{"id":12265,"date":"2020-02-04T14:24:10","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T19:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=12265"},"modified":"2020-02-04T14:24:18","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T19:24:18","slug":"mocos-moratorium-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=12265","title":{"rendered":"MoCo\u2019s Moratorium Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Montgomery County government is currently plagued by a $100 million operating budget shortfall<\/a> and a shrinking capital budget<\/a>.\u00a0 So what is the county doing to revitalize its economy and earn more revenue?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Potentially, imposing more moratoriums on housing\nconstruction!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

County development rules<\/a> require moratoriums on housing construction inside school clusters or individual school service areas when projected public school enrollment accounts for 120% or more of capacity five years into the future.\u00a0 Additionally, elementary schools must be 110 students over capacity and middle schools must be 180 students over capacity to trigger moratoriums.\u00a0 Projects that are already approved are not halted by moratoriums but new project approvals are not granted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, the county imposed moratoriums on four high school clusters and 13 individual elementary school service areas<\/a>.\u00a0 Those areas accounted for roughly 12% of the county<\/a> and included high-profile markets in Downtown Silver Spring and North Bethesda, thereby directly thwarting the county\u2019s transit-oriented development strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem with stopping residential development is that school impact taxes<\/a> collected from new units can be a major source of revenue for school construction.\u00a0 As recently as the FY15-20 amended capital budget, school impact taxes accounted for 15% of MCPS\u2019s school construction budget<\/a>.\u00a0 Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a memo to the Montgomery County Planning Board<\/a>, planning staff noted that the county executive\u2019s new recommended FY21-26 capital budget underfunds MCPS\u2019s construction request by $61 million in FY21, $93 million in FY22, $93 million in FY23 and $57 million in FY24.\u00a0 One of the biggest reasons for the underfunding is that school impact tax receipts have fallen by more than half since FY14<\/a>.\u00a0 The planning staff indicates that if the underfunding results in delayed projects, nine elementary school service areas (Bethesda, Clarksburg, JoAnn Leleck, Rachel Carson, Strawberry Knoll, Summit Hall, McNair, Page and Burnt Mills), one middle school service area (Parkland) and seven high school clusters (Quince Orchard, Richard Montgomery, Albert Einstein, Montgomery Blair, Blake, Northwood, Walter Johnson) may be at risk of moratoriums.\u00a0 For the Blake, Blair, Einstein and Walter Johnson clusters, this would be the second straight year of moratorium, threatening projects in North Bethesda and Downtown Silver Spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cruel fact here is that reducing residential construction has historically had little if any impact on MCPS enrollment increases.\u00a0 The chart below shows MCPS enrollment (red line and left axis) and residential units permitted in Montgomery County (blue line and right axis) from 1994 through 2018.\u00a0 MCPS enrollment comes from the county executive\u2019s recommended budget<\/a> while permitted units comes from the U.S. Census Bureau<\/a>.\u00a0 Over this 24 year period, housing construction has been falling while MCPS enrollment has been rising.\u00a0 The contrast between the two trends has been most pronounced in recent years.\u00a0 Housing units permitted has fallen from 3,981 in 2012 to 1,947 in 2018 while MCPS enrollment has grown from 146,497 to 161,470.\u00a0 It defies logic to blame school crowding on housing construction when homebuilding is in an era of decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And so here is the effect of MoCo\u2019s moratorium policy.\u00a0 Housing construction drops, causing school impact tax payments to plummet<\/a> and depriving school construction of needed funding.\u00a0 The county reacts by delaying school projects, triggering moratoriums.\u00a0 That causes housing construction to decline further and the cycle continues.\u00a0 None of this helps more schools get built but it definitely constrains housing supply, thereby driving up home prices and making the county even more unaffordable to live in than it already is.\u00a0 Another effect is that it makes the county radioactive to the real estate and investment communities, thereby pushing them into competing jurisdictions.\u00a0 It\u2019s no wonder that Prince George\u2019s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks is celebrating<\/a> her county\u2019s passing of Montgomery County in job creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using residential moratoriums to prevent school crowding\nis like treating lung cancer by amputating the patient\u2019s legs.  The treatment does nothing to solve the\noriginal problem but it definitely causes new problems to arise!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you wanted to stop economic growth and make it harder\nfor people to live here, it would be difficult to devise something more attuned\nto such goals than MoCo\u2019s insane moratorium policy.  The county must bring it to an end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. The Montgomery County government is currently plagued by a $100 million operating budget shortfall and a shrinking capital budget.\u00a0 So what is the county doing to revitalize its economy and earn more revenue? Potentially, imposing more moratoriums on housing construction! County development rules require moratoriums on housing construction inside school clusters or … Continue reading MoCo\u2019s Moratorium Madness<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,33,338,32],"tags":[1545,1368,2085,1475,1904],"class_list":["post-12265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-budget","category-economy","category-mcps","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-budget","tag-housing","tag-mcps","tag-school-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-3bP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12267,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12265\/revisions\/12267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}