CGCA / City Meeting:
December 16, 2005

Meeting to Discuss Stormwater Management in the College Gardens Park.
The meeting was held at City Hall, December 16, 2005, 4:00 – 5:00pm

Pre-Summary Notes: This summary concerns: 1) A November 2, 2005 meeting hosted by the Department of Public Works (DPW), 2) the Mayor and Council meeting of December 12, 2005, and 3) the subsequent December 16 meeting between CGCA and City Staff that is the subject of this summary.

Acronyms: CGCA = College Gardens Civic Association, SWM = Storm Water Management, LID = Low Impact Devices, LISWM = Low Impact Storm Water Management.

Bare bones history: The use of a Storm Water Management Pond (essentially a SWM pond and a ‘forebay’ replacing the present pond and other parts of the park) was proposed several years ago and proved controversial. The idea was at least temporarily shelved. Subsequently the City and the CGCA procured a grant of $30,500 to fund demonstrations of Low Impact Storm Water management projects in the neighborhood. College Gardens neighbors and the CGCA worked hard in 2005 to install Low Impact Storm Water Measures on their property. This mainly involved some educational sessions, rain barrels, and rain gardens, but there were other activities as well.

Parallel to the grant, the City funded a study of Low Impact Techniques; references below to the consultant refer to this parallel study. The DPW made a presentation at the December 12 Mayor and Council meeting in which they concluded that the Low Impact Storm Water Management measures would be insufficient to control storm water and proposed and promoted the use of the College Gardens Park for a Storm Water Management Facility. The DPW position is that Mayor and Council gave approval for the DPW to proceed. The CGCA position is that this is unclear and that Mayor and Council asked DPW to come back later after having worked with the community.

In attendance: Mark Pierzchala, President of the College Gardens Civic Association (CGCA; Paul O'Brien, Low Impact Storm Water Management leader for CGCA; Barbara Marinelli, Secretary of CGCA; Lise Soukup, Civil Engineer II, City of Rockville Department of Public Works (DPW); Craig Simoneau, City of Rockville, Head of DPW; Mary Lou Berg, City of Rockville, Assistant to the City Manager and assigned our liaison; Susan Straus, City of Rockville, DPW.

The meeting opened with City Staff wanting to work out a partnership and a process to start working on the Storm Water Management facility in the College Gardens Park. DPW stated they felt that Mayor and Council approved the proposal to proceed with a Storm Water Management facility in the College Gardens park. They further stated that there had been no decisions with respect to the exact nature of such a facility.

Mark stated that the City Staff were moving too fast, that as far as he was concerned there was no project to work on. Mark then expressed his concerns with the presentation given by DPW at the Mayor and Council meeting on Monday, December 12. The November 2 meeting held at the Senior Center, hosted by DPW to review a consultant’s report on Low Impact Storm Water Management, also was discussed.

Mark's points:
The CGCA was very surprised to hear that a Storm Water Management Facility was a firm idea being proposed by the DPW at the December 12 Mayor and Council meeting. He said that the subsequent approval of the project came across as a fait accompli. He noted that the CGCA and the neighborhood had no input into this idea. Given the history of this issue and previous controversy, this DPW presentation presented a public relations problem with the neighborhood. Additionally the presentation went far beyond mere presentation of the results of a consultant’s report. The mention of a possible Storm Water Management facility in College Gardens Park was limited to one sentence buried in the last paragraph in the consultant’s report.

Short notice, a phone call the day of the meeting, by the city of the December 12 Mayor and Council meeting. (Note: There had been an agenda item for some time on the City’s Website.)

In the minds of many people in the neighborhood, the idea of a Storm Water Management Facility in the park was long ago dismissed as a political possibility.

When Council Member Anne Robbins invited Mark to speak at the Monday meeting, he chose to wait until he had gathered the history of the agreement and spoke with Paul O'Brien and with the Executive Committee of CGCA.

