March 11, 2023 • 14 mins
This episode focuses on Prince George's County residents' ability to legally challenge zoning decision by the Zoning Hearing Examiner, the District Council (Prince George's County Council hearing zoning matters), and appellate court, which prevented Clinton residents from suing the developers for Clinton Market Place North. Now expect 136 townhomes, 94 apt/condo and retail at the B.K. Miller intersection. Contact Councilmen Franklin, Harrison and Hawkins and demand they move the standing bill MC/PG-107-22 (HB0818) out of the General Assembly committee so the full County Delegation can act.
MC/PG 107-23: Prince George’s County – Maryland–Washington Regional District – Standing to Request Review of Zoning and Land Use Decisions – Prince Georges House Delegation
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tamara Davis Brown (00:03):
In today's episode, we are continuing to
review and go over local PrinceGeorge's County House Delegation
bills.
Today we're going to bespeaking to a bill that's very
dear to my heart.
It is Prince George's County MCslash PGC 107-23.
(00:24):
You may remember from aprevious episode that I
mentioned that some of thebills, the way they are written,
is they have the county's name,initials slash the number, and
then the year.
And in some of the bills,because Prince George's County
and Montgomery County share twoentities together, the
(00:45):
Washington Suburban SanitaryCommission as well as Maryland
National Capital Park andPlanning Commission, which is
our commission that not onlydeals with our parks and rec but
also planning and zoning.
The bill that we're going to betalking about today is MC slash
PG 107-23.
And this bill is entitled TheMaryland, Washington Regional
(01:08):
District Standing to RequestReview of Zoning and Land Use
Decisions.
It's a mouthful, I know.
I'm going to break it all down,but just kind of bear with me.
Again, one of the reasons thatI'm doing this podcast and I
(01:58):
like to send out my emails is Itry to break down into all the
legalese into very layman'sterms.
And so I'm going to just kindof speak to you a little bit
about the whole zoning processand how we can appeal decisions
from our planning board, fromour district council, and from
(02:18):
the zoning hearing examiner.
So first of all, you'reprobably wondering if you're a
Prince George's County resident,you hear a lot of the county
council and you're going to say,well, who is this district
council?
Well, the district council isthe county council sitting and
hearing only zoning matters andplanning matters.
So again, in Prince George'sCounty, our district council
(02:41):
they meet once a week as thedistrict council to hear only
planning and zoning matters.
They also meet once a week asthe uh board of health and deal
only with health care issues andhealth care matters.
So that's just how our localcounty council and how the
(03:04):
county charter has set up howthe county council meet and what
when they hear just certaindecisions or hear certain
matters, they have a certaintitle as to who they are
officially.
So in zoning and landingplanning matters, they are the
district council.
And what's important about thisbill is that regular ordinary
(03:28):
citizens, whenever it used to bethat whenever there was a
decision that we just reallydidn't like, if some zoning
change, they want to changesomething from zoning from
residential to commercial, orthey want to change it from
commercial to industrial, wecould always come in as
residents and say, no, we don'tlike this zoning change, we want
(03:48):
to change it for these variousreasons.
And the district council, theplanning board, or the zoning
hearing examiner would hear usout and they would either agree
with us or disagree with us.
And if they disagreed with usand we still wanted to pursue
it, we could continue to appealall the way up to the district
(04:09):
court, the circuit court in thestate of Maryland, even all the
way up to the highest court, theCourt of Appeals in Maryland.
So this bill will allow us todo that.
That was taken away from usback in 2013.
And so this bill is to restoreour right to actually appeal
(04:31):
zoning matters.
And the reason this bill isimportant to me, and I I
personally support it, it'sbeing introduced by two
delegates, delegate uh MaryLehman and delegate uh Jocelyn
Pinamelnik.
They both are in the northernpart of the county.
But I'm gonna give you a veryreal-time example of persons who
(04:55):
live here in Clinton, Maryland,where my family resides, about
how we were impacted by adecision to take away our rights
to appeal.
