Reply to MOCO - County Wide Upzoning, Everywhere

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There’s sadly way too much “community involvement” and “environmental studies”. Anybody can make a fuss and block a project, it’s crazy! With these, there’s no way the county can grow to the level it needs to be competitive to NOVA. Maryland is a bunch of busybodies that love to shuffle money around without anything getting done. Let people build, let businesses come and make money. It’s not that hard. [/quote]

Let developers come and make money to the detriment of current residents, who not only will have more crowded environs, but will end up footing the bill for the failure of the proposed changes to address associated additional burdens on schools, public facilities & infrastructure, which already are inadequate/underfunded?[/quote]

As long as growth is immediately fiscally neutral (if not positive) then what’s the problem with it?[/quote]

I think that's the point, isn't it?  The additional densities add to the infrastructure needs.  There does not appear to be a part of the plan that ensures the additional densities come with the additional funding required to keep infrastructure/services at current levels.  That infrastructure/those levels are already at the lowest on a per-capita basis in the places most likely to be the immediate development targets -- already-built-out neighborhoods in the southeast of the county, where the land among close-in suburbs is the cheapest for developers to obtain, where the overlapping zoning adjusments from the various initiatives (e.g., near purple line & transit corridors) allow greatest additional density and where there are not neighborhood covenants that would impede development.

Those communities largely were platted out with mid-20th century allocations for public facilities such as schools, roads and parks.  Upgrading those to modern/equitable standards and serve even greater community population is far more expensive than streamlined creation of new facilities/infrastructure in areas of greenfield development.  Those areas also have less wealth to begin with, with relatively high URM populations.  The housing currently in place, and that more likely would be replaced with denser housing (and likely more expensive, as new build) are among the more attainable in the first place, yet there does not seem to be an objection among those pushing development to that counter-attainable loss, just as there does not appear to be any development-tied funding to ensure the necessary infrastructure.

The whole thing smacks of developer profit interests leading the County's voting populace by the nose, some unaware or marginally so, given the piecemeal-with-stacked-effect approach to development allowances, and others more blindly devoted to progressive rhetoric, not considering alternatives or tied-in mitigations that might better achieve community-desired ends (but that might not be as uber-friendly to developers).[/quote]

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