gaithersblog.net

Update: The City has posted notice of this hearing, along with a draft of the amendment. By my reading, it does pretty much just what I said below, which is to add a parallel exception process for the residential district. Personally, I’d think they’d just add a one- or two-story exception option for the commercial district as well and get it over with.

At the September 5th Council meeting, at the very end of the meeting when virtually everyone had left the room, a zoning text amendment was introduced. This text amendment was to enable changes to height restrictions in the CD zone, apparently to enable the redevelopment of the Broadstone Apartments. As I wrote at the time, this would seem to be an echo of a similar amendment requested by Jody Kline and discussed in an early January Council meeting. Also, following the September 18th Council meeting, I speculated that this text amendment could be related to an odd clause in the draft redevelopment deferral ordinance.

As of this writing, the City still has not posted notice or background on their website, however notice was printed in today’s Gaithersburg Gazette. I cannot find a copy of this notice on the Gazette’s website to link to, but their facility for searching legal notices doesn’t work very well so it could be there and I’m just not finding it. Anyway, from the printed notice, it appears that the request is not as egregious as what was proposed in January; it states (transcribed):

[…] so as to amend the waiver standards so that the City Council may, by resolution, waive the building and structure height requirements in the Corridor Development Zone (CD Zone) as follows: for a residential district to allow a height not to exceed four (4) stories, or forty-eight (48) feet.

The current CD zone, by my reading, appears to allow buildings in the residential district to be at most three stories, or 35 feet in height. There also appears to be no explicit process for granting an exception. There is a process for exception in the employment district, where the routine limit is six stories, or 65 feet. The exception process allows for buildings up to eight stories, or 90 feet, if a number of requirements are met and Council approves. This proposed text amendment appears to request that there be a parallel exception process for the residential district, with a special-exception hight of up to four stories allowed. If I recall correctly, in January the request was for removal of the restriction of the special exception height to the employment district, which would have resulted in a special-exception height of eight stories in the residential and commercial districts as well, and brought fears that a developer was planning on building an eight-story apartment building on South Frederick Avenue.

I will post more information as it becomes available.

The City has posted notice and tentative agenda for the October 4, 2006 meeting of the Planning Commission. On the agenda:

APPROVAL EXTENSIONS

SP-05-0001 — Washingtonian North
MXD Zone
10000 Washingtonian Boulevard
Infrastructure Plan
EXTENSION OF FINAL PLAN APPROVAL
TBA - Background Material (pdf format)
SP-05-0008 — Washingtonian North
MXD Zone
10000 Washingtonian Boulevard
220,116 Sq.Ft. Office, Garage & Improvements
EXTENSION OF FINAL PLAN APPROVAL
TBA - Background Material (pdf format)

SITE PLANS

AFP-06-030 — Bethany Presbyterian Church
E-1 Zone
1200 Quince Orchard Boulevard
Reuse from Office to Church Educational Use
AMENDMENT TO FINAL PLAN REVIEW
TBA - Background Material (pdf format)

AFP-06-043 — 16 Pavilion Drive
R-90 Cluster
156-Sq.Ft. Front Porch
AMENDMENT TO FINAL PLAN REVIEW
TBA - Background Material (pdf format)

I’ll update this with links to the background materials when they become available.

The City has posted notice of a public hearing for Historic Area Work Permit 56E, for 17 Walker Ave:

The application requests a certificate of approval from the City’s Historic District Commission for a replacement garage at 17 Walker Avenue . Section 24-228 of the City Code (Zoning Ordinance) requires a historic area work permit for altering exterior features of a historic resource. The subject property, located on Lot 17, Walkers Addition to Gaithersburg , is a contributing resource to the Brookes, Russell, Walker Historic District. Contact the Planning and Code Administration City Planner (listed below) at 301-258-6330 if you should have any questions and/or to learn more about this process and your ability to offer testimony and input.

