Coronavirus

Hyattsville to split $1M pandemic fund between nonprofits, business grants

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Hyattsville City Council approved a coronavirus pandemic relief fund allocating $1 million from city funds to go to a mix of local nonprofits and city business grant programs. Measure passed 9-2 with councilors Joseph Solomon and Edouard Haba voting against during Hyattsville’s May 4, 2020, City Council meeting. If all goes according to plan, Hyattsville residents and businesses will be able to apply for emergency city relief funds by June 1, 2020. The measure does several things:

It provides a restricted donation of $300,000 to the Hyattsville Community Development Corp.’s Community Action Fund to provide cash assistance to city residents for rent and mortgage relief, utilities and other emergency exceptions. Provides a restricted $100,000 donation to Employ Prince George’s Hourly Worker Relief fund to provide cash assistance to city residents in Hyattsville, with a two-percent administrative fee.Provides a restricted $100,000 donation to CASA de Maryland’s Solidarity Fund for cash assistance city residents. It creates several emergency business relief grant programs, with grants of up to $10,000 per business, funded as follows:$175,000 for Hyattsville businesses with a single location and 75 or fewer workers. $175,000 for minority-, women, veteran-owned, and single-employee businesses.$100,000 for childcare centers$50,000 for working artists, defined as individuals who earn 50 percent or more of their income from an artistic enterprise. 

Explaining his vote against the measure, Haba said he had concerns about the cost, the scope, and oversight of the pandemic fund. “I voted against the proposal because I believe this was a larger amount to put on the table to help,” said Haba at the end of the meeting. “I understand the urgency to provide relief to businesses and residents, but at the same time, in the fiduciary duty of the city I believe due diligence and strategic thinking and planning to make sure the fund is used accurately is needed.” “I think moving ahead with the organizations presented was a little bit hasty on our part,” continued Haba. 

Mayor Candace Hollingsworth said she suggested the charities because they have a history of providing assistance to Hyattsville residents. 

“I was looking at who’s already doing the work, which indicates to me who is interested in being able to do this work,” said Hollingsworth.

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Hyattsville

Hyattsville Council unsure how to use $1M pandemic relief fund

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Hyattsville City Council continues to look for ways to spend its $1 million local pandemic relief fund. During discussion at its April 22, 2020, meeting City Council members discussed in broad strokes possible ways the money could be spent, including donations to local charities already dealing with the aftermath of coronavirus’ disruptions, and programs for business aid. 

Mayor Candace Hollingsworth, lead sponsor of the city relief fund measures so far, pushed City Council members to think realistically about how the fund could best be used to provide direct relief to individuals. Additionally, she said Hyattsville economic development officials were crafting ways they could expand existing city business grant programs with some of the relief funding. Hollingsworth noted a city-funded program to provide about 75 grocery gift cards to Hyattsville residents attracted more than 650 applicants, of which only 88 turned out to be city residents. The deluge of applicants, and the work needed to verify their city residency, proved challenging for city staff to manage.

Coronavirus

Coronavirus shutdowns show up in Hyattsville budget

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Shuttered movie theaters and a drop in expected income tax revenue appear to be the biggest budget liabilities heading into Hyattsville’s next fiscal year, senior city staffers said during the city’s April 23, 2020, Council meeting, held by videoconference to avoid corona’s plague. 

During the meeting, City Administrator Tracey Douglas laid out department-by-department budget plans for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2020. Top line numbers include $20.9 million in projected revenue, $23.3 million in projected expenses, and a shortfall of $2.4 million. Asked if there was any concern about property taxes, the city’s largest source of tax revenue, Hyattsville’s city treasurer Ronald Brooks noted the city was not scheduled for a new property tax assessment until 2021, which should help maintain the city tax base at least for the next fiscal year. 

But Brooks also emphasized that the ultimate impacts of the pandemic are not yet known. Some revenue projections could still be optimistic, and a budget is just a planning document, not a final shopping list. “Going into probably the second quarter of next year, I probably expect some additional reductions in some of these areas,” said Brooks during the meeting.

Hyattsville

Hyattsville Administrator: Bringing officers back was right decision in pandemic

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Hyattsville City Administrator Tracey Douglas addressed the full-duty re-activation of several police officers involved in the still-under-investigation fatal shooting of Leonard Shand in 2019. Douglas’ comments, during Hyattsville’s April 22 City Council meeting, came in response to a prompt from Councilor Joseph Solomon to address the decision, which was conveyed to City Council after its April 6 meeting and disclosed to the media in an April 14 press release. “That was a decision that the chief of police made. It was an important decision. It was a very difficult decision that she grappled with.

