Rockville’s Road Map

City officials hope to use this month’s Rockville Summit as a springboard to further discussion of the city’s economic future.

The city is preparing to launch several task forces to address themes that emerged from the Oct. 18 summit.

The task forces will focus on:

• Job growth and utilizing the residential workforce.
• Housing.
• Preserving Rockville's character.
• Education and school capacity.
• Transportation and traffic.

Volunteer are needed for the task forces to explore, discuss, research and prepare reports to share with Rockville officials and the community at a second summit next year.

To volunteer for a task force or to learn more, click here.

“This was just what I wanted to see,” City Councilman John Britton—who proposed the summit in January, said of the program. The summit drew more than 225 people to in Rockville Town Square.

Britton said that he hopes that the task forces will help residents “to continue the dialogue and buy in from the beginning” to a broader vision for the city’s economic growth. The themes examined by the task forces will provide the foundation for that vision, he said.

The task forces could consider how each theme ties in with issues for military veterans and the disabled, two groups that attendees at the summit suggested the city address, he said.

The city’s tax base has led to “gold-plated services,” Britton said. “But to keep them, you can’t keep taxing your residential base. You need depth in your economic activity. So I think the future of Rockville is at stake.”

The City Council is too often forced to make decisions regarding economic development projects in haste without citizens having ample time to educate themselves, said Britton, who, after two terms on the council, is not seeking reelection Nov. 8.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could buy in and actually proceed with some vision that will include some development, as we discussed here, and everybody’s maybe not singing ‘Kumbaya,’ but kind of hand-in-hand?” he said.

Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at , led off the summit with a presentation of that he prepared for the city. The City Council voted to spend $15,000 on the study, which was suggested by Councilman Mark Pierzchala.

In , Fuller said that population growth “is inevitable in this region.” Because of that inevitability, he said, governments must look at their zoning and ask what they want their cities and counties to be. “Do you want [growth] to happen on its own or do you want to try to manage it?” he said.

The summit, dubbed a “Road Map for the Future,” gives the city an opportunity to “position ourselves to take advantage of and manage whatever happens—whatever comes down the pike, if you will,” Britton said.

What is coming down—and up—Rockville Pike is and development in Shady Grove, where .

Rockville Pike, with its congested intersections and many strip malls surrounded by seas of surface parking, “is an outdated paradigm,” Britton said.

Businesses along the city’s main commercial thoroughfare will lose out to the competition at the city’s borders if the pike doesn’t change, he said.

That doesn’t have to happen, Britton said.

“Because we have an affluent, educated and numerous residential base, those areas do not have to supersede what we’re going to present here,” he said.

At least one summit participant was skeptical about whether city officials now have a road map for Rockville’s economic future.

“I think that they’re going to walk away with not a road map, but maybe the idea that they need a road map,” said Susan Prince, president of the West End Citizen’s Association.

Prince brought a civic group’s perspective to a panel that also included local government, education, nonprofit and business leaders.

Click here to view Rockville 11’s coverage of the summit.

Britton said that he hopes the summit has set a course for “continuing dialogue where the city will agree on what we want to look like.”

The future “has to include some change,” he said. The city can manage that change, he added.

“We want to select the change and be happy with it,” Britton said. “That’s what this is all about.”