Candidates clash over growth, roads, developer money

by Robert K. Gardner

At the moment, there is only one thing that can be said with certainty about the four At-Large seats on the Montgomery County Council: Democrats will fill them all. At press time, no Republicans had declared candidacy. (Deadline for registration is July 8.)

As part of its continuing efforts to introduce voters to the candidates and issues, the Takoma Voice held a forum for the Montgomery County Council At Large seats on June 16 at the Takoma Park Municipal Building. Eight of the nine declared candidates attended; candidate Michael Subin, running for re-election, was unable to attend.

The major issues the candidates focused on were affordable housing, managing growth and development, and the county's transportation woes. Because the candidates are all Democrats, they agreed on many issues.

In their opening statements, the eight candidates attempted to stake out ideological ground.

Candidate Mark Elrich, a Takoma Park City Councilmember for 14 years and a fourth grade teacher at Rolling Terrace Elementary School, opened by saying he has been involved with the educational, social justice and environmental development issues facing the county. He said the 2002 election is critical to the county's future, and addressed the development issue by saying, "we can't allow overdevelopment to continue to overcrowd our schools, clog our roads and stretch our services to the breaking point."

Incumbent candidate Blair Ewing began by mentioning his term as council president last year and his four years as chairman of its health and human services committee. He said education would be his highest priority if he were re-elected, and that the council has made progress in the area, especially in increased funding, but had a long way to go.

Nancy Floreen, mayor of Garrett Park, said she has 20 years of experience working in the community, including alongside Takoma Park Mayor Kathy Porter. She was a member of the county planning board for eight years and she said her work as an attorney has given her a unique perspective on the issues facing the county. Floreen said relieving traffic congestion would be her top priority if she were elected to the county council.

Political newcomer Steve Joseph, a health care administrator who moved to Montgomery County in 1986 and whose wife grew up in Gaithersburg, said he is running for the At-Large seat because he wants to be involved in building a better community. He said the county is at a point where it cannot handle additional development without seriously degrading its current quality of life, and he mentioned rising commute times as being particularly detrimental. "We have commute times up to an hour and a half both ways; it's a situation where an eighth of [a person's] day is spent in automobile. That's no way to raise a family," Joseph said.

George Leventhal, past chair of the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee, grew up in Montgomery County, attended the University of California at Berkeley, and has been living in the county since 1985. He said he worked on Capitol Hill for eight years, with five as legislative director for Sen. Barbara Mikulski. Leventhal said his primary goal as an At-Large councilmember would be to build the Purple Line extension to the Metro rail system.

Vincent Renzi, a securities litigation attorney, said his main campaign theme is allowing development only when the infrastructure, schools and social services it will require are already in place. Last year, Renzi unsuccessfully challenged the legality of a Montgomery County zoning ordinance that exempted Potomac's Connelly School of the Holy Child from undergoing public scrutiny of its expansion plans in its residentially zoned neighborhood. He criticized the job the county has done in managing development and growth, saying that unregulated growth has drawn funds away from needed social services, such as after-school ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) programs.

Incumbent Steve Silverman, current council president, reiterated his campaign slogan of four years ago: "kids, cars and community." He cited the work he said he and fellow councilman Subin have done in reducing class size: expanding all day kindergarten, raising teachers' salaries, and increasing funding for school construction.

Ann Somerset, a City of Gaithersburg councilmember, related the issues facing her city to the ones facing the county, going on to list her accomplishments in Gaithersburg. She presented herself as primarily an advocate of "smart growth," a community planning concept geared toward environmental stewardship, increasing public transportation use, and halting unregulated development. "Development is killing this county," Somerset said. "Today we face congestion and badly overcrowded schools, despite having an adequate public facilities ordinance." No issue divided the candidates more than the transportation and growth issue, particularly support for the Intercounty Connector (ICC) project to link Gaithersburg and Laurel, the inner Purple Line Metrorail construction, and local road construction.

