Creating a Jubilee County: Prince George's Co., MD

Fellow Prince Georgeans,

The Governor's Task Force on the Future Growth of Maryland (HB773) and the Maryland Department of Planning are sponsoring 8 listening sessions around to state. We are please to host one in Prince George’s County. The purpose of the Listening Session is to collect input from citizens, businesses, developers, and elected officials for a 30-year plan that is currently being developed to address smart growth in the state.

The plan will include important recommendations and strategies on topics such as land use, planning, development, rural tier, environment, zoning, roads, employment, transportation, transit, schools, water, sewer, open space, natural resources, agriculture, and so on.

Please plan to attend and provide your input to this very important plan for the future of the State of Maryland. Please share this flyer with your distribution list.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Prince Georges County
Bladensburg High School
4200 57th Avenue
Bladensburg, Maryland 20710

For more information visit our website at:
http://www.mdp.state.md.us/listeningsessions.htm

If you are not able to attend on the 22nd, you can take the Listening Session survey on-line at: http://www.mdp.state.md.us/

Thanks,

Teena M. Green,
Member, Governor's Task Force for the Future Growth of Maryland
TeenaG@comcast.net

The following was forwarded to me by an active, caring citizen, though I couldn't fine it on the web site:

The Council is trying to take away our right to appeal zoning decisions unless we can actually “see” the property from our own — see the Gazette letter to the editor below. We need to let the Council know this is not acceptable:

( council email addresses here )

County Council Asks High Court to Take Away Citizen Rights to help Developer Contributors: The Court of Appeals has agreed to hear a case in which the County Council asks the Court to take away the rights of citizens and civic associations to file appeals in zoning cases. Gosain v. County Council (No. 26 Sept. Term 2008).

In 1994, the General Assembly gave broadened appeal rights to citizens and civic associations so that they could appeal the County Council's abusive zoning decisions that favor their developer campaign contributors. The 1994 law removed a requirement that an appellant had to be "aggrieved" in order to have "standing" to file an appeal. Aggrievement means that to appeal, you have to be able to literally SEE the property being developed or rezoned from your property. Courts have been very tough on citizens about being aggrieved, and abusive zoning decisions often could not be appealed.

The "aggrievement" requirement was removed in 1994, so that the political deals between the developers and the County Council would have to stand up in court. Developers and the County Council have bristled about this law for years, and the Council's lawyer has tried many times to get it overturned in court but has failed. Earlier this year, the developers and the Council got Delegate Joe Vallario to sponsor a bill (HB 927 (PG/MC 119-08)) to do the same thing - take away citizens rights to appeal zoning decisions by putting back the requirement that citizens be "aggrieved" in order to have "standing".

Vocal citizen opposition killed HB 927. Now, the Council has gotten Maryland's highest Court to hear its argument to strip citizens of their hard won rights.

Write your Council member and demand to know why they want to take away your rights. Write and demand honest government. And, tell your neighbors what their Council member is up to and get them to write or call.

We should also let our Delegates know that we appreciate their protecting our rights by killing HB 927 in the last session and alert them to the fact that the Council is trying to bypass the Delegate’s decision by going to the Court of Appeals.
( delegate email addresses here )

Get the latest news and discussions from bloggers in Prince George's County here.

So what do you think about losing your dependent care tax credit if your child doesn't do homework, is suspended for being disrespectful in school, or is absent too much? Hmmm, aren't homeschooling parents allowed to get these tax credits? Of course, if you're rich or have a child who would never do these things, then you might not care. But what of the single parents who are struggling in a community with few choices for where their child attends school & are struggling paying for child care while they work. Isn't this what the tax credit is for? There are truancy laws, which I understand they sometimes actually enforce now. We want to encourage parents to do the right thing, but how does making it harder for low-income parents to pay for things help? The bill is HB 1122 (PDF).

HB 1040 also wants to increase the drop-out age to 18 - no quitting at 16 to get a GED & a job, even if you're not college material.

There are also zoning laws that people are concerned about and WSSC "energy tax" and several other bills specifically for Prince George's Co. listed here.

Latest county blog posts are here.

“Prince George’s Environmental Knowledge Web” project
--Creating a database of substantive and tactical knowledge on land use, environment, and transportation to strengthen the
participation by residents of Prince George’s County in matters that impact their quality of life.

Update-

To date three lengthy interviews have been completed with Carmen Anderson. She provided charts and tutorials on zoning.
We are having the interviews transcribed, and after her editing, will be making Carmen's top notch tips available,
as part of the Knowledge Web project. We will be doing a series of interviews with activists who
have specialized knowledge in land use, environment, and so on. This info will be organized in an archive and made
available through workshops and websites.


