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I received the following press release from Ben Ross of Action Committee for Transit:

For Immediate Release

Thursday morning, December 27, 2007

Source: Action Committee for Transit

www.actfortransit.org

For more information, call: Ben Ross at 301-913-2849.

TRANSIT ADVOCATES BLAST PROPOSAL TO DROP RIDE-ON ROUTES AFTER SYSTEM GETS NEW STATE AID

The Action Committee for Transit today denounced a plan to cut Ride-On bus service at a time when the Montgomery County bus system has just been awarded millions of dollars in new state aid. The cuts were proposed in a Dec. 21 budget-cutting plan sent from the County Executive to the County Council.

“With Montgomery County’s traffic so bad, the last thing we should be doing is putting more cars on the road by forcing people to drive who don’t want to,” commented ACT Vice President Ben Ross.

Just one month ago, Montgomery County members of the General Assembly won a pledge from Gov. Martin O’Malley to provide additional aid for Ride-On from Maryland’s Transportation Trust Fund. Local legislators who voted for tax increases wanted to be sure that some of the new revenues would go to relieve the travails of county commuters.

If the county cuts Ride-On service at the same time that Ride-On is getting more money from the state’s Trust Fund, the net effect will be to use Transportation Trust Fund revenues to cover the county’s general operating deficit. ACT pointed out that when the previous state administration used TTF money to cover an operating deficit, Montgomery Countians were highly critical.

The transit group warned that diverting money dedicated for Ride-On could make it harder for our legislative delegation to win funding of any kind in the future.

Michael Dresser writes,

A plan to transform the MARC commuter rail service into a fully functional, seven-days-a-week urban transit system would cost an estimated $3.9 billion over the next three decades, according to an outline released yesterday by the Maryland Transit Administration.

The plan, first reported by The Sun on Monday, would extend the service from Delaware to Virginia while more than tripling the current capacity of the overcrowded train system.

This is the second of the agenda items from tonight’s Council meeting that I found interesting enough to post about.

As stated in the memo below from Assistant City Manager Fred Felton, while the County’s Annual Growth Policy does not apply within the City, the schools and transportation impact taxes do. The County is now engaging in their biannual review of this policy, and some of the proposed changes are concerning. I think that the approach that Mr. Felton recommends here is quite reasonable, and for the most part I’ll let his memo speak for itself. I will add a note about the consequences of the conflict between the City’s Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO) and the County’s Annual Growth Policy.

According to Mr. Felton’s memo, the County is proposing that development will be allowed to proceed as long as the schools are at less than 135% of program capacity; developers would be required to pay an additional tax if the capacity is between 110% and 135%, toward the end of providing additional funds to alleviate the overcrowding. While allowing more children to be sent to such already-overcrowded schools is somewhat frightening, I believe that this tax should never have to be paid within the City of Gaithersburg, because, by the City’s APFO, proposed developments will not be approved if the schools are at 110% of capacity or more; the City also uses a more restrictive test to determine capacity.

Nevertheless, some schools attended by Gaithersburg students could well be driven to as high as 135% or more of program capacity because the school districts routinely cross the City boundary and include students from developments outside the City. I’m not sure there’s much that the City can do about this; they’ve already made a fairly strong statement of their opinion of this sort of folly via their APFO. However, as residents of the County, we can all at least directly tell the County Council what we think of this proposal.

The proposed waiver of impact taxes within Strategic Economic Development Projects could be another big help to the revitalization of Olde Towne, and the 50% credit of transportation impact taxes near MARC stations is a strong smart-growth proposal for the entire County.

The original of this memo, as well as the attachments to which the memo refers, are contained in a PDF that is part of the background materials for tonight’s meeting. Again, this was an OCR’d PDF, and I had to make a number of corrections, especially in formatting and punctuation. Please refer to the original for an authoritative copy, and let me know if you see any errors in my transcription.

MEMORANDUM TO:	Mayor and City Council
VIA:	David B. Humpton, City Manager
FROM:	Frederick J. Felton, Assistant City Manager
DATE:	July 5 2007
SUBJECT:	Montgomery County Annual Growth Policy and Impact Tax Legislation

On May 18 2007, staff sent a memorandum to the Mayor and City Council that included the Montgomery County Planning Board’s recommendations for the 2007 Annual Growth Policy (AGP) and modifications to the impact tax legislation. While the County’s AGP does not apply within the City of Gaithersburg, the County’s impact taxes for both schools and transportation are applicable to development in the City.