So I guess it was uh probablyabout three or four years ago,
our county councilperson forDistrict 9 introduced a bill,
and this is it may have beenactually, it was actually even
(05:18):
before that, because now we havea different county council
person, but our countycouncilperson introduced a bill
that would change the zoning ofa particular piece of property,
and I'm gonna give you the exactlocation because it's a very
prominent intersection in what Ikind of call our downtown
Clinton, because in that area,if you're familiar with Maryland
(05:43):
223, which is known asPiscataway Road or Woodyard
Road, we have our starting fromthe south, our county library.
We have a regional medicalbuilding, we have our post
office, and we also have a localhigh school, Surrattsville High
(06:03):
School, all within less than amile radius, uh, a mile, not
even a mile radius, of just amile straight along Maryland
223, Woodyard, Piscataway Road.
And there's an intersectionwhere Piscataway Road actually
turns, once you cross thatintersection, you're actually on
Woodyard Road.
(06:24):
And the intersection intersectsbetween between Old Branch Road
and Brandywine Road.
Well, um, that intersection hasa lot of traffic because you
have all of those publicfacilities that I just
mentioned.
People are either trying to getto get their kids to the high
school, people are trying tocome in and out of the library,
(06:46):
people are trying to come in andout of the high school, um, the
post office or the regionalmedical facility.
And guess what?
All of them are on the sameexact side of that roadway.
And so also along that roadway,right at the intersection, used
to be a boys and girls clubfield where the kids used to
play soccer and all types of umboys and girls club.
(07:09):
All of that land actually wasdonated by the Miller family.
And so we affectionately callthat intersection the BK Miller
intersection because cat acorner to that lot is the BK
Miller store that sells liquorand meats and and whatever else.
I've believe it or not, as longas I've been living in that
(07:30):
area, I've never been, I'venever patronized that store.
Uh, because I thought it wasjust a liquor store.
Um, I didn't realize they soldother items.
But anyway, I digress.
The area is very congested.
It takes several cyclessometimes to actually get
through the light because thetraffic is so backed up.
(07:52):
The traffic is backed upsometimes all the way to the
post office is the first,sometimes to the school,
depending on if it's a school iscoming in or letting out.
Um, and it just gets reallybacked up at that intersection.
So they clear the land wherethe boys and girls club used to
be, where they had their soccerand football and and other
(08:14):
athletic uh activities on thatparticular lot.
And the proposal is to buildtownhouses.
Yes, I said townhouses, andsome commercial development
there.
As much development that hascome to the Clinton area.
We have asked so manydevelopers to please help
(08:36):
contribute to fix thatintersection, to widen the
intersection, to do some thingsthat will help move the traffic
through that intersection.
And when our councilperson uhapproved the zoning change to
change that particular piece ofland to allow for townhouses and
(08:56):
commercial development, weactually oppose, and when I say
we, it was just some citizens,um, several of us lived in
Clinton, a few people did livein um outside of Clinton, but
the majority of us lived inClinton.
But because we didn't, by thelaw at that time, live within a
mile radius, or our propertydidn't actually abut up against
(09:19):
that particular piece ofproperty, which it really could
not, because the only thingthat's next to it really is
Surrattsville High School.
There used to be a BB and Tbank, um, a couple of other
commercial properties, andthere's a few residential
properties behind it alongBrandywine Road.
It was really hard to find aperson who could be aggrieved
(09:43):
under the law that lived atabutted or live within a one
mile radius of that particularpiece of property.
But you can imagine if they puttownhouses and when they put
townhouses on that particularpiece of land, that it's gonna
exponentially increase thetraffic because you know,
townhouses is a high, you know,a higher density than a
(10:06):
single-family homes that we'reused to having here in Clinton.
And so the we decided that wewanted to sue, and we got a
really good attorney in Marylandto to represent us, and he had
an excellent case.
It was it was such a good case,but because we did not live
within a mile radius of thatproperty, we didn't, we were not
(10:29):
property owners that had abudding property, our case was
kicked out because we had quoteunquote what they call in the
legal world, lack of standing.
We weren't aggrieved enoughbecause we weren't affected
personally.
Now, everybody that lives inClinton, we are affected
personally every day when we tryto get through that
intersection.
(10:49):
And so this bill hopes to kindof restore our right to be able
to file an appeal against eitherthe district council, again,
which is the county councilsitting as a district council on
zoning and planning matters, orthe zoning hearing examiner, or
(11:11):
the planning board.
