Testimony For Hearing Before Montgomery County Planning Board on Forest Conservation Plan for Seven Locks ES Replacement December 22, 2005

I'm Wayne Goldstein, member of the Civic Federation Planning and Land Use, Education and Environment Committees, here to comment on this last chance of objective parties to stop this misbegotten scheme of the Board of Education and the School Superintendent. What began for them as a way to curry the favor of a County Executive and a County Council determined to pretend that they wanted to produce much more affordable housing has instead only produced a new school that will cost far, far more than enlarging and modernizing the existing school.

The cost that should make everyone realize that this new school would be considered out of reach by reasonable people is the cost of its massive underground stormwater retention facility. My sincerest compliments to MNCPPC planning and environmental staff and to DPS for insisting that the rules are the rules and that we must stop waiving away such desperately needed environmental infrastructure which is as important as our education and transportation infrastructure.

Unfortunately, this massive stormwater facility is still an inadequate substitute for the protection provided by the 9 acres of vigorous forest that will be clear-cut to make way for this unwanted and unneeded school. This facility doesn't make a direct connection to the stream because the additional tree destruction far exceeds the benefit of doing so. If this school is somehow built despite massive and unavoidable cost overruns and massive environmental damage, and MCPS tries to come back for such an extension in the future, it should be treated as an amendment to this plan.

As an example of the law of unintended consequences, one of the two specimen tree on the property will be lost in order to widen the road to make it safer for school children. A fraction of this forest will supposedly be replaced somewhere, evidence of a forest conservation law desperately in need of being changed to a law that requires an increase in forest cover, rather than slowing the rate of loss, as typified by what will happen on this site. Although more forest was lost when the 42-acre Kay Tract was almost completely clear-cut, with little of it replaced elsewhere, at least most people agreed that this was the school that was needed.

According to the School Superintendent's FY07 CIP book, the enrollment at this replacement Seven Locks in 2011 will be 260 students, just 9 students more than this year at the original Seven Locks, which has a capacity of 274. The entire cluster shows elementary school enrollment exceeding capacity by 140 students in 2011, a need that could be easily met by the original planned addition to the original Seven Locks. While the Planning Board in the past has been unwilling to act on its independent findings of such matters as MPDU buyouts, it seems to me that the relentless finger-pointing at this body by other county government agencies who can no longer conceal their own dirty laundry should embolden this Board to speak and act on the truth about others as a logical extension of its dedication to reform and its continuing courage to tell the truth about itself.

I don't believe I wander too far afield when I mention the ongoing investigative journalism of the Washington Examiner into the repeated failure of MCPS officials to promptly and fully report school violence and their willingness to retaliate against those who do so. Is it too great a leap to connect the misstatement of facts about the new Seven Locks with the missstatement of facts about school violence? A certain county councilmember who 5 years ago said he could not ask MCPS to ask for the return of Belt Middle School, is now willing to tell Montgomery College to make plans for how it would use the Carver site and to tell MCPS to make plans for handing over the site. He has asked the County Council to give the College $100,000 to start a formal study even before getting any response from MCPS.

If the County Council can directly tell MCPS what it can and cannot do, why can't the Planning Board? You did good the day you voted unanimously to recommend against the sale of Peary High School. Do good today and vote against the Forest Conservation Plan for this unwanted and unneeded replacement school.

Editor's Note for Friends of Sligo Creek and other viewers: Wayne Goldstein is a member of a steering committee formed in late 2005 to explore measures for amending the Montgomery County Forest Conservation Law.