Thursday, April 26, 2012

Board of Education member: Rock Creek Hills Park not "adequate size," so Montgomery Hills site would also be needed.


Ms. Françoise Carrier, Chair of the Montgomery County Planning Board, attended the April 17th meeting of the Montgomery County Board of Education. There, Board of Education member Ms. Laura Berthiaume told Ms. Carrier that, due to the small size of Rock Creek Hills Park, if Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) were to take the park to build B-CC middle school #2, then it would soon become necessary to build a third B-CC middle school, on the site of the former Montgomery Hills Junior High (currently the Yeshiva and Torah School of Greater Washington).

Ms. Laura Berthiaume, Member of the Montgomery County Board of Education:
"Our duty is to build a school sufficient to the needs of our future population. If we were to come back and say what we think is, because there's more land at North Chevy Chase, if you would be willing to talk with us about that, there would be adequate size to build, to only build once, rather than going back in seven years for the Montgomery Hills Junior High site, which I project would be necessary – "
Ms. Françoise Carrier, Chair of the Montgomery County Planning Board:
"For the middle school?"
LB: "For a third middle school because there's just not going to be enough room – "
FC: "At the Rock Creek [Hills] site you mean?"
LB: "Yes, eventually. "
FC: "Well, that would certainly be a shame."
Ms. Carrier  told Ms. Berthiaume and the other members of the Board of Education that the Planning Board was willing to discuss the much larger North Chevy Chase Local Park, MCPS's recommended alternate site, in order to minimize impacts on park users:
LB: "It was suggested in some of the testimony that Parks and Planning is open to negotiations... What I want to know is... having looked at an aerial [photograph] of North Chevy Chase, there's lots of land there, and not much actual facilities in terms of park facilities. It looks to me like it wouldn't be that hard to put a school at the back of it. Is Parks and Planning willing to negotiate to take a look at a joint use of that site, rather than get into loggerheads over Rock Creek Hills or Lynnbroook?"
FC"I think we're certainly willing to negotiate about North Chevy Chase..."
However, the Board of Education declined to discuss the issue further with the Planning Board.  (The first year of appropriation for the project is 2014; there's time to consider Planning Board options.)  Instead, in a decision that appears arbitrary and capricious, the Board of Education voted at that meeting to take Rock Creek Hills Park, even though the MCPS recommended alternate site is much larger, better comports with site evaluation criteria, and would likely reduce construction costs by $4-6 million.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Board of Education Votes to Take Rock Creek Hills Park.


Today the Montgomery County Board of Education voted unanimously to approve the Montgomery County Public Schools proposal to take the site of of Rock Creek Hills Park from the Parks Department in order to build a middle school.

Mr. John Robinson, President of the Rock Creek Hills Citizens' Association, said:
"The residents of Rock Creek Hills are very disappointed that the Board of Education selected Rock Creek Hills Local Park as the site for the proposed B-CC Middle School # 2 without further discussions with the Montgomery County Planning Board. Planning Board Chair Carrier made clear that the Planning Board was willing to discuss North Chevy Chase Local Park as another alternative. However the Board of Education declined to discuss the issue further even though the North Chevy Chase Local Park site is much larger and would likely involve less construction costs than the local park the Board of Education selected."

Monday, April 16, 2012

How can the Superintendent justify a decision that his own staff can't defend?


On Friday a letter was sent from Montgomery County Planning Board Chair Françoise Carrier to Montgomery County Board of Education President Shirley Brandman, reporting on the Planning Board's review of the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) proposal to take the site of of Rock Creek Hills Park from the Parks Department in order to build a middle school. The letter is timely, as the Board of Education is scheduled to vote on the proposal tomorrow. More to the point, although MCPS claims to have conducted a thorough analysis of sites, it couldn't answer questions about sites considered, even the site it selected as the recommended alternative to Rock Creek Hills Park:
"The Board found it difficult to fully assess the cost to the park system of MCPS taking North Chevy Chase Local Park rather than Rock Creek Hills Local Park because no information was available about which parts of the North Chevy Chase site school facilities would occupy, and which existing park facilities might be preserved. While two MCPS personnel attended our mandatory referral meeting and participated when asked, neither had any information about what the MCPS program would look like on that site."
The Planning Board provides an evaluation of the recent MCPS Site Selection Advisory Committee (SSAC):
"The majority of the Planning Board expressed concerns about the SSAC process, most notably that the sites reviewed by the SSAC did not receive a thorough analysis in a manner that would allow the SSAC and the Planning Board to adequately compare and contrast impacts and cost."
The letter reports the vote of the Planning Board Commissioners that:
"MCPS should enter into serious discussions with the Parks Staff and the Planning Board to assess the feasibility of locating the middle school on the combined site of the former Lynnbrook Elementary School and Lynnbrook Local Park..." 
When agencies team up to develop the best outcome possible, everyone wins. The Parks Department offer of land that they own, to serve the needs of MCPS, is an example of the professionalism we should expect from our public servants.
You can read the three-page letter from Chair Carrier to President Brandman below:

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

"Taking away a park ... is not only an incalculable loss but a serious breach of public trust."