And so it gives us, it restoresour right to say, hey, we know
what we want in our community,we know what works in our
community.
We live here, we traverse theseroads every day, we go to the
post office, we go to the localbanks, we go to the library, we
go to the regional healthcenter, our kids go to
Suratzville High School.
(11:33):
We know what this traffic lookslike to us, and we know that if
you build so many high-densitytownhouses, what it's gonna look
like.
It's gonna change the nature ofour community.
We we're accustomed to being abedroom community, meaning, you
know, single-family homes, uh,single families on a single um
(11:55):
one acre or more lot.
And we're used to having umsome semblance of not so much
hustle and bustle, but becauseof all of the development that
has come along in Clinton, weare experiencing a lot of
traffic along Maryland 223.
And quite frankly, mepersonally, I actually do my
(12:18):
best to avoid that intersection.
I will go down Temple HillsRoad and go around to get to
other commercial aspects ofClinton.
I will I will do a lot of myshopping because we live further
down south in Fort Washington,in Agakique, and other areas
just to avoid the traffic there.
(12:39):
And that's unfortunate that I'ma Clinton resident, and because
the traffic is so bad, I feellike I have to avoid and go shop
elsewhere in Brandywine, inAgakeek, in Fort Washington, in
order to get my service becauseI'm just so fed up with that
particular intersection.
So I'm happy to support thisbill.
(13:01):
Um, on January 3rd, when we hadthe big public hearing on all
of the Prince George's Countylocal bills, we were able to,
um, there were a lot ofcommunity leaders, not only from
the southern part of thecounty, um a lot in the central
and northern part of the countythat also supported this bill.
And again, what it does is itrestores what we call the
(13:24):
taxpayer standing, which is thelegal um word for to be able to
sue and appeal any decision ofour district council or the
zoning hearing examiner or to orthe planning board.
They go through differentdifferent steps and stages.
I'm not gonna get into thatlevel of detail.
(13:46):
However, we think that this isa good bill.
It also allows any civic orhomeowners association that
represents property owners thatare affected to also appeal
those decisions and any personthat is aggrieved by the
decision of the districtcouncil, again, which is the
county council sitting on zoningmatters.
(14:08):
Thanks for joining me today onthis episode of All Politics is
local, the Maryland edition,where we hope to inspire and
activate a new generation ofinformed voters to move beyond
the ballot box and take action.
Remember, all politics islocal.
In today's episode, we are continuing to
review and go over local PrinceGeorge's County House Delegation
bills.
Today we're going to bespeaking to a bill that's very
dear to my heart.
It is Prince George's County MCslash PGC 107-23.
(00:24):
You may remember from aprevious episode that I
mentioned that some of thebills, the way they are written,
is they have the county's name,initials slash the number, and
then the year.
And in some of the bills,because Prince George's County
and Montgomery County share twoentities together, the
(00:45):
Washington Suburban SanitaryCommission as well as Maryland
National Capital Park andPlanning Commission, which is
our commission that not onlydeals with our parks and rec but
also planning and zoning.
The bill that we're going to betalking about today is MC slash
PG 107-23.
And this bill is entitled TheMaryland, Washington Regional
(01:08):
District Standing to RequestReview of Zoning and Land Use
Decisions.
It's a mouthful, I know.
I'm going to break it all down,but just kind of bear with me.
Again, one of the reasons thatI'm doing this podcast and I
(01:58):
like to send out my emails is Itry to break down into all the
legalese into very layman'sterms.
And so I'm going to just kindof speak to you a little bit
about the whole zoning processand how we can appeal decisions
from our planning board, fromour district council, and from
(02:18):
the zoning hearing examiner.
So first of all, you'reprobably wondering if you're a
Prince George's County resident,you hear a lot of the county
council and you're going to say,well, who is this district
council?
Well, the district council isthe county council sitting and
hearing only zoning matters andplanning matters.
So again, in Prince George'sCounty, our district council
(02:41):
they meet once a week as thedistrict council to hear only
planning and zoning matters.
They also meet once a week asthe uh board of health and deal
only with health care issues andhealth care matters.
