County wants slice of stimulus pie for Silver Spring

By Jennifer Deseo | Jan 7, 2009

As Congress gets down to business on an economic-stimulus plan, county leaders want to be sure that some of that cash flows into downtown Silver Spring and other parts of MoCo.

“Montgomery County is a prime example of a local government that is able to quickly translate federal dollars into active projects,” MoCo exec Ike Leggett and council president Phil Andrews pitched to Maryland’s senators and Congressional reps in December. “With additional funding, we are poised to implement any number of ’shovel-ready’ projects quickly.”

One of those projects — ringing up at $100 million — would retrofit existing apartment buildings to be more energy efficient. The county’s older buildings, like the Depression-era Falkland Chase apartments, tend to be sieves as far as energy conservation goes, yet they house most of a community’s proletariat class, the county’s 28-page wish list for funding described.

“Because utility costs are passed on to the consumer, there is little incentive for multi-family complex managers to improve the energy efficiency of these properties,” the wish list stated. “Similarly, tenants can change behaviors but cannot change the characteristics of the facility.”

But low- or no-interest loans to landlords could get those apartment buildings in better shape, reduce energy consumption, improve property values, create “societal equity”, and pass the savings on to renters, the county argued.

The best part (for renters, anyway): In order to qualify for the loans, landlords must swear up, down and sideways to keep rent increases below county-recommended guidelines for up to five years after retrofitting wraps. If MoCo scores the cash, the retrofitting program could roll in six months.

Another proposal would drop lighted bike paths, racks and valet parking at the transit center, currently under construction outside Silver Spring’s Metro station. Because many of downtown’s bike paths have already been mapped out and the necessary real estate marked, the county can stick a shovel in the ground in two to six months for $1.3 million, the wish list read.

That proposal includes a bike station with repair services and valet bicycle parking on the triangular jug handle at Colesville Road and Wayne Avenue. Lockers and showers could be added later, the county said.

The area’s big project — about $1.2 billion big — is the Purple Line mass-transit ride. If funded, the light-rail or bus rapid-transit line (no one’s decided yet) would connect Bethesda with New Carrollton through downtown Silver Spring. A public meeting to hash out details on proposed routes goes down in front of the county planning board Thursday.

The nation’s economic-stimulus package is still sprouting, but US Rep Chris Van Hollen (D-Md 8) told Bloomberg News that the overall tab could run between $700 billion and $1 trillion. If approved, it would be the largest economic-stimulus package ever in US history.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user thebittenword.com.

Updated Jan7, 2008 for clarity.

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Council brainstorms to beat back foreclosures

By Jennifer Deseo | Sep 23, 2008

ROCKVILLE — The number of home foreclosures in Montgomery County may be down, but don’t let the Repo Man catch you napping, a panel of experts spelled out Thursday for county council members.

“The best results are achieved when homeowners are reached far in advance of foreclosure,” said Roger Glendenning, an adviser to the council’s economic-development committee. ”Avoiding foreclosure is a win-win situation.”

And if one must come close to losing a home, then why not do it in Maryland? The state is a leader at beating back home foreclosures, and recent stats show a 20-percent countywide drop since the beginning of the year, Glendenning reported. In the 20910 zip code, which includes downtown Silver Spring, foreclosures during the same period dropped by nearly 30 percent.

One could chalk up those numbers to a state law passed in April. The emergency legislation keeps the foreclosure dogs at bey for 90 days after a homeowner defaults on a mortgage, and for another 45 days after an intent-to-foreclose notice is sent.

Downtown Silver Spring’s healthier housing market also could be due to that old real-estate mantra: location, location, location. Homes within the Beltway tend to sell in 30 days, while sales on upcounty homes can take up to a year, Meredith Weisel, with the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors, told the committee.

Case in point: Parts of Germantown, Montgomery Village, and that neck of Silver Spring around Layhill and Bel Pre Roads are in serious trouble. Each of those spots logged more than 100 foreclosures in the second quarter of this year alone, Glendenning said. Parts of Gaithersburg, Wheaton and Calverton are also up a creek sans paddle.