[Testimony by Ms. Ginny Barnes, Vice-Chair, Conservation Montgomery, at the April 9th meeting of the Montgomery County Planning Board]

Conservation Montgomery’s commitment to the environment in Montgomery County is based in large part on preserving and protecting public parkland. We have one of the most extensive and diverse park systems in the region. They are no accident but the result of real vision and careful, long term planning. It is disheartening to realize our much admired public school system is not engaged in the same approach to their future needs. How can it be when it assumes parkland is simply ‘vacant’ land, ‘free,’ theirs for the taking. Parks are not undeveloped land just waiting to be used. No parkland is ‘free,’ and no park is completely undeveloped. Taking away a park from a neighborhood or community is not only an incalculable loss but a serious breach of public trust.

Parks are our community schools of the outdoors. Our family classrooms where we play; where we learn to get along with each other through games, and touch the natural world beneath leafy canopies of trees. We exercise our imaginations as Robin Hood’s merry men or princesses of rural kingdoms and when we have children of our own, we bring them to do the same in the parks we loved when young. This is a rightful legacy. It should be inviolate. We should never have to make a choice between a school and a park. We don’t have to now.

From the beginning of this site selection process, there have been flaws piled one upon the other. First, in assuming the ‘right of recall’ was a given without need of justification. Then in holding the belief parkland is ‘vacant.’ The Board of Education has prioritized parkland because they don’t have to buy it. But what do they intend to give in exchange for taking it back after 20+ years? Anything? Serious process flaws in the second act of this drama are just as numerous as the first time. Why not include available private land in the site consideration? Failure to do so only makes parkland continue to be seen as the obvious priority. How can any valid choice be made without a principal component on the table?

Though resource atlas generated maps were available to the Site Selection Advisory Committee, Parks staff was not asked to give an evaluation of sites using the resource atlas tool. This is where science really serves establishment of the greater good. As a member of the Trails Working Group, I’ve seen firsthand how the resource atlas can provide invaluable multilayered data that verify, without spending scarce dollars, the physical constraints and environmental costs of one route over another, and even lead to options as yet unconsidered. In this case, that analysis, were it available to participants in the selection process through the parks staff, expertise with the tool itself would have benefitted all concerned.

We support the Staff recommendation that the first priority should be the purchase of a private site and not the taking of any parkland from any community. When the Planning Commission wants land for parks, it has to buy it. Why shouldn’t the Board of Education do the same?

Monday, April 9, 2012

Planning Board Asks MCPS to Take a Harder Look at Lynnbrook.


Tonight the Montgomery County Planning Board conducted their "mandatory referral" review of the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) proposal to construct a middle school for the Bethesda - Chevy Chase cluster on the site of Rock Creek Hills Park.

The meeting lasted almost four hours, comprised of staff reports, public testimony, and deliberation.

The Planning Board commissioners voted to recommend that MCPS take a harder look at the former Lynnbrook Elementary School site (owned by MCPS) and the adjacent Lynnbrook Local Park, and that the Planning Board and the Board of Education should negotiate regarding use of the Lynnbrook Local Park site for this purpose.


"I am here tonight to support the recommendation of your staff..."

[Testimony at the April 9, 2012 meeting of the Montgomery County Planning Board]

Good evening, Ms. Carrier, and fellow Commissioners.

My name is Dr. James Pekar, and I am a resident of Rock Creek Hills. I am here tonight to support the recommendation of your staff, and the testimony of Mr. John Robinson. I will not repeat any of the points they have made.

