Posted on 06/03/24
| News Source: FOX45
Baltimore, MD - June 3, 2024 - The Baltimore County Council is scheduled to vote on a controversial bill that supporters say will help reduce school overcrowding.
But opponents of the bill warn there will be consequences if it passes.
Most everyone seems to agree, school overcrowding is a problem in Baltimore County. At the start of this school year, 50 schools exceeded 100% capacity. The disagreement is over how to fix the problem.
“We’ve used other formulas in the past. They haven't work,” said Baltimore County Councilman Todd Crandell, R-District 7, during an April council hearing.
The current Baltimore County code does not consider a school to be overcrowded until it’s at 115% capacity. At that point, no new residential developments can be approved in that school zone. But, the "adjacency exemption" allows residential development if any school in an adjacent district has enough seats to reduce the overcrowded school’s capacity to less than 115%.
“It was good in the 20th century, but it’s not so good for the 21st Century,” said Baltimore Council Chairman Izzy Patoka during the April hearing.
Patoka, along with councilmembers Mike Ertel, Wade Kach and David Marks, introduced legislation in April to incrementally lower and eventually eliminate the adjacency exemption. Patoka says this will reduce overcrowding, over time, by limiting new residential developments in school zones that are already at capacity.
“The end game of this is to get back to, our high point will be 100 students in a 100 seats, never going over 100% capacity of a school,” explained Patoka.
As the bill has been debated before the County Council, special interest groups that potentially benefit from the adjacency exemption, have been involved in the political process, which is not unusual.
Project Baltimore analyzed state campaign finance records for the seven current Baltimore County Council members. We looked at contributions they’ve collected from businesses, political groups or individuals who work in the construction industry. The list includes architects, surveyors, construction companies and real estate businesses.
In total, the seven Baltimore County Council members, throughout their political careers, have received more than $1 million in contributions from donors who appear to be connected to the construction industry. That’s nearly 21% of all their campaign donations.
By comparison, running the same analysis, the seven council members in Anne Arundel County have received about 14% of total contributions from donors who appear to be connected to the construction industry. Anne Arundel County does not have an adjacency exemption. Harford County, however, has a similar exemption. The seven council members there have collected more than $230,000, or about 15.5% of total contributions, from donors connected to the construction industry.
“We are operating on the assumption that an overcrowded school is a bad school,” said Crandell during the April council hearing. “That is not necessarily the case either.”
As Baltimore County Council weighs options, the main opposition has come from the construction community, which potentially stands to lose business if new residential developments are not approved.
Lori Graf, CEO of the Maryland Building Industry Association, spoke out against the bill during the April council hearing.
“We need to make sure we are moving forward and not backwards in this housing crisis,” Graf explained to County Council. “This bill is a step in the wrong direction.”
Critics say Baltimore County already has a housing shortage and limiting where new housing can be built, will make the problem worse.
“Stopping construction on new homes in Baltimore County, where we are desperately short and desperately need them, is not the answer,” David Thaler, owner of DS Thaler & Associates, told council members.
“This bill is a solution in search of a problem. Frankly, nothing that a new high school on the east side wouldn’t fix,” Thaler said.