Impact Fee Committee's Modest Proposal

According to today's Capital, the Impact Fee Committee appointed by the County Council, has arrived at a proposal. Unfortunately, for the residents of the County, it both waters down the basis on which the impacts were estimated by Dr. Nicholas, it also only recommends taking them up to 80% of that basis......over 5 years.

Should the Council follow the recommendations of the Committee, the impact fee that would have been levied upon a three-bedroom will drop from Dr. Nicholas' recommendation of $18,669 to $12,800, about the place Dr. Nicholas recommended the fee be placed 7 years ago.

The only measure by which this recommendation could be considered a success is when one compares it to the recommendations of the Impact Fee Committee appointed in 2001.

Once the Council decided defer this decision downward, it was clear that the development community was going march the impact fee number downward. Now, we're left having to hope that the Council disregards the recommendations of the Committee that it appointed.

One curious fact about the article is that the Capital writer went out of her way to repeat Ed Middlebrooks canard: "At one point, a councilman accused County Executive John R. Leopold of rushing through a proposal with huge hikes to distance himself from the development community, which had made large campaign contributions."

As someone who is concerned deeply about quality of life issues in Anne Arundel County, I will gladly take a County Executive who makes a habit of raising millions in campaign funds from the development community, if these sorts of policies are the way he chooses to pay them back.

Council Appoints Advisory Committee

This evening, the County Council appointed an impact fee advisory committee to help them sort out the issue. Thankfully, there are no representatives from the homebuilders association on the committee. The committee is being headed up by former County Executive, Robert Neall, and will include, among others:

• Bob Burdon, Head of the Annapolis and Anne Arundel County Chamber of Commerce
  
• Al Johnston, a former planner and member of the the Greater Severna Park Council
  
• Ann Fligsten, a local attorney
  
• Bob Gallagher, West/Rhode Riverkeeper
  

The full list of appointees can be found here.

Council Votes to Approve Commercial Recycling

At last week's County Council meeting, the Council unanimously approved a move to expand recycling pick up to small businesses in the County. The plan is to have the program launched by July.

A "Work Group"? Uh oh.

Apparently overwhelmed by having to make a decision where the facts are lining up against their impulses, the County Council last night announced that, rather than hire another expert to study the impact fee issue, they will form a "work group."

What's wrong with a "work group", you might ask? Well, according to Cathy Vitale, Council Chair, the group will be comprised of approximately 10 people representing "a broad spectrum of interests." That "broad spectrum" will no doubt include individuals from the construction, development, and business communities. In other words, the Council is inviting the foxes to take up guard of the henhouse.

A sham "work group" was set up when the impact fees were last revised in 2000, and not surprisingly, the group's recommendation was well below where the County consultant had pegged a full cost recovery fee.

By taking this step, the Council is passing the buck, making what is essentially a science based decision (i.e., what is the real cost of new development?) into a political one (i.e., how much is the development community going to allow us to raise this fee?).

Examiner Laments Poor Public Turnout on Impact Fees

By all accounts the last Council hearing on impact fee increases was packed with shills for the development industry. Housebuilders, realtors, and business interests enumerated the reasons why it's a "bad idea" to make new growth pay its own way. Testimony was so one-sided, it began to concern the press.

There is a second hearing this evening, 7pm in the Council chambers. It's important for the public to turn out in force in support of the County Executive's proposed impact fee increase, so that the discussion isn't driven by those who have a financial stake in forcing existing taxpayers to shoulder the burden for new development.

Council Flinches on Impact

Yesterday, the County Council had their work session on the County Executive's impact fee proposal. The bold plan, predictably, drew quite a bit of heat from the Council, for reasons ranging from the disingenuous (see Ed Middlebrooks feigning concern about "affordable housing"), to bad-faith misdirection (see Cathy Vitale: "The numbers that were produced were not based on one specific methodology"), to being insulted that the Executive gave the Council the legislation rather than vice versa (see Jamie Benoit's request to have the Council hire its own consultant).

From the start, there was never a question that a significant hike in impact fees was going to be an uphill battle, despite the fact that several members of the sitting Council blamed the Owens' administration for a failure to appropriately hike the fees.