Over the last month, staff has attended a series of County Council hearings and Committee work sessions on the AGP and the impact tax. During the June 19, 2007 Public Hearing, former Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Scott Reilly provided testimony on behalf of County Executive Leggett. Given that the Executive is proposing significant modifications from the Planning Board recommendation, I have attached a copy of Mr Reilly’s remarks for your review.

Schools Test

Over the last three AGP cycles (2005, 2003, and 2001), the City has commented extensively on the schools test formula. In particular, the City has expressed serious concerns about sharing of capacity between schools and allowing residential development to continue with affected schools going as high as 110% of AGP capacity

In January of 2007, the City of Gaithersburg adopted an Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance that included a schools test that was significantly more restrictive than the current County schools test. The City’s schools test was modeled closely after the City of Rockville’s schools test and closes an area to residential development if any of the receiving schools will exceed 110% of program capacity. Additionally, the City’s schools test does not permit sharing of capacity within or between clusters and only gives credit for Capital Improvements that are scheduled to be completed within a two-year timeframe

The Planning Board’s current proposal for the schools test reflects a new approach that both the County Executive and some County Council members have expressed concerns about. Rather than attempting to ensure that the current and forecasted schools can support students generated as a result of development approvals, the Planning Board approach attempts to generate significant revenues for future school construction. The Planning Board’s proposal evaluates elementary schools and middle schools on a cluster wide basis, but does not permit sharing of capacity between high schools. The Planning Board’s proposal would allow residential development to continue until a school’s capacity reached 135% of program capacity, but a substantial “special facilities payment” would be required for each anticipated student when capacity was between 110% and 135% of program capacity. These payments would range from $32,524 at the elementary level to $47,501 at the high school level. For your review I have attached an excerpt from the background material for the July 2, 2007 PHED Committee work session that discusses this issue in some detail.

Impact Taxes

As previously noted, Montgomery County impact taxes are assessed on new construction in the City of Gaithersburg. The Planning Board is recommending significant increases to both the school impact taxes and the transportation impact taxes. For example the school impact tax for a single family detached dwelling would increase from $8,464 to $22,729 per unit. The transportation impact tax for a single family detached dwelling would increase from $5,819 to $8,380. For your review, I have attached a memorandum dated May 14, 2007 from Research and Technology Chief Karl Moritz that outlines the Planning Board’s rationale.

While most County Council members appear to be supportive of some level of impact tax increase, a number of members have expressed concern that the recommendation may be excessive. An equally important issue is the timing of any impact tax increases. There has been some discussion of phasing in an increase over time to lessen the impact on projects in the pipeline.

At one point, the County allowed an exemption that would limit or waive impact taxes for Strategic Economic Development Projects. The County Executive’s staff has recommended that this exemption be reinstated in the current legislation.

For many years, the County has only charged 50% of the transportation impact tax for projects located in Metro Station Policy areas. In previous years the City has requested that this reduced rate also be applied to projects near MARC stations but the County Council has not acted favorably upon this request to date.

Staff Recommendations

Staff is recommending that the City of Gaithersburg make the following recommendations to the County Council with regard to the AGP and the impact tax legislation:

1. That the County’s schools test be modified to be more in line with the schools test adopted by the City of Gaithersburg and the City of Rockville.
2. That any impact tax increases be phased in over time to minimize hardship on development projects already in the pipeline.
3. That the exemption for Strategic Economic Development Project be reinstated, and that Olde Towne Gaithersburg be specifically designated as a Strategic Economic Development Project.
4. That development projects located in the vicinity of MARC stations (including Olde Towne and Metropolitan Grove Road) be given a 50% credit for the transportation impact tax.

I will be seeking guidance on the development of the City’s position on the AGP and impact tax legislation during the July 9, 2007 Mayor and City Council meeting. If you have any questions or wish to discuss this matter please feel free to contact me.

