Calvert Road School Presentation Raises Hopes, Hackles

Show of hands, who took the College Park City-University Partnership Child Care survey last May?

The survey was used to determine interest in turning the Calvert Road school, formerly the site of the Friends Community School, into a new child care center.  In past years, the location was also one of the proposed sites for the College Park Academy charter school, though it is unclear how some 700 students would have fit on the site.

Don’t be surprised if you weren’t one of the lucky ones to be surveyed.  During the Council Worksession last week, University of Maryland VP of Administration and Finance (and College Park City-University Partnership member) Carlo Colella revealed that, of the 1200 survey responses the Partnership received regarding the need for child care services, approximately 1000 of them were received from University employees.  For the math-weary, that is about 83%. It was noted that some of those employees also currently live in College Park.

Several College Park city council members seemed to be enthusiastic about the possibility of bringing child care to the site.  Councilmember Stephanie Stullich noted that local residents were pleased about the possibility of the site being rehabilitated and used by children again, and Councilmember Patrick Wojahn seemed aware of a burgeoning demand for day care services.  Councilmember Brennan noted “anecdotal” evidence that child care was in demand here.

Councilmember Fazlul Kabir stressed that the issue needed to be presented to the community civic associations for a full vetting, before the Council started advancing plans for the facility, a view shared by Councilmember Denise Mitchell.

The controversy surrounding this school goes back many years.  The property is owned by the City of College Park, and apparently cannot be sold, which may have been a condition of its transfer to the City.  While many uses have been proposed over the years, the building itself is aging, no longer meets Code standards as an educational or child care facility, and contains asbestos.  In order to rehabilitate the site as a child care facility, Colella unveiled a rough estimate of some $5.8 million dollars, to include the design, demolition, construction, and hazardous material abatement.

When questioned about the cost, and the possibility of charging rent to the child care center provider to cover some of those expenses, Colella indicated that even without paying rent, a child care facility would find themselves in a “break-even” position, at best.  To charge rent, the facility would find itself at the higher-end of the price-spectrum for its services, possibly discouraging University employees from using it, at all.

While the Calvert Road school is a nice building that certainly adds character to the area, the projected cost of the rehabilitation is quite high.  Does it make sense to split the cost of reconstruction of the building with the University, permit them to use the facility rent-free, and allow them to manage a for-profit Child Care center on it, when they could just as easily rehabilitate one of their own properties for that purpose?  It’s difficult to see how this arrangement would benefit residents, who would ultimately be funding at least $3 million in construction costs, but still pay just as much as they would to a private provider, to actually use the facility.  And without a returning revenue stream from that use, it would be little more than expensive window-dressing for the neighborhood.

Instead, would it make more sense to rehabilitate the building for use as a school again, and rent it at an eventual profit to a future county charter school?  In that case, the cost to City taxpayers would skyrocket to the full $6 million, but the possibility would exist to recoup most of that investment, over time.  Other options could include using it as extra City office space (as it is, currently), converting it into a wedding chapel/reception hall, using it as an indoor, bazaar-style market stall space, or as a community center.

How about you?  What would you like to see done with the Calvert Road School property?  How should it be paid for?

Executive Baker’s Blind Ambition

It seems that Rushern Baker has finally revealed himself to us.  Following his re-election as County Executive, and the voters’ rejection of a Term-Limits repeal, Baker has found himself in the position of having to fast-forward his end-game.  And what a run it is turning out to be.  In the space of the past six weeks, Baker has turned the county and its citizens on their heads, with a bold, expensive plan to raise the status of the county’s long-suffering school system, on the backs of the county’s renters and property owners.

In the drive to sell voters on a mind-boggling 15.6% property tax increase, Baker threw the school system under the bus, pointing the finger at PGCPS for the county’s failure to attract new business, while simultaneously touting their recent successes under PGCPS CEO Dr. Maxwell’s leadership.  In an attempt to explain the continuing lack of substantial commercial investment in Prince George’s County, the Executive made an inexplicable leap in logic, blaming the lack of commercial interest in Prince George’s County on the school system, rather than on the existing, punishing tax system.  The logic seems to go that businesses aren’t coming here, because our schools are bad.

