A group of teens, who received county awards for their regular grounds and stream cleanups around their Stony Brook apartments and Little Hunting Creek, were featured in a “walking tour and forum series” event of the Coalition for Smarter Growth last month. The nonprofit coalition sponsors educational events and works in the metro area to help plan for growth that is green and transit-centered.

In the community room of Stony Brook Apartments at 3600 Buckman Road, Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the coalition, Monica Billinger of the Audubon Naturalist Society, and others gave presentations on how the planned EMBARK development along Route 1 may influence stormwater management in Hybla Valley.

Schwartz saw EMBARK as an exciting chance to right some of the wrongs of development of the 1950s that paved over huge areas for parking lots and channeled streams to carry flood water to the river as fast as possible, gouging themselves out and removing all life forms.

New trends in development allow runoff water to soak back into the ground through green surfaces, holding ponds, and meandering streams before reaching the river. Billinger stressed the importance of neighborhoods’ understanding the water cycle and acting to keep water clean through rain capture, stream clean up, green spaces, and other environmental actions.

Five of the dozen or so teens from the apartments who have participated in about 10 stream clean ups attended the meeting and told the community leaders who attended why they helped out.

The teen group is led by Ryan Barton, manager of community impact strategies for Community Preservation and Development Corporation, which owns the 204 apartments. The apartments sport solar panels on the roofs and rain barrels at the drainpipes. The grounds are litter free, thanks in part to the students suggesting trash cans near the mailboxes.

Little Hunting Creek originates on the east side of Route 1 and runs behind Walmart, Costco and Audubon Mobile Home Park, then turns east runs through large residential developments such as Creekside, Sequoia, and Stoney Creek. It parallels Buckman Road and flows back under Route 1 where it widens and flows through residential areas to enter the Potomac River at Riverside Park. Barton and Billinger stressed the importance of the involvement of communities, especially youth, in protecting streams as they flow through neighborhoods.

Various civic leaders, some from the downstream areas of the creek, attended the briefing. They were joined by Lee District Supervisor Jeff McKay on the grounds along the creek, which is fenced off from most apartment property.

Asked why they participated in clean ups, the teens — three girls and two boys — gave the first reason as “he [Barton] gives us food” — pizza to be exact. But Barton noted that the teens kept working many hours after the pizza was finished.

“At first I didn’t want to touch those dirty things,” said Stephanie Agyemang-Manu, “but now I find clean- up relaxing — sort of therapeutic.” Racheal Appiah said she just wanted to help out her community. Carmela Dangale said she was still getting used to it but feels like she is helping out.

The teen group is two-time defender of the Fairfax County Youth Volunteer Group of the Year Award from Volunteer Fairfax, and is nominated again — and Racheal is nominated for Youth Volunteer of the Year.

Barton, who works full-time at Stony Brook, is now also working with CPDCs other properties to expand youth volunteer opportunities in locations such as Southeast, D.C.; Reston, Va.; and Silver Spring, Md.

“People are listening to young people, these days,” McKay said. “When our community was built here there were no environmental standards and most of the problems we see are a result of that. As the area redevelops with EMBARK, this is exactly the right time to be in this part of the county. We are focusing on all positive things.”

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Activists seeking to thwart the breakneck speed of development across the District have turned with greater frequency to the city’s highest court, filing legal challenges that have delayed more than two dozen projects in the past two years and driven up their costs.

Now the Bowser administration wants to curtail those challenges, proposing to amend District policies in ways to reduce those avenues for protest.

District officials say that the changes would end nuisance legal challenges, reduce the cost of doing business in Washington, and expedite the construction of housing units that the city needs.

“We have thousands of new homes that are hung up in court, including hundreds of affordable homes,” said Cheryl Cort, policy director for the Coalition For Smarter Growth. “The courts seem much more willing to ­second-guess the process, and it has thrown everything into uncertainty.”

But activists counter that the city is making it more difficult to stave off gentrification. They say their ability to turn to the D.C. Court of Appeals is necessary to prevent District officials from violating their own policies to accommodate luxury projects that drive up housing prices in exchange for minimal benefits for neighborhoods.

“It’s the most basic part of our checks and review,” said Kirby Vining, an activist who successfully appealed the city’s approval of a project in his neighborhood. “Without it, we would have been stuck.” He called the administration’s proposals a “Christmas present for developers.”