FJF/ms
Attachments

From the City’s website:

Agenda - Planning Commission Meeting, 6/6/2007

Posted 5/24/2007

City of Gaithersburg
31 South Summit Avenue
Gaithersburg, Maryland 20877

Telephone: 301-258-6330

PLANNING COMMISSION AGENDA*
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
7:30 P.M.
City Hall Council Chambers

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

May 16, 2007, Planning Commission Meeting
Background Material (pdf format)

RECORD PLATS

CONSENT

AFP-07-017 – Jackie O Salon
C-2 Zone
18525 North Frederick Avenue
Reuse from Office to Retail
AMENDMENT TO FINAL PLAN REVIEW
Background Material (pdf format)

SP-06-0002 – Criswell Used Cars
C-2 Zone
499 Quince Orchard Road
18,363 Square Foot Car Dealership Building
EXTENSION OF FINAL PLAN APPROVAL
Background Material (pdf format)

RECOMMENDATION TO MAYOR AND COUNCIL

MP-1-07 – Amendment to the General Plan for the Gaithersburg Corridor City Master Plan adding a Historic Preservation Element
NOTE: no additional testimony will be taken at this time.
Background Material (pdf format)

FROM THE COMMISSION

FROM STAFF

SDP-06-004 –  Fairfield Broadstone LP

Md. Rte. 355/West Deer Park Road
Redevelopment for 334 Multi-Family Units,
53 Townhouses, 28 2-over-2 Units
Announcement of Closing of Record

Z-304   –        Fairfield Broadstone LP

Md. Rte. 355/West Deer Park Road
14.157 acres of land (Broadstone Apartments)
Rezoning from R-20 Zone to CD Zone
Announcement of Closing of Record
I. Background Material (pdf format)

II. Background Material

ADJOURNMENT

• Chris Robinson writes, Aquatic center is off the blocks in Gaithersburg:
  

  Gaithersburg residents glimpsed the first designs of the evolving Aquatic and Recreation Center off Route 28 during a community meeting last week, as the city gears up for nearly a year’s worth of deliberation on the project.

• Sebastian Montes writes, Policing addressed for day-labor center:
  

  County police and day-laborer advocates have met to work out a range of issues they see as integral to the success of a new county employment center in Derwood.

  There is worry, however, that if workers stray from the site, the nearby community will consider the center a failure.

  ‘‘We don’t want to give them a reason to say the center isn’t working,” said Diane Tillery, community services officer for the county police’s Sixth District.

  Tillery, who has played a central role in the situation since late 2004, wants to prevent impromptu hiring sites in Derwood like the ones that have tended to pop up near the county’s formal centers in Silver Spring and Wheaton.

• C. Benjamin Ford writes, Three major transit projects delayed by revision of bad ridership numbers:
  

  Three major transit projects will be delayed for up to a year so state officials can come up with better studies on projected riders.

  Delayed are the Purple Line between Bethesda and New Carrollton, the Corridor Cities Transitway linking Clarksburg and the Shady Grove Metro station and the Red Line connecting Woodlawn to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore.

• Sebastian Montes writes, Sixth District officer marks 25 years of service:
  

  Numerous colorful merit badges donned the brown vests of 17 Brownie Girl Scouts snacking on vanilla wafers and juice bags with county police Officer Diane Tillery at DuFief Elementary School in Gaithersburg on Friday afternoon.

  Tillery’s badge is the one she started pinning to her chest 25 years ago.

The City has published it’s Legislative Priorities for the 2007 session of the Maryland General Assembly. These are the things that, given their druthers, the City would have the legislature pass in the upcoming session. Key issues in here are:

• Yet more money for the Lakelands aquatic center
• More funding for the City police
• Funding for major transportation projects, specifically the CCT and the Watkins Mill Interchange
• Taxing authority issues: Exemption from the Metropolitan District Tax, authority to levy additional Hotel/Motel and Development Excise taxes
• Authority for a municipalities to be opt-out electrical aggregators. On the Takoma Park website, I found a PDF document from 2005 discussing this issue in detail. A couple of quotes from this document will go a long way toward explaining what they want to do:
  

  What is electricity deregulation?
  Generally, electricity deregulation refers to a state deciding that customers should be allowed to choose an electricity supplier by letting competition enter a market where only a regulated utility monopoly existed before. It is felt that the market forces of supply, demand, and competition will help to keep electricity costs low, and stimulate innovative new products and services that didn’t exist under regulation. Maryland began this process in 1999.

  So if there is supposed to be a choice of suppliers, why can’t we find any besides our existing utility?
  What has been found in every state where restructuring has been tried, including Maryland, is that competition only appears for large industrial customers. This is because electricity suppliers who try to recruit individual homeowners and small businesses quickly learn that the marketing expense is much too high per customer to make it worth their while, and they abandon the effort.

