Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Save Rock Creek Hills Park!: The Top Ten Reasons to Preserve Rock Creek Hills P...
Save Rock Creek Hills Park!: The Top Ten Reasons to Preserve Rock Creek Hills P...: [an email response to a request for public comment] Date: Tue, Jun 4, 2013 Subject: The top ten reasons to preserve Rock Creek Hills P...
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Sorry, Rock Creek Hills Park is a legitimate location for a new school.
ReplyDeleteAn elementary school. But in no way, shape or form a middle school.
DeleteAnd, why is the County having to pay $695,000 to get the land back? That adds to the cost of construction.
We are urbanizing. Very few people in this county have spoken publicly against that move, in fact, almost no one in the communities from what we see. The acreage and location are reasonable for a smaller-acreage 'urban' school.
DeleteUntil 1979, the former Kensington Junior High School was located on the Rock Creek Hills site. With consent from the County Executive, the transfer agreement gives MCPS the right to reclaim the land for school use once again. Opponents of the school - mostly a group of people living adjacent to the park - are quick to point out that the retirement community was built on roughly 1/3rd of the former KJH site. It is also important to point out that the new school will be built into a hillside that did not include KJH school buildings or ballfields. In this way, the new school can make better use of the space.
DeleteThe transfer agreement requires MCPS to reimburse MNCPPC for the cost of improvements to the site. That is what the $695,000 is for. It is a transfer of funds from one public agency to another. Imagine what it would cost taxpayers to purchase thirteen acres of private land in the down county?
This video covers BCC MS#2 in detail, including why it is so important to more the 1,600 children:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5eEkrKmuNA
Wrong information in this anonymous post. This not a transfer between Parks and MCPS! The transfer is between Parks and Montgomery County.
DeleteMontgomery County will be paying parks the $695,000. We don't know what the BOE will have to pay Montgomery County for this land. The request for public comment was to the County Executive, not the BOE.
More bad information in the post - the BOE owns a number of parcels and has the right to reclaim a number of parcels in the downcounty area! The BOE should be able to use FREE land to build.
DeleteYou want a total of the acres that the BOE currently owns that they are not using for public schools? We'll get that for you.
You can't build a new school where an old school was, because there's a nursing home there now! The Kensington Park Retirement Community was built on much of the footprint of the old Kensington Junior High.
DeleteRock Creek Hills Park, the "remainder" of the old Junior High site – mostly its athletic fields – fails to meet most of the Board of Education's official middle school site criteria, including important standards for location, size, topography, and access.
The proposed school would be the middle school on the smallest site, in the entire county, without an adjoining (or “co-located”) park to provide space for student recreation and sports. Ms. Laura Berthiaume, then a member of the Montgomery County Board of Education, stated that, because Rock Creek Hills Park is not of "adequate size," if the proposed B-CC middle school #2 were to be built there, then it would soon become necessary to build a *third* middle school, on the site of the former Montgomery Hills Junior High (currently the Yeshiva and Torah School of Greater Washington).
Per the original transfer agreement, the BOE can reclaim the property at no cost for the land (in other words, for "free"). Parks agreed to that stipulation and recognizes the validity of the reclamation authority today. Per the original transfer agreement, the BOE is only required to reimburse Parks for the value of recreational amenities. While the county's executive branch has an administrative role in the transfer, the land is being transferred back to the BOE. The Site Selection Advisory Committee studied 38 potential sites. The BOE owns no land in the BCC Cluster suitable for a middle shcool. Other than the RCH site, the BOE has no reclaim right to property within the BCC cluster suitable for a middle school.
DeleteWait a minute, Anonymous. 1600 children?!?! Do you realize that the Feasibility Study process started out with an assessment for 800 children? It expanded to over 900. By the time the matter was forwarded to the BOE, the capacity expanded again to about 1200 students. At the BOE meeting a year ago last April, BOE members acknowledged that a third middle school will be needed for the cluster because the maximum capacity will have to be expanded to handle a projected 1500 hundred students, notwithstanding the fact that Dr. Starr indicated that the number of students would ever exceed 1200. Now you're talking a capacity of 1600 students?
