January 31, 2010
Dear Mayor and Council,
When will the City planning staff stop dropping the “Big Surprise” on the citizens of Rockville?
We were shocked to find, on the Mayor and Council agenda for this coming Monday, an agenda item to approve a letter of support for Low Income Housing Tax Credits for Victory Housing. City staff’s memorandum, recommending the approval, was signed by Susan Swift on Wednesday, and by Scott Ullery on Thursday, and posted on the City website late in the week for the Mayor and Council meeting for Monday. Prior to this, there has been absolutely nothing about this item posted on any future agenda, list of upcoming agenda items, or the like. Just two business days notice prior to a major Mayor and Council vote on a highly controversial issue. That might set a new record!
Regardless of one’s opinion about the merits of the Victory Housing project, it is precisely this kind of “Big Surprise” that gets the City in trouble with its citizens over and over again.
And why all the hurry? Ms. Swift and Mr. Ullery’s memo states the rationale as follows: “the applicant has indicated that early submission of its financing application is being requested because dates for future Funding Rounds have not yet been established by the State.” As Ms. Swift and Mr. Ullery well know (from Beall’s Grant II, if nothing else), the State never sets dates for future funding rounds until the current round is completed, after which the State sets the date for the next funding round, with plenty of notice for developers to get their ducks in a row. So the stated reason for “early submission” is entirely specious, and both Ms. Swift and Mr. Ullery know it.
The neighbors have asked the developer repeatedly about the sources for their funding of this project, including whether they would be applying for Low Income Housing Tax Credits; apparently the developer has evaded all such questions until this very moment. The developer had three months notice about the February 23 deadline, as the State sent out notification of the deadline on November 20. But the developer, in concert with Ms. Swift and Mr. Ullery, is now dropping the “Big Surprise” on the Mayor and Council at one minute to midnight. No notice, no discussion, no citizen input. How convenient for the developer.
Ironically, Ms. Swift, on the previous Thursday, addressed a meeting of the West End Citizens Association, where she was challenged by WECA members and leaders for precisely this type of behavior on the part of the planning department in the recent past, and for a pattern of her department working closely with developers while effectively shutting citizens out of the process. Ms. Swift, predictably, denied all of it.
But a City planning department that truly gives citizens a level playing field would have told this developer that a letter of support from the Mayor and Council is supposed to reflect support in the community for the project, support which has not been established yet. Citizens and neighborhood groups, including WECA, have not yet had the opportunity to adequately review and evaluate the current site plan. The developer should have been told that their request is premature, and that the developer still has work to do to build community support for this project. Instead, Ms. Swift and Mr. Ullery are, once again, willing to sacrifice due process, fairness, communication, and transparency in the interests of a developer. You would have thought that they would have learned something, after their mishandling of Beall’s Grant II resulted in an explosion of citizen outrage. What they’ve learned, apparently, is to draw the wagons in a circle and continue doing business as usual.
This is not how the City’s business should be conducted. For anyone who still questions the need for a Communications Task Force, here is just one more example of why such an effort is urgently needed. But the task needs to go beyond improving the mere mechanics of Channel 11 and Rockville Reports, and should address the larger issue of a culture at City Hall in which the City planning staff has consistently failed to communicate appropriately with the citizens regarding new development in the City.
We would respectfully ask the Mayor and Council to deny the letter of support at this time, not because of the merits of the project one way or the other, but because to write a letter of support at the eleventh-hour, without appropriate discussion and citizen input, would be a gross violation of due process and basic fairness. Further, we would ask the Mayor and Council to please do whatever it can to put an end to the “Big Surprise” as the modus operandi of the City’s planning department.
Thank you for your time and consideration of this matter.
Sincerely,
Jack Leiderman & Vicki McMullen