  What exactly is municipal aggregation?
  Aggregation in general refers to many customers joining together to form a buying group. Municipal aggregation refers specifically to the situation where a municipality organizes the pooling of its citizens to become the buying group. The municipality (or a group of them) then seeks out offers on behalf of its constituents to get a better price, terms and services than would be available to an individual.

  What is the “opt-out” part?
  If a municipality has to go out and recruit citizens to join the buying group (i.e. getting them to “opt-in” to the program), then just like when a business tries to do it, it is prohibitively expensive in time and money. Where aggregation can be successful is when it is allowed to be done another way using the so-called “opt-out” approach. This allows the city to publicly declare its intention to become an aggregating entity for its citizens through hearings and mailings, and all citizens are then included in the buying group unless they respond to the mailings or otherwise tell the municipality they wish to “opt-out” of the program.

  There’s a lot more detail in that document, but I think that this gives a pretty good idea of what’s going on. The document explains that forming such a buying group, where people would belong unless they explicitly bother to request exclusion, is not currently legal in Maryland; the proposed legislation is the thing that would make it legal to do this. It also asserts that the electrical utilities — PEPCO in particular — are opposed to this because it would force them to be more competitive.

Anyway, what follows is the complete text of the City’s 2007 legislative agenda, as posted on their website:

City of Gaithersburg State Legislative Priorities for 2007
Posted 12/27/2006

FUNDING

Regional Aquatic/Recreation Center - Bond Bill Needed for Construction

• Additional funding is needed to move forward with this project on Route 28 and Edison Park Drive that will serve both City and County residents.
• The project is now in design phase.
• Gaithersburg has committed $9.5 million.
• Montgomery County has committed $6 million.
• Crown Farm project developers have committed $5 million.
• $1 million bond bill is requested in the 2007 legislative session so we can move to the construction phase.

Police - State Aid Requested to Improve Public Safety

• Maryland provides $1,800 in state aid for each sworn municipal police officer. This figure has not increased since 1999.
• Additional state assistance is necessary for Gaithersburg to expand its force, which currently stands at 49 sworn officers.
• The Maryland Municipal League has made increasing this aid a key component of its legislative agenda.

TRANSPORTATION

Watkins Mill Road Interchange - Engineering Funds Need to be Increased

• The Watkins Mill Road Interchange at I-270 is critical.
• It will aid economic development and reduce congestion at one of the busiest intersections in Montgomery County
• The City and County are working with developers on the Watkins Mill Road extension.
• Gaithersburg recently approved a Road Participation Agreement that would provide for build-out in two years.
• Gaithersburg has secured 65% of the Interchange right-of-way at no cost to the state. Efforts are underway to secure the rest.
• The Interchange is in the engineering phase, but there are not adequate engineering funds earmarked for this project in FY 2008.
• The proposed Consolidated Transportation Plan only calls for $800,000 and the Department of Transportation notes that an additional $7.8 million is needed for engineering.

Corridor Cities Transitway - Make a Top Funding Priority

• Congestion on I-270 has reached intolerable levels.
• The Corridor Cities Transitway (CCT), which is supported by municipalities along the route, provides an effective light rail alternative to commuters.
• The entire right-of-way throughout the City of Gaithersburg is available for construction, and the land for the transit stations has been set aside.
• This project needs to be the next major transportation initiative in Maryland.

LEGISLATION

Metropolitan District Tax - Exempt Gaithersburg and Rockville

• Gaithersburg requests a Bi-County bill establishing that properties annexed into the City of Gaithersburg or City of Rockville since 1965 not be subject to the Metropolitan District Tax.
• This tax is used to support parks operated by the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission.
• It has never been assessed on properties located within Gaithersburg or Rockville, but a recent County Attorney’s opinion has determined that properties annexed in either City should be subject to the tax.
• Both Gaithersburg and Rockville have their own extensive parks systems and recreational programs that are funded by the respective City’s property tax revenues.

Hotel/Motel Tax- Allow Municipalities to Assess

• The City of Gaithersburg currently has 14 hotels operating within City limits.
• They require additional public services such as police protection.
• Gaithersburg requests that enabling legislation be approved allowing municipalities to assess a 3% hotel/motel tax.
  
• Most counties and the City of Baltimore currently charge a hotel/motel tax, but other municipalities do not have the authority to assess a tax of this nature

Municipal Opt-Out Electrical Aggregation- Approve

• Deregulation has not produced meaningful competition in Maryland, and our residents’ electric utility rates continue to increase.
• Like municipalities across this State, the City of Gaithersburg would like to seek competitive bids from electric providers on behalf of our residents.
• We are requesting that the General Assembly approve municipal opt-out electrical aggregation this year.

