Save Rock Creek Hills Park? Well, we sure tried!: Write to Ike Leggett, today!

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Write to Ike Leggett, today!

On April 28th, Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett wrote a letter to Montgomery County Board of Education President Christopher Barclay, closing with:

"... I ... urge the Board of Education to undertake an aggressive community and public input process to ensure that resident concerns are discussed and addressed before action is taken."

Is that clear enough? "[R]esident concerns" are to be "discussed and addressed before action is taken".

In flagrant disregard of this instruction, the Board of Education voted later that same day to take Rock Creek Hills Park. The community had no reasonable opportunity to "discuss and address" any concerns – for example, the Kensington Park retirement community adjoining Rock Creek Hills Park (and built on much of the site of the former Kensington Junior High) received 3 hours notice that the Board would consider this resolution.

A deeply flawed and secretive process led up to the Board's hurried April 28th decision, which was clearly arbitrary and unreasonable, because, as a middle-school site, our small park fails all of the Board's stated site evaluation criteria. A school built on this site would be, on opening day, inadequate.

Write to County Executive Leggett today! Ask him to spare Rock Creek Hills Park. Ask him to instruct the Board to re-open the B-CC middle school site selection process as soon as possible, before our May 27th deadline for appeal to the state.

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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..."