Now, I certainly won't begrudge the Council its due diligence, but to question the consultant, James Nicholas' credentials or his "methodology" strikes me as a bit desperate. After all, Nicholas literally wrote the book ("A Practitioner’s Guide to Development Impact Fees" (1991)) on impact fees, is an urban & regional planning professor at the University of Florida, and has been a consultant on the issue to at least 5 states, 28 counties, 22 cities, and the US government. His resume can be found here [pdf].

If the Council can find a more qualified consultant, I would certainly welcome his or her assessment of the County's situation. If, however, the Council is just chafed to learn that every time a new home goes in, the taxpayers of Anne Arundel County get rogered in the pocketbook, they should do the right thing and make new development pay its own way.

This is, arguably, the most important issue that will come before this Council. Thousands of new homes are slated to come to the County as a result of BRAC, and if we don't have serious impact fees in place when they do, taxpayers will be subsidizing each new home to the tune of something like $20,000 apiece. That's the way business has been done in the past, and it's why, despite adding 60,000 people from 1990 to 2000, our tax burden continues to increase.

UPDATE: Sun coverage.

Compromise Forged on Subdivision Bill

At Monday's County Council meeting, Councilman Reilly's bill to exempt so called "minor subdivisions" from school adequacy of public school provisions ran up against considerable opposition, and faced substantive amendments by Councilman Cohen.

The bill, ostensibly designed to address cases where local landowners are being held up in the process of subdividing their land so their children or other family members can build homes, was opposed by several groups, including South Arundel Citizens for Responsible Development (SACReD), on the grounds that it was too open-ended. Or, as Mike Shay said, "The bill was never really crafted to serve the people they were intending to serve."

Councilman Cohen's amendments narrowed the number of new units that can be created from five to three and require the land owner to possess the property for five years before subdividing. Curiously, Councilman Reilly opposed both.

Lifeguard Removal Bill Beaten Back

On Monday, the County Council defeated one of the more bizarre pieces of legislation in recent memory. Councilman Reilly sponsored a bill, apparently at the behest of a local hotel owner, to remove the requirement that hotels with pools of a depth of 5 feet or less have a lifeguard. The smarmy rationale of the hotel owner, Steve Merchant was that, "having no lifeguards may have parents better monitoring their children." Yes, let's adopt a laissez faire attitude to the protection of tykes in water wings and see which ones make it to adulthood.

Mr. Reilly, dumbfounded that the bill got only his vote, offered, "my peers were concerned about protection in spite of the economic cost." Imagine that, the County Council, whose charge certainly includes public safety, is more concerned about children drowning in the local Motel 8 than they are about the hotel having to pay a high school student minimum wage to monitor the pool. Have they no sense of priorities?

Even more confounding, however, was Health Officer Fran Phillips' support of the bill. Her defense? “We don’t see a detriment to public health, as we will still monitor the pool’s operation.” Yes, because checking the pool weekly for high bacteria levels is in any way, shape, or form related to the capacity of children to drown in the absence of supervision. She also said, "most of the county’s six drownings last year were outside of pools." Perhaps that's because the pools had lifeguards and the law is working.

This is now at least the third time in the past year that the County's Health Department has underwhelmed me. The first two being their blame deflection game regarding the fly ash situation in Gambrills, and their persistent defensiveness in the face of the inadequacy of their waterway bacteria monitoring program.

Developers Seek to Erode School Protections

According to today's Capital, the County Council is seeking to "address" crowded schools. Of course, for the development community pushing the bill, "address" means "remove the school capacity related obstructions to new home construction by any means necessary." Council members Dillon, Vitale, and Benoit are developing a new methodology for determining school capacity, which is more responsive to demographic changes, and that is a good thing.

However, simultaneously, the eerily named Alliance for Fair Land Use, has been lobbying, persistently, to drop the adequacy of public facilities requirements for "small property owners." John Pantelides, paid lobbyist for the development community, and head of the Alliance has been trotting out every Tom, Dick, and Harry, who has had to wait to develop a parcel for his long lost son/daughter because of overcrowded schools, at Council meetings for the past several months.