Development Excise Taxes- Enact Enabling Legislation

• The City of Gaithersburg is supportive of Rockville’s request for enabling legislation that would permit municipalities to charge development excise taxes to assist in providing the infrastructure necessary to support new development

Update: The City has published an Outcomes document for this meeting, as well as the Video, two parts: Part 1, Part 2.

The agenda for Monday Night’s Council meeting is extensive — more than two dozen items in seventeen segments — so I’ll just hit a few highlights here. Refer to the agenda as posted on the City’s website for complete details.

• The City Manager’s Day Laborer Report. As this is the first meeting since the failure of the Festival site, I have no idea what Mr. Humpton might have to say here.
• Joint public hearing on SDP-06-005 for Crown Farm. I’ve discussed this previously.
• The draft anti-solicitation ordinance.
• T-379, affordable housing ordinance. Note that the latest background materials reflect the planning commission’s recommendation for alternative 2 of the ordinance, which treats Olde Towne as a special case. The planning commission also suggested that the ordinance “require affordable housing as Olde Towne approaches the same levels of vitality as the remainder of the City”, although this would happen automatically if my suggestion — that the ordinance merely be sensitive to the amount of affordable housing near any proposed project — were implemented.
• The 120-day deferral ordinance, which in my estimation is probably dead in the water, given the progress on T-379. One interesting aspect of this, however, is the list given in the background materials of all the redevelopment projects currently under consideration. This is yet another bit-mapped PDF, so what follows is OCR’d, and the original document should be consulted before commenting. I’m more or less familiar with almost all of the projects listed here except for the last one, for “redeveloping several blocks of North Frederick Avenue”. I find this quite interesting, because the entirety of North Frederick Ave is not much more than “several” blocks long in the first place. Such a project could have a major impact on what many people see as “Gaithersburg”.

  But my primary reaction to this is that it really is a sad state of affairs; it is a litany of failure, uncertainty and stalemate. Money continues to flow into greenfield developments such as Crown Farm and Watkins Mill Town Center as if it were water over the Niagara. But when it comes to Olde Towne revitalization, we see at best a slow drip from a leaky faucet, most of it evaporating before it can serve any useful purpose. At this rate, I don’t think that the Planning Commission really has to worry all that much about Olde Towne “[approaching] the same levels of vitality as the remainder of the City” any time soon.

  West Deer Park Apartments (198 units)-RST Development has indicated they can not move forward with this redevelopment due to adjustments in the housing market and high costs of materials.

  Executive Garden Apartments (85 units)-Property was recently purchased, and developer has showed staff a concept plan for redevelopment. Concept plan shows 78 townhouse units. Staff has told the developer that we believe the plan is too dense, lacking green space, and is severely under parked. Developer maintains that this project will only be economically viable if he can build 78 units. To date, formal application has not been submitted.

  Water Street (52 units)-The same developer that purchased Executive Gardens has 52 units on Water Street under contract. While he has not yet produced a concept plan, he recently indicated that he would not move forward with purchasing the properties unless the City was supportive of the density he was proposing for Executive Gardens.

  Stratford Place Apartments (350 units)-Property owner has requested that the Mayor and City Council approve a text amendment that would allow a waiver for four stories in the residential portion of the CD zone. This text amendment is scheduled for policy discussion on December 4, 2006. If the text amendment is approved, the property owner has indicated he will be filing a request for rezoning and a schematic development plan requesting approval of a mixed-use residential development including townhouses, apartments, and two-over-two condominiums.

  East Diamond Avenue consolidation (73 units)-Staff is still working with a developer and the property owners of three small apartment complexes who would like to redevelop this area with fairly high density apartments. During a work session on May 30, 2006, the City Council indicated general support for the project but expressed concern about the scale and density of the project. To date, no application has been submitted.

  Frederick Avenue consolidation (75 units)-Several months ago, staff met with a group of developers that expressed an interest in redeveloping several blocks of North Frederick Avenue that included several commercial buildings and 75 apartments. To the best of staffs knowledge, the developer does not have the apartments under contract and has not prepared a plan.

• Proposed Legislative Priorities for the 2007 General Assembly Legislative Session. Most of what is listed in the background document seems pretty straightforward, and I’m happy to see a couple of items in there about increasing funding for public safety. However, I’m quite curious about the first listed item:
  

  A bond bill for City Capital project(s).

