User fees floated to close traffic gap

Mitigation areas could be left without restrictions if new options aren’t found, planners say

The meeting is set for 7 to 9 p.m. on June 16 at the department’s headquarters at 8787 Georgia Ave.

New options in administering the growth policy could affect development in four congested areas planners have said need developers to mitigate all additional vehicle trips generated by their projects: Germantown East; Gaithersburg, Montgomery Village⁄Airpark and North Potomac.

Planning Department funding was cut about 3 percent from last fiscal year, excluding mandatory spending increases. The reduction means that three transportation planner positions — two existing vacancies and one new — won’t be filled. As a result, the agency will not be able to carry out some of the studies on traffic mitigation the County Council envisioned when it passed the Annual Growth Policy, said Dan Hardy, acting chief of transportation planning.

He cited three options planners are considering in response to the staffing shortage.

One option would reduce mitigation requirements, perhaps dropping them altogether for smaller projects. ‘‘That’s the easiest way for us to address the problem. We don’t know if the County Council is interested in doing that,” Hardy said.

A second option would impose additional fees on developers to make up for the fiscal shortfall and allow the Planning Department to follow the growth policy as currently conceived, Hardy said. The money would be used to build infrastructure where the need is greatest, he said.

No formal proposal has been drafted, but the amount could range from $2,000 to $20,000 ‘‘based on available information,” Hardy said.

A third response would continue the growth policy at current funding levels, although the shortage of personnel would probably create a backlog that could slow or halt work, Hardy said.

Council President Michael J. Knapp (D-Dist. 2,) defended the cuts as a necessary return to basics for the Planning Department in what he described as a ‘‘tough budget year.” Traffic mitigation is ‘‘a nice thing to do” but the council wanted the department to concentrate on tasks like issuing its findings on master plans and proposed developments to the Planning Board, Knapp said.

Business leaders in the Germantown area greeted the news of possible changes in the growth policy with renewed criticism of its traffic mitigation requirements, which they contend are based on faulty data.

‘‘My first take on it, it’s utter chaos and confusion,” said Brad Chod, a vice president for Minkoff Development, which owns 156 acres it wants to develop east of I-270. ‘‘Obviously, this whole idea of a user fee just really bothers me.”

Chod and Marilyn Balcombe, president and CEO of the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce, said they were concerned that changes in how the policy is administered will complicate efforts to complete revisions in the Germantown Master Plan. The plan has focused heavily on matching land use rules with transportation infrastructure.

Balcombe argued that Germantown has enough roads and mass transit to meet the needs of the extensive commercial development that is expected in the community over the next 10 years.

‘‘My feeling is that in the case of Germantown, I don’t think there is a growth problem,” she said.

Catherine Matthews, director of the county’s Upcounty Regional Services Center, said doubts about the Planning Department’s ability to fulfill the goals of the growth policy are likely to be felt at Father Hurley Boulevard and Route 355, an intersection she said is projected to be ‘‘in terrible shape in the near future.”

‘‘They don’t have the means to verify that, and they won’t be able to do so,” Matthews said of the planners. ‘‘It’s kind of putting property owners and developers in an awkward position of not knowing how to proceed if they want to be considerate of the community.”

Knapp said changes in the growth policy should not delay the master plan. The master plan should control the direction of the growth policy, he added.

‘‘We need to put in place a good, prudent, effective development plan for Germantown, then figure out what transportation is needed to make a good plan work,” he said.