The video for last night’s joint work session of the Mayor & Council and Planning Commission is now online. This was a short meeting, only about 45 minutes. A motion to hold a closed executive session passed, the traffic impact standards document was quickly introduced, and the bulk of the meeting concerned the Vistas. Generally, the Mayor, Council and Planning Commission were much happier with the proposal than they had been with previous iterations. The primary concern was with the structure of the homeowner’s association, whether they would merge with the Quince Orchard Park HOA or be a standalone HOA just for their relatively small development. There appeared to be reluctance to approve the plan unless the new homes could become part of the QOP HOA. Regarding affordable housing, while there were no provisions for it in the current plan, it was stated that if the affordable housing ordinance went into effect before the Vistas SDP could be approved, then the new ordinance would apply to the new development. Given the status of the project review, it seemed unlikely that the the SDP would be approved in time.

The closed executive session was, of course, closed and I can find no reports on what happened.

Update: The Gazette has an article on this : Vistas Housing Project Slowed by Confusion

Geography, Not Our Strongest Subject:

The Post fixed the graphic online after it was mentioned in Gene Weingarten’s chat. You’ll just have to trust me that I didn’t change the map when I used Photoshop to crop the screenshot. You can also take a look at page A2 of a print copy of the Tuesday, September 26 Post.

An article in the Washington Post today tells about Diebold’s continued attempts to deliver electronic voting equipment that appears to work:

Linda H. Lamone, state administrator of the Maryland State Board of Elections, invited Diebold to show that the system is “100 percent perfect.”

To do that yesterday, Diebold technicians showed what happened to an unmodified e-poll book after 40 to 50 voters had registered: An error message appeared on the screen, displaying the words “can not continue;” the screen went black; and the unit rebooted, as if a polling judge had just turned it on.

Then, Diebold technician Euel Kirk Cowal began registering voters on a unit with the modified software. Cowal reached 138 voters without a freeze. The Diebold executives, including one from the company’s Texas headquarters and another from a subsidiary in California, looked relieved.

Lamone, who has long championed the company and its voting machines, said she was not disappointed in Diebold. “I love the technology. I’m disappointed we had the problems, but I’m heartened to see Diebold stepping up to the plate to come up with solutions,” she said.

“If it doesn’t work,” she added, referring to the e-poll books, “we’re going to pack them up and ship them back.”

And what, exactly, would it take to convince Ms. Lamone that the books don’t work? I personally can’t see any way that these machines can be trusted until (a) the hardware designs, the software, and the production and delivery channels are completely open and available for independent audit, and (b) a voter-verifiable paper record is produced and archived, enabling a human-monitored recount. A controlled demonstration showing that a system doesn’t crash after 138 voters have signed in is in no way sufficient proof that the system works; anyone who has ever bought a new system after seeing a trade show demonstration can attest to this.

Update: I see that MoCo was thinking along the same lines…

Update: The Baltimore Sun also has a story on this.

When I wrote about the draft affordable housing ordinance a few days ago, I said:

[…] perhaps developers could opt out of the affordable-units requirement by purchasing units in existing developments and reselling them as MPDUs.

Clearly the same concept could be applied to rental housing, and in last Saturday’s Washington Post there was an article about a company that is rehabilitating older buildings for affordable housing:

KSI purchased the building — originally built in 1972 — in 1998, rehabbed it in 2000 and turned it into a rent-subsidized property in 2001. With the Fields of Gaithersburg and more than two dozen other of its buildings, the company participates in a tax credit program designed to provide reasonably priced apartments to households whose incomes fall within certain ranges.

Having lived there through an ownership and management change as well as a renovation that inconvenienced her, Carmona remains pleased with her experience. That is at least in part because when KSI took over and upgraded the complex’s 168 units, Carmona got a dishwasher, wall-to-wall carpeting to cover what she describes as shabby wood floors, new windows and window treatments and a complete renovation of the kitchen and bathroom.

In their one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, residents also have ample closet space and a window in each kitchen. Each building has its own laundry room.

Residents are allowed pets, have plenty of parking and have access to a children’s playground and an on-site outdoor pool.

