The Montgomery County Planning Board voted to put 12% of the county’s land under a moratorium that will block new residential building for one year. The moratorium takes effect July 1.
The move comes as part of the county’s annual review of growth patterns and something known as the “adequate public facility.” This bars new residential building when schools are at 120% of capacity.
Currently, 13 schools feeding into four of the county’s high school “clusters” are at overcapacity. The high school clusters affected by the moratorium are James Hubert Blake, Montgomery Blair, Albert Einstein and Walter Johnson.
There are six other elementary schools in Clarksburg, Gaithersburg and Silver Spring that are well beyond the 120% overcapacity mark, but they won’t come under a moratorium because there are current plans for new school construction that will relieve that crowding.
“These are areas where a lot of activity is happening,” said Jason Sartori, acting division chief for the functional planning and policy division at the Montgomery County Planning Department.
There’s a lot of turnover, where families with school-aged children are moving in, and that’s one of the larger drivers of the growth that the region is seeing in enrollment in these schools, Sartori said.
Under the current county policy, when a moratorium on new residential construction kicks in, “The planning board is not allowed to approve anything that would have a net impact more than three new additional residential units,” Sartori said. That policy is expected to be reviewed next year.
Every four years, the county re-examines its planning policy, Sartori said. Under current practice, moratoria are declared in order to provide a sort of cooling-off period.
The thought has been that by holding back on new residential construction, the county can catch up with growth by adding capacity in schools and other public facilities.
Sartori said the county will take a look at the current development staging policy in 2020.
