Westmoreland Hills Citizens Association donates $5000 to Save Westbard lawsuit against county

The Westmoreland Hills Citizens Association officially announced yesterday it is donating $5000 to the Save Westbard lawsuit against Montgomery County. WHCA includes the neighborhoods of Westmoreland Hills, Spring Hill, Overlook, Westgate, Westhaven and Yorktown Village. "The substance of the [Westbard sector] plan is dishonest," said Celia Martin, who is running unopposed to be the new president of the WHCA. She said the plan, which was opposed by an overwhelming majority of area residents, "disregards that schools and roads are inadequate" to handle the influx of the more than 3000 new residents allowed by it.

Martin said residents were concerned about private meetings held between county officials and developer Equity One. Even if the lawsuit were to fail, she added, it "focuses much attention on how Montgomery County is developed," such as the influence of developers on the County Council and the planning process. More than 70% of the campaign funds received by the current County Council come from development interests. "By helping ourselves, we help other communities," Martin told a standing-room-only crowd at the Washington Waldorf School last night.

Westmoreland Hills joins Sumner, which has already ponied up $5000 for the lawsuit, which Sumner Citizens Association President Sid Clemans called "really the only practical way to stop or slow this process down." Residents whose testimony was (literally) entirely disregarded by the Montgomery County Planning Board last Thursday would likely agree. He mentioned traffic impacts as a major concern for his neighborhood, which is already going to bear the brunt of thousands of new vehicles related to the new intelligence campus on Sangamore Road.

Of planners' laughable claims that there is less traffic than there was ten years ago, Clemans said, "I don't know anyone here who agrees with that," to chuckles from the crowd. In fact, a recent study showed the intersection of River Road and Western Avenue - which will be traversed each morning by a majority of the thousands of new cars brought by the Westbard plan - is the third worst bottleneck in Montgomery County.

Also in attendance at the meeting, were the Rev. Segun Adebayo, Pastor-Elect of Macedonia Baptist Church, and five-term Kensington Mayor Peter Fosselman, who is running for the District 1 seat on the Montgomery County Council. Adebayo expressed his frustration with Thursday's Planning Board decision, which allows Equity One to move forward with its development plans, while providing no written or legally-binding assurances that the African-American cemetery investigation on Equity One's land will be conducted properly and with full transparency. He said the church is currently reaching out to additional allies at the county and national levels, and is prepared for "a long struggle. We're going to fight them."

A lawsuit similar in scope to Save Westbard's recently prevailed in the District. Ironically, the McMillan development was also proposed by Equity One's Westbard partner, EYA, and utilized the same architecture firm, Perkins Eastman. Both projects' renderings are eerily similar, showing proposed buildings as a series of boxes lined up in a row.