  What could this possibly mean? The City is not especially given to borrowing money for capital projects, and in fact they have frequently been criticized for not doing this. Does this item indicate a change? Or am I completely missing their intent here?

• Financial incentives for the Bozzuto project on North Summit. That project is currently languishing, with nothing but bulldozed dirt and a sales office at the corner of Park & Summit (as of this writing the local.live.com image shows the corner before the houses were torn down). It’s being proposed that the City would provide such incentives as down payment assistance to prospective buyers of homes in this new project. Will we ever see an unsubsidized redevelopment project in Olde Towne again?

Several items in this week’s Gaithersburg Gazette:

• Push is on for light rail along upcounty transitway, by Melissa A. Chadwick
  
  

  ‘‘It ought to be a light-rail project, which will attract more riders,” said Congressman Albert R. Wynn (D-Dist. 4) of Mitchellville.

  Other officials agreed.

  ‘‘I have never seen economic development around a bus stop,” said State Sen. Robert J. Garagiola (D-Dist. 15) of Germantown. ‘‘It needs to be rail.”

  Thirty-one elected officials, community activists and candidates for state and county office signed a petition of support for a light-rail CCT.

  The group also unveiled a marketing campaign for the project, declaring the CCT is ‘‘Good to Go.”

  Maryland’s Secretary of Transportation Robert L. Flanagan said in a telephone interview on Monday that the Department of Transportation is reviewing both the light-rail and bus options and will choose the better mode of transit sometime next year.

  ‘‘It is our responsibility to develop the best light-rail alternative and the best bus-route alternative,” he said.

  It is too early to know which will be best, he said.

  This was the event I blogged about earlier.

• Developer asks to re-lease West Deer Park apartments, by Jaime Ciavarra
  
  

  ‘‘[T]he redevelopment of this property for townhomes … is simply not feasible and cannot be financed,” Scott Copeland, principal of RST Development, wrote in an Oct. 18 letter to Mayor Sidney A. Katz. ‘‘On the other hand, by retaining it for rental units … we will address a market where there is a housing shortage.”

  The shift is a first in city history, and planners are researching how and when returning the buildings to rental units could be approved, said Greg Ossont, the city’s planning and code director.

  The city already authorized a new site plan for the construction of luxury townhouses in January 2005. To return to rental units, RST will have to go back before the Planning Commission and may need to add measures — such as more parking spaces — to bring the buildings up to current code.

  ‘‘It’s not as simple as tearing the fence down and renting them out,” Ossont said. ‘‘The city needs to go through the legal planning process again. We’ve got a lot of question marks at this point.”

  This is an ongoing story.

• Spanish Catholic Center moves again, this time to Olde Towne, by Sebastian Montes
  
  

  The Spanish Catholic Center first opened its Gaithersburg branch in 1986, most recently operating out of cramped offices on East Deer Park Drive. After the move to Olde Towne, the center plans to be up and running today.

  The new building is at 415 East Diamond Ave. In July, the City Council rejected the site as the site for a day-laborer center.

  In its job placement program, the SCC sees 60 to 70 workers from across the upcounty four days a week, last year providing more than 8,000 employment leads. At two informational sessions each morning — the first for men, the second for women — the SCC does not ask a worker their immigration status.

  I don’t know where to begin on this one. The whole day laborer thing started when the SCC was at 117 N Frederick. Also, is there a reason why the SCC would not consider contracting to run the proposed day labor center in Festival?

A coalition of light-rail advocates is planning a publicity event to be held at Shady Grove Metro at 8:00 am next Monday, October 23. From their press release:

On Monday 10-23 at 8:00 AM, coalition representatives including business leaders, community activists, and city, county, and state officials will be at the Shady Grove Metro station to officially announce their campaign support for the Corridor Cities Transitway (CCT), an extension of the Metro’s Red Line that goes from Shady Grove to Clarksburg. They seek the support of commuters and other citizens for county, state and federal funding of the service.

I also received an email from Ben Ross, of Action Committee for Transit, informing me of what I assume is the same event. But more interesting, to me, was an article by Mr. Ross that was linked to from ACT’s website, entitled “Stuck in Traffic: Free-Market Theory Meets the Highway Lobby”. Quoting,

Put a conservative in the driver’s seat, and he can sound like a utopian Marxist. If you ask him about food, housing, or health care, he’ll explain how buying it and selling it in the marketplace creates the best of all possible worlds. But his car has an inalienable right to free parking and open roads. “To each automobile according to its needs” is a truth so self-evident that it need not be uttered.