Elrich, Ewing and Renzi, running for the council as a formal slate, are opposed to the ICC. Elrich said he doesn't support it because a study conducted by the transportation task force concluded the road would not relieve congestion on the Beltway or in Montgomery County. Ewing said he favors short-term solutions, such as light rail and buses, that would have immediate benefits. He reiterated his suggestions to add more buses in the county and his opposition to the Montrose Parkway Project, calling it a waste of money.

Renzi wasn't as definitively opposed to the ICC as Elrich and Ewing, saying if the ICC is built, he believes it "should look more like the George Washington Parkway than Rockville Pike."

Somerset called for a comprehensive solution to the county's transportation woes, saying that funding and construction of all public transit should move faster, an environmentally sensitive ICC should be built, and development along it should be controlled. "We need to build it all, not argue over what to build in the next twenty years," she said.

Silverman echoed Somerset's point about needing to build an environmentally sensitive connector as part of a comprehensive congestion solution that includes expanded public transit. "We need to make up for 20 years of neglect by building the inter-county connector, building the inner Purple Line, the I-270 transit way, and expanding and discounting more bus service," Silverman said.

Leventhal said he is also in favor of the ICC and supports the building of a road linking Gaithersburg and Rockville to BWI Airport. He said his top transportation priority would be to build the inner Purple Line in conjunction with building roads.

Floreen blamed county traffic problems on thirty years of inaction on previously planned roads and said she supports an environmentally sensitive ICC and the Purple Line between Montgomery and Prince George's counties. She said she also supports the extension of the Capital Crescent Trail to Silver Spring.

Joseph said the congestion problem is due to the county's inability to separate local and through traffic, something he vowed to work to correct. In supporting the ICC he proposed making it a toll road with the collected money earmarked for education.

Another issue that served to distinguish the candidates was affordable housing and its relation to the underlying issue of growth and development.

Leventhal said he supports growth, saying it is preferable to the situation in Baltimore City and Cumberland, which lost population. He also said the county needs to accept that population will continue to grow, and it needs to strengthen the Adequate Public Facilities ordinance, which requires that planning commissions determine whether new development will overburden existing public facilities.

Leventhal cited statistics which state that immigrants and people of color accounted for all of the county's population growth over the past decade, and he suggested that the calls to limit growth had racist undertones. "To rail against growth raises the question of just who is it you are concerned about moving into this county," he said.

Renzi, followed by Somerset and Elrich, criticized Leventhal's introducing the question of racism into the growth issue. Elrich criticized what he called Leventhal's "injecting a question of who we want to live here into the growth debate" as being absurd and said he believed every candidate supported a diverse community.

Leventhal said he believes that communities like Silver Spring and Langley Park could handle the addition of affordable housing units. He also said he doesn't support a moratorium on housing construction and said the county needs to consider the problem of affordable housing for people most would classify as middle class. He said he supports a permanent 1.5 percent set-aside in the county budget for affordable housing.

Ewing also emphasized the need to fund affordable housing projects, saying the county needed to double the amount of money for affordable housing to alleviate the plight of the most vulnerable, including the homeless and mental patients, in addition to the working poor. Mentioning his support for a defeated council proposal to return the local income tax back to 1990 levels, which he claimed would have raised $ 28 million,

Ewing said consideration of how to fund affordable housing construction should be a priority. Ewing was strongest in advocating the strengthening of the Adequate Public Facilities ordinance, calling the current one "a joke," and mentioned his Sierra Club endorsement while promising to consider environmental issues.

Ann Somerset criticized the ordinance as "being designed to say OEyes' to development" and said she wants to bring her experience of scrutinizing this ordinance at the city level to change the ordinance as a county councilmember. Addressing criticism of past county efforts to promote affordable housing,

Silverman defended the county council's record on growth, saying it had unanimously rejected proposals to ease growth restrictions. Silverman also said the council had doubled the money going into the Housing Initiative Fund, which he said would leverage money from private sources to renovate existing housing for seniors and low-income residents. He did, however, say the council should reevaluate its annual growth policies.

