No Action Taken On Beall's Grant II [updated]
Dec 16, 2008 7:31 - 12 Comments
After a Citizen’s Forum that featured fifty speakers split almost evenly for and against, the Mayor and Council took no action last night on a proposed resolution in support of the proposed affordable housing development, Beall’s Grant II.>
The resolution in support was needed by the Montgomery Housing Partnership, the development’s sponsor, in order to apply to the State of Maryland for Low Income Tax Credits, a key piece of financing for the construction. The application is due today.
The lack of support means that MHP cannot apply for the state funding in this round, and must wait nine months. According to MHP, this will add up to $1 million in cost to the project and some observers have said it may derail it altogether.
The project has been the source of great controversy for a number of months, after having seen smooth sailing. Despite the West End Citizens Association’s board endorsing the project in February, a number of residents say they first heard of the initiative when it came up for review at a July Planning Commission meeting. That meeting was highly contentious. Since that time, “Stop Beall’s Grant II” signs have appeared throughout the West End neighborhood as well as elsewhere. Montgomery Housing Partnership has also worked behind the scenes to garner support for the project.
In recent weeks, MHP and local residents have met to negotiate possible reductions in the scope of the project, with little evident progress.
The crowd spilled out into the hallway, where people watched on monitors. Throughout the audience, people held signs indicating their support or opposition. Twenty four citizens spoke in favor and 26 spoke against the project at last night’s Mayor and Council meeting. [UPDATE: Other accounts have 53 speakers. There were three speakers who spoke in a row employed by and representing MHP. I didn't count them.]
However, the members of the Mayor and Council focused on an issue few raised in their statements. In the hours just before the meeting, Montgomery Housing Partnership’s chief, Rob Goldman, had hit upon what he hoped would be a strategy to keep MHP’s funding application alive while still offering guarantees to the local residents that MHP would still have an incentive to continue negotiations. The strategy involved the Mayor and Council writing a letter in support to add to MHP’s application, but not passing a resolution. The Mayor and Council would defer the resolution until ninety days later, at which point it would only pass it if it felt MHP had continued negotiations in good faith.
The letter would be enough to initiate the application process, but before settling, it is a state requirement that there be a formal resolution in order for the financing to be completed.
The new strategy, while of interest to some members, raised questions for others about procedure. The group agreed that they had been laboring under the impression that last night’s meeting was the “drop dead deadline,” according to Council Member John Britton. But with the new plan, and a new deadline, Britton said, “we might have approached this evening differently.” He said he was “taken aback” by the new tactic.
Council Member Anne Robbins asked City Attorney Paul Glasgow whether the two-step plan had merit and whether it would do what MHP said it would. “I don’t know because I only found out about the idea at five o’clock today,” replied Glasgow. “I think what Paul said speaks volumes,” Robbins said. She later said she felt “ill-used” by the way the idea came up.
For her part, Council member Phyllis Marcuccio said that after a pivotal meeting in October when MHP and WECA vowed to negotiate, she “wished there had been a flurry of meetings” to work out a compromise. But meetings had only begun in the last few weeks. While some point to MHP for the delay, MHP said it had been asked to follow WECA’s lead, and WECA had not formed a committee to negotiate until only recently.
“There were missteps on both sides,” said council member Britton. “WECA was schizophrenic” about a committee, having first not created one and then created one, and MHP “had communications problems. If you wanted our support, this whole strategy should have been laid at our feet weeks ago, so we could see it.”
The two clear supporters of the Beall’s Grant II project, Mayor Susan Hoffmann and Council Member Piotr Gajewski, appeared in favor of the new idea, but there was no support for it.
As debate drew to a close, and the group was considering the original question of whether to pass a resolution in support or not, Mayor Hoffmann read with permission from a letter by Rockville resident Bill Newhouse. “I am concerned that Beall’s Grant II is being subjected to greater hurdles than other developers have to endure,” wrote Newhouse.
However, this was not enough. The agenda item died when none would make a motion to bring the resolution up for vote.
[NB: Quotations are from my notes and may not be exactly verbatim.]
This is an email that I sent this morning in response to last night’s meeting.>
Dear Mayor and Council:
I would like to express my sincere disappointment with the action (or lack) that you took last night on a request for support of Beall’s Grant II after a five-hour grueling meeting. Last night 50 people spoke. Half were for and half were against. Please check the record for this.
Mr. Goldman’s two-part request was obviously and plainly stated to be an attempt to apply for funding while continuing to negotiation with WECA. Yet some of you choose to see this as a sneaky and underhanded move, designed to lock out the citizens from the process.
Nothing could be further from the truth. He was attempting a compromise! He was giving you and the citizens exactly what you both asked for: a furtherance of the goal of affordable housing while pursing Beall’s Grant II in specific.
The fact that this delay will cost a non-profit $1 million, cause a delay of close to a year and push the request into fiscal 2009 with a completely unpredictable economic situation did not matter to you.
You are continuing to allow this building to be held hostage by citizens who you must know by now want to “stop” this building and who have no incentive to settle. I also hope you realize how many falsehoods this group said last night. The reason there were not more WECA meetings is because citizens hijacked the meeting process.
Some of you scoffed at the developer’s concerns and seemed more interested in taking a “no’ vote because you felt slighted by members of the Council. Some of you clearly do not represent anyone but yourselves! A bruised ego is no reason to deny needed housing.
You could have brought order to this process. You could have imposed a structure and a deadline on it.
You did neither. I expect the opposition to grow stronger and more hardened as they continue their campaign of hate and divisiveness.
For shame.