Coronavirus
A black metal gate bears a three-panel sign reading, top to bottom, "City of Hyattsville." In the background, bright green leaves.

Who should get Hyattsville’s $1 million pandemic relief fund?

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At its last meeting, Hyattsville City Council approved a measure allocating $1 million to spend on pandemic relief programs. Among Prince George’s County’s larger municipalities, it’s the largest aid funds so-far assembled. But the legislation did not say how that money should be spent. Tonight, at it’s April 22, 2020, meeting, Hyattsville City Council tackles that question, and all options are seemingly on the table. 

Hyattsville isn’t the first to put its own money into relief programs. Soon after the pandemic was declared, Riverdale Park approved a comprehensive suite of legislation that allocated money and created programs that provide vouchers for the town’s farmers markets and restaurants, and loosened the rules on the city’s commercial grant programs. Mount Rainier has allocated $10,000 to coronavirus community response efforts, a portion of those funds have already gone to purchase a large nefrigerator to store donations of perishable goods in the city police department. 

One of the big policy issues for the fund is to whom the money should be allocated: businesses or individuals? Another issue facing Councilors is the question of establishing means testing for the program. For context, Hyattsville brought in $19.7 million in revenue in 2019.

Development

Magruder Pointe detailed plans filed for review

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Developers have filed paperwork seeking approval of detailed site plans for the controversial Magruder Pointe project. Werrlein Properties, which has been pursuing the project for more than two years, hope to eventually build a mix of 71 attached and detached single-family homes on the 8.6-acre site, the former home of the WSSC headquarters. The proposal has been notoriously divisive in Hyattsville. City officials and a group of residents have asked for a judicial review of a key rezoning decision needed for the project to move forward. A decision in that case has yet to be issued.

Coronavirus

Citing coronavirus, Hyattsville re-instates officers still under investigation for fatal shooting

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Six Hyattsville officers who fatally shot Leonard Shand have been placed back into “full-duty” status, despite an ongoing investigation into the events leading up to Shand’s death. Normally, the officers would remain on “administrative leave” until such an investigation is complete. In press releases issued at the time of Shand’s death in late September 2019, Hyattsville officials identified eight city police officers on the scene of the shooting. Three Prince George’s County officers and one Mount Rainier officer were also present. The announcement said, in a statement attributed to Hyattsville Chief of Police Amal Awad, that the department has “been operating with minimum staffing for more than a year.”

Hyattsville

No backyard chickens for Hyattsville, Council says

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Backyard chickens remain banned in Hyattsville’s lawbooks. At its April 6, 2020, meeting, Hyattsville City Council easily defeated a measure from Councilor Danny Schaible that would have deleted city laws banning domestic chickens and other fowl. But Schaible’s proposal would not have overturned a county-level ban on domestic fowl in areas not zoned either agricultural or rural residential. Nor would it have established regulations governing the husbandry of backyard fowl. As Route 1 Reporter has previously covered, a majority of City Council said they would not support the measure unless one or both of those concerns were addressed.

Hyattsville

Hyattsville weighs $1 million pandemic relief fund

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Hyattsville City Council is considering establishing a $1 million emergency fund to address the impacts from the coronavirus pandemic. But how that money will be doled out is up in the air. The legislation, to be discussed at Hyattsville’s April 6, 2020, City Council meeting, only establishes a broad outline of what the fund may be used for. Boiled down: the legislation creates a budget line item, the Hyattsville Covid-19 Pandemic Fund, which may be used to address “economic hardships” felt by residents and businesses. How the money is to be distributed is not addressed in the legislation.

Hyattsville

Kaiser Permanente plans West Hyattsville medical building

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Health care giant Kaiser Permanente wants to build a 44,360 square-foot medical office building on a two-acre site near West Hyattsville Metro Station on Ager Road. Hyattsville City Council will be briefed on the proposed development at its April 6, 2020, meeting. The three-story building, with an attached three-story, 238-space parking garage, would sit on what is currently a vacant lot near the Kirkwood Apartments on Ager Road. The property is also bordered by the Riverfront at West Hyattsville development. According to documents filed by Kaiser Permanente, the space will have 25,000 square feet of clinical space, 1,700 square feet of lab space, a 300 square-foot cafe and a 2,000 square foot pharmacy space.