What Baker glosses-over in the conversation, is the fact that he has now been in control of the school board for several years.  With the complicity and blessing of the Maryland legislature, Baker was handed the power to appoint members to the Board of Education, a supposedly-elective body in the County, and expanded his power over the Board, to the point where it placed all decision-making powers within his own grasp.  Any failure of the school system can now be squarely placed on Executive Baker’s shoulders, rightly or wrongly.

There seems to be a distinct lack of understanding by the Executive about the forces that are weighing on the county.  When the housing crisis landed in 2008, Prince George’s County had been a late-comer to the game.  Predatory lending practices hit the county hard at the end of that cycle, and many people who would not otherwise have been able to afford homes, suddenly found themselves with good-enough credit to participate in the Ponzi scheme.  When the system collapsed, many residents and new homeowners were left holding the bag.  Foreclosures in Prince George’s County continue at an alarming rate, even today.

Along with the economic downturn, the County lost a significant amount of foreign laborers, who had been providing inexpensive labor for the development boom, as well as contributing to the tax base.  When the home-building jobs left, so did that workforce, in many cases returning to their home countries, and abandoning their homes here.  The taste of success that Prince George’s County enjoyed during that brief window, was built on a lie.  The means of our success, were also the indicator of our impending failure.  But that fact seems to go unrecognized, in the emerging revisionist narrative being developed here.

The downturn caused many who had just recently bought houses to instantly go underwater on their mortgages.  Those who managed to keep their jobs, and hold on to their houses through the crisis, have since then been burdened with absurdly-high mortgage payments, with their only real relief coming from the fact that the lowered assessment values allowed them some breathing room on their tax bills.  With Executive Baker’s proposed 15.6% property tax increase, that oxygen supply is about to be cut off.

The latest round of assessment increases in the County seem to ignore the fact that home purchases and values have not truly rebounded.  Whatever the formula is that the State government is currently using in Prince George’s County to value homes, it does not appear to have any basis in reality, except for the reality that increased assessments will bring more money into the government.  It is a self-serving, malicious shakedown of residents, and the one-two combination punch of increased assessments and property taxes are likely to result in long-suffering, fragile populations finally collapsing under the weight.  A new wave of foreclosures is likely just around the corner for the county, and perhaps it is by-design.

The Hyattsville Arts District has been repeatedly pointed-to as a success story, and it is true that the once run-down area is now a successful place to do business.  But the Arts District was not a roadmap to success for the county.  It was a fluke, fueled by a number of factors that are unlikely to be replicated elsewhere.  The only thing any new projects are likely to repeat, is the heavy hand of the county government in them.

Wishing for a more economically-stable population does not cause it to spontaneously exist, and the perpetual push for more development of expensive housing in Prince George’s has only served to drive many people away.  The new housing units popping-up all over the county are not affordable, and are unlikely to draw the long-term economic activity they are intended to.  Many people can just barely afford their own housing, and the lack of disposable income for residents is the true driver of the continued economic problems here.

In many ways, Prince George’s County residents have been cornered and trapped into their current housing situations.  They can barely afford their current homes, can’t afford to buy new ones, and they can’t sell, because of the competitive glut of housing still on the market from the ongoing foreclosure crisis here.  Increasing assessment values is not a substitute for a real recovery, it is only a way to perpetuate the illusion that Prince George’s remains one of the wealthiest counties in the country.  A truly wealthy county doesn’t have 66% of its school-aged children on a free/reduced meal program.  Only a paper-wealthy, cash-poor county does that.  To fail to admit that, is a failure of leadership.