So what’s a county to do? Hit the streets with mortgage counselors who can help homeowners renegotiate the terms of their loans, Glendenning pushed.

“Delinquent homeowners need to know they have a shoulder to lean on,” Glendenning told committee members. Pre-foreclosure counseling, he said, “is the backbone, and should be the core of what every jurisdiction looks at.”

There are just a couple of hitches to that. According to Richard Nelson, with the county’s department of housing, there aren’t enough mortgage counselors to go around. On top of that, there aren’t enough lenders willing to renegotiate with those high-risk borrowers.

To kick both problems, Nelson is hollering at Annapolis for help. Currently, the county and state have a nonbinding agreement to cover a reluctant lender’s loss up to 30 percent if it chooses to rework a mortgage. And the state might pick up the tab for more mortgage counselors, using money it gets from the feds, Nelson said.

“This whole cycle is going to continue for another 18 months,” Nelson told the committee. “But what we do won’t be money or effort wasted.”

Lead photo courtesy of Flickr user Respres.

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MoCo works, just not in MoCo: experts

By Jennifer Deseo | Sep 22, 2008

ROCKVILLE — Here’s the good news: Montgomery County’s unemployment rate is relatively low at 3.4 percent. The not-so-good news: No one actually works in Montgomery County.

Instead, much of the county’s workforce schleps it daily to places like The District and northern Virginia, a panel of experts told the county council’s economic-development committee Thursday. And having a county full of commuters can have its economic pitfalls, the experts argued.

“We have to have the jobs here, so that we have the money to support education and all the other things that make our quality of life what it is,” Gigi Godwin, with the county’s chamber of commerce, told committee members.

In the last year, private-industry payrolls in Montgomery County lopped off 1,300 jobs. And don’t expect any job growth this year either, even with the county’s 2,000 new federal jobs, David Platt, chief economist with the county’s department of finance, said.

Why are jobs leaving the county? A couple of different reasons, the experts said.

First, peg it on the region’s housing recession. Overall, the region has seen a 27 percent decline in home sales, which has quashed job growth in the construction and service industries, according to John McClain, with George Mason University’s school of public policy.

Second, despite fierce competition for talent, workers from other parts of the country are actively discouraged from relocating to Montgomery County, the chamber of commerce’s Godwin testified. Pin that on the county and state’s complicated tax structure, she said.

Third (and here’s the real rub), startup companies nurtured by the county’s business incubators are being acquired — and relocated — by northern Virginia firms, Godwin added. When that action goes down, the jobs must be backfilled, she argued.

Meanwhile, the county’s department of economic development hustles to attract new companies to the county, said Pradeep Ganguly, the department’s top guy. “When the economy is down, that is the time to be aggressive with the way we market ourselves,” Ganguly told committee members.

Biotech companies from South Korea, India and Israel already call MoCo home, and a new business incubator has sprouted on Montgomery College’s Germantown campus. Another incubator in Wheaton has a waiting list full of small startups, he added. There’s also a computer-tech incubator on Georgia Avenue in South Silver Spring.

But Manuel Hidalgo, executive director of the Latino Economic Development Corp, warned against doling out financial aid. His organization, which offers micro-loans to area small businesses, recently rejected 10 percent of applicants because the businesses couldn’t handle any more debt, he told the committee.

“We’d be giving them the rope to hang themselves,” he said.

So what’s a county to do? Hidalgo called for a sales-tax holiday and lower taxes on booze to stimulate consumer spending. Other panelists recommended lower taxes and looser regs to kick start the construction industry.

“I’m willing to look at discrete steps to make adjustments,” council member Roger Berliner (D-District 1) told the panel.

But at-large Dem Marc Elrich wasn’t digging it. “Those fees are there to provide infrastructure,” he told his colleagues. Without that revenue stream, residents can expect less infrastructure and higher taxes, he warned.

George Leventhal (D-At large) tossed his hands in the air. “If development is barely occurring, then the conversation is moot,” he said.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Steve Longus.

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