Council feeling heat over Westbard plan; time to crank it up

The Montgomery County Council has clearly heard the voices of residents who marched in protest against the Westbard sector plan twice this past weekend. Council President Nancy Floreen has now delayed the final vote on the plan - despite the appearance of sufficient votes to easily pass it - until the first week in May.

But while they may sense some danger to their political careers, they don't yet seem to fully understand the depth of opposition to their so-called "compromise." Floreen suggested yesterday that "most community members" would eventually like the plan they are poised to approve.

Really? The plan hundreds were marching against was that compromise plan! Among the signs carried by protesters was one calling on voters to "Dump Berliner" - Roger Berliner, the Councilman who was behind the compromise plan folks were marching against.

Floreen also claimed their work had addressed the issues of transportation and school capacity. Absolute baloney! There is not a single project in the plan to add capacity to River Road, which would be receiving 2618 new automobiles, in addition to the 3000 new commuters who will start driving to the ICC-B intelligence campus on Sangamore Road this year.

Nuts.

The Council's analysis included their staff ridiculing the hard work of the PTA volunteers in the Whitman cluster, even though the latter's numbers were more accurate than staff's. Staff produced no potential school site, and we've learned in the process not only how expensive it is to reopen a closed school, but that MCPS is loathe to do it for just that reason. Ultimately, the staff and a majority on the Council concluded that there is no capacity problem(!), and that any students generated will be well-absorbed thanks to millions in magic money that will somehow appear just in time, and under the premise that the U.S. economy will not enter recession through the year 2040. This in a cluster where kids take gym class in a hallway at Pyle MS, and a cart on wheels passes for a "music room" at Wood Acres ES.

Nuts.

Floreen also claimed that there won't be tall buildings adjacent to the single-family homes in Springfield, despite having cast a straw vote to approve a 75' (before density bonuses) building directly across the street from a single-family home on Ridgefield Road.

Then, astonishingly, Floreen doubled down on the literally-illegal argument that urban heights can be added to Westbard because "there already are very tall buildings" there. This coming from a former Montgomery County planning commissioner who regularly touts that credential during election season is a disqualifying statement. She is attempting to mislead her constituents. Floreen was a major proponent of the County's new zoning code, under which the buildings she is referring to could not be constructed today. They are non-conforming structures.

She then repeated it again, claiming residents "don't realize there are some pretty tall buildings there on Westbard." Unreal! Floreen just claimed you, the resident, are an idiot. You've lived there X number of years, and you haven't realized there are a handful of non-conforming high-rises scattered across the plan area. What is the Council President's level of self-awareness? Does she think about these talking points before delivering them?

So, does Nancy Floreen not know the County's zoning code, or is she intentionally trying to deceive her constituents? Neither one is a winning attribute.

Even Bill Turque of the Washington Post noted to Floreen that the compromise she is still touting "is simply not enough" in the view of residents. Given that, he asked, would the Council address those public concerns by further reducing the density of the plan?

"At this point, no," Floreen responded. She said you'll be "pretty comfortable with how it turns out." Floreen is probably pretty comfortable with the $250 check she received from Equity One's attorney, Barbara Sears.

The bright spot of Floreen's news conference was her acknowledgement of the protests, in her admittance that "We've never quite had this situation, where people have continued to be unhappy after we've really done our best." Well, they've done their best for the developers, that's for sure.

"Do you think there's a larger problem about trust and credibility here," Turque asked. "The folks who are out there protesting simply don't find the numbers credible, they don't find the school population numbers credible, and the traffic numbers credible." Citing the lowball Council student generation predictions for the already-overcrowded Whitman cluster, Turque suggested, "It doesn't ring true."

Floreen replied that the Council and Planning Department are having to "constantly help [you, the resident] appreciate these analyses." Huh? Then, Marco Rubio-style, she repeated that phrase twice: "help people appreciate the analyses." A buzzphrase that seems to mean you, the resident, are a dummy. The same condescending attitude we heard toward residents throughout the worksessions. You just don't understand how good this plan is for you, and we will have to educate you. And you're a racist, and lucky to live in 20816!

Then she threw in that whopper of a talking point that's been floating around in recent times: the perverse claim that traffic "congestion levels have decreased the last few years...The data is the data." When is the last time Council President Floreen has been on I-270 or MD 355 during rush hour? If you don't know that the data from which these false conclusions are being drawn is totally bogus, you might be fooled. They're counting on it, in fact.

This is the same Montgomery County political cartel that claimed they had created more jobs in recent years than D.C. or Northern Virginia, until Turque exposed their fake numbers in a 2014 article in the Post.

In short, residents now have the Council's attention. The protests over the weekend were "unprecedented," to use Floreen's term. Usually County residents are too obsequious and laid back to challenge the Council on anything beyond a certain point. I'm proud of the neighborhood for turning out in force, in numbers that even surprised me. Clearly, the organizers of the protests knew what they were doing, and they have been very effective.

But the Council still doesn't completely get it, and this course of action will have to be kept up until they start downsizing this plan toward the demand of the majority of their constituents: 580 new units, and maximum height of 50'. More protests, perhaps at the Council Building, exploration of incorporating the area as a separate municipality, etc. And signing the petition to get term limits on the November ballot. I don't want to suggest or rule out any particular option, as the organizers likely have a better sense than I of what the next moves should be. What I do know, is that residents now have an additional 3-4 weeks to make their case.

We saw what happened with the transit authority proposal - citizens shut it down. It has to be public, and it has to be a show of force like the demonstrations to get results. The only thing the MoCo cartel understands is the threat of losing power.

With voters in other areas now freshly aware of the stakes as the Council attempts to urbanize the suburban areas of Montgomery County - from Damascus to Lyttonsville -we may be on the verge of what Save Westbard activist Stan Wiggins hinted at: another Neal Potter-style victory as in 1990, when multiple incumbents were tossed out on the street by voters angry over development issues, among other complaints.

#ThrowTheBumsOut!