I am writing on behalf of the members of Sprawled-Out Accokeek, a civic group in Accokeek, Maryland. We firmly oppose replacing CB-89-2004 with CB-56-2005.
Our county's most important public facilities -- police, fire, and EMS services -- have been proven repeatedly to be inadequate. Severe overdevelopment is causing unsafe conditions for citizens who need emergency assistance in the event of a crime, fire, or medical crisis. It is also putting the county into a hole that it is not going to be able to climb out of. Prince George's County cannot manage to serve current residents, and the nominal surcharges (which can be waived altogether in many cases) proposed in CB-55-2005 to put a sweet face on continuing rampant development are not going to solve this problem.
Prince George's County citizens have a right to adequate police, fire, and EMS protection. The County Council will knowingly endanger the public with their proposal to lengthen acceptable emergency response times. The public will also be endangered by mitigation guidelines letting developers build houses in areas the County knows are not adequately covered by emergency services.
Before development can continue in PGC, our police, fire, and EMS services must be sufficient to handle the needs of the current populace. These are the services that our taxes pay for ($302,759,779 in county income tax in 2001, $312,288,218 in property taxes in 2005, and $457,866,750 in state taxes in 2001), and we have the right to demand that they meet our requirements for reasonable protection.
While we understand that the lure of surcharges is hard to resist, we suggest looking at what the money collected can actually buy. Research shows that, in fact, it will not come close to the sum required to provide necessary improvements we need, especially in light of the enormous surge in proposed / pending new development. Further, since there is no retroactive stipulation, an overwhelming proportion of the development in our area will be exempt from the surcharge, meaning that we suffer from the sprawl, and don't even get the benefit of a surcharge Band-Aid.
CB-56-2005 undermines CB-89-2004 in several ways. First, the bill lengthens acceptable response times. Under CB-89-2004, maximum allowable times in the rural tier are eight minutes for fire engine and basic life support, and ten minutes for advanced life support. Under CB-56-2005, emergency response times have all been extended to ten minutes for the entire county.
Asthma, which is most prevalent among African-American and Hispanic populations -- those that comprise the majority of PGC's citizenry -- is the number one chronic disease in young children, the number one reason that children go to the emergency room each year, and the number one reason that they miss school -- more than 14 million days annually. It is among the top two reasons that adults go to he emergency room yearly. Every year it results in 5,000 deaths. For a person suffering from an asthma attack whose air passages close up, fill with mucus, and are constricted by the muscles surrounding them, 10 minutes without emergency medical services means that they die, according to Mike Tringale, M.S.M., Director of Marketing and Communications for the
Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America
The same holds true for people who suffer heart attacks, strokes, or anaphylactic shock. Every second is crucial to survival; a ten-minute response time is a de facto death sentence.
It is for these reasons that many insurance companies give customers discounts if they live in close proximity to fire and / or police stations.
Worse yet, subdivisions that do not meet even the new, longer adequate public facilities tests will still be able to build by submitting mitigation plans to the County. Guidelines for the mitigation plans have not yet been set, but are referenced in the bill, leaving a huge loophole for backroom deals down the road.
Prince George's County has a lot to offer residents and visitors: parks, historical sites, good food, abundant cultural opportunities, and a largely well-educated and well-heeled population. What we don't have to offer is peace of mind.
There is no other region where this would be a remotely acceptable situation -- why should we have to live in constant, justified fear of violent crime, or other common disasters because no one has the guts to say that development must be put on hold until we have our house in order? "So far this year, a person has been killed in Prince George's almost every other day, on average. The number of homicides has surpassed that in the District�.Compared with this time last year, homicides are up about 57 percent, carjackings are up 42 percent, rapes have increased 25 percent and robberies have more than doubled," according to a May 18 article by Allison Klein in The Washington Post.
The inevitable argument that "development is coming" is stale and bitter by now. We have not elected developers to plot our county's course, we have elected you -- presumably a person with enough courage to stand up to financial pressures and serve your citizenry in a way that makes you proud to hold your head up high and look in the mirror each morning.
Putting developers' "right" to make huge sums of money developing PGC ahead of citizens' rights to a safe existence in the environment that they have chosen and paid for is immoral and despicable, but that is exactly what state lawmakers (the entire PG delegation and Gov. Ehrlich) enabled the PG County Council to do when they passed HB-1129.
It also smacks of racism. Developers, largely white men who live outside of PGC, are ravaging our county to enormous personal profit (which leaves the county with the developers) and leaving an uninformed, largely minority, populace to live in unsafe houses on postage stamp properties in a county with rapidly depleting natural resources, such as fresh air and water, and open space.
Letting developers pay a nominal surcharge and build houses that are proven to be inadequately covered is wrong. However, it is not mandatory.
The notion that the County Council must comply with HB-1129 simply is not true. Council members are elected officials, voted into office by a public who trusted the Council to protect citizens' interests. CB-56-2005 does not do that. It is not only poor planning, it is an immoral proposition.
Please vote to preserve CB-89-2004, and vote against CB-56-2005.
Thank you for your kind consideration.