By Adam Pagnucco.
When I worked at the county council, probably my favorite part of the experience was working with the council’s central staff. They were an all-star cast of experts, wise men and women with vast experience, diligence and professional responsibility. Few of them compared to our zoning attorney, Jeff Zyontz, who combined incredible knowledge and competence with an outstanding sense of humor. I was overjoyed to see the council appoint him as the temporary acting chair of the planning board. When you bring issues to the board and attend their meetings, I know you will agree with me.
Zyontz graciously agreed to a written interview. Let’s get to our questions and his answers!
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Q: Your experience in county government goes all the way back to 1974, when you first went to work for Park and Planning. What drew you into the world of planning and zoning?
I was introduced to city planning when I attended the American University’s School of Government. I enrolled in the Urban Semester program in my junior year. The course work included field trips that took me to many institutions in the region—WMATA, DC Schools, DC Housing Authority, and Lorton Penitentiary come to mind. They were all trying to solve problems in their own specialized area. I then took the last course that Professor Royce Hanson taught at AU before he became the first full time Planning Board Chair. I was struck by the idea of a career that tried to rationally solve problems by an open decision-making process. I went on to Rutgers University to get an M.C.R.P. degree. There, I had an outstanding planning law professor named Jerome Rose. He was the special master appointed by the New Jersey Supreme Court to find a method of inclusionary zoning (zoning that requires the provision of affordable housing). He brought the power of zoning law alive to me.
Q: You have seen many Planning Board chairs during your time with the county. What have you learned from them in terms of doing the job effectively? (Feel free to name names!)
Let me pick three notable Chairs with whom I served. Dr. Royce Hanson was the most impressive Chair. He spoke in a folksy understandable style about complex issues. I would not be the first to say that he is the high priest of the planning religion in Montgomery County. He got the county to preserve farmland 16 years after the 1964 General Plan recommended the idea. Dr. Hanson’s timing was no accident. He pushed the idea when there was a sewer moratorium (treatment capacity constraints) that stopped virtually all new development approvals in the County. He and the farmers knew that development on traditional septic systems required vastly more land (around 25 acres per house) than the pre-existing zoning that allowed a density of one house for every 1/2 acre. In subtle ways, he was able to get Board and Council majorities on this and countless other more minor decisions. He preferred to speak last in any debate. When it came to getting the votes he needed, he played chess while everyone else played checkers.
“Storming” Norman Christeller could make staff presentations an adventure. His life-long mission was to increase affordable housing. When he was on the Council, he was instrumental in getting the nationally recognized MPDU (inclusionary zoning) law through the Council. He helped organize the Montgomery Housing Partnership. In between those accomplishments, he was Planning Board Chair for eight years. One event just sticks in my head – after a public hearing when a speaker said he was unable to understand a chart in a staff report I authored, Chair Christeller nearly screamed at me for publishing a “deceptive” graph. In private, he apologized to me and said although he understood my chart, he recognized that others might not and empathized with the complaining speaker. He kept his eye on his mission every day he sat as Chair.
William (Bill) Hussmann was an unexpectedly strong advocate for environment protection. I say unexpectedly because he had a background in the development industry. He pushed for a special protection area for Paint Branch. That protection limited impervious surface in a sensitive stream valley. He got the Council to fund the Legacy Open Space program and left it to staff to find the most environmentally sensitive areas in the County to purchase for park land.
Even as temporary office holder, I am humbled to be in the same position as these civic giants even though it will only be until June.
Q: For our readers, please explain what the Planning Board does and specifically the role of its chair.
The Montgomery County Planning Board, together with the Prince George’s County Planning Board, compose The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC). The Chair alternately serves as chair or vice chair of the Full Commission.