Baker’s economic development fund has been used to lure specific, large businesses to the county, such as MGM, the potential FBI project in Greenbelt, as well as large apartment complexes and hotels, while ignoring the County’s most valuable traditional asset:  Affordable housing.  What draws people to an area, and spurs economic activity, is getting value for money, and for all the problems of Prince George’s County, it was always a reasonably affordable place to live. With the new proposed tax increase, a $250,000 home in an unincorporated area of the county will now cost the owner $390 a month in taxes, alone.  And with increased assessments on the horizon, the likelihood of those same houses being valued at $400,000 is a distinct possibility, a valuation which would drive the monthly tax bill to over $620, an increase likely to drive many homeowners and renters over the cliff.

Baker has squandered the prime opportunity he had, by foregoing the option to develop affordable housing programs, which might have enticed bargain-hunters back into the area, in favor of a plan to apparently gentrify the entire county at one time, on the expectation that drawing-in overpaid government employees will save the county’s economy.  It is a gamble that is unlikely to bear fruit.  Improving the school system isn’t the magic elixir that will draw unimpressed house-hunters back into the county, spur commerce and start the county back on the road to prosperity.  Executive Baker is too late to the game for that, and government workers have far better options available to them, than to be punished for their good fortune by a revenue-starved county government.

Proposed FY2016 Budget Documents

I went looking for the Prince George’s County 2016 Proposed Budget in PDF form, but could only find a site with web links.  To make things a little less convenient, I have combined all that information into a single PDF file, which you can find here:

2016 Prince George’s County Proposed Budget

(Right-click on the link, then select “Save As” to keep the copy on your computer).

Be advised that this file is 700 pages long, and almost 80mb, so it may take forever to download.

The link to the web version is here:

http://www.princegeorgescountymd.gov/sites/OMB/Resources/budget-2016/Pages/default.aspx

More County budget information can be found here:

http://www.princegeorgescountymd.gov/sites/CountyCouncil/Resources/Budget/Pages/default.aspx

Also, since a lot of this discussion revolves around the school system budget, here is their Proposed FY16 budget:

FY16 Board of Education Requested Budget Full Version

(Right-click on the link, then select “Save As” to keep the copy on your computer).

Video of the Education Town Hall Meeting (April 21)

On April 21st, Prince George’s County hosted an Education Town Hall, where they made a presentation of the plan, and took questions. You can view the presentation from about the 10 minute mark to 33 minutes.

While I would highly recommend that everyone view the entire meeting here, at least be certain to catch the exchange that begins around the 1:18:30 mark, where things get a little heated and emotional.

The original video is available for viewing here: http://livestream.com/PGCountyCouncilMD/events/3873523

Prince George’s County Council 2016 Budget Hearing (April 28)

Here are some select comments from the first budget hearing the Prince George’s County Council held on April 28.

Projected Tax Burdens Under Proposed 2016 Budget

We’ve been playing with spreadsheets here at College Park Matters.  Below is a sheet showing the projected tax burdens for each municipality in Prince George’s County, if County Executive Baker’s proposed 2016 County budget passes.   The numbers aren’t exact, as the increases were scaled based on the current tax rates of each municipality, and the “Solid Waste Service Charge” and “Clean Water Act” fees are different for every street, it seems.  Actually, if you know how these fees are calculated, please contact me.  But for now, this chart is as accurate as we can get, without knowing your address.

(Click the image above to view the PDF file)

As you can see from this file, we’ve got it pretty good here in College Park.  For a $250,000 house, you’d wind up paying about $400 per month in taxes.  But if you are the unlucky owner of that same house in Colmar Manor, you’ll be paying over $600 per month!

Just for giggles, we also ran the numbers for annual tax billings, so you can compare your bill this year with the one you could receive next year.  Green columns are this year, orange columns are the proposed 2016 rates.