Theresa Defino
400 Mannakee Street
It is unbelievable tha the Council could not act on this issue, to support afforable housing as the country faces the worst economic situation the Great Depression. That they would cave to the fear mongering and misinformation of the Melanie Zeletsky led McMansionistas is really amazing. These people do not represent the best of Rockville, and do not represent the majority of residents who support the project. Its too bad that everyone who supports the project wont put out yard signs that say: Shame on You, but thats because we really do care about the community and not a single issue, property values, which the opponents tried to dress up with other non-issues. As they sat there holding up their pathetic red signs at the meeting, it was only Mayor Hoffman and Councilman Gajewski who were able to see through their specious arguments…its a sad day in Rockville when fear triumphs over reason…
Again, this would not have been an issue if they put this in Lincoln Park or Maryvale or East Rockville. But heaven forbid you put someone on that side of Rockville that cannot afford a Lexus. >
I thought Rockville was seen as an extremely liberal town, it now looks more like Utah than Maryland. Congratulations.
Please remember, when commenting, that it is alright to disagree, but it is not OK to be disagreeable. >
In particular, comments that attach people’s names to epithets, or that question the motives of private individuals, are unwelcome. I will delete comments that go too far.
Some comments have been quite close to the line. Yes emotions are running high. Yes you can restrain your language and still make your point.
Thank you.
-Brad
Hate and divisiveness? When in doubt, play the bigot card.
I spoke at the meeting last night in favor of the City sending a letter of support for Bealls Grant II, in the hope that the project would go forward. I wore a “Yes! Bealls Grant II” shirt because I wanted to send a message as strong as the one being sent by all the “Stop Bealls Grant II” yard signs that some of us think this project is a good one.>
While I was speaking, someone in the lobby yelled “Why do you hate us?” and if that was directed at me, I want to say that I don’t hate anyone; I just wanted all voices in the community to be heard, mine included.
I’m glad to see that so many people care deeply about this and have been willing to invest time and effort to come up with a solution that would leave as many people as possible satisfied. I’m extremely disappointed to see the project killed, if that is what happened last night, over what appears to be a technicality rather than a reasoned process that came to its logical conclusion.
I was also disappointed to hear that no action could be taken because it would not be sensitive to the voice of the community, with the implication that those of us who spoke in favor of the project (and have blogged about it, and read every scrap of information we can find about it in an effort to understand the arguments, and tried to stay informed despite the fact that we don’t live in West End and can’t be part of the negotiations) are somehow completely irrelevant.
Neither of those things sent a message to citizens in Rockville that our voice matters much.
Brad thanks for this thorough report. I am a late arrival to being civic-minded and this site and the opportunities it affords us is another reason that Rockville is an outstanding community. Happy Holidays. No I just wish Beall’s Grant II could move a step closer to becoming an asset to our community.
In the sixties when I first came to Rockville it was a happier place, people were full of hope for the future and the desire to help everyone was evident. We even had a march through the city in support of open housing ( no discrimination against blacks). We are now in the beginning of an economic downturn. People are losing their jobs, their houses, and their nest eggs. Anything that can be seen as a threat to their property values raises fears. As house values go down , many find themselves owing more on their houses than the house is worth. The opposition to Beall’s Grant II is based on this very real, if misguided, fear. It is interesting that the opposition group could only get 300 signatures after intensive efforts in their 1600 home community. That looks like a 10% response to me. The only way to overcome this fear is by extensive education, presenting facts to reassure them that what’s good for the prospective residents of Beall’s Grant is not harmful to their neighbors.>
Roald Schrack
If Rockville is trully a diverse community, it would welcome the hard-working middle class who do not live in McMansions or West Montgomery Ave. estates AND do not believe in tax-payer dollars going towards any kind of housing for anyone (including tax-breaks for the weathly who live in “historic districts”). >
The rest of us never dreamed of having our own houses when we were out-of-school whether high school or college even if we had children., which is OK because we believed in working hard towards a goal. We rented rooms, had roomates in efficieny apartments and saved our money if we dreamed of a better circumstance. We went to school part-time and financed our own college tuitions, got better paying jobs when possible and often worked 2 jobs to make ends meet. This used to be the American way.
We middle-class (or lower middle-class by Rockville standards) are the true neigbors to the BGII…the ones who live on N. Adams, Van Buren, and within a block or two. We cannot afford the liberal agendas of the wealthier Rockville residents because we are struggling to pay our own mortgages and our own bills, particularly the tax bills.
Hello, anonymous at 9:06am. Good to see one of the people who would be most affected by BGII weighing in here. Roald mentioned the need to educate, but that education needs to go both ways. What is it about BGII that gives you the most cause for concern? How can those of us who live in the vicinity (my family is about 1/4 mi away, but not in West End) help you and others who are in the immediate neighborhood to address those concerns?
>The following comment was sent in by a reader who wishes to remain anonymous:
Having lived in Rockville over 20 years, the behavior displayed on Monday night at city hall was the most depressing I have ever witnessed. To think that the controversy and the yard signs affected one Bealls resident so severly that he screamed “why do you hate us” was superceeded by the tone and language of conversations between residents on opposite sides of the issue. “Civil” was not a word that applied to any of the behaviors. I have always noticed the presence of Chief Treschuck at these meetings and I’m grateful he handled each confrontation in his graceful way.
When I saw the face of a young child, present with her parents, terrified by the “conversation” between two men in the lobby, I realized how much damage is being done in the city and to the city. Yes I want Beall II but even more I want to live with civilized humans as neighbors, not with “gangs”.
[...] most readers of Rockville Central know, there are ongoing negotiations between a committee of the West End Citizen’s Association and the affordable housing developer [...]