While the Planning Board has oversight authority over the Planning Department and the Parks Department, those departments operate separately from the Board. At the same time, the Board plays an important advisory or decision-making role in the work of those departments and serves as land use advisors for the County Council. The Board has the authority to decide preliminary plans, record plats, sketch plans and site plans for proposed development that are reviewed by the Planning Department. The Board has advisory authority on zoning issues (map amendments and zoning text amendments), approved by the County Council, and conditional uses, approved by the Hearing Examiner. The Planning Department develops, with community input, master plans that are then reviewed and revised by the Board. The Planning Board then transmits the “Planning Board Draft Plan” to the County Council, which then conducts its review and has final approval authority. For parks, the Board oversees the Parks Department’s land acquisition, development, operations and maintenance of the system. The Planning Board Chair approves the Board’s weekly agenda and presides over meetings. At public hearings, the Chair introduces speakers, allows people to speak, and allows questions from other Board members.
Q: Give some advice to members of the community who would like to express their opinion to the Board about a particular issue. How can they be most effective?
I assume that the particular issue relates to a particular development application where the Board has final authority. Being most effective means getting to knowing when the pre-submission community meeting and the Planning Board public hearing will be held. The development plan may be amended as public comments are made so the testifier should be aware of that possibility. Testimony that just says “I hate” or “I love it” is not useful at all. Decisions are made based on findings that particular standards are satisfied. Emotion, and the number of people who agree with that emotion, do not help in making any necessary findings. Be specific about why the development should modified or denied. Which standard is not being met? If the project must be “compatible,” give evidence of the pre-existing conditions for the problem that you believe will be created (e.g., building heights, setbacks, noise, traffic).
Q: What do you intend to do to rebuild public confidence in the board given recent events connected to the former board?
What is clear is that that the Council lost its trust in the Planning Board. The Council will not regain confidence in the Board if the public does not have confidence. The new Board needs to demonstrate with each decision that it considers the opinion it hears and makes evidence-based findings under the standards required by law. Every participant must feel that they were heard, even if the Board disagrees with them. Drama and mystery are words that are fine to describe entertainment. They have no place in a public organization. Trust is gained by transparency, consistency, and calm…one event after the other.
Q: I have never seen a master plan get fully built out before a new master plan replaces it. Do we do too much planning in this county? And if not, do we adequately track the results of our plans?
If you change plans too often you are doing too much planning…and maybe bad planning. Frequent master planning signals a lack of consensus on a long-term vision. Master plans can take decades to implement and build out, so they may not be revised for decades.
Unless a plan has its own metrics for success, determining a plan’s implementation success is very difficult. Plans are visionary. The goal posts move and evolve over time as society and communities change. So, tracking actual results is difficult and would not necessarily measure the success of a community or the development therein. Evaluating the implementation of past plans is academically interesting. It may be measuring the availability of money for programs and infrastructure and the political will to use those resources.
More recently, the Planning Department has tried to evaluate the effectiveness of master plans and are tracking implementation of more recent plans. The Planning Department has conducted a “Master Plan Reality Check” of several plans adopted in the late 1990s to examine to what extent those plans’s vision and recommendations have been implemented on the ground. Additionally, the Planning Department produces an Annual Monitoring Report on implementation of the Bethesda Downtown Plan and a Biennial Master Plan Monitoring Report on three plans in the I-270 Corridor area.
Q: You were famous for your hilarious footnotes in your staff packets. Which one was the funniest?
Before I answer your question, I have a bone to pick with you. My domestic tranquility is threatened by your characterization that some memos I wrote were hilarious. My wife complains that I must be telling better jokes at work than at home. She never describes any manifestation of my humor as hilarious.
Which of my footnotes was the funniest? What an unfair question! It’s like asking a parent which child they like best. In any event, the funniest jokes are those that make other people laugh. Which footnote made more people laugh than others? I cannot answer that question because I was not around when it was read. Personally, I like self-deprecating humor that has an element of truth.[1]
[1] When I wrote a memo on retaining a 100-foot setback for chicken coops, I wrote, “A deep emotional attachment to chickens was also expressed in testimony,” with the footnote, “Staff notes that there was no testimony concerning any emotional attachment to land-use attorneys, yet attorneys are allowed within 100 feet of neighboring houses.”