DeleteIf Westland, at over 25 acres with a similar student capacity is considered over-crowded, how can Rock Creek Hills, at 13 acres, be sufficient for these kids? Even if the entire site is dropped four feet (the plan to situate the facility and provide fill dirt for the slopes), the stream buffer is ignored, and all the trees are removed (BTW, they have to be replaced, i.e., another cost), the site is just north of 50% of the size of Westland. Even if the BOE builds a four-story building, the site is just not big enough for a school.
If you care about "the children," why are you so fixated on this small site when a 32-acre site is just down the road? Alternatively, if you really care about "the children," why aren't you demanding a cap on the capacity at the Rock Creek Hills location and the search for a third middle school site, like Lynbrook Park? Both would promote educational parity at the middle school level.
38 sites? Name 'em. There aren't 38 listed in the Site Selection Report. No mysteries. No secrets. No confidential votes for public issues.
DeleteWhat was the "cost" to reclaim of each of those 38 sites? What about eminent domain?
BOE does own land in the Cluster. Obviously, "suitable" is not longer operative consideration. The Rock Creek Hills site is not suitable either.
Sorry, "value of recreational amenities" is NOT free!
What is the B-CC Cluster? It's an arbitrary line. Means nothing.
You want to spend $700,000 of taxpayer dollars on just the land, you better be able to justify that cost.
DeleteOr do you just shop according to what looks good in the window without ever doing comparison shopping for asking for the price of the item?
Sorry, Anonymous, "per the original transfer agreement," the reclaim of the land is not free. Under Paragraph 6, if the Executive concurs with MCPS that the site is needed, the commission will transfer the park to the "COUNTY" on the following conditions:
Delete-- the county reimburses the commission for amounts paid for debt servicing and surveys, feys and other costs associated with the transfer. (6.a)
-- the county reimburses the commission for all recreational improvements made. (6.b)
In addition, notwithstanding the extraordinary engineering costs associated with construction on this site, there are costs associated with environmental impact. For example, as noted in the Feasibility Study, over 5 acres of forest may be removed, which will require replacement on site or in the county.
I really wonder whether anyone involved in the site selection understood the issues surrounding this site.
In 2017, 1,600 children will attend middle school in the BCC cluster. Here's the report from the Site Selection Advisory Committee describing the 38 sites:
Deletehttp://www.montgomeryplanningboard.org/agenda/2012/documents/Reportof200120315_SSACforBCCMS2FINALMarch122012_000.pdf
If for argument's sake one wanted to pretend that $700k is going to purchase 13 acres of prime downcounty real estate, then that is an incredible bargain considering what it would cost to purchase similar property under private ownership.
Nope. Name the 38 sites. They aren't named in that document. Try again.
DeletePretending? Well that is exactly what the Site Selection Committee did. They "pretended" as if ALL of the sites were free. Not one site had a cost associated with acquisition. No cost comparison was done.
Is this a "deal?" Prove it. Show the cost of acquiring all of the other sites.
Too late now to pretend as if this is a "deal." This was spendthrift shopping with no discussion of cost EVER until the bill arrived on taxpayers' doorsteps.
Please see page five for the list of public sites. The report also references thirteen private sites which were treated confidentially in order to preserve the negotiating position of the school system.
DeleteWhat negotiating position???? There was NO negotiating position!
DeleteWhen the Report is issued those sites had already been tossed. So where is the Cost Analysis of ALL of the sites?
Remember Kendale? The whole problem with that site selection was that there wasn't a cost analysis! Here we are in 2013, same problem! NO IMPROVEMENT! Guess the IG Report was a total waste!
That Site Selection Committee report does include some very important minority reports!
DeleteThe B-CC High School NAACP Parents' Council wrote that they "... cannot support the recommendation to build the new middle school in a potentially racially divisive and socially isolating location. ... We, therefore, ask the Superintendent and the Board of Education to decline to adopt Rock Creek Hills Local Park as the site for the new middle school."
see: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/85361002/Minority-Report-NAACP
The Lyttonsville Civic Association wrote that "...MCPS staff set inappropriate boundaries for discussion... ...MCPS staff cut off discussion to insist that a vote be taken before the committee had finished considering all their options. Staff ... made procedural rulings that affected the ability of some representatives to speak freely. Some representatives voiced concerns that they were being led to a predetermined conclusion."