The project is under Fred Tutman's EarthReports organization, and funded by Councilman Dernoga's office, with in-kind
contributions from other organizations and individuals. I am project officer, and am partnering with Sarah Lesher, an environmental writer
and researcher, programmer Bruce Jacobs, and students from University of Maryland.


If you have any members or officers who are interested in learning more about this project, and possibly participating,
please let me know. Contact Chip Reilly at (301) 218 3920.

----------------------------------------------

Project aims

-

1) To broaden the number and diversity of people involved in environmental and quality of life efforts.

2) To build consensus for strategies and policies that will facilitate better implementation of community and county-wide visioning.

3) To improve the quality of participation and engagement so that citizens have access to technical information they need to understand

the environmental impact of a specific proposal.

4) To share strategies and “lessons learned” by community activists across the county so that interested citizens can most effectively focus

their participation in public decision-making.


The long-term outcome will be a more balanced discourse about the direction of the county in the future, improved messaging and outreach,

and more informed participation by residents during consideration of the impact of development proposals on fundamental issues such as clean air and water.

See Prince George's County Newsvine here for recent news concerning the county in categories of your interest.

See the latest county blogger posts here.

I just learned about this. If you're interested in controlling development and/or saving the rural tier, this may be of interest to you:

The Bi-County Delegation meeting in scheduled for TONIGHT
at 7:00pm at Pg. Community College in the Rennie Forum. There will be some
bullet handouts about the bill. It will be an important opportunity to testify in favor of the Purchase of Development Rights Program (PDR) bill.
Please check web-site as dates and times may change. You can click on
the bill to see a synopsis and further understand what you need to
testify about.
http://www.princegeorgeshousedelegation.com/

The county is working on its development master plans. I recently attended a county "listening session". Apparently these are not available in all regions (or, technically, "subregions"). I applaud Betty for being a good county employee to provide this service; we need more county employees like this. Here are my notes:

Historical Subregion VI Master Plan "Listening Session" mtg 7/24/07

Subregion VI - largest subdision in county - mostly, but not all rural.

Croom Rd. is only designated historic & scenic road. There was a list of roads that didn't meet the criteria last time that might be able to make the list now.

Betty Carlson-Jameson, project planner/VI (the planner for V is not having Listening Sessions)

Pre-planning - 18 mo. process starts ~Oct.

Goals, concepts & guidelines - have 6-8 mo. to write proposed plan, Planning Board approval, public hearings. After master plan is made, County Council can pass special exception laws. Our present Master Plan was made in 1993.

The bill CB18 was just passed, which was a special exception for Wilmer's Park.
( Read more... )

Remember to check the Prince George's blog posts here. I've added some new ones; they're not all listed on the list of bloggers yet, though.

Check the latest Maryland Carnival here.

I've avoided the District V Coffee Club meetings even though I've heard about them from many different people and been invited to join. I'm active locally & interested, but I think my introversion and the close quarters of their public meeting space at the Starbucks inside Safeway has been a subconscious deterrant. Well, I was out for other reasons this morning & decided to go grocery shopping and there they were.

There were about 25 people having a heated discussion, but very well controlled by the facilitator, Carolyn Lowe. I missed the first half of the meeting, but maybe I'll read about it in the paper since there were two reporters there. The second half of the meeting was about Wilmer's Park, which I'll address below, but my point for this post is that I was really impressed with this group. It is what I love about Prince George's County: DIVERSITY! There were young & old, business-owners, blue collar workers, people who are retired, mothers accompanied by their children, relative newcomers, people who've lived here all their lives, almost every shade of skin & hair color, and probably a lot of other descriptions, but I didn't know them all. I can only assume that there was diversity of religion and educational background and many other ways; there was certainly diversity of ideas there. The one thing we all have in common is that we're Prince Georgians who want to help make this area a pleasant place that we can live for as long as we can.

OK, on to the issue of Wilmer's Park (recent story here):

I live in Brandywine & I know both sides of the issue well (or maybe I should say, the many sides). I know most people are thinking "sneaky developer trying to get through the process by using his powers through the politicians & this bill." I really don't know all of why he is not going through the regular development process - text amendments shouldn't be used and he's been told that repeatedly by residents he's spoken to about his plans. I guess the process must be expensive, but apparently other developers do it, so I'm really not clear about that. I think our legislators are as much to blame about trying to use this bill as a means to circumvent the process, though.

Our democratic process is important and the people need a voice in what happens in our community. The developer says he wants to develop true community, but if he does, he should understand about this point of it. If the system needs to be fixed, then we need to fix it instead of finding ways around it. I hope we can work together to develop something that we can all live with.

