Whether the county rezoning process would leave old Greenbelt unprotected from higher density development was the key issue before the Greenbelt City Council at its September 11 regular meeting.
Aileen Kroll presented council with a petition with roughly 2,000 signatures requesting them to go on record that night, in the presence of County Councilmember Todd Turner, asking that the Neighborhood Conservation Overlay Zone (NCOZ) be included in the draft ordinance to be provided to the county council by the end of this year or early next. They were concerned that passing a new law eliminating the Residential Planned Community (RPC) zoning category without implementing the NCOZ would leave old Greenbelt unprotected from higher density development.
Later in the meeting, the city council voted unanimously to send a letter to the county asking that the NCOZ process be done at the same time as the zoning rewrite and requesting that the draft NCOZ for Greenbelt, drafted by the contractor assisting with the rewrite, be provided to the city. As of press time, the letter had not been sent out. Council also suggested the possibility of asking for a freeze on rezonings currently zoned RPC until the NCOZ is in effect.
In the ensuing discussion there was one thing that all appeared to agree on: that “old Greenbelt is a treasure.” This was stated by Derick Berlage, chief of the Countywide Planning Division at the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC), who assured the crowd that “the last thing on our minds is to do anything to change it.”
Read the rest of this story in the September 21 News Review