see: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/85538661/Minority-Report-Lyttonsville
Ms. Brooke Farquhar (Parks Department) wrote: "Costs were not thoroughly evaluated in the process and misinformation may have prejudiced the votes of committee members.... The process lacked a robust analysis. The potential sites should have been analyzed more thoroughly, based on detailed information that would allow consistent comparison across the sites."
see: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/85262172/Minority-Report-Farquhar
Mr. Frederick V. Boyd (Planning Board) wrote: "[T]he rating process used for selecting sites did not provide a real opportunity to consider the community character and quality of life consequences of choosing a candidate site. ... [D]escriptions appear to have been written to enable easier consideration of some public sites..."
see: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/85262220/Minority-Report-Boyd
The SSAC Report does identify the number of sites as 38. There were 25 public sites, and the balance were private sites, never revealed to the public. If, however, you’re going to throw large numbers around to bolster the credibility of the process, then you invite further scrutiny.
DeleteOf the 25 public sites identified, 14 of the sites were about 10 acres or less in size (one was a 3.71 acres and the site of an elementary school recently renovated, and another was the site of the Housing Opportunity Commission). Of the remaining sites, one had high lease termination costs; at least two are outside the cluster; and 3 are barred by law from transfer. The private sites were either cost prohibitive and determined not to be for sale.
The site size criterion for county middle schools is at least 20 acres. So, right off the bat, more than half the sites identified for “evaluation” were bogus, and, if fact, dismissed out of hand by the SSAC. All told, 20 of the 25 public sites and 33 of the 38 public and private sites effectively were unavailable before the SSAC even met. Drilling down further, there were only 2 sites with any chance of selection: 32-acre NCC Park and 13-acre Rock Creek Hills Park. Parks like Norwood, with substantial representation on the SSAC, simply were never in the running. In sum, the numbers don’t lie; the SSAC was a window dressing exercise.
As for the number of students, refer to the transcript of the April 17, 2012 BOE meeting. During the colloquy between a BOE member and the Planning Chair, it was recognized that, because the Rock Creek Hills is so small, a third middle school will need to be built because the number of students in middle school would exceed the 1200 student capacity being constructed on the Rock Creek Hills site.
http://parentscoalitionmc.blogspot.com/2013/06/695000-to-reclaim-rock-creek-hills-park.html
ReplyDeleteSo, as I read the two postings (paying for the site and cell towers), once the MCPS apparatchiks appropriate the land, they can decide to place a cell tower right in the middle of a residential neighborhood, right next to an elder car facility? Are they not required to adhere to _any_ zoning restrictions? Would any other occupant on that site be allowed to install a cell tower?
ReplyDeleteHow, or better yet, why did the citizens of this county ever cede so much power over their communities to such an autocratic entity?
Correct! Parks doesn't allow cell towers on their land! But, once this land is turned over to MCPS, well Doug Duncan would like 2-3 cell towers with up to 5 vendors a piece on every school site in the state of Maryland!
DeleteHow would 3 cell towers look at the Rock Creek Hills site? Imagine them in a green-fake-tree covering.
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/boe/meetings/agenda/2011-12/2012-0417/3.0%20Site%20Selection%20for%20B-CC%20MS%202.pdf
ReplyDeleteThere certainly isn't any mention of the acquisition cost in the resolution.
I notice at the end of the resolution that they need to notice IAC. I wonder if that happened? The Maryland State Planning Clearinghouse only shows NW Elementary School #8 and the Clarksburg Cluster Elementary being submitted in the last two years.
I guess MCPS knows that the Council doesn't even care if the state is going to participate in the funding and hasn't bothered to submit this site or Farquhar. That or they would have to reveal to MDP all of the convoluted logic involved in developing these otherwise protected sites.
It looks as if the County has to pay Parks for the land. That's why the 10 day (oh - wow - 10 whole days) period is through Montgomery County. Montgomery County has to pay for the land to get it back from Parks, and then the County can transfer the land back to the BOE. No cost yet for the second transaction. Either way, taxpayers are paying to buy this land from Parks.
DeleteSo the County Council is voting to appropriate funds and the site may not have even been submitted to the State? I thought all school sites went through MDP, PSCP and IAC for approval?