The nice, clean pool was the only reason Susan Molina felt bad about living at the Fields, but only because her co-worker, who lives in nearby condo, did not have access to such a haven from Washington’s hot summer.

I believe that this would be the complex mentioned in the article.

Now, given that this is a story in the Washington Post, there’s a chance that it is little more than a goodness-and-light fantasy. But it sure sounds better than a lot of the affordable housing in Gaithersburg, which is affordable only as a result of disinvestment. I think that to the extent that a developer is willing to rehabilitate some existing structures in this manner and re-purpose them for affordable housing, that this should be counted toward the affordable housing requirement in a new development or redevelopment project — especially if the new project is in an area that already has a lot of disinvestment-induced “affordable” housing.

First, I want to make it clear: I do not in the least intend this to be an anti-day-laborer or anti-immigrant blog. However, I do want to provide information on events in Gaithersburg, and I hope that everyone understands that this has in fact been one of the biggest, if not the biggest story in Gaithersburg for nearly the entire time I’ve been doing this blog, since late August. Also, I want to make clear that to the extent that I have a problem with the way things are going, it has less to do with the day laborers themselves (although I do wish they’d be a little more respectful of us and our property, and I do want the City to find an appropriate place for them to solicit work) as with the media, advocates and government officials who attempt to exploit and distort the news about the laborers to advance their own agendas. I try, in my posts, to be generally supportive of those who are making positive efforts to find real, practical solutions.

Anyway, one thing I intend to do over the coming weeks is to try to minimize the number of posts I put up with links to news reports about the day laborer situation, so that this issue pops up to the top of the post stack a little less often. Toward that end, I will simply put up a single post today and append to that any additional links I encounter over the rest of this week. As I add links, I will change the title to reflect the update, but the permalink will remain the same. If I come across a news item that merits special attention, such as the Washington Post editorial this morning, I will add it as a separate post.

Update 3: The Gazette has two items on the day laborers today, an article and an editorial. The article is entitled “County defies city’s ruling“:

But within hours of the enforcement last week, county officials let it be known to the day laborers — mostly Latino men, many of whom are also illegal immigrants — that they could use a nearby site under lease to the county government.

That site, a vacant commercial building and parking lot at 17 North Frederick, was slated last year to become an official employment center in Gaithersburg, but city officials rejected the plan, saying it was an inappropriate neighborhood location.

Early Thursday morning, a dozen day laborers were at the new lot pulling weeds and readying the overgrown site for their daily business. They were led in prayer by the Revs. David Rocha and Simon Bautista, who have advocated for the men in months of debate.

[…]

Humpton held an impromptu meeting with those gathered. Responding to the St. Martin’s proposal he reminded the group that temporary trailers next to City Hall had been proposed and rejected last month.

‘‘I’m a realist,” Humpton said. ‘‘My reaction … is that we’ll have as just much a fight from the community over there [as] we do at Walker Avenue — that people will come out and say, ‘Aha, City Council, you’re moving it from one area to another.’”

He predicted it would take a ‘‘huge coalition” to support the idea and get it through the City Council.

Several religious leaders and Latino advocates met privately Thursday morning to continue work on the idea.

The focus of the group — which includes representatives of Grace Church, St. Martin’s, Episcopal Church of the Ascension and the Latino advocacy nonprofit Casa de Maryland — is to create a broader coalition of religious and civic groups in support of St. Martin’s offer and, in the meantime, to help supervise the day laborers gathering at the county site at 17 North Frederick.

If only the local religious leaders had been willing to build this coalition months ago, when the Day Labor Task Force recommended it; perhaps we wouldn’t be having this stalemate now. Also, I expect that if CASA de Maryland’s role in this is more than as an interested party providing some input and advice to the coalition, we can expect significant public resistance to the arrangement.

The editorial makes it clear that the Gazette has no thought for the residents of any neighborhood that might be home to a day labor center:

[…]

Gaithersburg can’t wait for another winter to come and go with no place for these workers to shelter themselves from the elements while they wait for jobs that others consider too menial. And the situation mustn’t be encumbered by debate over federal immigration policy and reform.

