ON BEHALF OF SPRAWLED-OUT ACCOKEEK, A GROUP REGISTERED WITH THE M-NCPPC UNDER CB-12-2003
Dear Council Members:
I am writing on behalf of the members of Sprawled-Out Accokeek, a civic group in Accokeek, Maryland. We firmly oppose CR-78-2005.
Recently several members of our steering committee attended an outstanding seminar given by the Prince George's County Fire Department explaining response times and assignment of territory in the county. We learned as well that the majority of calls answered by the fire department are in response to medical emergencies, not fires. It was an excellent presentation, which we understand has also been made to Councilman Peters.
Given that he has been given the same explicit information we were presented with, we are confused about why he is sponsoring CR-78, which will not only further undermine the efficacy of the fire department, but endanger citizens so that developers can benefit from a miniscule pay-and-go surcharge.
The language of the resolution is so vague that it is impossible to assess these guidelines without knowing the current state of response time statistics. Of course, very few citizens have access to this information, and we fear that most Council members might not have been fortunate enough to receive as exhaustive a briefing from our Fire Department as Mr. Peters did.
One thing that the presentation emphasized was how important it is to understand what response time means. As referred to in CR-78, does it include call-in time, rollout time, and/or travel time? How are these times calculated? Who will be responsible for reporting the times, and based on what data will those reports be made? How frequently will that data be updated? In the context of CR-78, what does fire service area mean? Does the term refer to a fire-box or an area within a specific distance of the first due station or something else altogether?
Not only have police and fire response times recently been relaxed, but the public seems to have been deliberately excluded from participation in shaping the mitigation guidelines that will govern whether or not they can sleep safely in their beds at night. Why was CR-78 not released until today -- the day before it is scheduled to be heard by the Council? Why the rush to pass this resolution? Is Mr. Peters afraid of giving voters a chance to find out that he, a trusted official who is supposed to be acting in their best interests, is actually stabbing them in the back?
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. Poorly written mitigation guidelines hastily voted on in a shadow of secrecy will certainly compound these problems.
Prince George's County citizens have a right to adequate police, fire, and EMS protection. In supporting CR-78, the County Council will be performing a sleight of hand that puts citizens in potentially deadly situations without so much as an F.Y.I.
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. According to the Prince George's County Fire Department, our problem is not particularly a financial one anyway -- it is that we cannot recruit enough people to staff our firehouses. How are the new mitigation guidelines addressing that problem?
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. 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; an elongated 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.
No doubt mitigation guidelines will be a great comfort to us and our families and our friends and neighbors as we struggle to breathe, to stem the bleeding, to pull our children from burning homes while we wait and wait and wait for help coming from a long long way away because areas which the fire department cannot cover, by their own admission and yours, have been allowed to be developed anyway. Young families, grandparents, the children spilling out of our schools, and people you know and love will be hurt by CR-78, as they not only support development in regions proven to be unsafe, but because they pave the way for huge developments that suck safety services away from current residents without providing them anything in return.
We find great hope in the fact that only Mr. Peters sponsored this resolution, and hope this reflects the fact that no other Council member shares his blatant disregard for the lives of his fellow citizens. CR-78-2005 is not only poor planning, it is an immoral proposition. Please vote against it.
Thank you for your kind consideration.
Sincerely,
Kelly Canavan
President, Sprawled-Out Accokeek