Latin gala to raise money for Wheaton Volunteer Rescue Squad March 28

The Wheaton Volunteer Rescue Squad is hosting a fiesta for a great cause this Saturday, March 28, at their new Ballroom at Wheaton Glen facility above the squad at 2400 Arcola Avenue.

Proceeds from the event will go toward the purchase of a $1,000,000 truck needed for the squad, due to aging equipment.

The event will feature Salsa and a variety of other Latin music performed by Laura Sosa and Pa’ Gozar Latin Band. The band is widely known for performing at festivals and Latin venues throughout the Washington, DC area. The show will also include a performance by Titanes Salseros, the Latin dance team from Albert Einstein High School. Free Latin dance lessons will be provided starting at 7pm, courtesy of Flying Feet Enterprises. The WVRS will be serving Latin food items (for an additional cost) and have a cash bar. There will also be door prizes, a raffle, and other cash games.

Doors will open at 7:00 PM.

Tickets are $25 for adults and children 12 and over. For more information:

Email L​atinGala@wvrs.org, or call 240-389-3894.

Downtown Wheaton " redevelopment " meeting March 24

A public information meeting on the proposed Lot 13 redevelopment project in Wheaton will be held Tuesday, March 24, at 6:30 PM in the Wheaton High School Auditorium. The school is located at 12601 Dalewood Drive.

Updated sketch plans will be displayed for the project, which will be a Montgomery County Government office building. This is hardly what residents and Wheaton businesses had in mind. The project will hurt Wheaton Triangle businesses by removing the convenient parking their patrons currently enjoy in Lot 13, and create dirt, noise and disruption. Government offices won't jumpstart the Wheaton economy, either. The reality is, the Powers That Be want the small businesses around Lot 13 to fail, so that they can demolish those retail buildings, and build more luxury apartments.

With Marriott actively searching for a new headquarters location convenient to Metro, why aren't these unwise plans being put on hold, and efforts made to secure the hospitality giant for Wheaton. Doesn't Wheaton deserve to have a logo other than that of a grocery store to anchor its skyline?

Quarry House, Bombay Gaylord & Mandarin Chinese restaurants damaged in Silver Spring fire (Photos)

A major fire in the 8400 block of Georgia Avenue damaged three popular restaurants early this morning in Silver Spring. Quarry House Tavern, Bombay Gaylord and Mandarin Chinese restaurants were all damaged. Over 100 firefighters responded to the 2 alarm blaze. One firefighter suffered non-life-threatening injuries, according to Montgomery County Fire and Rescue spokesperson Pete Piringer. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Photos by Pete Piringer

FACT-CHECKING MONTGOMERY COUNTY INFRASTRUCTURE FORUM

As Paul Harvey used to say, "And now...the rest of the story."

This past Saturday's infrastructure summit at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School was long in hours but short on accurate information. The Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County described it as a "farce." Much of the program was made up of County officials delivering the same talking points we've already heard in other forums, and too little from actual parents and residents. More facts were being tweeted by the PCMC and citizens during the meeting than being generated by the speakers themselves.

No public speaking by the public,
please!

One would think that the beg-a-thon underway currently for school construction money would be enough to dissuade Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson from claiming that development is covering the cost of the new school construction it requires. While everyone is rolling around on the floor laughing in response to that assertion, let me point out:

DC, Fairfax and Arlington have all had real estate development booms - and they all had budget shortfalls this year. Montgomery County has been growing like mad before and after the recession - and is in a structural deficit as far out as the projections go.

Guess what? It's a fact that residential development does not generate the revenue needed to cover the schools and services those new populations require. Your ever-increasing Montgomery County taxes and fees are the best evidence of that.

Developers covering school construction
costs? Not quite... "Need state aid," tweeted
MCPS Board of Education member
Jill Ortman-Fouse. Yep, actual BOE member
said it, not me

The use of cluster averaging allows County officials to give the false impression that overcrowding is currently under 120% of capacity.

FACT: I'm aware of eight Montgomery County public schools which currently exceed 150% of capacity. One is at, or exceeds, 180% of capacity. At some point, it's like having two schools within one building.

FACT: As regards future development in the Walt Whitman cluster - those schools are over capacity now. Wood Acres Elementary is getting an addition, and that will put it at full capacity when completed (it was over-capacity prior to the beginning of construction). Kids are taking gym class in hallways at Pyle Middle School.

FACT: The generation of students from multifamily housing in the Whitman cluster, and in the Westbard Sector in particular, is significantly higher than elsewhere in the county. Bruce Crispell, long-range planner for MCPS, acknowledged this fact at the Westbard Sector Plan charrette.

