Carrier Talks Planning at Wheaton Library

Francoise Carrier, Montgomery County Planning Board Chair, spoke to a meeting of the League of Women Voters Monday about the Planning Board’s current priorities, the zoning rewrite and how 

Carrier, who became the Chair in June 2010 after being the county's hearing examiner for nine years, has had a busy beginning to her term, including the worksessions on the Wheaton Sector Plan. 

“We’re expecting our demographic growth to continue, so we need a place for those people to live,” Carrier said about the Planning Board’s priorities. “We need to increase our employment base as well."

As a result, the Planning Board is trying to focus growth in areas to close to transit - i.e. the Wheaton Sector Plan. Ultimately, Carrier said, growth near transit would help ease traffic.

“Not everyone who lives near the Metro will take it, but they are more likely to.” 

Adding transit for Montgomery County in beyond Metro is also a priority. 

But she wanted to reassure the audience that the growth did not come at the expense of existing residential, suburban areas.

She noted it was a “particular priority of mine”, to consider quality of life in existing residential communities.

“We have a lot of people who chose in live in a suburban environment,” she said.

As an agency that receives its budget through the county council, Carrier said the budget crunch had affected MNCPPC in some ways, but had not slowed down the review and voting on development applications.

“So far we’ve avoided slowdown in application processing, but only because there’s not as many applications,” Carrier said.

MNCPPC is printing less items on paper and relying on their web presence to inform residents. In addition, the zoning code rewrite is taking longer to get through than they expected.

The rewrite is one of the land-use issue that the League of Women Voters is looking into, in addition to their support of the agriculture reserve, according to land-use chair Margaret Chassion.

The zoning rewrite will likely not reach the County Council until 2012. Carrier said they were trying to avoid a lot of “substantive changes” made through the rewrite, but would likely be moving towards zoning commercial areas more for mixed use. Eventually, a document will be produced with every line change from the previous code.

Carrier was asked by a League member why the County was promoting development and the necessary infrastructure if they are having trouble paying for the existing infrastructure and cutting services.

“There is a fine line to promoting development to improve services, and having too much development that decreases the quality of life,” she answered. “It is really a very purposeful plan to preserve and improve quality of life.