The proposed changes are part of a periodic review of the District’s policies that guide future growth, a process that has generated unusual public interest as residents, community groups and city agencies have suggested an estimated 3,000 amendments.

The D.C. Council, which must approve any changes, is slated to hold a hearing on the proposed new language later this month.

Since 2016, 25 appeals have been filed against projects approved by the District, three times the number lodged between 2013 and 2015, according to the District’s Zoning Commission. Members of one community group, Union Market Neighbors, have filed appeals against eight projects in the blocks adjoining Gallaudet University in Northeast, including one that was recently dismissed after the group reached a settlement with a developer.

The number of legal challenges in the District surged after the appeals court in 2016 overturned the Zoning Commission’s approval of a project to redevelop McMillan Park in Northwest into a complex of residential units, offices, a new park and a supermarket.

The development’s opponents successfully argued that zoning officials failed to consider the project’s potential to intensify gentrification. The opponents also contended that the officials had violated the city’s own regulations by permitting buildings denser than allowed under the D.C. Comprehensive Plan. The plan is the District’s compendium of policies that guide its evolution in housing, transportation, economic development and the environment.

The McMillan project’s opponents say that kind of contradiction would be less clear under new language the Bowser administration wants to insert in the Comprehensive Plan that asserts that references to such categories are “intended to give broad guidance and are not intended to be strictly followed.”

The D.C. Council’s first hearing on the proposed changes to the comprehensive plan is scheduled for March 20.

Other proposed changes include deleting specific measurements — “8 or more floors,” for example — that define terms such as “high density residential.”

“They are removing specificity and making the rules fuzzy,” said Aristotle Theresa, a lawyer who has appealed Zoning Commission approvals 14 times and represented the opponents to the McMillan project. “This is all to make it harder to file appeals.”

The proposed changes would make it more difficult for his largely poor clients to negotiate with developers, he said. They would be unable to “extract some equity out of the cycles of disinvestment and gentrification. It also takes away the say in how our neighborhoods develop.”

But District officials and advocates contend that it is the current language in the plan that’s ambiguous.

“To say we’re trying to wipe out any appeals or the ability to have due process is false,” said Andrew Trueblood, an economic adviser to Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D). “The problem is we’re litigated to the letter of the words in the Comprehensive Plan rather than the policy’s intent. This is meant to clarify what we’re trying to do. The more we can clarify the policies and remove ambiguity, then everyone will know the rules of the road from the beginning.”

The mayor’s proposals have generated widespread and sometimes heated discussion, with a coalition of advocates, community organizations and developers teaming up to press for changes.

At the same time, council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) warned his 15,000 Facebook followers recently that the mayor is seeking to remove “language that helps folks have leverage in court against major development that does not protect poor communities #STAYWOKE.”

Developers have said that costs incurred by the appeals discourage them from seeking zoning changes for their projects, instead of building only what they are allowed under existing regulations.

As a result, they say they are more likely to propose smaller projects that create less housing, both market-rate and affordable.

“There’s a chilling effect on development,” developer Martin Ditto said about the appeals, one of which was filed — and eventually dismissed — against his project near Union Market in Northeast. “People aren’t likely to go after deals that are uncertain.”

Ditto is part of a coalition advocating changes to the Comprehensive Plan, a group that includes the Coalition For Smarter Growth and Greater Greater Washington, as well as developers such as JBG Smith and Trammell Crow, which have been the target of appeals.

Activists who have filed the appeals argue that the subsidized housing included in the projects is aimed at people making more than $50,000 and not the District’s poorest residents.

“It’s affordable only for single, wealthy professionals,” said Chris Otten, a community organizer who has helped file a flurry of appeals in recent years. “It’s not affordable to working-class families and longtime District residents. They use the term ‘affordable’ to cover up the harm that’s created when you build big boxes for professionals.”

Bowser did not invoke Otten’s name, but she seemed to have him in mind when answering council member Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5) at a recent meeting. McDuffie asked if “there’s anything else we need to do” to curtail appeals that “slow down the production of thousands of units of housing — both market-rate and affordable.”

The mayor replied that she hoped to reduce the influence of “outside parties” driving opposition to projects in places where residents are largely supportive. Her priorities, Bowser said, include “ensuring that the citizens’ voice is not diluted by someone who has a totally outside agenda that isn’t impacted directly.”

