Council Moves to Relax Schools Test for New Development

The public will have a chance to weigh in on proposed changes to the city's school capacity test on January 3.

The Mayor and Council sponsored a public hearing at their regular meeting on Monday night.

Right now, the city's adequate public facilities ordinance limits residential development if a nearby school is at 110 percent of recommended capacity or higher. This is much stricter than the County's APFO, which doesn't halt development until a whole cluster reaches an average of 120 percent.

Gaithersburg modeled their schools test after Rockville's law in 2007. As a result of the regulation, since several schools are at or above the 110 percent level, more than 60 percent of Gaithersburg is in a residential development moratorium.

But earlier this year Councilman Jud Ashman suggested tweaking the ordinance to allow more flexibility for the Council to grant exceptions.

The change, he proposed, would be to take one word—"and"—and change it to "or." The proposed development would then have to meet one of three requirements for an exception, rather than all three.

But last night, Ashman went a step further and said he didn't even feel it was necessary to list the second requirement.

"For me, I don't need number two to be there," he said, referring to a requirement that the proposed project be "compatible with existing and proposed adjacent land uses."

He said all projects should meet that requirement.

The council added language to the proposed ammendment that says any project must meet requirement two, plus either one or three.

The changes would make it easier for the City Council to grant a waiver to a development project that would increase the number of students at an over-capacity school.

However the current ordinance doesn't allow any new proposal to be heard if the school is at or above 120 percent, even if the new development would lessen the burden on that school.