MOCO - County Wide Upzoning, Everywhere
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Anonymous
I’m talking about the planning analysis component to determine how many parcels are potentially eligible. Unless you actually went to law school this statement does not serve any purpose. Most people are not lawyers and I’m asking a question to see if anyone else has an idea what the answer might be. So far no one has pointed to any legal sources that provide credible evidence to answer this question. Everything has been speculative with supporting evidence. Point to something legit that shows this is not a reasonable question or concern. Otherwise, it appears ideologically motivated and potentially dishonest to suggest this is a non issue. |
Anonymous
*Without supporting evidence* |
Anonymous
I didn’t claim this either. But some developer will absolutely try to take advantage of this ambiguity to boost the size of the development due to land ownership history in the distant past. So the question is relevant |
Anonymous
If you're worried about this, then you can send an email to your county council member asking them to ask the council's legal staff for clarification. But if the idea is that we shouldn't do anything because somebody might do something? Nah. |
Anonymous
You made up the scenario in the first place. You posited a hypothetical and are now asking people to prove it's not true. |
Anonymous
+1. I tried to make this point earlier. Now would be the time to ask for this clarity, or lobby for a change in the STATE law that this is based on. Doing so however, does not require idenifying every single potentially impacted property, nor does it necessitate not moving forward with any aspect of this proposal. |
Anonymous
There are a lot of ways to do this. One way is to limit the authorization for multifamily development in these zones only to buildings that are in compliance with any authorized setback requirements in the governing municipal code. It’s a self-contained solution. If done this way, the restriction becomes part of county land use regulation, and the council is authorized to establish land use regulation. |
Anonymous
I get that logically. But I'm thinking of the legal doctrine of preemption. I'm no expert in it, but generally a local jurisdiction can't do anything that is in conflict with a law of the state...and this could be direct or implied. What you describe is basically the same as the state saying that Chevy Chase is not permitted to do something and MoCo saying "yes they are." It is an interesting legal question that I do not know the answer to. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/preemption |
Anonymous
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Anyone only reading through the final report and the state law really should check the video of Monday's meeting.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=55h90lVpZJI The Attainable Housing portion of the meeting starts at 2:10 and goes for just under an hour. As seen in the report, the voiced concerns of residents are briefly mentioned in summary and rather summarily dismissed. If there was any doubt that these concerns are valid, all one has to do is listen to the introductions by the council and planning chair. The remainder was unsurprising, given the Council makeup and their recent appointment of the Planning Board (one wonders if the reaction to the scandal had more to do with packing the Board with more decidedly pro-Thrive/pro-development interests in the runup to adoption). For those complaining about the process, met by comments about the several community meetings in the last couple of years, your thoughts still are valid, though it may not matter from a strictly legal sense. Ask when, along the timeline of those meetings, the full impact was addressed. Not just examples of multiplex housing with reference to the pattern book for continuity with the previously-built community, but fully-built-out properties along the corridors (19-unit to 24-unit stacked flats with maximal allowance for bulk/minimal adherence to to-be setbacks, etc.). The answer would not include those community meetings, as much of the higher-impact recommendations only recently were introduced to the document (which also does not do the job of presenting those maximal buildouts for common understanding), as was the state legislation. It is overwhelmingly likely that community input would be significantly different than was garnered in those already-pandemic-limited interactions. The dog and pony was comically completed towards the end of the presentation (prior to the Council committee's few questions) with the planning chair repeatedly nodding at the intern's earnest comments about research she had conducted to find favorable examples of jurisdictions that had pursued similar changes. Of course, there had been no critical review of this that would highlight the dissimilarities to that which is being proposed, here. Nor was there any public comment/rebuttal/presentation of opposing viewpoints. The Council PHP Committee will have 2 working sessions in July, beginning on the 8th. I expect they will have limited public comment, with staff and supporters prepped alternately to present stories of hardship finding desired housing to garner sympathy and dismissive remarks to any concerns voiced, without opportunity for rebuttal/debate. A few half-hearted questions may be presented, intentionally phrased to allow sidestepping of any more troublesome answer. (E.g., "Can we get an idea of the student generation rates?" to "represent" community concerns about school crowding, met with a pat answer that does nothing to project that overcrowding, the associated costs of building and the infeasibility of land acquisition for schools, with a buildout on the scale envisioned that would "correct" the perceived shortage of housing opportunities in the affected areas -- perhaps with a platitudinous "the County has established processes to address school system needs" thrown in.) Having completed that pro forma over the summer, while many are vacationing, they can claim to have completed everything appropriately for the Council vote in the fall. That is a done deal, short of near-Kenya-level in-the-streets objections, and I don't see the MoCo residents, majority or no, who would have objections having the stomach for anything close to that. |
Anonymous
| If you are trying to persuade everybody that the fix is in and there's no point in doing anything, good job. |
Anonymous
Same with Thrive. Just a “plan to make a plan.” We can’t address your concerns now. Nothing in the plan changes the zoning. You are all being unreasonable. We don’t have the details, we can’t tell you anything. It was subterfuge. Now the plans are being drawn up, and still it’s not the appropriate time. Concerns and disagreements are being swept under the rug, yet again. The YImBYs are definitely under some time constraints here because they have limited time before the next election, so of course they don’t want to pause to work out details or gather data. |
Anonymous
I am really not following you here at all. That being said, I do appreciate the link to the video. I will watch! |
Anonymous
Who is saying now is not the appropriate time? Who is saying they don't have the details? How are concerns being swept under the rug? |
Anonymous
Preemption wouldn’t be in play. The county wouldn’t be granting a municipality authority. The county would be acting within the authority granted to it by the state to impose certain setback restrictions. State law doesn’t prohibit the county from drawing information from municipalities in determine setback restrictions. |
Anonymous
Thank you. You did a much better job explaining a major concern I have about this proposal. |