Otten helped organize the appeal in the McMillan case, as well as at Barry Farm, the public-housing complex in Southeast that the city is seeking to redevelop. He also led an Adams Morgan community group that received $2 million from a developer to drop its opposition to a new hotel in the neighborhood.

More recently, he helped organize Union Market Neighbors, which has appealed eight projects surrounding the market, a 40-acre swath of wholesale warehouses that District officials have rezoned to accommodate apartments, hotels and ret ail.

The appeals court has dismissed several of the cases, one of them Feb. 7 after the developer agreed to pay Union Market Neighbors $150,000. Otten said the group has discussed using the funds to hire a liaison to talk with “the developers about how are we going to get local people jobs and who is going to tell the community that a giant crane is rolling through their neighborhood?”

“This money is going to a community that’s about to see a dramatic adverse change to their future,” Otten said. “At one point, it was a low-rise market. Now it’s going to be replaced by glass-and-steel behemoths.”

Not everyone in the neighborhood opposed the project, a total of 1,100 apartments spread across five buildings. The local Advisory Neighborhood Commission twice voted to support the development.

Philip Evans, a lawyer for the developer, Kettler, declined to comment on the settlement.

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Maryland Del. Maggie L. McIntosh was stunned. The veteran lawmaker, who chairs the powerful House Appropriations Committee, had just heard nearly 90 minutes of testimony in which people who typically disagree were all on the same side.

Corporate executives and union leaders. Chamber of commerce presidents and environmentalists. Civic leaders from both the Washington suburbs and Baltimore. All favored giving Metro more state money.

“I can’t believe there’s nobody opposing this bill,” McIntosh (D-Baltimore City) said at the end of a hearing in Annapolis last week.

The unanimity was a sign of the political momentum in Maryland, Virginia and the District propelling what would be a landmark deal to provide permanent, dedicated funding for the regional transit system.

Metro revenue and governance bills enjoyed favorable receptions in three key committee hearings in Annapolis. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) is resisting some key provisions, but his team is in active negotiations with Democratic lawmakers in hope of achieving progress.

Crucial details remain to be decided. There is no consensus on how much money Metro would get, what management and labor reforms would be required, whether Northern Virginians’ taxes would increase, and whether an increased federal contribution must be part of the package.

And the Trump administration cast a shadow over the otherwise sunny outlook by saying it wants to reduce federal funding for Metro.

Still, the events in Maryland and Virginia made clear that Metro is closer than ever to gaining a significant, guaranteed stream of revenue. Since its founding in 1967, the agency has been the only major transit system in the nation to lack such financial support.

“The jurisdictions are aligning for the first time in 50 years,” said Maryland state Sen. Brian J. Feldman (D-Montgomery), chief sponsor of one of the funding bills.

Several factors account for the encouraging prospects. One is the nearly universal respect accorded Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld for the changes he has instituted regarding management, safety and reliability since taking over the system in late 2015.

Another element is the growing acceptance among politicians outside the Washington region that Metro is vital to the area’s economy and thus to the prosperity of Virginia and Maryland as a whole.

“Metro is extremely important to the vibrancy of our commonwealth, just like the port is,” said Virginia Del. S. Chris Jones (R-Suffolk), referring to the harbors at Hampton Roads, which have received substantial state support.

That point has been driven home by Amazon.com’s desire to build its second North American headquarters on a site with good public transit. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Northern Virginia, Montgomery County and the District are on the Seattle-based retail company’s shortlist of 20 locations for HQ2 and its 50,000 jobs.

Finally, the region’s business leaders have forged an unusually large and strong alliance to lobby for increased Metro funding. In the latest sign of business support, six major companies joined the MetroNow coalition backing the campaign: Capital One, Marriott, Hilton, MedStar Health, Exelon and Washington Gas.

The companies and business groups also have joined with other civic organizations, including environmental groups such as the Coalition for Smarter Growth and the Southern Environmental Law Center.

“Our growing membership is showing its strength at the right time,” said MetroNow campaign manager Clare Flannery.

Despite the optimism, significant hurdles remain. Perhaps the biggest is Hogan’s insistence on limiting the increased funding to four years. Both bills in Virginia, as well as the Democratic-backed ones in Maryland, call for permanent dedicated funding.

Hogan, however, opposes an open-ended pledge of funds.

“The governor’s plan is not a blank check,” spokesman Doug Mayer said. “He is not going to turn over unlimited funds to an agency that has been known more for its failures than its successes.”