[Note: I noticed a Washington Post article about a personality that used to perform or MC at Wilmer's Park, Petey Greene, since there's a movie out about him and a video on YouTube.]

Wilmer's Park in Brandywine was part of the historic Chitlin Circuit with some of the greatest African American music of the 1960's - '80's, but the redevelopment of the since vacated farm has created controversy. The owner is having a meeting about it this Sunday:

Join Us To Share the Renaissance of Activity, History, & Culture of Wilmer’s Park 

No Rumors, Just Facts

Sunday, July 15, 2007 
Brandywine Volunteer Fire Department
14201 Brandywine Rd. Brandywine, MD 20613 
3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Light refreshments will be served.    

New for Maryland News, there's watchdog_md.

Latest news stories for Prince George's include:

Fewer deaths, less damage from fires last year
Prince George's firefighters expect to visit as many as 10,000 homes this year, offering advice and free smoke detectors, in a program they credit with helping to reduce losses in lives and property from fires in 2006.

Students will have long weekend starting Friday
Prince George's County students will have a four-day weekend, with days off from school Friday and Monday.

Residents can speak on Springhill Lake redevelopment plan
The Prince George's County Board of Education's Capital Improvement Program (CIP) Committee will host a public hearing discussing AIMCO's redevelopment plan for Springhill Lake at 6 p.m. on Jan. 17 at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, 7601 Hanover Parkway in Greenbelt.

A walk on the nature side in Odenton - West County
The section at the edge of the preserve will eventually connect to the Prince George's County bike trail system. This is a good area to do some birding and biking.

Library funding, bus driver schedule changes among requests at first BOE public hearings
Parents and school employees both praised and requested changes in Prince George's County Public Schools CEO John Deasy's Fiscal Year 2008 Proposed Operating Budget.

Deasy's small schools idea may need big donations
The Prince George's County school system is likely to pursue private funds in a big way to implement Superintendent John Deasy's plan to open small schools that teach specialized skills and meet state education standards.

The county health-care system's frequent financial crises have prompted the introduction of state legislation that directs the University of Maryland Medical System to take over from Dimensions and run the system.

With Few Public Options, Competition to Get Into Top High School Programs Is Fierce - Nathan, an eighth-grader at Ernest Everett Just Middle School in Mitchellville, is among nearly 1,500 students who have applied to the science and technology program at Eleanor Roosevelt in Greenbelt, the leading public high school in Prince George's County as measured by scores …

Government - Lawmakers likely to try changing election laws
Democrats, who control the General Assembly, have mentioned several election-related matters that may come up in the legislative session that begins next week.

DCist's January Theater Preview
New company Active Cultures in Prince George's performs Hansel and Gretel Eat Crabs (a musical, natch). We enjoy its tagline, which casually throws cannibalism in with triumph, abandonment and beauty, but question the naming of a theater company after a yogurt ingredient.

Read these and more at Newsvine.

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These stories are from the Examiner and can be read from this page.

Development planned for many Prince George’s Metro stops
1 day ago - Seven of the 15 Metroail stations in Prince George’s County have some sort of development planned on land belonging to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, according to a recent tally by the authority.

Council gives initial OK to Verizon deal
1 day ago - An agreement to allow Verizon Maryland to offer cable TV service in Prince George’s County received an initial OK on Tuesday from the County Council, which is slated to give final approval in two weeks.

Pr. George’s farmland to be shielded
1 day ago - Legislation laying out regulations for a farmland preservation program won unanimous approval Tuesday from the Prince George’s County Council.

Pr. George’s Co. looks to fill many teaching positions
2 days ago - As the Prince George’s County school system expands to handle a growing student population, so does its need for teachers.

Prince George’s Council to hold public hearings Tuesday
3 days ago - Where and when commercial vehicles can park and a development rights purchasing program will be up for public discussion when the Prince George’s County Council meets on Tuesday morning.

Suspects from possible arsons in Accokeek still eluding police
5 days ago - A push to find the individuals responsible for a dozen intentional fires set in Accokeek has resulted in some arrests, according to the Prince George’s County Fire/EMS Department but has not yet yielded the arsonist.

"The idea is to preserve rural land by promoting agricultural enterprises. Here are some examples of economic opportunities for rural areas...." at Prince George's County Rural Tier Watch where Henry S. Cole, Ph.D. is sharing his ideas and also announcements about other problems and meetings there. Brandywine is being affected by Charles County development with traffic and heavy trucks. They're asking for help with writing letters, especially if it affects you (or someone you know - spread the word).

You may notice I chose a different template for this blog with side links (if you're not viewing this on your Friends page; if so, click over to see it). I link to a new page I created on Prince Georgians Care to bloggers who blog about county issues. If you know of any others, please let me know.