Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Wheaton residents exasperated with MoCo's failure to enforce laws on residential streets

Forget illegal parking within 35' of
a stop sign - this car is parked AT the
stop sign
Wheaton residents are questioning why Montgomery County is not putting more code and law enforcement resources into their area, as crimes and violations continue to increase. Four years after Connecticut Avenue Estates requested more assistance with illegal trash dumping on neighborhood streets, the problem persists. Parking of work trucks and rampant parking violations, including vehicles left too close to driveways and intersections, go unpunished across Wheaton neighborhoods. This despite new parking laws having been passed almost a decade ago to supposedly address the issue.
Illegal parking at driveway
Kimblyn Persaud, President of the Wheaton Regional Park Neighborhood Association, says Wheaton residents deserve the same level of enforcement and quality of life as those living in Bethesda. While the County has occasionally deployed more officers to the neighborhood in response to complaints, Persaud argues those efforts need to be sustained and ongoing to have any real impact. "The bottom line is, we need dedicated officers," she said.
"You can't see around these working vans, cars and vans are parked all the way to end of the corner, past stop signs and right into the street," Persaud added. "Large commercial vehicles, in violation of height restrictions, are still being allowed to park on residential streets, cars are often parked in the wrong direction, food trucks allowed to be stored on the streets and numerous garbage cans and cones holding parking spaces. Where is the quality of life in living like this, and why should we have to wait till a child, darting between work vans, gets hit?"
At the same time, increasing crime, gang activity and drug deals are taking up much of the time of those officers who are on patrol. "Even officers don't feel safe over here," Persaud said. "Nobody but a fool would walk by themselves down Shorefield [Road] and Connecticut Avenue Estates at night, and that's including officers.  So when a complaint is called in, officers respond by driving by, but they haven't been stopping!"
Persaud questions why Wheaton residents are being treated as children of a lesser god, despite the great wealth and progressive politics of Montgomery County. Given the highly-diverse demographics of Wheaton, she said race may be a factor. During scandals like Farm Road and the Moses African Cemetery in recent years, institutional racism in Montgomery County government has indeed come to light. In fact, the County Executive and County Council offices, and the Planning Board, have each called in as many as 7 police officers to confront African-Americans exercising their First Amendment rights to testify and peacefully protest. Police have never been called on white residents under the same circumstances, a disparity that should be under an even brighter spotlight after the recent Starbucks incident.
"The continued perpetuation of structural racism not only hurts Wheaton and Montgomery County, but it hurts us as individuals," Persaud said.  "We deserve to be safe, we deserve to have the protection of the police, from both crime and parking violations. We deserve clean neighborhoods, that are not roach and rat-infested." She cited promises made four years ago in emails by Councilmembers Nancy Navarro and George Leventhal, which have proven to be empty promises.  "We deserve so much better than what this County Executive and County Council has done," she said.
Illegal dumping remains a problem,
four years after the Council promised to end it

Illegal parking up against an
intersection

Parked cars in a no-parking zone

Parking within 35' of an intersection
along Shorefield Road
Photos: Kimblyn Persaud

14 comments:

  1. As a resident who has contacted the county multiple times to address this I can say this is 100% accurate. I have spent hours and days going back and forth with the county explaining all the violations, having them come out to our neighborhood to inspect. At one point the inspector promised to address it, then he went back to his supervisor and called me a week later saying the county cannot do anything, unless I get a petition of all the neighbors. Interesting, so now the ones who disregard the county codes and laws must agree that they are in violation for the county to do something. Not the way it works in Bethesda/chevy chase, and reflective of the counties desire to keep this area down. Extremely sad.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, I’ve been told to get permit parking. So, the County Council has passed parking regulations laws that adversely affect low income neighborhoods. They’ve raised our taxes and now we’re expected to pay to park in front of our homes. This is truly a sad state of affairs.

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  2. so many obsessed with hating on Dyer. If he is so bad, why do you insist on reading his material, aren't you just supporting the so called "White Supremacists"?? does that make you a White Supremacists sympathizer???

    reality is he does great work for the community, actually holding the county responsible and accountable for so many issues that are hardly, if ever, reported.

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  3. @ 8:45 - Doesn't that make YOU a white supremacist sympathizer?

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  4. I am not the one who believes he is. As stated at @8:45 I characterized him as one who does great work for the community, actually holding the county responsible and accountable for so many issues that are hardly, if ever, reported. Which is why I do enjoy and appreciate his material.

    but surely I would not support one I thought was a White Supremacists, my God, what would that say about me

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  5. Robert Dyer, who has never worked a day of his life, hates blue-collar workers.

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  6. Mike Smith in WheatonApril 25, 2018 at 10:51 AM

    It seems like Wheaton Regional Park Neighborhood Association members spend their (ample) leisure time on awful ideas: preventing the Wheaton Library from being near the transit center; advocating for demolishing the historic and architecturally important Wheaton Youth Center; making life difficult for working people, etc.

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    Replies
    1. nope - demolishing the wheaton recreation center was the best thing that happened to the neighborhood. It was a dilapidated eyesore and honestly, it was the STUDENTS that came out in full force to advocate for the new facility. Second, the new wheaton library is in a great spot. If it had moved, there probably wouldn't have been room for a library combined with a recreation center. It would have cost too much to assemble that space in downtown wheaton. Third, it's not too much to ask people to park properly and to ramp up enforcement of illegal dumping - like trash, couches, old TVs.

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  7. Living in an auto-centric neighborhood and then complaining about the multitude of cars comes across as rather ridiculous.

    Why are there 10 pictures of work vans? Work vans are illegal? That can't possibly be true. The person complaining in the article clearly has never been to Bethesda if she thinks people fudging rules like parking 35' from intersections only happens in her neighborhood. I used to live on Battery Ln and street parking was far, far tighter and in greater demand than anything in freak Wheaton.

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    Replies
    1. No, I don’t have a problem with the cars. I have a problem with them being illegally parked and violating the height restrictions. Thank you, I’ll go to battery lane this weekend to take pictures of the work trucks in violation of height restrictions parked there.

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  8. Folks who don't want to see work trucks are out of luck unless they move somewhere with strong HOA rules.

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    Replies
    1. Or you can move to an apt. Like the ones on Shorefield, where they don’t allow working vans of any sort due to safety concerns for pedestrians and fellow drivers.

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  9. Mike Smith of Wheaton raises a good point. Where was Robert Dyer when the MoCo Cartel built a regional library outside of the walkshed of a Metro station?

    This is not Smart Growth. This is not even Dumb Growth. This is Retarded Growth!!!

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  10. Why is there snow visible in Photos #4 and #5?

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