This is one thing I still just don’t get. By and large, the jobs that these laborers get are outside, even in the winter. Can anyone explain to me why they need better conditions while they are waiting then they have while they are working? In Herndon, they wait outside under a canopy, 12 months a year, and are reportedly happy to do so. Propane space heaters — as are used on construction sites — can also be used to provide some releif when it gets particularly cold.

In more than a year of trying, examining almost 30 locations, about all Gaithersburg has been able to offer up in recent days is the suggestion that churches help with bus fare to ferry the workers to existing county-supported labor centers in Wheaton and Silver Spring.

The county has more experience with labor centers, witness its involvement nearly two decades ago when workers gathered before dawn each morning in the parking lot of a Takoma Park convenience store, prompting the first center operated by an advocacy group./p>

The county has more experience with labor centers, this is true. The success of those centers is open to debate and highly dependant on how you define “success”. If success is measured by the number of day laborers getting jobs at the centers and the lack of day laborers remaining at ad-hoc sites near the centers, they are failures. If success is measured by the ability of politicians to say they’ve dealt with the problem, or by the steady stream of money flowing from the public coffers into CASA de Maryland’s bank accounts, then yes, they’ve been highly successful.

Gaithersburg’s leaders still have a number of options. They include supporting a center in the county-leased building, working with Saint Martin for buildings at the church property, coming up with another centrally located site or continuing to fret and sit on their hands.

Remind me again why it has to be central to Gaithersburg, other than that the County has some agenda to put it there? Many of the laborers come to the existing site on busses, so they could ride busses to some other site as well. I’m not aware that any of the Gazette’s editors live near this location, surely they could recommend locations near their own homes. Or perhaps the Gazette’s editors live where no busses go.

Perhaps the best option is to admit they’re incapable of making a decision and let the county come to the rescue. When the mayor and council are up for re-election, the voters can decide whether that’s the kind of leadership they want.

Whatever they decide, I certainly hope that we do a better job selecting leaders than has the County as a whole.

Update 2: Aparently Martin O’Malley and Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM) are having a press conference today at CASA de Maryland’s facility in Silver Spring:

O’Malley’s news conference with Richardson today will be in Silver Spring at CASA of Maryland, where he will aim to bring out more Latino voters.

Other than the comment on mocoprogressive that first tipped me off to the event, this sentence in the Post is the only mention I’ve been able to find regarding the press conference. If I find more information I may make a separate post about this.

Update 1: I missed this when it was put up a few days ago at the Washington Post: Video of Gaithersburg worker protest

Laborer site still sought

Publish Date: 09/23/06

By Sonia Boin
News-Post Staff

GAITHERSBURG — Day laborers who were threatened with arrest if they continued to gather at a commercial parking lot in Gaithersburg have moved up the street to a site Montgomery County is leasing.

But that doesn’t settle a yearlong search for a permanent site that can accommodate an employment center without bringing down a hail of complaints from neighbors or store customers.

Gaithersburg Mayor Sidney Katz said the city is waiting to see if another shopping center, one that has an adequate existing building, will agree to let the laborers use its premises.

“If that doesn’t come to fruition,” he said, “we might ask the county for a place close to the city limits.”

Mr. Katz was less than enthusiastic about a new possibility raised Wednesday, a field across from St. Martin’s Catholic Church with a trailer to accommodate the laborers.

He said the laborers would stand on the lawn, but potential employers can’t park on Md. 355 to pick them up.

I have also heard that there are no sewer connections on that lot, so that portable toilets would be required; something that some advocates have in the past identified as unacceptable, even though many of the laborers work on construction sites where such toilets are a standard part of the work environment.

Asked for their take on seeking a place outside the city limits for the average 100 laborers who gather every day, councilmembers who represent Gaithersburg and the upcounty said their minds are open.

Michael Knapp said he doesn’t have a problem with a site outside the city.