One of [public policy consultant Wendell] Cox’s favorite arguments against new light rail lines, for example, is that the cost of construction is enough to buy a Mercedes for each future rider. Not factored into this computation is the price of the road the Mercedes will drive on — no small item when a new highway in the Washington, DC, suburbs is expected to cost $39,000 for each daily round trip that crosses its busiest point. But since roads — as Cox likes to see the world — are as free as the air we breathe, railroads must be wasteful because they run on expensive tracks!

On one project that has just broken ground, the widening of a ten mile stretch of I 95 north of Baltimore, the tolls won’t even raise enough money to cover the extra costs of building toll lanes instead of free lanes. A trip is expected to cost around $1.50 in rush hour and 50¢ at other times. The revenues these charges will yield can be estimated from experience on [California] SR 91; both have the same length and number of toll lanes, and tolls will be adjusted so both carry the same number of paying vehicles. Current tolls on SR 91 run four or five times higher that what is predicted for I 95 and bring in $39 million a year, so annual revenues for the I 95 toll lanes should be in the vicinity of $8 to $10 million. But putting toll lanes on the highway requires extra access ramps, so construction will cost $270 million more than adding the same number of free lanes. The toll revenue won’t even be enough to cover the interest on the extra $270 million, let alone pay the entire $830 million price of widening the highway.

I highly recommend that everyone interested in these issues go read the rest of Mr. Ross’s article.

I’d like to highlight a few letters in this week’s Gazette:

• David B. Humpton: City ‘committed to finding the right solution’ to day labor center issue
  

  The Sept. 27 Gazette editorial (‘‘Breaking the day labor stalemate”) criticized the city of Gaithersburg for its inability to find a site for a day laborer employment center. With terms like ‘‘flat footed” and ‘‘sitting on their hands,” the editorial unilaterally dismissed the efforts of an entire community to find a solution.

  […]

  This has been one of the most difficult issues we’ve encountered in Gaithersburg. Public input has been passionate on both sides. With no support from the federal level, local jurisdictions are left on their own to struggle with the quality of life and public safety issues that surround day laborer gathering sites. Have our deliberations taken a long time? Yes. But how long is ‘‘too long” to do what’s right?
  We urge the public to come forward and continue the dialog at our public work session at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 12 at City Hall, 31 S. Summit Ave., Gaithersburg. A storefront site at Festival at Muddy Branch has become available. With public support, this location, which meets much of the site criteria set forth by the Day Laborer Task Force, could begin housing a Montgomery County-operated employment center before winter.

• Michael Stumborg: city officials defended
  

  You mention the city manager’s lack of ‘‘political firepower” to impose a day labor center on an unwilling neighborhood as if that’s a bad thing. Exercising political firepower, as the county did when it unilaterally dismissed the city’s rejection of 17 N. Frederick Ave., is done by thugs, not leaders. Your faith in county leadership is woefully misplaced. Day laborers come from County Council Districts 2 and 3. While District 2 representative Mike Knapp attended the ad hoc meetings that ironically chose a District 3 site, District 3’s ‘‘Silent Phil” Andrews deferred site selection to the executive branch and disappeared from Olde Towne for a year. Neither action exhibits leadership.

• Stephen Schreiman: Illegal immigrant labor undermining legitimate businesses
  

  Our elected county officials have had four years to solve the day labor problem in Wheaton, Silver Spring and Takoma Park and have failed miserably. We need to throw the incumbents out of office on Nov. 7. Our tax dollars, along with funding from Casa of Maryland, pay for the day labor centers, and between them they have accomplished Casa’s goal of accommodating more illegal immigrants in Maryland.

• Susan Gross: Tower residents concerned about CCT station placement
  

  While residents of the Washingtonian Tower may or may not be in favor of the Corridor Cities Transitway, we are quite concerned regarding the proposed placement of transit station No. 4 as shown on the map.

• Deborah A. Vollmer: ‘Let everyone vote on paper’
  

  I wish I could have some certainty about the results, but as we all know, the primary election in Maryland was a fiasco, with those access cards arriving hours late at many polling places, and other glitches in the system. How many folks were in fact denied a vote because their polling place was not prepared to proceed with the machines for lack of access cards, and also ran out of provisional ballots, we will never know.