City of Rockville Tables Issue of School Crowding

The 3-1 vote on the controversial Adequate Public Facilities Standard (APFS) in City Hall on Monday, January 28, 2019 was to table a decision until Monday, February 4, 2019. Councilmember Feinberg used the word ‘crisis’ to describe the public reaction to the City of Rockville’s proposal to increase school overcrowding under the APFS school test from the currently permissable 120 percent to 150 percent overcapacity.

Testimony from the prior week’s public hearing generated 1,200 pages of remarks for the public record. Among the pages was new information as well discrepancies in student enrollment numbers, information critical for informed decision makeing. City Hall recognized the need to better coordinate with the state, the county, and Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in order to not be placed into a building development moratorium due to overcrowded schools.

Though the controversies appear to center around the City of Rockville and just Rockville Pike, the decision by the city will have an impact on every household with school aged children attending Farmland, Tilden, and Walter Johnson.

Prior to the mayor and council voting on whether or not to permit increasing school overcapacity in order for B.F. Saul and Wegmans to begin the development of the 11 acre Twinbrook Quarter across the street from Congressional Plaza, a summarized presentation was made by staff concerning four options. These were (1) no change to school overcapacity, (2) permit overcapacity to reach 150 percent, (3) grant a conditional exemption that is focused on the South Pike District (Twinbrook Quarter) with only high rise condominiums built in phases over 10 or more years along with non residential use, or (4) issue a waiver based on the mayor and city council’s direction to the developer.

From the January 28th public hearing, discussion took place on an exemption as an approval based upon meeting certain conditions versus a waiver as an approval based upon the discretion of the mayor and city council. It was noted that granting a waiver would expose the city to future litigation from other developers demanding the same discretionary, in fact, arbitrary approval for development.

On the spectrum of municipal government decision making, granting a developer a waiver in order to bypass an in place adequate public facilities test can trigger lawsuits from other developers if they are denied a request to develop based on not meeting the same adequate public facilities test.

Lost in this fog of war that is municipal government politics where a major publicly owned Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) as regional developer is pitted against struggling households with school aged children in over crowded public schools is a time bomb, but that no one yet is willing to truly discuss. There is a fiscal crisis at the state, county, and municipal level.

This is the twelfth article in a series on Windermere and community planning in North Bethesda.

Visit www.WindermereNeighbors.org.