At City Council meeting, resolution to long-running issue for one College Park family

By Connor Mount

Months of complications with local governing bodies over a fence were finally resolved for one College Park family Sept. 23 at a College Park City Council meeting that lasted about 25 minutes.

Last Tuesday marked the end to the appeal period for the approval Yaris Reyes and Heisy Garcia were granted to build a fence in their yard two feet higher than normally acceptable in College Park. The College Park City Council, the Advisory Planning Commission and the Prince George’s County Board of Appeals all had spent time weighing the merits of Reyes and Garcia’s request.

The Prince George’s County Zoning Ordinance limits the height of fences located in the front and side yards of corner lots to four feet. Reyes wished to build six-foot-tall fences in the side yards.

Reyes and Garcia live on 5926 Bryn Mawr Rd, a triangle-shaped property at the corner between Bryn Mawr Road and Edmonston Road. The property’s location creates unique challenges for the property, they said.

Reyes said two family dogs were killed when they ran off the property and onto a bordering street--a car on Edmonston Road struck one dog and the other was hit on Bryn Mawr Road. He also said that within the last year there have been two cases of theft on the property--the family’s storage shed was broken into and a van was stolen.

At an Aug. 12 city council meeting, Garcia testified that “it’s not a secure area, at least where we live because it’s in the corner, the bus stop is right there…people just walk [through the yard] like it’s a free land.”

Garcia, a mother of a two-year-old child, said, “we just want to have a property where we can live and have a secure place for our children and pets.”

The process to obtain approval to construct the fence began May 9 when Reyes submitted an appeal from the county’s zoning ordinance. The APC conducted a hearing on the matter June 5 and voted in favor of the fence variance. Another hearing was held by the College Park City Council Aug. 12, where the case was sent back to the APC to iron out some details. The APC reheard testimonies Sept. 4 and again granted approval for a variance.

Robert Day, a College Park city councilman and former APC member, explained the process of this request and those similar to it.

“We have always looked at each case one-by-one…and we don’t try to compare them to anybody else,” Day said. “But we do look at things in the surrounding area, what they might have. I think this case was a little unique because the guy got it approved by the county before they got it approved by us, when they need our approval to get the county approval.”

Day also provided reasons why the variance was granted.

“It’s in a very unique situation where you can kind of see three sides of the house from the road, so they kind of need to have some kind of protection,” Day said.

Stacey Patterson, the next-door neighbor of Reyes and Garcia, had voiced concerns with the installation of a six-foot-tall fence during a previous hearing, but said he is satisfied with the result of the process.

“If they need a fence, they need a fence, I can’t deny them that,” Patterson said. “I just want to make sure it’s not a makeshift fence and that it respects the property line.”

The fence is to be constructed board-over-board, with the planks offsetting one another in depth. Reyes said he expects to begin building it in mid-October.

Reyes summed up his experience with the local governments.

“It was kind of tiring because it was a long process,” Reyes said. “We’ve had too many courts.”

*image from Google Maps