"Smart Growth Initiative"
In December, 2007, Mr. Leggett announced what he then called his "Property Use Initiative," a grand plan to spend half a billion dollars to purchase land and build facilities to relocate multiple existing County government operations. In order to more effectively market his plan, Mr. Leggett later renamed it the "Smart Growth Initiative."
The plan, which is ongoing, involves spending hundreds of millions of public dollars on land and buildings to "save" the County some "estimated" cost of renting office space at some indeterminate point in the future. It is an optional program which, even in the best of fiscal times, offers questionable benefits.
Yet Mr. Leggett, with the help of the County Council, has continued to fund the Smart Growth Initiative with blinders on. Even as the economy continued to crash, and the County budget deficit mushroomed, the spending continued. Mr. Leggett's stubborn refusal to reconsider his course of action -- and the County Council's continued support -- has compromised the County in numerous ways.
Mr. Leggett's plan is not "smart," and it does not foster "growth."
It is not "smart growth" to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to shuffle County employees from one place to another at a time when the County cannot even afford to pay them. It is cold comfort to employees whose COLAs, step increases and retirement benefits have been taken or threatened, and who are facing layoffs and furloughs, that they may one day work in more elegant office space.
Nor is it "smart growth" to issue hundreds of millions of dollars in "interim" financing based on expectations that the County will be able to recoup some of its investment by selling land profitably at a time when the real estate markets are in turmoil. Interim financing could become permanent debt at a time the County can least afford it.
True "smart growth" would not place a County office building in an isolated office park in Gaithersburg, as Mr. Leggett has proposed to do with the County's "public safety headquarters." "Smart growth" principles would be much better served by placing such a facility in the heart of Wheaton, where it would be served by Metro and major roadways, while bringing a much needed stable employment base to that redeveloping community.
In order to fund the Smart Growth Initiative, Mr. Leggett and the Council diverted funds from other more important projects. They used more than $53 million that had been set aside for transportation projects to fund a new liquor warehouse for the County's Department of Liquor Control instead. They delayed numerous school and public safety projects in order to free up bond capacity for the Smart Growth Initiative. They incurred tens of millions of dollars in annual debt service payments to support the money they borrowed. And they did all this while the County's budget deficit grew from $200 million to $500 million to $700 million and, finally, to $1 billion.
To make matters worse, in the process of relocating County operations, Mr. Leggett and the Council showed remarkably little regard for the communities on the receiving end of those facilities. Forcing a residential community to accept the presence of "burn buildings" and a race track (as on the Webb Tract), or forcing a bucolic historic community to accept a truck maintenance yard (as on the Casey land next to Washington Grove), demonstrates a lack of regard for the quality of life of existing residents -- an attitude later duplicated in the treatment of communities surrounding Science City.
As County Executive I will reverse course on the Smart Growth Initiative plans that are incompatible with the surrounding communities.