How about those talking points about "urban" schools? Put aside the point that Westbard and other areas being targeted for massive overdevelopment are definitively suburban and residential in character for a moment. Put aside the point that neither potential elementary school site floated by planners for the Westbard sector is large enough to hold a school. Put aside the point that the acreage of Westland Middle School and the current Little Falls Library site together is not large enough to support the population, employees and facilities for two "collocated" schools (one wonders how many people who are talking about "collocating" a school at the Westland site are aware of the actual size of the property, and that any expansion into Equity One's site is blocked by the driveway for Kenwood Place - and the proposed Equity One grocery store building that would be on that part of the Westwood Shopping Center site).

Put that all aside, and ask yourself if you want your kids in a tiny school, with inadequate playground space, athletic fields and other facilities. As Rockville Planning Commissioner John Tyner pointed out recently, schools involve more than just jamming kids into sardine can classrooms and "urban" (a.k.a. cramped) school buildings. The facilities that high-quality schools require are "the things that really determine if kids get a good education or not," Tyner said. I won't even get into the idea being floated of these schools being placed in industrial areas! What's better than a portable classroom? A portable classroom next to an EPA brownfield, I guess.

"Full disclosure": The architect speaking at the meeting was with Perkins Eastman. The same Perkins Eastman retained by developer Equity One for its Westbard redevelopment plan. The same Perkins Eastman that thereby will profit from approval of the Westbard Sector Plan as currently formulated. An approval that will be decided by Chairman Anderson, and Councilmembers Roger Berliner and George Leventhal, and other officials present at Saturday's forum. Is this a forum, or corporate lobbying?

By the way, there's a lot more to infrastructure than schools. Roads, sewers, police and fire are just some of the major expenses development generates. Yes, proponents of BRT did use this forum to push for that $5 billion bus system boondoggle - which will have zero impact on traffic congestion.

FACT: BRT would reduce capacity on the County's most-traveled commuter routes by a full 33%.

FACT: The current draft of the Westbard Sector Plan includes not a single project or proposal to increase automobile capacity on River Road or Massachusetts Avenue. And how could you do much anyway, given that the River Road right-of-way is constricted by homes east of Little Falls Parkway. Would the War-on-Cars-Capital of the World, Washington, DC, widen River Road within its borders past Western Avenue? Fuhgeddaboudit!

Contrary to what you may be hearing from this meeting and the media - we are not "going to be okay" on our present course regarding development and infrastructure.

"And now you know...the rest of the story."

Just the facts, ma'am.

HIGH WINDS BLOW OUT WINDOWS AT BAE/VITRO SITE IN ASPEN HILL (PHOTO)

Yesterday's wind gusts up to 60 MPH were more than the venerable BAE/Vitro building could take. Winds blew out windows, but there were no injuries, Montgomery County Fire and Rescue spokesperson Pete Piringer said. The building has been vacant since June 2010.

While the site layout now is very appropriate for its suburban location, near single-family homes, developers are rubbing their hands together in eagerness of urbanizing suburban Aspen Hill. Walmart was intentionally used by the County Council (not the landowner) as a poison pill to achieve what they really wanted - mixed-use, urban, transit-oriented redevelopment of Aspen Hill.

Their nightmarish urban vision is laid out in this illustration from the Aspen Hill Minor Master Plan Amendment report, where you can see their ultimate scheme - replacing suburban retail with a small city of high-rise luxury apartments. This will be facilitated, of course, by the Bus Rapid Transit being worked up for Georgia Avenue. BRT hit a snag recently when the public was informed by the State Highway Administration that the line would require demolition of 155+ homes and businesses along Georgia Avenue. That "oops" moment for developers, and the "smart growth" organizations that front for them, resulted in a temporary pause in planning for the Olney-Wheaton route.

One later phase no one is talking about publicly? When developers plan to snap up and demolish the relatively cheap homes around the commercial area, and extend the new urban zone into the residential neighborhoods as far as they can go. Maybe even all the way to Veirs Mill, where they will meet with the planned town center on today's Halpine View site. And then, maybe even to Rockville Pike, if a similar land grab is pulled off in the historic Twinbrook neighborhood.

"Oops," indeed.

Each of the red splotches in the above
right rendering represents an urban
apartments building, arrayed around
an Aspen Hill "town center"

Top photo via Pete Piringer

ANGRY VOICES, SMUG POLITICIANS AT MONTGOMERY COUNTY TRANSIT AUTHORITY PUBLIC HEARING

Using transit, 

"you lose an enormous amount of 

your productive hours waiting"

Tell me about it.

The disrespect of the citizens of Montgomery County in the Independent Transit Authority scandal continued Friday night, as the Montgomery County Delegation to the Maryland state legislature held a public hearing on bill MC 24-15 at the County Council Building in Rockville. After all the deception and dirty tricks of the previous 6 days, the shenanigans extended to the hearing itself.

