Rockville, Gaithersburg have own concerns

‘‘It’s the same for Rockville as the rest of the area. It’s about traffic congestion and school overcrowding and loss of green space,” said Rockville Mayor Larry Giammo. ‘‘A lot of these folks, when they campaigned for County Council, talked about the need for the county to be more proactive and assertive in managing growth. And, hopefully, they’ll follow through.”

Giammo is asking the county to adopt tougher standards more in sync with his city’s Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance. The city law imposes a building moratorium if a proposed development exceeds standards, which include school capacity.

‘‘We’re very concerned about school overcrowding,” Giammo said. ‘‘We’ve adopted much more stringent standards within the city of Rockville and think it would be appropriate for the county to do the same.”

Much of Rockville is in moratorium because school capacity has exceeded city standards.

When the city passed the APFO in 2005, Beall Elementary School was measured by county standards at 72 percent capacity, Giammo said. The new city standard puts the school at 119 percent. The county Planning Board’s proposed capacity test would trigger a moratorium in areas when the school capacity rate hits 135 percent, which is the equivalent of the 110 percent standard used in the previous tests.

That leaves the city waiting for the county, which operates the public schools within its borders, to catch up with the standards and provide the additional capacity.

Gaithersburg Mayor Sidney A. Katz said the county’s 135 percent rate is unacceptable: The county’s growth policy should instead link new development to the adequacy of public facilities.

‘‘We believe we need to be much more practical and more reasonable for school capacity,” he said.

What is unreasonable, Katz said, is the Planning Board’s proposal to increase county impact taxes to cover 100 percent of the infrastructure needed in new areas.

He has asked the County Council to phase in impact tax increases to minimize hardship on projects already under way. He also wants an added exemption for Strategic Economic Development Projects, including Gaithersburg’s Olde Towne. And Katz is asking that projects near MARC stations receive a 50 percent credit on the transportation impact tax.

Giammo has pushed for a city impact tax to pay for increased school capacity of county schools within Rockville, but the tax — which would have required a state law change — failed to make it through the legislature.

Regardless of the mayors’ opinions, the Rockville Chamber of Commerce says impact fees targeting local development are an antiquated approach because the county is largely built out, said Erica Leatham, a land-use attorney who leads the chamber’s legislative affairs committee.

‘‘There’s simply not enough development opportunities left to generate the money required,” Leatham said.