Friday, August 10, 2012

NO WAY TO SPIN BETHESDA POST OFFICE DEBACLE

ABC7 has finally discovered - with a little help from panicked Montgomery County politicians - that the new Bethesda post office at 6900 Wisconsin Avenue has no parking... ...oh, just 4 months after I first wrote about it here on this blog.

Unfortunately, the channel was being used by the county officials who are actually to blame for the whole fiasco.

After waiting for over 2 months, the county establishment is now bringing all of its insider power to bear on anyone and everyone who could potentially provide parking for postal customers.  It's being made abundantly clear to those entities that it is in their best interest to comply.  Now.

Publicly, however, the media appears willing to present a different narrative:  that all of this was a complete surprise, and that Chris Van Hollen (and possibly other yet-to-speak-publicly officials) is going to come to the heroic rescue of the citizens of Bethesda.

Ha.

Enough with the baloney.

There's no way you can put a positive spin on an overpaid Congressman and county council not being involved in the process of closing every post office in town, and selecting a new site.  That is the most basic, bread-and-butter constituent service issue a politician could ever confront.  And they just weren't engaged.  What were they doing instead?

Now Channel 7 is saying, "sources tell ABC7" that a solution will be announced next week.  Well, of course it is.  But it will literally be too little, and too late.

Hence the spin machines are working overtime.

But there are only heroes in white hats in the imaginations of the politicians of Montgomery County.  We need a new post office, with drive-up drop boxes, ample parking and in walking distance of downtown residents.  Period.  And, we need a full investigation - media and otherwise - of what Van Hollen and the council knew about the post office decision process, and when they knew it.

Now that's a story for ABC7!

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