The article doesn’t say if this includes locations in his district, which includes parts of Montgomery County immediately to the north of the City limits, or if he’s thinking more to the east, south and west of the City, which would still leave it in Mr. Andrews’ district. Mr. Knapp was the most active of all the Council members in the early, secretive meetings among day laborer advocates and City and County officials and staff which resulted in the leasing by the County of the Gaithersburg site now being used without permit by Rev. Rocha and the day laborers, in collusion with Mr. Romer’s office.

Phil Andrews, who represents Gaithersburg and Rockville, said, “Gaithersburg needs to keep at it. It’s important to find a location that works for residents and day laborers and can be supervised.”

Asked about a location outside the city, Mr. Andrews said he has an open mind.

I’m surprised that Mr. Andrews has expressed any opinion at all on this issue; as far as I’ve been able to determine, he has been almost completely absent from this debate, and has done little to nothing to support his Gaithersburg constituents in their dispute with the County. In the one opportunity I had to speak with him, he stated that he thought these sorts of operational details were not the responsibility of the legislative branch, an ethical stance that in my opinion serves no purpose when his colleague is attempting to place a day labor site right under Mr. Andrews’ nose.

In an editorial in today’s Post, we learn:

Even after examining some 30 sites over the past nine months, the city has come up empty-handed: Some prospective neighbors, it seems, always object.

No, it isn’t a problem with the neighbors in most cases. It is a problem with the property owners. It has been extraordinarily difficult to find a landlord willing to rent for this purpose. In the very few cases where the landlord has been willing (or possibly unwitting), the unsuitability of the site for virtually any use and consequent long-term inability to find a tenant may well have been calculated into the landlord’s decision. Does the Post think that the City should accept any site offered, no matter how inappropriate? Or perhaps the Post thinks that the City should exercise eminent domain to solve this problem, forcing some property owner to relinquish his rights for the day laborers?

Gaithersburg’s dilemma is no different from that of other growing suburban localities in this area and elsewhere, where day laborers — most of them Hispanic and many of them illegal immigrants — are in demand. Like it or not, they are an integral part of the local economy, and their services are welcomed as house painters, construction workers, landscapers and odd-jobbers.

If they are an integral part of the local economy, why are so many of them standing around doing nothing? Does the Post suggest that the City has an obligation to warehouse surplus laborers? When most businessmen find insufficient demand for their product at a location, they typically abandon that location. Does the Post believe that day laborers should be immune from this risk?

Like other jurisdictions, Gaithersburg has been saddled with a problem that is the product of the federal government’s failed immigration policies. But also like other jurisdictions, Gaithersburg must make accommodations for a group of workers from whom the city and its residents clearly benefit.

“Must” is strong language. One would think from this editorial that there was some law that compelled all local jurisdictions to set up employment centers for day laborers. In fact, there is no such law, and the Post must know this. Moreover, there are those who argue that such centers, to the extent that they serve illegal immigrants, are themselves illegal. I myself wish to look past this question but for the Post to say that Gaithersburg must make these accommodations seems a bit much. In fact, if the Post were to look at the situation a bit more carefully, I believe that they would find that very few local jurisdictions have set up day labor centers. This is not because there aren’t day laborers in other jurisdictions, but rather because few of those jurisdictions were willing to try to do something about them — in most cases the problems — and yes there are problems — are simply allowed to fester.

In Silver Spring and Wheaton, Montgomery County has been operating day-labor centers for some time, without incident.

And without much benefit, either. I encourage the Post to visit those day-labor centers, and see first hand all the laborers who are not getting hired, and then to drive around in the area of those day labor centers and see first hand all the informal laborer pickup sites. Why do so many laborers avoid the day labor centers? Please read the report of Gaithersburg’s Day Labor Task Force:

