a waiver of the open enrollment requirement for students whose parents reside at the Crossway housing facilities, we deny the waiver request."State Board Opinion

The Charter School has also apparently told the Planning Board staff that no MCPS school buses will be used to transport students.  

The applicant has indicated that public charter school students will not be bused...(page 7 of Planning Board memo)

How can a countywide school operate without school buses?  A transportation plan was part of the charter school application.  

However, neither of these issues are relevant until an Application is made for the use of this property by an entity that has a legal right to occupy the building.  

Please return this Agenda Item to staff for documentation of a legal right of an Applicant to occupy this building.  That is, an Applicant for a Mandatory Referral on this property must produce an executed lease showing that they have a legal right to use this facility. Then, and only then, will it be appropriate for the Planning Board to review an Application for a Mandatory Referral on this property.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

7 comments:

  1. What's new? MCPS decided to swap parcels with Park and Planning for the "new" Farquhar, but Park and Planning doesn't own the property they've offered to swap!

    These are details you're talking about, they don't matter.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well now they wouldn't need to swap the land if they already owned it, would they? And Park & Planning now has the deed to the property. Swapping the land keeps students from being bused, keeps Farquhar's fields open for school and community use during the construction period, and gets the new park built 5 or 10 years sooner than planned. This is smart planning - and our County should do more of it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Let's see the deed. It's a public document. We will post it as soon as you send it to us.
      Thanks.

      Delete
  3. Here is the response I received from the Planning Board.

    Ms. Sartucci:

    Your comments were not received within the submission deadline to be shared with the Board prior to the hearing. However, they will be shared with appropriate staff for inclusion in the file.

    Joanne Hill
    Office of the Chair
    Montgomery County Planning Board

    ReplyDelete
  4. That is typical of the Planning Board. They have set a rule that comments must be received 24 hours prior to the meeting. That is a very difficult bar to reach, considering that in many cases the staff report comes out shortly before the meeting, and us working stiffs have other things to do during the day than read staff reports and write comments. This rule could easily be changed if the Planning Board really wanted public input. The only people that find this rule easy to meet are the developers and their attorneys and planners, who have plenty of time to look at staff reports with a fine-toothed comb.

    Suggestion: Send these comments directly to the Planning Board and have a meeting with them. These are not just comments, this is a legal issue.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. During the Planning Board hearing on Accessory Apartments the Planning Board Chair gave members of the public she liked extended time. If you disagreed with her position, you were cut off. She got up and wandered around while people were speaking, and mocked the one Planning Board member who spoke out against the proposal. One issue with Accessory Apartments is their potential impact on public school attendance. Planning Board members had zero interest in this issue. At the end of the hearing it was clear that the majority of the Planning Board members didn't care if their proposal made any sense. They were very clear that they were passing it on to the County Council to clean up. Do Planning Board members take their jobs seriously or do they just see their function as a joke?

      So apparently approving a Mandatory Referral for a party that has no right to occupy a space, and further imposing restrictions that violate Maryland law is all in a day's work for this body. (See post above on Charter School agenda item.)

      Would you send you child to a public school that had no legal right to occupy a building? Isn't it the responsibility of the government to make sure that public school children are put in classrooms, or is that just a detail that Montgomery County can ignore?

      Who in this county is looking out for the interests of public school children?

      Delete
  5. Planning Board members are chosen by the council. It is also worth mentioning that right now the county planning department does not have a director and the search has not yet been announced. Rose Krasnow, former Mayor of Rockvile, is the Acting Director. As with the rest of this county's government, decisions are usually made in private meetings with developers, their attorneys, their architects, and their planners.

    ReplyDelete

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