In another potential obstacle, the total contributions agreed upon by the three jurisdictions may fall short of the additional $500 million a year in dedicated funding that Wiedefeld says is necessary to ensure reliability and safety.

Metro and its backers want each jurisdiction to contribute its share based on an existing Metro funding formula, which is based on population, number of stations and similar factors. Under it, Maryland would contribute $167 million, Virginia $154 million and the District $179 million.

However, the bills being considered in Maryland would provide $125 million. Business groups and others are pushing hard to raise that to $167 million, but it’s not clear whether they will be successful.

In Virginia, a key issue is tax increases. The House approved a bill offering $105 million a year — with no tax increases. The Senate’s version provides the full Virginia share of $154 million, but includes new taxes on hotel stays and real estate transactions in Northern Virginia.

Virginia House leadership has ruled out any tax increases, although there may be support for setting a floor for regional wholesale gasoline taxes. That could yield $17 million or more for Metro, on top of the $105 million, for a total of $122 million.

The District is considering dedicating three-quarters of a penny per dollar of its sales tax to help meet its obligation to Metro. It has given up seeking a regionwide sales tax to support the transit agency because of opposition from Virginia and Maryland. But D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) has objected that the proposed regional funding formula is unfair to the city.

Wiedefeld said it is crucial to get the full $500 million from the three jurisdictions, because the White House has signaled it wants to reduce the federal government’s contributions.

“The key message is we’ve got to stick to the $500 million across the board,” Wiedefeld said. “We may need to backfill” to make up for a lower federal subsidy, he said.

The Trump administration last week proposed to reduce the federal subsidy to Metro from $150 million to $120 million in the next fiscal year. The White House budget office also said federal support to the transit agency needs to be “lessened” over the “long term”; the federal subsidy program for Metro is set to expire after 2019.

Given the federal government’s position, another possible stumbling block is Hogan’s insistence that Maryland would contribute more money for Metro only if the federal government increases its contribution. Democrats, business groups and other Metro supporters see that as unrealistic.

Hogan’s spokesman defended the governor’s position while noting that negotiations are continuing.

“It is bare bones common-sense that we put pressure on the federal government to pay their fair share,” Mayer said. “What’s really important is the governor has been leading on the issue . . . and he’s going to continue to do that.”

A key player in procuring federal funding is Rep. Barbara Comstock (Va.), the only Republican to represent a congressional jurisdiction that includes a Metro station. She said Friday she is “confident” that Congress will restore the full $150 million for Metro for the next fiscal year.

Asked about extending and increasing the federal subsidy in later years, as she has proposed in her own Metro bill, Comstock said only that changes would be necessary to have a chance of succeeding.

“I think if we have the reforms, it’s going to be a lot easier for me to make that case,” Comstock said.

Such changes should include restructuring the board to make it more “businesslike,” and saving money on pension and overtime costs, she said.

A requirement for governance and labor reforms as a condition for getting extra money is also an issue in the state legislatures, especially Virginia.

The House bill in Richmond would shrink the 16-member Metro board to a “reform board” of four or five members at first, and later create an eight-member board. It also calls for limiting the agency’s annual growth in operating costs to 2 percent and adopting a “right-to-work” provision for any Metro projects solely within Virginia.

The less-restrictive Senate bill calls for effectively shrinking the Metro board to eight by restricting the participation of the eight alternate members. It backs Wiedefeld’s commitment to 3 percent annual growth in the operating budget and does not include the labor provision.

In Maryland, proposed governance changes include requiring the secretary of transportation or their representative to serve as a Metro board member, and to strengthen the role of the Metro inspector general.

It will be a daunting task to work out all these differences in Annapolis and Richmond in the relatively short time allotted. Virginia lawmakers must resolve the differences between their two competing bills by the scheduled close of the General Assembly session March 10.

Maryland has more time — its session lasts until April 9 — but its legislation should not contradict what Virginia approves. The D.C. Council meets year round, so its calendar is not an issue.

Nonetheless, the progress has lifted the hopes of Metro and its backers that dedicated funding is on the way.

“Clearly there’s a sense that something has got to happen,” Wiedefeld said.

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For every tax provision, there’s a loophole — or so it’s said, anyway. And public transit advocates are worried that a seemingly minor change included in the new federal tax law could push employers to seek workarounds that would have a long-term effect on commuter benefits for people who use public transportation.

