Five weeks ago, residents of Gary Road and others living close to Potomac Village pleaded Montgomery County officials for a missing section of sidewalk on River Road.
A few hundred feet of concrete, they said, would do so much to make Potomac a more welcoming, walkable place. Some had been lobbying for the sidewalk for a decade or more.
Around the corner, the county has asked Jim Welebir to construct a sidewalk that no one else seems to want — a length of perhaps 200 feet along Democracy Boulevard that would not link or connect to any existing sidewalks.
Welebir finds this situation ironic. “You can’t walk anywhere in this town … and they want me to demolish all this stuff to put in a concrete sidewalk to nowhere,” he said.
Welebir said he offered to give the money he would spend on his “sidewalk to nowhere” to the county to use on sidewalks in the village, but no mechanism exists to allow such a transfer.
In 2002, Welebir was a business partner in the subdivision and development of a one-acre lot on Democracy between Falls Road and Sorrel Avenue. The plan to build two houses on half-acre lots moved through Park and Planning Commission review in a relatively quick three-and-a-half months.
Welebir, a Potomac mortgage broker, praised the work of the Park and Planning staff but said that getting the development approved by Montgomery County officials was a different story. “We took it to the county and it was total hell,” Welebir said. “They gave us conflicting conditions in writing,” asking for fire hydrants that already existed, street lamps, and finally, the sidewalk along the two houses’ frontage.
Both of the subdivision houses are occupied — one owner bought the land and had a relative build the house, and the other, built as a “spec house” sold for a reported $1.9 million. The sidewalk would have to go on the near side of the drainage ditch next to Democracy, cutting though the homes’ yards and requiring significant re-grading, Welebir said. The homeowners do not want the construction, or the sidewalk, he said.
Improvement requests from county departments are a normal part of Park and Planning development review, said Richard Weaver, a development review staffer, who said he did not specifically remember the Welebir project. Sidewalk requests come from the Department of Public Works and Transportation and are common in downcounty areas with 1/2 acre or greater densities. “Generally you’re on the hook for your frontage improvements when you get the subdivision,” he said.
WHEN SUCH improvements are tied to the approval of a project, the enforcement duties fall to another county agency, the Department of Permitting Services, which issues the permits for clearing, building, and sediment control necessary to begin construction work.
“We ensure [the] conditions are followed through,” said Joe Cheung, manager of right of way permitting and plan review at Permitting Services.
Welebir and partner Jim Salter, who is an attorney, asked Permitting Services for a waiver of the sidewalk condition and said that the waiver was granted and then rescinded overnight.
But Cheung stressed that Permitting Services does not set any requirements; it only enforces them. “We [went] back to DPWT because they’re the one that imposed the sidewalk requirement and asked them, ‘Hey the applicant has requested not to construct this, do you have a problem with that?’” Cheung said. “They still felt the sidewalk is needed.”
“The county position has always been, well if they can get the sidewalk installed now maybe in the future there’s money in the Capital Program and they can get it completed. That’s the rationale for getting it put in.” Cheung said, noting that the houses are within a few hundred feet of Falls Road, where the county has long contemplated installing sidewalks connecting Potomac and Rockville.
Neither planning nor construction for that project is funded under the county’s FY05-10 Capital Improvements Program.
“It’s really a judgment call. … I guess DPWT’s idea is basically they or someone else is going to build out to Falls Road,” said Sarah Navid of Permitting Services, who requested the waiver from Public Works and Transportation. “In the meantime, it’ll have no utility.”
WELEBIR SAID he’s been left in limbo. He has written letters to County Executive Doug Duncan, County Councilmember Steve Silverman (D-At Large) and others seeking a better solution than merely building the Democracy sidewalk.
Welebir stressed that he has fought against the sidewalk because he believes it makes no sense. He estimated that the construction would cost $5,000-$6,000, relatively little compared to the value of the development.
“What I’m looking at is why don’t they just say, ‘We don’t want you to put the sidewalk here, but let’s contribute this amount to a general fund to put sidewalks where we need to,’” he said. “If they did that … you would actually have things like completed sidewalks in the village.”
Weaver, of Park and Planning, said that a covenant for future construction is sometimes connected to a subdivision at plan review, but county officials agreed that such arrangements are rare and that no such fund exists.
Asked whether he was considering bringing the case to court, Welebir said, “Who knows. … I haven’t heard back from the County Executive’s office; I haven’t heard back from Silverman’s office. If I don’t hear back from them, I don’t know what the next step is.”
Cheung said that Permitting Services is still working with Public Works and Transportation to negotiate a possible waiver.
“What it comes down to is complete inconsistency … I even offered to give them the money,” Welebir said. “The comment I got from one person was, ‘Well we wouldn’t know what to do with it.’”
“We’re not allowed to take his money. There is bureaucracy also — it’s dragging on,” Navid said. “Normally [cases] get resolved a lot faster. I can’t really explain this one.”