The installation of rain gardens and use of rain barrels as low impact devices were supposed to be the way we were going with this. The implementation of these techniques to a point where they would have positive benefits was a long-term project covering several years.
He noted further that the park has a certain place and use in the community, the pond has a history going back to the Anderson farm, that the park is the site of our Annual Night Out (one of the biggest in the City with up to 400 people attending). Thus the use of the park cannot boil down to only a Storm Water Management issue.

Our experience working with the city on Storm Water Management has been mixed. At a technical level for the LID project we have had good experiences. Working with city procedures has been a learning curve, a particularly steep one when it came to the bidding process for installing rain gardens and procuring rain barrels.

At the December 12 meeting, DPW spoke of a partnership with CGCA. Mark stated that the CGCA has never had a sense of partnership with DPW with respect to Storm Water Management.

Conflict of meetings: For the November 2 DPW meeting at the Senior Center, the original date and time of this meeting was in direct conflict with the CGCA meeting of the same night. Our CGCA date is made months in advance. There should have been consultation with the CGCA in the first place concerning date and time of this meeting. The DPW meeting was moved to one hour before the CGCA meeting (DPW had expressed they had limited flexibility in changing the date). Because of the nearness in time of the DPW meeting to the CGCA meeting, none of the CGCA officers could attend the November 2 DPW meeting.

The CGCA never conceived of the Low Impact Measures as a competitor to the idea of a Storm Water Management Facility in the College Gardens Park. It was upsetting to see the two kinds of techniques compared to each other the way they were in the DPW December 12 presentation.

A difference between the SWM proposal this year as opposed to several years ago is that more of the park is in play. This includes the ball fields and perhaps some MCPS school property as well as the lower part of the park. This would give more flexibility.
Craig stated that certainly the LID program was a good thing, but it did not go far enough; that he knows there was contention in the neighborhood about the pond, so there is nothing new about our arguing the issue. He disagreed that the pond was not needed. He added that concerns go beyond the technical benefits and mentioned that action was needed before the state or federal government got involved.

Mark pointed out that whatever is done, it is not in the community's best interests to do anything that would give MCPS an excuse to delay the rebuilding of the College Gardens Elementary School.

Craig allowed that low impact has a certain value and cited his extensive experience with it. He insisted that the pond was a partner technique, not a competing technique, with our low impact installation. He stated that the problems of water runoff have not been solved.

Paul O'Brien then produced a map and discussed with the group that the neighborhood’s worst swales were not covered in the benefits of a pond and that this was a major problem for that section of the neighborhood not draining into the pond area.

Mark asked if it was technically possible to build a Storm Water Management pond on the site of the ball field. Lise Soukup did not rule it out, but couldn’t say for sure. Craig said the size and scope of the project were open to discussion and there was also discussion of what MCPS participation might be and how that may change the situation.

Finally Craig asserted that the city has a storm water issue in this community and that they were starting with a blank page. There was no set time frame, (there was subsequent discussion of the timely necessity of a solution from both the city and the CGCA) and the fact that the City group has been told by the Mayor and Council not to drag this out.

Paul pointed out that the present LID program is a demonstration program, but wasn’t presented that way in the consultant’s report. It was the beginning of a project that it will take a decade to complete. He stated that the SOW for the consultant makes clear that we are in a pilot project and that more is to be done.

The importance of the trees staying in the park and the maintenance and historic value of the present pond were issues raised by Paul and Mark.

Craig insisted, in summary, that LIDs were not being dismissed as window dressing and that there had been notice of the December 12 was on the city calendar but could not state for certain that the Association was notified before the last minute.

The meeting ended with the assignment of Mary Lou Berg as our liaison for these issues.
Mark will speak at the Citizen’s Forum at the Mayor and Council Meeting on Monday night, Dec. 19.

Notes taken by Barbara Marinelli and subsequently edited by Mark Pierzchala.

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