The COPT Trees, Again

Saturday, March 6, at 9:00 a.m., adjacent to the park at 100 Pasture Side Way, the City of Rockville will brief King Farm residents about the latest tree and landscape plans for the COPT site.

The relationship between KF, the developer COPT, and the City has been rocky at times. A few years ago, the City and COPT jointly told KF residents at a community meeting what was going to happen to the site: ninety percent of the trees were coming down. It had been approved by the City, with no recourse.

Nearby neighbors Carrie Klabunde, Brad Hess, and Lynda Moulton, along with many others, protested to City Hall. Several homeowners said the City had misled them, and cited signs indicating that the City of Rockville was protecting the trees, not planning to destroy them.

City staff met with the KF External Affairs Committee and advised KF to stop fighting it. Not the City's signs, they said, even though a City ordinance was clearly identified on the signs.

But Mayor Giammo and Councilmembers Phyllis Marcuccio, Susan Hoffman, and especially Anne ("Over my dead body") Robbins sought a way to protect more of the trees. City Manager Scott Ullery proposed some changes to forestation ordinances.

External Affairs and the Board of Trustees challenged the City's original planning process. The City Attorney agreed on several points and COPT and the City were sent back to the drawing board.

COPT and the City came up with a plan to save about fifty percent of the trees. The plan was presented to KF residents two years ago, with a commitment to get back with more details about screening and landscaping. That is the genesis of the meeting Saturday.

Among the discussion points of the meeting two years ago:

• The goal of the screening should be to thicken the border with plantings of various sizes, including evergreens for winter screening.
• The plantings should be done with minimum damage to the existing forest.
• The plantings should be done in a timely way to screen from construction activites and there should be no construction worker parking on KF streets.

Here's hoping for a good briefing. The trees are of interest to all KF residents; the backdrop they form frames all of King Farm and the retention of a tree border is essential to maintaing property values throughout the whole community.

--Jon Oberg

$now No.....

[By Barry Jackson - cross-posted from http://www.kingfarmbarry.blogspot.com]

Thanks to Rajiv for suggesting this venue and creating this and the google group. Although neither are official channels of King Farm, I think it is always a nice idea to have various ways to discuss issues with folks and learn about the different opinions of residents.

I wanted to share a topic that is going to take up much of our time in the short-term and that I believe should be THE issue that we must demand candidates for Trustee and President discuss.

I learned of the numbers the other day and informed the other members of the Board of Trustees on Friday. Unless you've been living in a cave you probably noticed that we have had a historic amount of snow in the month of February. Three storms in the period of about two weeks dropped 40 inches of snow or so on our streets and alleys and sidewalks. As financial agents of King Farm, we've been holding our breath as to what the snow removal would do to our budget. Waiting for the shoe to drop and to find out exactly what this would mean to our budget.

Well the wait is over.

Our Phase I, II and II snow removal numbers are in.

Phase I cost our community around $209,000. Phase II and III together came in around $350,000.

That is a combined total of approximately $550,000. Our entire snow removal budget for 2010 is $200,000. So we're about $350,000 over budget at this moment.

That is the bad news.

Now for the good and for what is next.

We have a large amount of money from surpluses and assessments in our accounts - the unallocated equity. This money, nearly one million dollars, has been the topic of debate in recent years and has allowed King Farm to develop budgets that have not raised HOA fees in the last two budget cycles. In addition, it gave us a nice insurance policy in case of unforeseen expenses. Many communities will not be in this situation and will struggle to pay the snow removal bills when they come due. We won't.

Once the bills are paid, we'll still have an amount of money in the unallocated equity funds that would allow us to weather even another 40 inches of snow.

But we will have to make some decisions in the short-term on cash flow and on other items like the planned renovation of the Community space at Village Center. In addition, the Budget and Finance Committee will be looking at our budget and determining several different courses of action we can take in regard to our overall discretionary items in the budget and whether or not to look at rebuilding some of this unallocated equity.

I know that some people will want to revisit the snow removal contract and investigate whether or not we are getting our money's worth for snow removal. I think that is a relevant conversation but I hope no one will lose sight of the big driver on this. We had one heck of a lot of snow and it had to be removed. And snow removal is expensive.

For me, as someone charged with being responsible to this community I can tell you that I am breathing a sigh of relief that we have our unallocated equity and will not have to cut our budget to the bone or contemplate other measures such as assessments to pay these snow removal bills. I am certain that other communities are not so fortunate.

But there are decisions to be made and our next Board and next President will be responsible for much of them. I think we deserve answers from these candidates about specifics in regard to what they think needs to be done to keep King Farm's fiscal house in order for residents in 2010 as well as five and ten years from now.

[Barry Jackson is the current Chair of the King Farm Citizens Assembly Board of Trustees. He can be reached at dbjackso1@gmail.com]