Rockville Town Square by Dan Reed licensed under Creative Commons.

On Election Day, Rockville voters chose between two slates of candidates, the generally more anti-new-housing Rockville Forward slate and the generally more pro-growth Team Rockville slate. But instead of giving one slate the victory, voters split their ballots, re-electing Mayor Bridget Newton and electing or re-electing two councilmembers from each slate.

The first big takeaway from this election cycle is that the vote by mail initiative was a resounding success. Voter turnout almost doubled compared to the last election: 12,287 votes were cast versus only 6,468 in 2015.

Besides Newton, the Rockville Forward winners were Monique Ashton and incumbent Beryl Feinberg, while GGWash-endorsed candidates David Myles and incumbent Mark Pierzchala were elected from Team Rockville. Rockville voters seem to be pretty happy with the incumbent mayor. Virginia Onley faced an uphill battle trying to unseat Newton, who is well regarded both inside and outside Rockville. However, both newcomers to the council are young professionals with more diverse experiences and perspectives, showing the city is not afraid of change.

Although land use and development issues were described as the number one difference between the candidates, the average voter may have had trouble identifying where individual candidates stood on those issues, especially on the basis of campaign literature. Despite her historic opposition to some key affordable housing efforts like Beall’s Grant II in 2008, many voters (even among the politically active crowd) did not identify Mayor Newton as an “anti-growth” candidate.

Newton voted for an exemption to the city’s school capacity test to allow a fairly large transit-oriented development project to proceed at the Twinbrook Metro Station, and she has talked about the need for missing middle housing within Rockville. Monique Ashton has also talked about the need for smart growth and Beryl Feinberg discussed using the Redgate golf course site for housing in the published questionnaires.

Although the members of the Team Rockville slate were more amenable to adding housing density than Rockville Forward within Rockville Town Square, it’s hopeful that the current mayor and council will implement policies which allow for more housing options within the city. The mayor and council have the opportunity to work with Rockville-based Smart Growth advocates and each other to do the challenging work of reforming zoning to allow for duplexes, quadruplexes, and other missing middle housing types in Rockville’s single-family zoned areas.

Continued reliance on single-family housing will only worsen crises of affordability and congestion, as well as drive economic activity away from Rockville towards other, more affordable and accessible parts of the region.

The city recently commissioned the Urban Land Institute to study “strengthening [the] vitality” of the town center. The report said that to sustain small businesses there requires, first and foremost, more residents to live in that area instead of only driving in from elsewhere. Addressing zoning will give businesses the customer base they need to succeed, while also providing the variety of housing Rockville needs to thrive.