Of concern is a provision in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that eliminates tax write-offs for employers who subsidize the cost of their employees’ parking or transit passes — as many as a third of employers in urban hubs such as Washington.

The change won’t affect people who use pretax dollars to pay monthly parking or transit costs, the most popular form of commuter benefits offered by U.S. employers. In fact, those commuter benefits are increasing slightly. The maximum amount of pretax income that can be used each month for commuting expenses increased to $260 this year from $255 in 2017.

But at companies where the employer covers part or all of their employees’ commuting costs, those subsidies are no longer considered a tax-deductible business expense.

Lawmakers say they advocated for the change because standard corporate tax rates are dropping dramatically — to 21 percent from 35 percent — under the new tax law. With so much cash freed up, they argue, employers have more freedom to provide benefits and perks that would be most valuable to their employees.

But transit advocates worry that the change could lead employers to recoup some of the money they were previously able to deduct by finding an alternative — and tax-deductible — method to pay for the benefit under the umbrella of their property lease — a workaround that some say has been recommended by tax attorneys.

Here’s how it would work: Employers who rent office space and also separately pay to provide parking for employees could try to “bundle” those expenses. They could, in theory, negotiate a two-in-one agreement, in which the cost of providing parking would be embedded as part of their lease — a tax-deductible expense.

“It would be a way for an employer to provide a benefit and still be able to wrap it into their office lease, since it’s an office expense that is deductible,” said Cheryl Cort, policy director at the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

The workaround would be good only for parking, not public transit subsidies. Although it’s still a win for workers in that it allows employers to offer a perk, transit advocates say it will encourage more people to drive.

It’s even more of a concern in dense cities, where the cost of parking can be exorbitant — a valuable perk for employees but expensive to subsidize.

Transit advocates fear that over the long term, the provision will worsen the disparity between transit and parking benefits, with employers opting more toward parking subsidies than those for transit.

For years, transit advocates have complained that federal tax law rewards those who choose to drive to work and fails to incentivize using public transit. Through the 1990s and much of the 2000s, the tax-free limit for monthly parking fees was much higher than its transit pass equivalent.

That’s why some cities and states have enacted their own legislation to tip the scales away from parking credits and toward transit. In 2014, the D.C. Council, for example, enacted a law that requires all D.C. businesses with more than 20 employees to offer a way for workers to pay for public transit costs with pretax wages. The council is considering legislation that would require businesses that offer free or subsidized parking for employees to offer the cash equivalent of that parking to employees who choose to use transit, walk or bike.

“There have always been ways that the federal tax code had encouraged subsidized parking as a commuter benefit. Over time, we’ve struggled to get some parity, but we’ve never reached parity,” Cort said.

Others, however, say advocates are being alarmist. It’s also unclear whether the workaround is even allowable.

“It’s a question that the IRS will definitely have to look into,” said Jason Pavluchuk, policy director at the Association for Commuter Transportation. “If employers start to look for workarounds, I think the IRS will start to come down pretty harshly against that.”

Another possible outcome of the new tax law, experts said, is that more employers will consider ditching their transportation subsidies altogether, opting instead to enroll their employees in pretax commuter pass programs.

“I don’t think they’re going to stop providing transit or parking benefits tomorrow, but they’re certainly going to rethink them in the future,” Cort said.

But Pavluchuk said he has spoken to several national employers known for their robust transportation benefit packages, and they don’t expect to change them, despite the fact that they will no longer be able to use the tax deduction.

“They don’t do it for the write-off. They do it for the employee recruitment and retention. And they do it because it helps not to have to figure out parking,” he said.

If that happens, it could have an opposite effect on commuting habits: In midsize, car-dependent cities, employers that ditch their commuter subsidies are more likely to eliminate parking subsidies — and instead get workers to sign up for transit passes.

Still, they question whether the elimination of the corporate tax write-off will be enough to get a large number of companies to change their policies.

“If employers are looking to improve their bottom line, transit benefits are not going to be the first place they look,” said Jody Dietel, chief compliance officer at WageWorks, a company that administers pretax benefits like parking and transit passes.

“In a lot of places, commuter benefits have become like health benefits — it’s a given,” she added. “Employers will say, ‘No way am I going to get rid of those benefits that are so valued by my employees.’ ”

Photo by Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post. Read the orginial story here.