Despite promises that the hearing would present a balance between those for, and opposed to, the bill that would create an unelected transit authority with unlimited taxing and eminent domain power, the deck was stacked in favor of the bill. Citizens already forced to race home from work to Rockville for a 6:00 PM start time arrived to find County politicians and developer-backed advocates for the bill ensconced at the top of the speakers list. That was just the beginning.

Not only did citizens and Ride On employees have to sit through a whopping 15 supporters of the bill before even getting a chance to speak, but those speakers and their allies in the delegation dragged out their testimony to around 90 long minutes. 90 minutes of mostly hot air. At one point, the delegation's chair, Shane Robinson (D-District 39) even spent time giving shout-outs to former delegates. Why they were even there makes no sense, but how about a "shout-out" to your constituents - the people who pay your salaries?

Earlier, Robinson tucked away the First Amendment, admonishing the crowd to forgo applause, "booing, and hissing." God forbid we'd have to hear any expression of the anger of the public after the outrageous deception that brought forth this ITA proposal.

Speakers for the proposed legislation were given extra time, and more extra time beyond that to fully flesh out ideas, cover all the bases, and complete actual thoughts. The taxpayers who paid for the hearing and the microphones? Two minutes, a full 60-seconds less than the 3-minute standard for public hearings at every other level of government. "I am John Smith, and I oppose the bill because...." [beep beep] "Wrap it up!"

The chair of the County Rapid Transit Task Force, Mark Winston, who was previously found to be in a position to benefit financially from the approval of a Bus Rapid Transit system and the development that would follow, had the laugher statement of the evening: "There is nothing sinister being proposed in this bill." Winston said the formation of the transit authority would "increase the sense of urgency" regarding construction of new transit projects in the county. But all of the urgency is really coming from the developers who will benefit from passage of MC 24-15.

Delegate Ben Kramer (D-District 19), one of the few outspoken critics of the bill (and one of the few who wisely voted Nay on the late filing of it in Annapolis) on the panel, asked Winston "are we perhaps putting the cart before the horse?" Kramer compared the idea of granting an unlimited funding mechanism before the details of the authority and the projects are even known to a kid demanding college tuition from his parents. That kid has no specific plans about college, Kramer said, but is simply "lookin' for you to pay for it," an allusion that drew raucous laughter from the packed hearing room.

Another Nay-vote, Delegate Eric Luedtke (District 14) was similarly skeptical of the bill, and the process that brought it to a sudden public surfacing last Friday. He mused aloud whether or not it might be sensible to simply have a public process and discussion on this at the county level through 2015, and then put forward a better bill in the 2016 session 12 months from now.

Luedtke's on-point questions also brought out a very significant aspect of the proposed authority I had never even considered. Because the ITA would not be backed by the "full faith and credit" of Montgomery County, it would therefore have to pay markedly higher interest rates - at taxpayer expense.

A common-sense idea from Delegate Aruna Miller (D-District 15) - who did vote for the bill, by the way - was to have the transit authority issue be put to a voter referendum in 2016.

But voters were still waiting to have their say last night. And waiting. And waiting.

Amy Ginsburg, Executive Director of Friends of White Flint, enthusiastically endorsed the bill, saying her group "looks very favorably" upon it. She claimed "the community rallied around" it, but strangely, none of those feverish fans ever showed up at the hearing last night to provide evidence of her statement.

Finally, a few detractors got a turn at the mic. One of them, Town of Chevy Chase Councilmember John Bickerman, scored several blows on the authority, and his testimony was referred to and seconded by many speakers through the long hours that would follow. He noted that the actual language in the bill "doesn't sound at all like what" its proponents testified at the hearing. The bill is actually a "backdoor property tax, an effort to circumvent the cap on property tax," he argued. One of Bickerman's comments which got a favorable response from the crowd, was his astonishment that "you have a public hearing on Friday night at 6:00."

Paula Bienenfeld, representing the Montgomery County Civic Federation, asked the delegation which of them traveled to the meeting by transit. No one raised their hand. The Montgomery County Council has famously had the same response when previously asked. Yet both bodies are asking the public to "get out of their cars." Winston, the Rapid Transit Task Force Chair once said "it has been a while" since he rode the bus. Hypocrisy at its best in all 3 cases.

Finally, someone pointed out the elephant in the room - the dirty tricks speakers list.

Twinbrook Civic Association representative Christina Ginsburg criticized the way the delegation "stacked this hearing" with supporters in the early, favorable slots (several reporters left early, and did not hear [and therefore will not quote] the later speakers). The crowd cheered, and one voice in the crowd bellowed toward Del. Robinson, "You said it would be pros and cons!!" That promise, of course, turned out to be hogwash.

Attacking the decidedly-unusual process by which this bill has been brought forth, Ginsburg said, "I'm appalled that you're lending your names and reputations to this kind of chicanery." She added that none of the jurisdictions cited as models in the county report allow what's in this bill.