Renzi agreed with most of the other candidate's proposals for affordable housing and said he wanted a more policy-oriented approach, adding that the affordable housing issue goes back to overdevelopment. Renzi said the question facing the county is "are we going to grow willy-nilly, or allow growth only when the infrastructure to handle it is in place?"

In addressing Renzi's and others' calls for halting development and growth, Silverman wondered aloud whether they were referring to the Silver Spring and Wheaton revitalization projects and the attendant benefits. "I wonder what development everybody wants to stop," he said. "Overdevelopment isn't the cause of traffic congestion

Silverman also said a proposal to renovate existing affordable housing units wasn't enough, mentioning his proposal to allow non- and for- profit development of affordable housing on what he called the "Top 10 county-owned land sites."

While agreeing with Silverman on the use of county owned land for affordable housing development, Somerset said she wants to stop development of the county's agricultural preserve, which discourages badly needed redevelopment in older communities. "It's much cheaper for a developer to plow up a pasture or cut down a wood than it is to redevelop," she said.

Floreen said debate over the development issue must take into account the need for affordable housing and more jobs. She said she supports most of the proposals for affordable housing, emphasizing that from her experience she has learned there are no easy solutions and the best way to solve these problems is for the council to make it a priority. She also mentioned the master plans approved by the current county council to allow development in communities along I-270 and said county councilmembers "have a solemn obligation to our residents to fulfill the transportation requirements these areas need."

Ewing said he supports housing construction on county-owned land and ownership opportunities for renters, stressing the importance of preserving existing units close to public transit.

Elrich said the Elrich-Ewing-Renzi slate supports the use of county-owned land for development, but said the county also needs to take the cost-effective step of preserving existing units and exploring ownership opportunities for tenants. Echoing Renzi's concerns, Elrich advocated allowing development only after the infrastructure and social service network to service it is in place and the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance is strengthened.

Elrich also called for impact fees to be collected from developers to help fund the infrastructure improvements their projects make necessary.

Joseph said he supports impact fees to foster developer support for infrastructure projects, and he called for greater employer involvement in providing affordable homes for their employees, including the increasing of county corporate taxes he claimed were too low. He proposed the use of vacant and under-utilized commercial property as affordable housing and integrating residential and commercial areas in older neighborhoods to allow people to work near their homes.

Joseph also said the council needs to look at the $33 million legacy for open space and consider putting some of it into moderately priced housing projects. He said the county should embrace the growth and attendant economic benefits which will come in the ensuing years due to the county's proximity to Washington, D.C. He stressed, however, the need to balance that with a commitment to building first rate schools and communities.

Somerset said she agrees with the candidates' emphasis on helping workers, especially regarding increasing salaries, noting her early and continuing support for the Living Wage Bill. She also said she supports proposals to renovate existing and build new affordable housing units.

Renzi also supports the Living Wage Bill as a first step in helping the working poor, he said, and a counter to what he sees as certain candidates efforts to paint others as being hostile to growth.

As the candidates continue to distinguish and define themselves over the summer the distinctions and alliances will take shape. Already the Elrich-Ewing-Renzi slate appears to courting Somerset for inclusion; Renzi, apparently on his own, suggested toward the end of the forum that voters could vote for Somerset along with the other members of the slate.

Also, the slate is distinguishing itself from the incumbents Subin and Silverman; Elrich alluded to Silverman's contributions from developers when he said he wouldn't accept money from "the most privileged special interest group," and Renzi referenced the alleged physical altercation between Subin and Ewing.

In what seems to be a forming alliance, Silverman bristled at Renzi's statements about Subin, saying he didn't think it was fair to make comments about a candidate who wasn't there to defend himself. As the summer wears on, the two camps will certainly continue to stake out their positions and to court voters concerned about growth and development, transportation, and affordable housing in Montgomery County.

This forum will be rebroadcast on Takoma Park Cable Channel 13 on Tuesday, July 21 at 1 PM and 9PM.