So that's just how our localcounty council and how the
(03:04):
county charter has set up howthe county council meet and what
when they hear just certaindecisions or hear certain
matters, they have a certaintitle as to who they are
officially.
So in zoning and landingplanning matters, they are the
district council.
And what's important about thisbill is that regular ordinary
(03:28):
citizens, whenever it used to bethat whenever there was a
decision that we just reallydidn't like, if some zoning
change, they want to changesomething from zoning from
residential to commercial, orthey want to change it from
commercial to industrial, wecould always come in as
residents and say, no, we don'tlike this zoning change, we want
(03:48):
to change it for these variousreasons.
And the district council, theplanning board, or the zoning
hearing examiner would hear usout and they would either agree
with us or disagree with us.
And if they disagreed with usand we still wanted to pursue
it, we could continue to appealall the way up to the district
(04:09):
court, the circuit court in thestate of Maryland, even all the
way up to the highest court, theCourt of Appeals in Maryland.
So this bill will allow us todo that.
That was taken away from usback in 2013.
And so this bill is to restoreour right to actually appeal
(04:31):
zoning matters.
And the reason this bill isimportant to me, and I I
personally support it, it'sbeing introduced by two
delegates, delegate uh MaryLehman and delegate uh Jocelyn
Pinamelnik.
They both are in the northernpart of the county.
But I'm gonna give you a veryreal-time example of persons who
(04:55):
live here in Clinton, Maryland,where my family resides, about
how we were impacted by adecision to take away our rights
to appeal.
So I guess it was uh probablyabout three or four years ago,
our county councilperson forDistrict 9 introduced a bill,
and this is it may have beenactually, it was actually even
(05:18):
before that, because now we havea different county council
person, but our countycouncilperson introduced a bill
that would change the zoning ofa particular piece of property,
and I'm gonna give you the exactlocation because it's a very
prominent intersection in what Ikind of call our downtown
Clinton, because in that area,if you're familiar with Maryland
(05:43):
223, which is known asPiscataway Road or Woodyard
Road, we have our starting fromthe south, our county library.
We have a regional medicalbuilding, we have our post
office, and we also have a localhigh school, Surrattsville High
(06:03):
School, all within less than amile radius, uh, a mile, not
even a mile radius, of just amile straight along Maryland
223, Woodyard, Piscataway Road.
And there's an intersectionwhere Piscataway Road actually
turns, once you cross thatintersection, you're actually on
Woodyard Road.
(06:24):
And the intersection intersectsbetween between Old Branch Road
and Brandywine Road.
Well, um, that intersection hasa lot of traffic because you
have all of those publicfacilities that I just
mentioned.
People are either trying to getto get their kids to the high
school, people are trying tocome in and out of the library,
(06:46):
people are trying to come in andout of the high school, um, the
post office or the regionalmedical facility.
And guess what?
All of them are on the sameexact side of that roadway.
And so also along that roadway,right at the intersection, used
to be a boys and girls clubfield where the kids used to
play soccer and all types of umboys and girls club.
(07:09):
All of that land actually wasdonated by the Miller family.
And so we affectionately callthat intersection the BK Miller
intersection because cat acorner to that lot is the BK
Miller store that sells liquorand meats and and whatever else.
I've believe it or not, as longas I've been living in that
(07:30):
area, I've never been, I'venever patronized that store.
Uh, because I thought it wasjust a liquor store.
Um, I didn't realize they soldother items.
But anyway, I digress.
The area is very congested.
It takes several cyclessometimes to actually get
through the light because thetraffic is so backed up.
(07:52):
The traffic is backed upsometimes all the way to the
post office is the first,sometimes to the school,
depending on if it's a school iscoming in or letting out.
Um, and it just gets reallybacked up at that intersection.
So they clear the land wherethe boys and girls club used to
be, where they had their soccerand football and and other
(08:14):
athletic uh activities on thatparticular lot.
And the proposal is to buildtownhouses.
Yes, I said townhouses, andsome commercial development
there.
As much development that hascome to the Clinton area.
We have asked so manydevelopers to please help
(08:36):
contribute to fix thatintersection, to widen the
intersection, to do some thingsthat will help move the traffic
through that intersection.