(Click the image above to view the PDF file)

This might not seem so horrible to you, but for some, this could be the difference between keeping and losing their home.  And a lot of seniors, especially those on fixed incomes, simply don’t have loose money available to put toward these payments.  When you are already choosing between buying groceries or medicine, it seems cruel to add “keeping the house” to that list.  But that is exactly the situation that some folks may be placed in.

Another issue is the impending assessment adjustments.  As the housing crisis started to grip Prince George’s County, the assessments were drastically lowered, reflecting the massive foreclosures, and the difficulty many people had in securing new loans to buy houses.  While we are still feeling those problems, there seems to be an un-reality bubble in the Assessments Office, because those home values are back on their way up, even though we are still foreclosing around 500 houses a month.

If you take your current tax bill, increase the county tax by 15.625%, then increase the assessment on your house by 50%, you’ll likely be in for quite a shock, when tax time rolls around again.

For the worst-case scenario, let’s say this is a straight 15-cent increase across the board, unaffected by the Constant Yield Tax Rate.  In that case, the tax chart looks like this:

(Click the image to view the PDF file)

And the new tax comparison chart would look like this:

(Click the image to view the PDF file)

Prince George’s County Council 2016 Budget Hearing Comments (May 4)

These are comments from some of the residents during the May 4, 2015 Prince George’s County Council hearing, regarding County Executive Baker’s new proposed 2016 budget.  The budget is highly controversial, because it seeks to raise the County property tax rate by 15.6%, and circumvent a voter mandate called TRIM, which is a law forbidding the County from raising property taxes, without putting it to a referendum, first.

Rushern Baker’s 2016 Budget: Not What Our Schools Need

Rushern Baker’s proposed 2016 budget has now been through its public hearings, and the decision rests with the County Council.   School principals and administrators seemed to dominate the first half of the council hearing last week, with the occasional angry citizen slipping-in to express their allotted 3 minutes of outrage.

Former Councilmember Tom Dernoga noted during his comments that there has been no in-depth presentation of the opposing view of this budget, an intentional “stacking of the deck” to shut out dissenting voices.  There were a lot of points made during the hearings, here are a few of them:

• Prince George’s County already has one of the highest property tax rates in the Metro DC area.  More than 60% of those taxes are earmarked for schools, and have been for a long time.

• The County population was sold on the idea of a casino at National Harbor, specifically because those generated revenues were supposed to be given to the schools.  Obviously, those funds haven’t come back as promised.  Who has benefitted?  It certainly wasn’t the students.

• The new budget includes furloughs for County employees, as if they are normal things that should be included in budgets.  They aren’t.  They are emergency cost-cutting measures done in response to poorly-crafted budgets.  At least this budget doesn’t pretend to be good.  And it isn’t.

• Throwing additional money at the problem of the Prince George’s County school system has not solved anything over the past years.  There is no reason to believe that will change now.

• The school system is now top-heavy with administrators and coaches for teachers.  If more money needs to go to the system, the system itself needs to change.

So, what can we do?  We can start with some common-sense.

In a world where we can’t get the existing schools to manage the K-12 situation, creating a new pre-K program is ridiculous.  Yes, children need to have certain abilities before they start school, but that is a parental duty, not a government one.  The whole point of kindergarten is to get children evened-up to a level where they can begin formal schooling.

Rather than setting up a whole new school system to address these youngsters, try giving the parents vouchers for Sunday newspapers.  Kids learn to read from mundane things, like comics, and Mini-Page inserts.  They develop abstract abilities from word searches, crosswords and mazes.  Guess where you can find those things?  That’s right, in a Sunday newspaper.  Older kids would also benefit from having current news at their disposal on a regular basis.

It may seem outdated in this world of high-speed internet, with the instant gratifications of Google, and the infinite distractions of the information superhighway, but it is the basics of reading and writing that are left wanting.  Kids don’t need to be given computers to learn.  They need access to vital, timely information in an organized manner.  They need to understand the world they are growing up and living in.  You don’t get that from Google, you get it from the daily news.

