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Health & Fitness

On Spinning Grass into Gold.

Most people know the story of Rumplestiltskin, the strange man that could spin straw into gold, and how he helped the poor Miller’s daughter enrich the greedy king that filled three rooms with straw.  The King had such high expectations because the girl’s father had bragged to the King in order to seem important.   The foolish girl offered Rumplestiltskin her most valued possession, her beautiful child, in order satisfy the King's greed.  The story ends up all right in the end because a messenger overhears the man singing in glee that he would soon take the Queen’s daughter, but the morals of the story about greed, bragging, truth, and keeping promises seem to get lost at that point.

Zoning codes set up rules and boundaries for developers, like fairy tales set up morals for life.  Once a local area is filled with the maximum number of houses then those zoning limits are even more critical, since they start to limit supply in the face of continued demand.  This limit causes housing values to increase as buyers are forced to make a choice on living closer in or further out along commuter pathways.  If developers are able to continue to buy more land close-in and get it rezoned that essentially enables them to “spin gold from straw”, since they can now ignore the carefully defined rules and build wherever they want to.  But by increasing the number of new homes “close-in” the home value of existing owners is punished because supply is no longer constricted.  Sellers “further out” are also punished since their new home must be discounted when compared to a new home that is closer in.  Everybody loses.

This is why zoning text rules and neighborhood building plans are so important – they set a legal limit on how much density can be built on an acre of land.  Real Estate values depend heavily on consistency and keeping the rules in place.  The Montgomery County “Town Sector Zoning” limits are well known and 48 years old, and currently limit further new development in Montgomery Village to about 64 houses or slightly more townhouses.  

“Smart Growth” is a concept that allows growth in some sectors while constraining it in other areas, or pairing higher density in one area with open spaces in another.   This allows developers to propose dense neighborhoods paired with open space without making the average overall population density too high.  This was done in Montgomery Village, which is why there are so many nice open spaces.  Eventually though the limit is reached and the growth has to stop as the un-paired open spaces are all used up.  The primary choice facing some communities then is to allow residential use of commercial space – and many find that an acceptable tradeoff to gain a vibrant “downtown area”. 

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However, it would be a dangerous precedent for the Montgomery County Planning Board or County Council to allow building on open properties that were previously paired for dense development, since that would make a mockery of the zoning rules.  Fairness and consistency would lead to more requests.  It would be “game over” for the agricultural reserve and similar open-space land, and facilitate further subdivision actions all over the county.  It could lead to lower property values for (and tax revenue from) existing homes as supply and demand adjusts.

Changing the zoning text to allow 145 acres of open green space in Montgomery Village to become housing is like helping the King get rich by spinning gold and letting the strange visitor steal the beautiful baby.  Homes in Montgomery Village may not be new, but they are in a desirable location and most are surrounded by open green spaces and mature trees.  The village community should not be asked to give up its green grass to be spun into gold and enrich others.  

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