It truly is a shame when people are asked to abide the law, isn't it? Especially when it's a law that is intended to protect school children from an overcrowded learning environment. Instead, Mr. Pantelides and his funders would like the Council to exempt developments of 5 or fewer homes from the school capacity test. I ask you, to the kids of current taxpayers sitting in already crowded schools, what difference does it make whether additional kids are coming from 5 house subdivisions or 20 house ones?

Council Fumbles SMART Fee

Last night's Council meeting was surely one of the lower points in recent County Council history. With scores of individuals testifying on behalf of the amended SMART fund (over 60 by the Capital's estimate) and only a handful speaking against, the four councilmembers who have opposed the bill since its inception, stood firm. The result likely is that we'll be without a stormwater bill until one of the other Council members (e.g., Reilly or Vitale) or the County Executive can introduce a bill that's going to stroke their ego, that is "theirs."

The Sun's take.

One Vote from a Stormwater Start

Monday's County Council meeting held several pleasant surprises. Most notable among them was Ron Dillon's recent effort to champion a stormwater utility that would build upon the County Executive's SMART fund effort.

Councilman Dillon appears to have gotten religion on the issue, declaring, "We have been 30-plus years trying to save the bay. We haven't gotten very far. It's time to be radical."

Can I get an "Amen"?

Councilmen Dillon, Benoit, and Cohen introduced the amendment to charge each residence a $25 annual fee and each business/industrial site a $100 annual fee to be used to correct the damage that has been caused by stormwater runoff at Monday's meeting. The bill will be voted on at the next meeting.

Councilwoman Vitale, who apparently thinks the $1.3 billion problem can be solved by creating tax incentives for rain barrels, "felt sandbagged" by the maneuver. However, it would be great to see her get behind this bi-partisan bill (perhaps with an amendment to create parallel incentives for good stormwater management practices), and help push Anne Arundel County to the forefront in the efforts to clean up the Bay. The bill has particular relevance for Ms. Vitale given the proposed $3.5 million going into the restoration of North Cypress Branch, on the Magothy, in her district.

Despite the fact that Councilman Middlebrooks, the most vociferous opponent of the bill, insists on calling the utility a tax, this issue was resolved last year, in a decision by the Attorney General's office.

County Takes Action to Stop Poisoning of Wells

Executive Leopold has introduced emergency legislation to stop a practice that has been decried on this site a number of times, the storage of fly ash in soils where it can leech into groundwater.

Fly ash, a particularly nasty by-product of burning coal, is an amalgam of goodies, often including such heavy metals as: nickel, vanadium, arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, barium, chromium, copper, molybdenum, zinc, lead, selenium, uranium, thorium, and radium. Earlier this year, the EPA released a report on the potential dangers of fly ash to human health.

The legislation would prohibit the disposal of fly ash anywhere in the County. Let's hope it passes unanimously.

Council Circumvents Community on the Annapolis Neck

At last Monday's County Council meeting, Councilman Cohen's colleagues failed to give him the votes to update the zoning on a property in his district. In fact, they deliberately lined up against it. The zoning change, the product of long negotiations between the Annapolis Neck Peninsula Federation and the developer, the Samaras family, would have converted a 6 acre parcel on Forest drive from 2 acres of commercial frontage with 4 acres of residential in the rear to 6 acres of commercial with more forest cover, better stormwater management, and architectural oversight by the community.

Now, some are claiming that the Council Members who blocked the change conducted a backroom deal with an adjacent property owner who has failed to negotiate with community groups.

Left from the Capital's account is the sudden (and ominous) reappearance of former Zoning Director Joe Rutter, a close acquaintance of the property owner in question. There's no way we've heard the last of this sordid situation.

Councilman Cohen Gets a Blog

District 6 County Councilman Josh Cohen has started up his own blog. Check it out at The Cohen Bulletin.

Council Hears Board of Appeals Applicants

Today's Sun provides coverage of the Monday evening County Council meeting where Board of Appeals candidates were "interviewed" by the Council.

Six of the sitting Board members have re-applied, and at least 3 seem relatively likely to be re-appointed.

County Squanders $4.7 Million, Revisited

The latest chapter in the saga of the allegedly misspent impacts fees has taken an unfortunate turn. A Circuit Court Judge has ordered that the County refund more than $4.7 million (now, with interest, over $11 million) in improperly spent impact fees to homeowners who paid the fees between 1988 and 1995.