"Kill this bill," county resident James Williamson said. He was skeptical of claims that the county should be trusted on this legislation. "Just look at the great work we did with the Silver Spring Transit Center," he noted sarcastically. County resident Tanzi Strafford concurred, citing the county's "history of incompetent transportation management." Williamson seconded Miller's suggestion of putting the matter to the public via referendum.

Joan Fidler of the Montgomery County Taxpayers League called the bill "a solution in search of a problem," and then went on to slice and dice it - and its proponents' arguments - to the delight of the crowd.

Jean Cavanaugh was one of several civic leaders to note that the short notice of the bill and public hearing did not permit enough time to engage membership on the proposal. Her Seven Oaks Evanswood Citizens Association's Executive Board is opposing the bill.

The Greater Four Corners Alliance is also in opposition to the ITA bill, and its representative Kevin Harris referred to the "undemocratic process" it has been rushed through.

Eileen Finnegan said Hillandale residents question the need for such a transit authority, and its Executive Board is likewise opposed.

Allen Myers, representing the Maplewood Citizens Association in Bethesda, said that a similar ITA proposal was only approved in the state of Florida after two voter referendums.

The Cherrywood Homeowners Association was also opposed. Their representative, Paul Jarosinski, said resident opposition was "almost unanimous." Jarosinski called the county's BRT plan "a forced redevelopment plan, rather than a transit plan."

Cherrywood's neighbors, the Greater Olney Civic Association, is equally opposed, particularly in light of the ITA's "unspecified borrowing and eminent domain powers." GOCA is also concerned that ITA debt would ultimately become the responsibility of the County, and its taxpayers.

Union leader Gino Renne expressed several reservations about the bill, including the open question of what would happen to current labor contracts under the ITA, and the fear of privatization. The room and hallway were packed with union members wearing yellow shirts. Some carried signs protesting the bill.

Even supporters of the bill thought it could use some significant changes.

Jay Corbalis, development associate at Federal Realty, argued "we need to offer more than sitting in traffic" as transportation options for young professionals. But he added that the development firm doesn't "support a blank check" such as the bill's language currently implies. Corbalis also said Federal Realty wants checks on the ITA's powers, and a cap on the amount taxes can rise.

Author, transit advocate and Bethesda resident Ben Ross (Action Committee for Transit) said he is concerned that the ITA proposed is not restricted to transit. Ross was particularly concerned that ITA funds could end up going to garage construction. He argued parking districts should not be placed under ITA control, and said the "bill as currently drafted won't provide that."

A spillover crowd, angry constituents, and the first sunlight to hit the ITA proposal since it was drawn up behind closed doors almost certainly will result in some changes to this bill. It could even be delayed a year for more public feedback, if politicians don't want to end up like their ousted counterparts in Arlington County. 

But don't expect the ITA to disappear, with so much developer profit at stake.

CITIZENS: WHO KNEW WHAT, WHEN ABOUT MOCO TRANSIT AUTHORITY PROPOSAL? (PHOTOS)

Document as reuploaded January 28, 2015

A Powerpoint presentation reportedly delivered by Montgomery County officials to as-yet-unidentified groups - prior to public announcement of legislation that would permit creation of an unelected Transit Authority with taxing powers last Friday - has been taken down, and reuploaded to the County website with a January 2015 date added.

While there is nothing necessarily nefarious about the change, it certainly plays into the existing controversy over the timeline of to whom the plan was disclosed to and when, prior to last Friday. There is a dispute between County officials, and citizens who oppose the plan, as to whether development interests had more notice of the plan details than residents. The latter only got their first look at the specifics of the proposal 6 days ago.

The change was reported by the Stop the Backroom Montco Transit Authority Deal Facebook page, operated by citizens organizing to fight the proposed new transit agency and taxing authority.

Previously, the document was dated "December 2014," a date prior to the January 23, 2015 public announcement of the Independent Transit Authority legislation and details.

Original date stamp

Patrick Lacefield, Montgomery County Director of Public Information responded to the blog prior to yesterday's date stamp change. He asserted that the Powerpoint presentation had been delivered to "a whole range of community organizations" since County Executive Ike Leggett's Inaugural Address December 1, 2014.

The County has not yet published a list of the "community organizations" to which the presentation was made. If your civic association, organization or business group received the presentation, please comment below or confidentially via email. I personally never heard any public announcement of a presentation that could either be attended, or requested to be delivered to a civic association or group, during the time period in question.

A public hearing on the state legislation that would permit creation of the Transit Authority will be held Friday, January 30, at 6:00 PM in the 3rd Floor hearing room of the County Council building at 100 Maryland Avenue. Those interested in testifying can sign up online by 12 PM on Friday.