Save Rock Creek Hills Park? Well, we sure tried!: It's quite a gem, but they don't care.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

It's quite a gem, but they don't care.

Thanks to wise land use decisions and careful stewardship, Rock Creek Hills Park is a success story of multi-purpose outdoor recreational space, a small park that succeeds in serving three distinct purposes:

Neighborhood park, with playgrounds;
Soccer park, with two regulation fields, used by youth and adult teams countywide, including the B-CC High School girls' soccer team;
Park setting for the Kensington Park retirement community (which was built on much of the former site of Kensington Junior High).

But more than just serving each of these communities separately, the park also brings them together, as neighborhood children, dog-walkers, Montgomery County soccer moms, and Kensington Park residents mingle & meet in that green kid-friendly space.

Tonight, three staff members from the Montgomery County Public Schools briefed members of the Rock Creek Hills Citizens' Association. One thing that was clear from their briefing is how much the Board of Ed cares about the varied important roles the park serves: Not at all. They just don't care. To them, our park is just a construction site in waiting. Indeed, at the meeting, Ms. Janice Turpin of the MCPS "Real Estate Team" described Rock Creek Hills Park as the "residue" of the Kensington Junior High School site, after the Kensington Park retirement community had been built, and explained that they were "targeting" it for construction.

Our cherished park is their "residue" for "targeting". Good to know.

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Who Said That?

"When the [Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission] developed [Rock Creek Hills Park] in the early 1990s they accepted funds from the Program Open Space. This is a program managed by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to distribute funds from the Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund to preserve open space. The use of Program Open Space funds was inconsistent with the reclamation terms of the transfer agreement under which the M-NCPPC took title to the property. This was the case since use of these funds places restrictions on future public use of parks, in contradiction with the terms of the original transfer agreement..."
– Dr. Joshua Starr, Superintendent, Montgomery County Public Schools.

From the MCPS Site Selection Advisory Committee Minority Reports:

The 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."

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."

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."

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..."