After months of debate, six worksessions and two public hearings, Park and Planning has finalized its recommendations for the county’s Annual Growth Policy (AGP).
While previous revisions of the growth policy have been incremental at most, the new draft is a dramatic divergence from the previous policy guidelines.
The growth policy, first adopted in 1986, governs administration of the county’s Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance, which seeks to ensure sufficient infrastructure, primarily roads and schools, to serve new construction in the county.
However, the county’s persistent problems with congested roads and crowded schools led many to believe that the AGP was not working properly.
As a result, the County Council ordered the Park and Planning Commission to engage in a top-to-bottom review of the growth policy. The planning commission essentially threw out the complex mathematical formulas which had characterized the old growth policy, reasoning that the numbers tended to show that there was capacity on the county’s roads and in its schools, despite visible evidence to the contrary.
Planning commissioners began with the premise that everything is full, and have endorsed a plan which represents a radical departure from previous growth policies.
The proposal greatly simplifies the growth policy.
Park and Planning’s draft of the AGP calls for allowing a limited number of Preliminary Plan Approvals, imposing an impact tax on all new development, and targeting the approvals and taxes to encourage growth in areas already served by transit.
“The new paradigm is that we’re going to moderate the rate of growth so that we have a chance to catch up,” said Commission Chair Derick Berlage.
The proposals would result in an impact tax of $12,500 for a new residential unit in Potomac. Commercial construction would have an impact tax of from $6,000-9,000 per 1,000 square feet of construction, depending on the type of project.
Boundaries
In the old AGP, the county had been divided into 23 school clusters and 29 transportation areas. Under the proposed plan, there will be eight planning areas.
The new areas are primarily defined by the availability of transit in the area and the amount of growth called for in the various area Master Plans.
Potomac is classified as a Lower-Growth suburban area. Its boundaries are roughly the same as those laid out in the Potomac Master Plan, from the Beltway and Interstate-270 to the Watts Branch, and from the river to the City of Rockville.
Allocating Growth
Growth is allocated to different regions of the county according to the newly defined boundaries.
The allocations limit the number of preliminary plan approvals which the planning board can grant in a calendar year, therefore it has been named the Preliminary Plan Approval Rate. A preliminary plan is the first step in creating a new development.
The plan calls for approving job growth at a rate of one percent of the current number of jobs per year. Housing approvals would occur at a ratio of 1.6 housing units per job, which is considered the optimum balance of jobs to housing. “I want to be honest about our needs,” said Commissioner Meredith Wellington.
The number of approvals would be distributed across the broader non-contiguous zones. Therefore, the 3,100 job units allocated to “Metro Areas” would be spread across all Metro areas, but not sub-allocated. If a project was approved in the Bethesda Metro area that equaled 3,100 jobs, it would result in a moratorium in all other Metro areas.
Potomac’s job and housing allocations would have to be shared with all other “suburban” areas in the county.
The approval rate however, will not have an immediate effect on the construction of new projects. Projects which have already received approval but have not been built, the so-called “pipeline,” would not be affected by the approval rates. There are approximately 100,000 jobs and 35,000 housing units in the pipeline.
Actual building could continue at a rate higher than one percent for some time. “We need to explain that one percent does not really mean one percent,” said Park and Planning Chair Derick Berlage.
Additionally, the Commission does not have control over projects in the cities of Rockville and Gaithersburg.
The number of allocations would be revised in odd-numbered years. Increasing the number of allocations would be done at the discretion of the council. If there were unused allocations from the previous year, or if the county had a boom and could then accommodate new growth, the rate would theoretically be increased.
Hitting The Cap
When an area uses up its allocated number of jobs or housing units in most of the county, including Potomac, it would not be allowed to proceed — moratorium.
In areas designated as Metro areas, developers would have three ways of moving a project forward.
* Wait until the next calendar year when a new crop of allocations are made available.
* Find some way of mitigating 100 percent of the trips. Mitigation primarily comes through requiring use of transit or new construction of road improvements. Mitigation could happen using these methods in combination.
* Mitigate 50 percent of the trips, and pay the impact tax at the rate charged in “rural” areas.
Impact Taxes
The Commission considered several impact tax rates, and it chose the highest option it was given. If approved, the tax would generate a little over $20 million each for roads and schools.
Affordable Housing would be allowed to go ahead without an impact tax, however the Commission wanted to make sure that was not used as a loophole. “The fact that you have some affordable units doesn’t exempt the rest of the development,” said Commissioner John Robinson.
The schools tax on residential units, $8,000, stays the same regardless of where in the county new construction is proposed because it has been decided that overcrowded schools are a problem across the county.
This rate is substantially higher than a proposed impact tax rate which was defeated by the Council earlier this year.
The money generated would be given to the school board for construction generally, and would not necessarily have to be used in the area which generates the fees.
The transportation tax would be assessed at a higher rate if the project had less access to mass transit. Commissioners hope that this policy will help to encourage growth where it can be most easily accommodated.
The commission also wanted to be clear that the impact taxes should not be placed into the county’s general fund. “[It] must be dedicated,” said Commissioner Meredith Wellington.