Ready or Not - Clinton Market Place North is Coming

This episode focuses on Prince George's County residents' ability to legally challenge zoning decision by the Zoning Hearing Examiner, the District Council (Prince George's County Council hearing zoning matters), and appellate court, which prevented Clinton residents from suing the developers for Clinton Market Place North.  Now expect 136 townhomes, 94 apt/condo and retail at the B.K. Miller intersection.  Contact Councilmen Franklin, Harrison and Hawkins and demand they move the standing bill MC/PG-107-22 (HB0818) out of the General Assembly committee so the full County Delegation can act.

MC/PG 107-23: Prince George’s County – Maryland–Washington Regional District – Standing to Request Review of Zoning and Land Use Decisions – Prince Georges House Delegation

Transcript

Tamara Davis Brown: 0:03

In today's episode, we are continuing to review and go over local Prince George's County House Delegation bills. Today we're going to be speaking to a bill that's very dear to my heart. It is Prince George's County MC slash PGC 107-23. You may remember from a previous episode that I mentioned that some of the bills, the way they are written, is they have the county's name, initials slash the number, and then the year. And in some of the bills, because Prince George's County and Montgomery County share two entities together, the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission as well as Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, which is our commission that not only deals with our parks and rec but also planning and zoning. The bill that we're going to be talking about today is MC slash PG 107-23. And this bill is entitled The Maryland, Washington Regional District Standing to Request Review of Zoning and Land Use Decisions. It's a mouthful, I know. I'm going to break it all down, but just kind of bear with me. Again, one of the reasons that I'm doing this podcast and I like to send out my emails is I try to break down into all the legalese into very layman's terms. And so I'm going to just kind of speak to you a little bit about the whole zoning process and how we can appeal decisions from our planning board, from our district council, and from the zoning hearing examiner. So first of all, you're probably wondering if you're a Prince George's County resident, you hear a lot of the county council and you're going to say, well, who is this district council? Well, the district council is the county council sitting and hearing only zoning matters and planning matters. So again, in Prince George's County, our district council they meet once a week as the district council to hear only planning and zoning matters. They also meet once a week as the uh board of health and deal only with health care issues and health care matters. So that's just how our local county council and how the county charter has set up how the county council meet and what when they hear just certain decisions or hear certain matters, they have a certain title as to who they are officially. So in zoning and landing planning matters, they are the district council. And what's important about this bill is that regular ordinary citizens, whenever it used to be that whenever there was a decision that we just really didn't like, if some zoning change, they want to change something from zoning from residential to commercial, or they want to change it from commercial to industrial, we could always come in as residents and say, no, we don't like this zoning change, we want to change it for these various reasons. And the district council, the planning board, or the zoning hearing examiner would hear us out and they would either agree with us or disagree with us. And if they disagreed with us and we still wanted to pursue it, we could continue to appeal all the way up to the district court, the circuit court in the state of Maryland, even all the way up to the highest court, the Court of Appeals in Maryland. So this bill will allow us to do that. That was taken away from us back in 2013. And so this bill is to restore our right to actually appeal zoning matters. And the reason this bill is important to me, and I I personally support it, it's being introduced by two delegates, delegate uh Mary Lehman and delegate uh Jocelyn Pinamelnik. They both are in the northern part of the county. But I'm gonna give you a very real-time example of persons who live here in Clinton, Maryland, where my family resides, about how we were impacted by a decision to take away our rights to appeal. So I guess it was uh probably about three or four years ago, our county councilperson for District 9 introduced a bill, and this is it may have been actually, it was actually even before that, because now we have a different county council person, but our county councilperson introduced a bill that would change the zoning of a particular piece of property, and I'm gonna give you the exact location because it's a very prominent intersection in what I kind of call our downtown Clinton, because in that area, if you're familiar with Maryland 223, which is known as Piscataway Road or Woodyard Road, we have our starting from the south, our county library. We have a regional medical building, we have our post office, and we also have a local high school, Surrattsville High School, all within less than a mile radius, uh, a mile, not even a mile radius, of just a mile straight along Maryland 223, Woodyard, Piscataway Road. And there's an intersection where Piscataway Road actually turns, once you cross that intersection, you're actually on Woodyard Road. And the intersection intersects between between Old Branch Road and Brandywine Road. Well, um, that intersection has a lot of traffic because you have all of those public facilities that I just mentioned. People are either trying to get to get their kids to the high school, people are trying to come in and out of the library, people are trying to come in and out of the high school, um, the post office or the regional medical facility. And guess what? All of them are on the same exact side of that roadway. And so also along that roadway, right at the intersection, used to be a