ReplyDeleteNo! MCPS does what they call "forward funding". They build without any State approval. They build and they ask for State money later - hoping that it gets "approved". As I recall, it doesn't always get approved as they would have liked.
DeleteFrom COMAR:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dsd.state.md.us/comar/comarhtml/23/23.03.02.13.htm
23.03.02.13
.13 Site Selection.
A. An LEA shall submit a proposed site to the Maryland Department of Planning through the Public School Construction Program for:
(1) Acquisition of a new site for a new or a replacement school;
(2) Use of an existing site for a new school or a replacement school that adds capacity; or
(3) Redesignation of an existing site for a new school or a replacement school that adds capacity.
B. Unless a waiver is granted in accordance with Regulation .28 of this chapter, a proposed site for a new school or a replacement school that adds capacity shall be in a priority funding area.
C. The IAC and State Superintendent of Schools shall approve or disapprove an LEA's school site selection based on:
(1) Consistency with the county comprehensive plan;
(2) The growth element of applicable municipal comprehensive plans;
(3) Available sewer and water service;
(4) Transportation options; and
(5) The State's economic growth policies to ensure that facilities in established neighborhoods are of equal quality to new schools, including location of a new school or a replacement school that adds capacity within a priority funding area.
D. Before submitting the request for site approval to the IAC, the LEA shall:
(1) Submit the site selection to the Maryland Department of Planning for State Clearinghouse review; and
(2) Resolve any issues brought up in the State Clearinghouse review.
E. When submitting the site for IAC approval, the LEA shall include:
(1) The local board of education's approval of the school site acquisition to the IAC; and
(2) For a new school or a replacement school that adds capacity located outside of a priority funding area, a request for a waiver in accordance with Regulation .28 of this chapter.
F. The IAC may recommend including a project for planning approval in the State capital improvement program only if the project site has been approved or re-approved by the IAC in the preceding 5 years.
G. Priority Funding Area Review.
(1) Except as provided in §G(2) of this regulation, priority funding area review shall be conducted by the IAC for sites for new schools and replacement schools that add capacity and are proposed outside of priority funding areas, including review of requests for:
(a) Acquisition of new sites for new schools or replacement schools that add capacity;
(b) Reapproval of existing sites that were initially approved after the effective date of this regulation; or
(c) Redesignation of existing sites that were initially approved after the effective date of this regulation.
(2) The following sites for school construction projects are not subject to priority funding area review:
(a) A site that was approved prior to the effective date of this regulation if a new school or a replacement school that adds capacity on the site received planning approval within 5 years of the date of the previous approval; and
(b) A site for a replacement school when there is no increase of capacity.
COMAR? Haha- that's one of those "old" laws, right? MCPS don't give a hoot about laws. Why do you think they have been charging students to attend public school classes for over a decade? Free public school is a law, too. But, when confronted, MCPS administrators said the Constitution was "old" and the law didn't apply anymore. Same for COMAR on Site Selections. Old law, not used anymore. MCPS opts out of laws it doesn't like.
DeleteSo how does this work? Taxpayers are not getting the benefit of the State review, but they get the MCPS bill to pay - justified or not.
What's interesting is that the "easy" sites are submitted. They know how to follow the procedure, Song just ignores it on those sites he fears will result in a "no".
ReplyDeleteI'm sure MCPS and Starr are straightforward when explaining to the Exec and Council the reason for not receiving state funding on certain projects is their failure to follow any state mandated procedures.
For some reason Parks is desperate for money for Parks Director Mary Bradford's slush fund. As another example of Parks manipulating public lands to top off the slush fund, take a look at North Four Corners Park. A wonderful place, Rachel Carson Meadow, is about to be graded and destroyed, hundreds of trees cut down, to build a soccer field. And, the great community center building at the Park has been leased to a private Montessori School. The community center is in terrific condition and is a unique resource in the county, built from logs and local stone. It was used annually for the neighborhood Strawberry Festival, among other activities. No more. Public employees at Parks lied and claimed it was in terrible condition. Bye bye public spaces! As a reminder, Mary Bradford's boss is Francoise Carrier, Planning Board chair, who was appointed by your elected council members.
ReplyDelete