I would like to address, briefly, some specifics of the middle school that Montgomery County Public Schools proposes to build upon the site of Rock Creek Hills Park, according to the feasibility study they completed last summer, even though the park fails to meet the overwhelming majority of their middle school site evaluation criteria.
  • The feasibility study proposes construction on the steep slope of the small site, in contravention of concerns expressed by this body [County Planning Board] and the County Council decades ago. This, and substantial regrading of the entire site, would raise costs; an Independent Construction Budget Estimate, commissioned by the Rock Creek Hills Citizens Association, puts 2017 total costs at $64.5 million, almost 40% above the MCPS estimate. Entrances for those arriving by car and and by bus would be located on different levels of the school, heightening security demands and increasing staffing requirements.
  • A middle school on this site would be the one on the smallest site, in the entire county, without an adjoining (or “co-located”) park to provide space for student recreation and sports. All final feasibility study options used "overlaid" playing fields, which would limit student athletics.
  • The MCPS Director of Construction confirms that "none of the three options provide the 125 on-site parking [spaces] called for in the educational specifications," and parking is restricted in the narrow surrounding streets.
  • The site fails to meet each element of the official "access" criterion: Frontage on a primary [70 foot right-of-way] road; three access points (for safety, to separate cars, buses, and trucks); community sidewalks. None of the final feasibility study options have three access points, or a separate service drive.
Under your stewardship, Rock Creek Hills Park is a success story of multipurpose recreational greenspace, serving the needs of three constituencies: the elderly, park users, and the community. It would be a shame to lose it for a school that fails to provide parity with other middle schools in the county.

Thank you.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Planning Board Staff Recommend Rejection of Site Selection Advisory Committee Recommendations.


"Staff recommends that the Planning Board not accept MCPS’s site selection advisory committee’s recommendation to construct the new BCC Middle School #2 on the site of either the current Rock Creek Hills Local Park or North Chevy Chase Local Park. Instead, staff recommends that MCPS take a harder look at the viability of three other options. These three options include:

  • Purchase of a private site
  • The former Montgomery Hills Junior High School Site
  • The former Lynnbrook Elementary School site and the adjacent Lynnbrook Local Park

Both the Montgomery Hills and Lynbrook sites were on the original list evaluated by MCPS’s site selection advisory committee, as well as 13 private sites that were reviewed confidentially."


Monday, April 2, 2012

Ignoring the Facts, Indifferent to the Elderly.


Last Friday, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) issued a news release containing this erroneous description of Rock Creek Hills Park:
"The property was previously owned by the Board of Education and was the location of Kensington Junior High School, which closed in 1979. The Board transferred the land to the county, with the provision it could be reclaimed if the land was ever needed for a school. The property was subsequently transferred to the Maryland-National Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) in 1990 for use as a park."
That statement is inaccurate. Look:
The Kensington Park Retirement Community stands on much 
of the site of the former Kensington Junior High School.

After Kensington Junior High School (KJH) was closed, the site was broken up, with about the northern third deeded to our county's Housing Opportunities Commission (HOC), which financed with tax exempt bonds the building of a facility providing independent living, assisted living, and Alzheimer's care to over 200 senior citizens. Thus, the old KJH site is now a dual-use site, balancing compatibility among three constituencies: The elder-care facility, park users, and the community.

Rock Creek Hills Park, itself, is substantially reduced from the former KJH site —  it is significantly smaller, and lacks a former access road to the North, as well as a through North-South roadway. Rock Creek Hills Park fails to meet the overwhelming majority of the MCPS middle school site evaluation criteria; the 2011 MCPS feasibility study proposed building on the steep slope of the small site, in contravention of concerns expressed by the Planning Board and County Council decades ago.

Friday's error is disappointing, but not surprising, given MCPS's history of repeatedly ignoring facts and manifesting indifference towards the existence of the elderly residents of Kensington Park:
  • In April of 2011, before the Board of Education voted to select the site of Rock Creek Hills Park as the location of B-CC middle school #2, MCPS failed to notify the HOC, Kensington Park management, or Kensington Park residents.
  • In May of 2011, before the Board of Education voted to approve a "feasibility study" for B-CC middle school #2 on the site of Rock Creek Hills Park, MCPS failed to notify the HOC, Kensington Park management, or Kensington Park residents.
  • In December of 2011, when MCPS assembled the recent, supposedly inclusive, site selection advisory committee, they failed to provide representation to the HOC, Kensington Park management, or Kensington Park residents.
During the feasibility study conducted over the summer of 2011, MCPS officials were asked what steps would be taken to protect the elderly residents of Kensington Park from what was estimated to be a two-year period of heavy construction, right next to their home. The answer was, "That has not been an issue that's been brought up:"

After this issue was brought up, MCPS failed to address it. As Friday's news release shows yet again, MCPS seems to be more comfortable ignoring the facts about the site, and pretending that these elderly simply do not exist.