The crux of the dispute focuses on the requirements of the 1987 impact fee law passed by the County:

The law provided that impact fee money had to be spent within six years, though extensions were possible; required the county to spend money on schools only if it increased student capacity; and laid out how money could be spent on roads.

Among the instances of improper expenditures, according to the Judge:

"The county improperly spent more than $2.8 million in impact fees to expand Park Elementary School in Brooklyn Park and South Shore Elementary School outside Annapolis without adding any more seats."

"The county spent money on trailers, called relocatable classrooms, which the court ruled wasn't allowed under the law."

"Sections of East West Boulevard in Severna Park were paid for with money collected in other districts."

To add additional drama to the case, the County has already spent about $500,000 in legal fees defending itself and, the one of the homeowners' lead attorneys, Phillip Scheibe, is a former County Councilman and former County Attorney who advised John Gary (County Executive 1994-1998) on impact fees.

One wonders if Mr. Scheibe, in his work for the County under Mr. Gary, didn't stumble onto spending "irregularities" and think that he had come upon a cash cow. After all, he and his partner were seeking $1.3 million (over $100k apiece per year) for their work on the case since 2000.

Both sides say they will appeal, the homeowners' attorneys, because they think they should be receiving more money (over $30 million), and the County, because it lost.

Given the fact that impact fees in the County desperately need to be raised to help offset some of the costs on new growth, much more oversight has to be given to the manner in which these dollars are spent, both to lessen the blow of development as well as avoid these costly imbroglios in the future.

Newly Elected Officials Discuss Their Priorities

The Sunday Sun has a piece on the newly elected Executive, Councilmembers, Sheriff and Register of Wills, and their respective priorities. Here's a summary:

Executive Leopold - "Revise the county's General Development Plan and strengthen the Adequate Public Facilities law so that the aggregate impact of developments is a consideration, instead of each development individually."

Councilman Jones (D1) - "Public safety and education are among his biggest issues, including properly providing services and paying employees. Linking transportation and a variety of services for disabled residents is another priority."

Councilman Benoit (D4) - "He wants to be an advocate for the county as it deals with the continued changes at Fort Meade and the growth they are expected to bring. Among his greatest concerns is the physical condition of the public schools."

Councilman Cohen (D6) - "He wants to strengthen environmental protections in the construction stages, and bring the county code in line with newer "green" environmental performance standards in the building industries."

Sheriff Bateman - "His priorities are dealing with warrants and with personnel."

Register of Wills Parker - "She wants to re-link Maryland's estate tax floor (the amount at which the estate tax becomes applicable) with that of the federal government."

District 6 Election Victory Spawns Another Election

As a result of Alderman Josh Cohen's County Council election victory on Tuesday, a special election will take place early next year for the City Council seat he is vacating. The City Code governing the race specifies:

[Mr. Cohen] must first resign the position, giving the mayor five days to announce a special election to fill the vacancy. After the mayor's announcement, candidates can officially file. In the mayor's proclamation, she must specify a date for the special primary and general elections for the roughly 4,500 residents of Ward 8. The primary must be 23 to 30 days following the original proclamation, with the general at least three weeks after the primary.

Which, likely means that the special primary election would occur some time in January, and the special general election would likely take place in early February. Two Democrats, Ross Arnett, President of the Eastport Civic Association and Paul Foer, a motivational speaker and former City Transportation Marketing Specialist, have already expressed interest in the position.

[UPDATE: A third Democrat, Michael Matthews, has thrown her hat in the ring.]

Capital Endorsements: County Council

Today, the Capital released its endorsements for the County Council races.

District 1:
Daryl Jones (D)

District 4:
Jamie Benoit (D)

District 5:
Cathy Vitale (R)

District 6:
Josh Cohen (D)

District 7:
Ed Reilly (R)

Sun Endorsements - County Races

The following are the Executive and Council endorsements from the Balitmore Sun.

County Executive:
John Leopold (R)

District 1:
Daryl Jones (D)

District 4:
Jamie Benoit (D)

District 5:
Cathy Vitale (R)

District 6:
Josh Cohen (D)

District 7:
Ed Reilly (R)