PLANNING BOARD

GOES HOG WILD,

SERVES DEVELOPERS

DESSERT BEFORE

THEY FINISH THEIR

VEGETABLES

Disaster is on the horizon in Montgomery County if we continue on the course further solidified this week by our Planning Board. Total traffic gridlock has become an accepted part of life for Dr. Yes and his Yes People on the Planning Board, for Rollin Stanley, and for their allies on the county council.

The new message this year, even from the "End Gridlock" Team on the council (please don't laugh), is that laws can be ignored (mandatory moratoriums, school population targets, even Planning Board terms!!!!), overcrowded schools are the future, and immobilized traffic is here to stay - plus you'll get to pay tolls for the priviledge of sitting in it.

It's outrageous.

Just recently, your county council turned its collective head and allowed a Planning Board commissioner whose term was up to illegally stay on the board.

Did I already say, "It's outrageous?"

Outrageous, but true. Why was this illegal move allowed by the enablers on the council? So that the developer-beholden member could break multiple tie votes on controversial decisions that profit large developers at the expense of you, the citizen.

Will councilmembers refuse to leave office in 2010? I think you, the voter, will have something to say about that.

What this Planning Board was able to do, with this member staying on past his term, was to pass terribly-flawed master plans, approve poorly-designed projects for big developers, and forward new rules that devastate county public schools and the environment to their council buddies for approval.

Will they approve the new rules that will allow massive overdevelopment, crowd classrooms, and eliminate green space?

The Science City and White Flint Master Plans are environmental catastrophes and harbingers of total traffic Armageddon.

Why?

Because the developers and their puppets on the Board and Council are going right to the dessert of big profits for vacant buildings and campaign kickbacks in 2010. Meanwhile, they've avoided the vegetables on the plate - the infrastructure improvements that are essential to even somewhat handle the massive development they've ordered.

Witness the simply wacky I-270 corridor proposals. Here you have a highway that is in total gridlock, representing the utter and complete breakdown of our transportation system. A transportation system I rightly referred to in 2006 as "a national laughingstock." Because it is a national laughingstock. Thousands of articles have been written nationwide, and Americans everywhere know of our elected officials' failure to fulfill their basic obligations regarding transportation.

What is the plan for 270? Reduce - yes, reduce! - the number of lanes, add Lexus Lanes for the rich, and build the Corridor Cities Transitway. The CCT should be built when the funds are available, but not instead of making the needed improvements to the highway first, or simultaneously.

I've covered in a previous blog the serious flaw of the CCT, which is that the plan does not fit the geography of the Upcounty. If you live in Poolesville or Damascus, how do you get to your home once you disembark from the CCT? I rest my case.

So the CCT may help on the small scale, but it will not reduce traffic on 270.

Meanwhile, you're going to have all of those new cars going home around the Science City west of 270 clogging exit 6B on 270. The Johns Hopkins element of the plan is very positive, and we should welcome those new facilities. However, the mixed-use part is not ready for prime time.

Our planning process should forbid the approval of such a master plan when the transportation infrastructure is not in place. Period.

And yet, Dr. Yes & Co. have said, "Yes!" again.

Any truth to the rumor that Dr. Yes (Royce Hanson) will swoop in as a "surprise" Democratic candidate in 2010?

You heard it here first.