There’s several Gaithersburg stories in this week’s Gazette, I’m going to break this up into two posts.
After a lengthy and tense public hearing Thursday night, Gaithersburg leaders approved an empty storefront in the Festival at Muddy Branch shopping center as a day laborer center.
The debate stretched nearly three hours in a packed City Hall as more than 50 people laid out their arguments for and against the controversial center. Opponents of illegal immigration attacked the city for being involved in a center that would cater to the illegal immigrants among the city’s day laborers.
But the overwhelming majority of speakers — more than 40 — supported the site. Some made emotional entreaties, others called for practical solutions.
‘‘We have to get control of our situation,” argued City Councilman Michael Sessma just before voting. ‘‘This is the first step.”
The city has asked the county to choose a faith-based non-profit with close ties to Gaithersburg to run the center. The city’s preference, based on the recommendations of a task force that studied the issue, has been viewed by a many as a rebuke of Casa de Maryland, which runs county-funded day laborer centers in Wheaton and Silver Spring.
The county has said it is open to the city’s wishes. However, the county’s approved 2007 budget, which provides funding for a Gaithersburg day-laborer center, specifically designates $114,780 for Casa de Maryland to run it.
County Councilmen Michael J. Knapp, Philip M. Andrews and George Leventhal told The Gazette Monday that they think the language naming Casa may have been an assumption on the part of the county executive’s office, which proposed the budget.
While the council approved the budget, Leventhal pointed out that the allocated money appears in a part of the budget — the section for non-competitive bids — which the council passed without a single change. Leventhal sat on Casa’s board for several years until the early 1990s.
County Council attorney Michael Fadden said it should be ‘‘a relatively simple process” for the council to propose the needed resolution to amend that part of the budget.
Unaware of the budget language until Monday, Leventhal, Knapp and Andrews said they support introducing the necessary resolution to fix it.
Please do go read the rest of this article on the Gazette’s site. Mr. Montes also reports that:
- CASA de Maryland claims to have lost interest in running a Gaithersburg center. [And I wonder, could they be uncomfortable with the amount of scrutiny they would receive in Gaithersburg?]
- The new coalition of local churches is ready to “oversee” the operation of the center but has not yet committed to running it.
- The City and County are bickering over who will pay for the work to turn the Festival storefront into a center, especially with the County still paying for the lease on 17 N Frederick Ave.
This topic has been discussed extensively on this blog.
The owner, Hamza Halici, wants to demolish the 85-year-old bungalow which currently houses the Hair Bar salon. He says it’s an economic hardship to continue operating a business there. The upkeep is pricey, and to sell the property, he says, the place must be leveled.
On the other side of the argument are residents who support or live in historic city homes and say they would bemoan the loss of one of Gaithersburg’s jewels.
The debate, which has played out at several recent public meetings, is a rare controversy in the city’s historical backdrop.
‘‘Vacant land may be in short supply,” said Cathy Drzyzgula, chair of the city’s Historic Preservation Advisory Commission. ‘‘But historical resources can’t be recreated.”
The mayor and City Council, acting as the Historic District Commission, will decide whether to approve the demolition in a meeting next month.
A land appraiser Halici hired says the property would fetch about $900,000 if the home were demolished. With it in place, the land is valued at $630,000.
‘‘And when they hear the place is historic, [potential buyers] walk away,” Halici said.
‘‘The highest and best use of land is not the standard for a historical parcel, that’s a standard for a vacant parcel,” said Richard Arkin, a member of a historic preservation group. ‘‘Under that standard, even Monticello, even Mount Vernon would not qualify, because I could come up with a deal, you could come up with a deal, anyone could come up with a deal that could make more money from those places than is currently being made now. But they are historic, and they are important.”
“… a historic preservation group” may be understating it a bit. Mr. Arkin is the Chairman of the City’s Historic Preservation Advisory Committee.
The city’s Historic Preservation Advisory Committee, a group of appointed city residents that reviews applications to change any part of a home deemed historic, has dismissed Halici’s request time and time again, saying that the Hair Bar still operates in the building and is a successful business.
This may be overstating it. The demolition request has been before HPAC twice, and both times HPAC has unanimously recommended that the HDC reject the request. Gaithersburg’s split HPAC/HDC system is highly unusual; the normal way to do it is to vest the citizen’s committee with the final say, similar to the way that the Planning Commission works. In Gaithersburg’s system the HDC is also supposed to be an appointive body, but the Mayor and Council invariably appoint themselves, and members who leave the Council for whatever reason are expected to resign from the HDC as well. Thus, Gaithersburg’s system tends to politicize the process.
The group says Halici hasn’t proved economic hardship, and many who live in historic homes say demolition would be an easy cop-out to maintaining a piece of the city’s history.
Many owners of historic homes are also wondering, if Mr. Halici gets approval to destroy the Talbott house, will the same standard apply to everyone? Will their neighbors be able to claim economic hardship without proof, demolish their old homes and build tidy 21st Century tract mansions for sale at a substantial profit? If not, what is special about Mr. Halici’s case?
More Gaithersblog coverage of this issue can be found here.
Arkin said the districts can be further sorted out in future meetings, but that it was essential to pass the measure now to prevent a group of condominium owners from packing the board with trustees sympathetic to slashing Assembly-funded recreational programs and ending maintenance of Assembly-owned roads.
‘‘It was done in a way to prevent the condo majority-super majority from happening so we could address this situation in a more considerate fashion later on,” said Arkin, who outlined the district plan. ‘‘This was pulling the trigger on a failsafe mechanism, basically.”
Opponents of the resolution, like his District 2 challenger Robyn Renas, have decried the alleged clandestine nature board members used to address the issue and the fact that it was approved so soon before the Nov. 3 election. She also refuted that condo owners want to make such sweeping changes to Assembly-funded programs, and said she’s collected more than 150 signatures of residents opposed to districting.
‘‘We spend months deciding if a grandmother and a nanny can attend the swimming pool with their children,” Renas said. ‘‘I truly don’t understand why two weeks before the election this was required. If we wanted to divide it into districts, do it last summer or last spring.”
More Gaithersblog coverage of the KCA here.