Despite the desire to provide all these educational and social service opportunities, the main thing the workers did at all of the centers was to wait for work. In Silver Spring the workers waited in an outbuilding sitting on chairs, talking, and perhaps eating. In Herndon they waited under a cloth canopy, unless they were called in for English classes. In Wheaton the men watched a flat panel TV, browsed the internet on computers and talked. (The internet access was clearly unrestricted.) The Wheaton ESOL classes were held in the evening because the workers did not want classes to take them away from the opportunity of getting a job. It seemed that the Herndon center did more to encourage the workers to learn English, and their greater involvement in self-management presented opportunities for self improvement and the ability to make a difference in their own lives. The permit condition which prevented the Herndon center from providing social services at the center did not keep the workers from receiving services. It was also true that if services were primarily available at employment centers, workers who obtained long term employment would no longer have access to these services. Furthermore, women who did not visit the centers (we didn’t see any women in Wheaton or Herndon) couldn’t benefit from the centers’ services.

[…]

The ability of the centers to obtain participation by all of the day laborers was critical to their success, and was not uniformly observed on the task force visits. Herndon partnered their center with an anti-solicitation ordinance and zoning regulation giving property owners a duty to prevent congregation of workers. This seemed to be effective. […]

The Silver Spring center appeared to be particularly unsuccessful in convincing all workers to seek work at the center. On the day of the task force visit at least 30 men were congregating at the 7-Eleven less than a mile from the center. The employment coordinator for CASA indicated she was aware of this problem and that CASA encouraged these men to use the center, but they could not require them to do so.

Back to the Post editorial,

[…] a day-labor center makes eminent good sense; it would move the workers indoors and provide an organizational structure, toilets and possibly classrooms to teach English.

Just because there are indoor toilets available doesn’t mean that the laborers will use them. The laborers don’t like to be indoors because they can’t see the contractors when they come. This is also why so few of them make use of the English classes — they don’t want to be occupied if there’s an opportunity for work.

A center could still be established at the county-leased site, but the city objects.

The City objects because the site is inappropriate, not just because of the problems the laborers cause for the neighborhood, but also because access to that building for contractors is unacceptable, and the current zoning does not allow such a use. Furthermore, the building is too small for the classrooms envisioned, doesn’t meet modern code and there are no occupancy permits granted or even applied for. Does the Post believe that the City should just close their eyes, cover their ears, and go “LA LA LA LA LA” while the County throws good money after bad on a site that just won’t work?

A Catholic church not far away is also offering some of its property — but the city objects to that, too.

The offer from the Catholic church — St. Martin of Tours — came very late in this process, after repeated statements from that same church that they were not willing to host the laborers. The piece of land in question (the vacant lot to the right) has significant problems as well, that have not been addressed in the church’s offer.

Update: The New MoCo Progressive also has some thoughts on this editorial.

I wrote about the Vistas once before, when the public hearing was first announced. That public hearing is scheduled for tomorrow evening (Monday, September 25, 2006), and I’ve just noticed that the background materials for that hearing have been posted. I’m guessing that they went up late Thursday or early Friday, as the internal time stamp on the third of the three PDFs is around close of business on Thursday. The three PDFs can be found here, here and here.

As is usual with the PDFs from the City planning department, they contain only images of the pages submitted, rather than machine-readable text of the content of those pages. Thus it can be a bit of a challenge to read it through looking for specific content. The non-free professional version of Acrobat does, however, have an OCR (optical character recognition) feature that can be used to quickly scan the documents for images of text. I’ve done this with these three documents and I’ve found that, within the ability of the software to recognize text, it was not able to find the strings “MPDU” or “moderately priced dwelling unit”. I did find a single instance of the word “affordable” in the first of the three documents, on page 24 in a discussion of densities:

We understand that there are economic and other pressures (such as keeping housing more affordable) that may militate toward a somewhat more dense mix in the Vistas. Indeed, the Board and the Committee are generally comfortable with the portion of this design that uses high-density condominiums along Orchard Ridge Road, with the possible exception of the Condominium structure planned for the comer of Winter walk Drive and Orchard Ridge.

However, there is a strong community feeling that more downward movement in the density numbers is needed.

If there is significant interest in the OCR’d versions of these PDFs please mention it in the comments or by email and I’ll consider posting them. I’ve pasted in a few images from the background PDFs: