The Montgomery County Council on Tuesday will interview five finalists to replace a term-limited commissioner of the Planning Board as the group weighs important decisions on the future of downtown Bethesda and the county’s growth policy.
Commissioner Amy Presley’s second four-year term will end June 14 and the Republican isn’t eligible for reappointment because commissioners are limited to two consecutive terms.
Since more than three members of the five-member board can’t be from one political party, the newest member must be a Republican like Presley or unaffiliated with any political party.
The finalists are Rockville’s Gerald Cichy, a former director of the county’s Department of Transportation who retired last year from the state Department of Transportation; Montgomery Village’s Mark Firley, a computer security analyst at IBM; Poolesville’s Dennis Kamber, a retired civil engineer; Germantown’s Tina Patterson, a management and mediation consultant; and Silver Spring’s David Perdue, a member of the county’s zoning Board of Appeals.
All five are to be interviewed starting at 10 a.m. Tuesday in the Council Office Building in Rockville.
Whomever is selected will likely have a hand in some major decisions facing the board this spring and summer.
The board is still deliberating many of the building height, zoning, green space and other land use recommendations in the Bethesda Downtown Plan, the sector plan rewrite that will guide development in the area for the next 25 to 30 years. The board is expected to approve its version of the plan and send it to the council for final approval sometime this summer.
The board also will discuss the county’s new Subdivision Staging Policy, formerly known as the Growth Policy. The policy would institute standards for development’s impact on schools and roads. For example, the policy could end up requiring fewer school impact fees from developers. It must be approved by the council this fall.
Board Chairman Casey Anderson and Commissioners Natali Fani-Gonzalez and Marye Wells-Harley are Democrats while Presley and Commissioner Norman Dreyfuss are Republicans.
Cichy and Firley identified themselves as Republicans. Party politics rarely, if ever, play a part in Planning Board decisions, which include final approvals of area-wide master plans and individual development projects. The board also has direct budget and planning oversight over Montgomery Parks.
Kamber, Perdue and Patterson said they are unaffiliated with any political party. Patterson, who has served on the county’s Human Rights Commission and the board of the BlackRock Center for the Arts in Germantown, also submitted letters of support for her application from others who have served with her.
As the board’s full-time chairman, Anderson is paid $200,000 a year. The four part-time commissioners are paid $30,000 annually.