And when our councilperson uhapproved the zoning change to
change that particular piece ofland to allow for townhouses and
(08:56):
commercial development, weactually oppose, and when I say
we, it was just some citizens,um, several of us lived in
Clinton, a few people did livein um outside of Clinton, but
the majority of us lived inClinton.
But because we didn't, by thelaw at that time, live within a
mile radius, or our propertydidn't actually abut up against
(09:19):
that particular piece ofproperty, which it really could
not, because the only thingthat's next to it really is
Surrattsville High School.
There used to be a BB and Tbank, um, a couple of other
commercial properties, andthere's a few residential
properties behind it alongBrandywine Road.
It was really hard to find aperson who could be aggrieved
(09:43):
under the law that lived atabutted or live within a one
mile radius of that particularpiece of property.
But you can imagine if they puttownhouses and when they put
townhouses on that particularpiece of land, that it's gonna
exponentially increase thetraffic because you know,
townhouses is a high, you know,a higher density than a
(10:06):
single-family homes that we'reused to having here in Clinton.
And so the we decided that wewanted to sue, and we got a
really good attorney in Marylandto to represent us, and he had
an excellent case.
It was it was such a good case,but because we did not live
within a mile radius of thatproperty, we didn't, we were not
(10:29):
property owners that had abudding property, our case was
kicked out because we had quoteunquote what they call in the
legal world, lack of standing.
We weren't aggrieved enoughbecause we weren't affected
personally.
Now, everybody that lives inClinton, we are affected
personally every day when we tryto get through that
intersection.
(10:49):
And so this bill hopes to kindof restore our right to be able
to file an appeal against eitherthe district council, again,
which is the county councilsitting as a district council on
zoning and planning matters, orthe zoning hearing examiner, or
(11:11):
the planning board.
And so it gives us, it restoresour right to say, hey, we know
what we want in our community,we know what works in our
community.
We live here, we traverse theseroads every day, we go to the
post office, we go to the localbanks, we go to the library, we
go to the regional healthcenter, our kids go to
Suratzville High School.
(11:33):
We know what this traffic lookslike to us, and we know that if
you build so many high-densitytownhouses, what it's gonna look
like.
It's gonna change the nature ofour community.
We we're accustomed to being abedroom community, meaning, you
know, single-family homes, uh,single families on a single um
(11:55):
one acre or more lot.
And we're used to having umsome semblance of not so much
hustle and bustle, but becauseof all of the development that
has come along in Clinton, weare experiencing a lot of
traffic along Maryland 223.
And quite frankly, mepersonally, I actually do my
(12:18):
best to avoid that intersection.
I will go down Temple HillsRoad and go around to get to
other commercial aspects ofClinton.
I will I will do a lot of myshopping because we live further
down south in Fort Washington,in Agakique, and other areas
just to avoid the traffic there.
(12:39):
And that's unfortunate that I'ma Clinton resident, and because
the traffic is so bad, I feellike I have to avoid and go shop
elsewhere in Brandywine, inAgakeek, in Fort Washington, in
order to get my service becauseI'm just so fed up with that
particular intersection.
So I'm happy to support thisbill.
(13:01):
Um, on January 3rd, when we hadthe big public hearing on all
of the Prince George's Countylocal bills, we were able to,
um, there were a lot ofcommunity leaders, not only from
the southern part of thecounty, um a lot in the central
and northern part of the countythat also supported this bill.
And again, what it does is itrestores what we call the
(13:24):
taxpayer standing, which is thelegal um word for to be able to
sue and appeal any decision ofour district council or the
zoning hearing examiner or to orthe planning board.
They go through differentdifferent steps and stages.
I'm not gonna get into thatlevel of detail.
(13:46):
However, we think that this isa good bill.
It also allows any civic orhomeowners association that
represents property owners thatare affected to also appeal
those decisions and any personthat is aggrieved by the
decision of the districtcouncil, again, which is the
county council sitting on zoningmatters.
(14:08):
Thanks for joining me today onthis episode of All Politics is
local, the Maryland edition,where we hope to inspire and
activate a new generation ofinformed voters to move beyond
the ballot box and take action.
Remember, all politics islocal.
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