Our county's most important public facilities -- police, fire/EMS, and schools -- are inadequate to serve its populace. Severe overcrowding 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. Simply put, if Prince George's County cannot manage to serve 100 people, it certainly cannot manage to serve 1,000.
Before development can continue in PGC, our police, fire/EMS, and school systems must be sufficient to handle the needs of the current and future populace. These are the services that our taxes pay for, and we have the right to demand that they meet our requirements.
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. Letting developers pay a nominal surcharge and build houses that are proven to be inadequately covered is wrong. Tell the County Council you think so, and that you want CB-89-2004 preserved.
CB-55-2005 (surcharges)
This bill will require developers to pay a $2,000 surcharge per house inside the developed tier (urban areas) and $6,000 surcharge per house in the developing and rural tiers (everywhere else) for all houses approved after July 1, 2005. The county will have the option to waive the $2,000 surcharge. The surcharge money will go into a fund to improve public facilities (police, fire / EMS.)
While this is a good start, we think that it is too little too late. The money collected won't come close to the money needed to provide the improvements we need, especially in light of all this new development. Further, since there is no retroactive stipulation, an overwhelming amount 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 (allowing for building in areas inadequately covered by police, fire, and EMS services)
This bill undermines CB-89-2004 in several ways.
1.
The bill lengthens acceptable response times. Under CB-89-2004, maximum allowable times in the rural tier (most, but not all, of Accokeek) are 8 mins. for fire engine, 8 mins. for basic life support, and 10 mins. for advanced life support. Under CB-56-2005, emergency response times have been eliminated. Instead, subdivisions must only be within 7 mnts. driving time from a fire station, regardless of average engine or ambulance response time.
2.
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. So far, no Council member or staffer has been able to explain to me exactly what such a plan might entail, but one can guess that it means a lot of money, presumable to upgrade public facilties.
3.
Guildelines 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.