boys and girls club field where the kids used to play soccer and all types of um boys and girls club. All of that land actually was donated by the Miller family. And so we affectionately call that intersection the BK Miller intersection because cat a corner to that lot is the BK Miller store that sells liquor and meats and and whatever else. I've believe it or not, as long as I've been living in that area, I've never been, I've never patronized that store. Uh, because I thought it was just a liquor store. Um, I didn't realize they sold other items. But anyway, I digress. The area is very congested. It takes several cycles sometimes to actually get through the light because the traffic is so backed up. The traffic is backed up sometimes all the way to the post office is the first, sometimes to the school, depending on if it's a school is coming in or letting out. Um, and it just gets really backed up at that intersection. So they clear the land where the boys and girls club used to be, where they had their soccer and football and and other athletic uh activities on that particular lot. And the proposal is to build townhouses. Yes, I said townhouses, and some commercial development there. As much development that has come to the Clinton area. We have asked so many developers to please help contribute to fix that intersection, to widen the intersection, to do some things that will help move the traffic through that intersection. And when our councilperson uh approved the zoning change to change that particular piece of land to allow for townhouses and commercial development, we actually oppose, and when I say we, it was just some citizens, um, several of us lived in Clinton, a few people did live in um outside of Clinton, but the majority of us lived in Clinton. But because we didn't, by the law at that time, live within a mile radius, or our property didn't actually abut up against that particular piece of property, which it really could not, because the only thing that's next to it really is Surrattsville High School. There used to be a BB and T bank, um, a couple of other commercial properties, and there's a few residential properties behind it along Brandywine Road. It was really hard to find a person who could be aggrieved under the law that lived at abutted or live within a one mile radius of that particular piece of property. But you can imagine if they put townhouses and when they put townhouses on that particular piece of land, that it's gonna exponentially increase the traffic because you know, townhouses is a high, you know, a higher density than a single-family homes that we're used to having here in Clinton. And so the we decided that we wanted to sue, and we got a really good attorney in Maryland to to represent us, and he had an excellent case. It was it was such a good case, but because we did not live within a mile radius of that property, we didn't, we were not property owners that had a budding property, our case was kicked out because we had quote unquote what they call in the legal world, lack of standing. We weren't aggrieved enough because we weren't affected personally. Now, everybody that lives in Clinton, we are affected personally every day when we try to get through that intersection. And so this bill hopes to kind of restore our right to be able to file an appeal against either the district council, again, which is the county council sitting as a district council on zoning and planning matters, or the zoning hearing examiner, or the planning board. And so it gives us, it restores our right to say, hey, we know what we want in our community, we know what works in our community. We live here, we traverse these roads every day, we go to the post office, we go to the local banks, we go to the library, we go to the regional health center, our kids go to Suratzville High School. We know what this traffic looks like to us, and we know that if you build so many high-density townhouses, what it's gonna look like. It's gonna change the nature of our community. We we're accustomed to being a bedroom community, meaning, you know, single-family homes, uh, single families on a single um one acre or more lot. And we're used to having um some semblance of not so much hustle and bustle, but because of all of the development that has come along in Clinton, we are experiencing a lot of traffic along Maryland 223. And quite frankly, me personally, I actually do my best to avoid that intersection. I will go down Temple Hills Road and go around to get to other commercial aspects of Clinton. I will I will do a lot of my shopping because we live further down south in Fort Washington, in Agakique, and other areas just to avoid the traffic there. And that's unfortunate that I'm a Clinton resident, and because the traffic is so bad, I feel like I have to avoid and go shop elsewhere in Brandywine, in Agakeek, in Fort Washington, in order to get my service because I'm just so fed up with that particular intersection. So I'm happy to support this bill. Um, on January 3rd, when we had the big public hearing on all of the Prince George's County local bills, we were able to, um, there were a lot of community leaders, not only from the southern part of the county, um a lot in the central and northern part of the county that also supported this bill. And again, what it does is it restores what we call the taxpayer standing, which is the legal um word for to be able to sue and appeal any decision of our district council or the zoning hearing examiner or to or the planning board. They go through different different steps and stages. I'm not gonna get into that level of detail. However, we think that this is a good bill. It also allows any civic or homeowners association that represents property owners that are affected to also appeal those decisions and any person that is aggrieved by the decision of the district council, again, which is the county council sitting on zoning matters. Thanks for joining me today on this episode of All Politics is local, the Maryland edition, where we hope to inspire and activate a new generation of informed voters to move beyond the ballot box and take action. Remember, all politics is local.