Home Day Care Expansion Denied by Rockville Board of Appeals. Good or Bad Call?

A woman’s proposal to expand a home day care’s capacity from eight children to 12 was denied by the Rockville Board of Appeals, The Gazette reports.

During a meeting Saturday, the Rockville Board of Appeals denied Rubina Mohammed’s request to add more children at her home day care center at 731 W. Montgomery Ave., The Gazette reports.

Adding children required that she get a special exception from a city ordinance.

Though city staff recommended approving the exception, the Planning Commission voted unanimously to reject it and said it did not with fit with Rockville’s Master Plan, city records show.

Members of the West End Civic Association complained the expansion would ruffle traffic and add another “institution” to the city’s historic West End, the newspaper reports.

“The four children really is not the issue,” Noreen Bryan, president of West End Citizens Association reportedly told the newspaper. “The issue is that we’re becoming truly saturated with institutions. … Where does it end?”

Mohammed told the paper that she didn’t think her day care fit the definition of an institution.

“From eight kids to 12 kids, they’re comparing my day care with elementary schools,”  Mohammed  told The Gazette.

Read The Gazette’s account at Gazette.net.

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Speak Out: Do you think the Board of Appeals was right to deny this proposal?