Another link in this chain is the damage being caused by our entry into the Common Core program.  Our previous blog post addresses Common Core & PARCC, so I won’t repeat that here, but the program is throwing a wrench into the existing teaching methods and models.  We’ve been teaching children in this country for hundreds of years, we should have a better grip on how to do it effectively, by now.

Instead of buying ever-changing textbooks at premium prices, maybe we should start reprinting and using old public-domain textbooks from the 1930s and 40s.  Children learned to read and write just fine, back then.  They also defeated the Nazi army, invented modern computers, and sent men to the moon using calculations performed on slide-rules.

The notion that kids need computers in order to be competitive 10 or 15 years from now, is as sensible as buying them cars, so they can be better mechanics and drivers when they grow up.  Kids don’t need Chromebooks, they need McGuffey Readers.  They need to develop the abilities of logic, reason and abstract thought.  They do not need to be exposed to the epileptic flash of a billion web pages, or to the empty promises of intellectually-bereft, graphics-intensive textbooks.

The onslaught of corporate, commercial and Federal bribery of our schools has to end.  Trading cash kickbacks for soda machines has to end.  We need to regain control of the beast, and rejecting the cash offered by the Federal government to embark on intrusive, disruptive and ineffective programs may just be our way out of this mess.  We’ll take a hit financially, of course.  Federal dollars are a lucrative enticement, but the damaging effect of these programs is mounting.  In the long run, stripping the system back to basics can only help our students.

Our priorities now should seem clear.  Return the schools to local governance, keep the roof patched and the air conditioners running, develop a practical vocational/technical program that teaches real-life trade skills, acknowledge that not every student is destined for college and/or entrepreneurial riches, and we’ll figure out the rest.  You don’t need more money to do that, but you do need courageous leadership, willing to make widespread, profound changes to a broken system that denies the reality of the world around it at every step.

What we’re doing now, simply isn’t working.  The State of Maryland needs to regain control of the schools from the Federal government and commercial interests, and Dr. Maxwell should abandon his 5 year plan, in favor of something a little less ambitious.

Let’s just get the kids to school safely, for a start.  Then, teach them how to communicate effectively, and how to balance a checkbook.  Maybe in 20 years, we will be rewarded with a generation of young adults who can return the favor to the school system, and to the County government.  They could both stand the lesson.

Common Core and PARCC

There is a lot to dislike about Common Core and PARCC (Maryland’s implementation of the Common Core standards).  For many parents and teachers, the focus on “teaching to the test” is a destructive, ultimately self-defeating one.  Teachers literally spend months of class time preparing students for a single test.

It is worrisome for parents concerned about the privacy of their children’s data, which under Common Core follows them throughout their school career…and possibly beyond.

The clip below lays out some of the issues surrounding Common Core, and is well worth your time.  Please take a few minutes to view it.  Be advised that there is some adult language here.

Common Core sets the path toward a nationalized education system, which takes control of education out of the hands of parents, teachers, and local governments, and puts it into the control of the Federal government. The same system is used in China.

Many states have started dropping out of PARCC and SBAC, now it’s time for Maryland to do the same. Please come to this rally, and show your support for keeping educational curriculum at the State level.

Public Rally Opposing Common Core & PARCC Testing
Sunday, May 17 at 11:00am
Lawyers Mall in Annapolis, Maryland

Using Residents and Visitors as a Source of Income

The City generates a full 10% of its annual income from fines and fees. Let that sink in for a moment.  That’s over 1.6 million dollars worth of speed camera tickets, parking violations, and code enforcement fines. Does it make sense for a city that’s trying to encourage new patrons to its downtown business district to dish out tickets to them?  Does it make anyone want to visit College Park, or to return? If you live here, it’s more like a hidden tax increase.  We all want safer streets, but lowering the speed limit along Route 1 seemed less like an improvement to public safety, and more of a way to entrap folks into paying more $40 violations. Do you think we should be relying so heavily on fines and fees as a method of generating revenue?