Wednesday, November 09, 2016

Term limits win big in MoCo as voters throw the bums out

Montgomery County voters delivered a powerful repudiation of the County Council at the ballot box yesterday, with a whopping 69% voting YES on Question B, in favor of term limits. At least four councilmembers, Roger Berliner, Marc Elrich, Nancy Floreen, and George Leventhal, will be barred from running again for their seats in 2018. Councilmembers Nancy Navarro, Hans Riemer, and Craig Rice will be able to run for a final term in 2018, but cannot run again in 2022. Navarro received a save from voters yesterday, who voted by 79% on Question C to allow her partial term in 2009 to not count as a full term.
The vote was a major victory for neighborhoods across Montgomery County, whom the Council had thumbed their nose at violently in the last year. In Damascus, where councilmembers supported an urban-style low-income apartment building in a part of the small town that already has a disproportionate amount of low-income housing and a high crime rate, term limits won 88% of the vote in early voting.

Councilmembers had also unanimously approved construction of bus depots at the Carver Education Center and WINX property on Westmore Avenue in Rockville, only to be hit by a tidal wave of blowback from residents who found out they'd be awakened by 400 blaring truck horns as early as 4:00 AM each morning.

Lyttonsville residents and business owners found themselves being pushed out by potential urban-style high-density development. And, perhaps most controversial of all, the Westbard sector plan found the Council voting unanimously in favor of urban-style growth in a Bethesda neighborhood nearly two miles from the closest Metro station - despite vehement opposition by over 90% of their Westbard-area constituents.

Most ironically, the Floreen-led Council boldly voted unanimously again yesterday to approve the Westbard sectional map amendment, that will make their high-density Westbard plan formally the new zoning across 44 acres of currently low-rise suburbia, just feet from single-family homes. At the same time, voters were ending the careers of four of them at voting booths around the county. How sweet it is.

A 69% vote against the County political machine was a rare primal scream from the normally staid, obedient and docile MoCo electorate. How did it happen?

Give civic activist Robin Ficker his due. The attorney worked tirelessly to collect far more than the number of required signatures, and debated opponents in numerous forums to promote Question B. For all of the criticism directed at Ficker, he has now scored some of the largest political victories in County history with the property tax cap and term limits. 

One may have led to the other. The 9% tax increase, which supposedly raised $90 million for public schools without a radically-new strategy to justify it, ended up being 10% or larger for many homeowners. At the same time, the Council voted themselves a massive raise while claiming we were cash poor, personally enriching themselves at taxpayer expense. Politicians in Bell, California went to jail for the same circumstances.

Aggrieved communities coming together was the other factor. Neighborhoods targeted at the same time by the Council for the bus depot ended up supporting each other, instead of trying to push the depot to the other's neck of the woods. Lyttonsville supported Westbard in testimony and numerous events.

And yesterday, the citizen group Keep Damascus Rural endorsed term limits. In its announcement, its leader, Seth Gottesman, wrote:

Why should we in the up county care? Because our leaders count on specific communities not being able to significantly impact an election result. If other communities stand by or are uninformed while this sort of leadership occurs to another because it doesn't impact them directly, it will come to us as well and the culture of rejecting the desires of the community will continue and that affects everyone. When our leaders are held accountable, the culture can start to change and that takes all of us from all communities. We have to support each other.

Powerful stuff. Ironically, it was through a Council agent's compulsive trolling on my blog that it accidentally became public that the Council was indeed calculating the number of votes they would lose if they supported the Westbard plan. And that they had concluded those votes alone were not enough to cost them the 2018 election.

How wrong they were.

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dyer: Will term limits actually happen? I ask because the people approved in referendum and end to the ambulance tax a few years ago, and the Council somehow managed to pass it anyway. Is there a chance of that happening here? I'm unclear if referendums are binding or not.

Anonymous said...

Our elected Council representatives stopped listening to their constituents. They paid the price at the ballot box.

Looking forward to fresh faces and ideas on the next Council!

Anonymous said...

"Give civic activist Robin Ficker his due."

Neither you or him have any chance of taking a council seat. I can't wait until the electorate votes in younger, more liberal councilmembers that will be even more beholden to developers.

Trust me. Trump voters...Brexit voters...Term Limits voters WILL NOT have the last laugh.

"a Council agent's"

You seriously need help

Anonymous said...

Dear 7:12AM,
Why do you say younger liberals would be even MORE beholden to developers?

And why are you so anxious for the council to be that way? Do you think businesses should be in control of government?

Why should I "trust you" that term limits will be so awful? Are you psychic?

Sour grapes?

Anonymous said...

7:12 AM sounds like Council staff, fantasizing about punishing their constituents. Sick!
No wonder residents overwhelmingly wanted term limits.

George, Roger, et al. can't leave soon enough.

Anonymous said...

I DEMAND A RECOUNT

Anonymous said...

Dyer has the best coverage of local development & retail in MoCo. Full stop.

Anonymous said...

@9:55 I agree that doing development in MoCo is full of bureaucracy, but how to do you explain the Council's smart moves like giving away the bus depot property next to Shady Grove Metro to a developer, without a replacement bus depot property already agreed upon? It's either total incompetence, or they were desperate to please a developer.

Anonymous said...

There's a reason why developers & their lawyers donate so much $$$ to the Council.
They donate to their campaigns and then come before them asking for stuff.

Anonymous said...

The way to "throw the bums out" (which I agree ... they are mostly bums) would have been to VOTE them out. Now, if you get a bunch of great council members, they'll have to go, too.

We'll at least there's a limit to the number of terms a president can hold office. And at least we have the chance to VOTE him out before he reaches his (our?) limit.

Anonymous said...

10:25 AM There's very low turnout for council elections. Think about it...2 years from now, a non-presidential year I expect low turnout again. Incumbent Council candidates didn't even show up for community debates last cycle, so they could care less about increasing turnout.

Incumbents have major advantages in promoting themselves in willing local media. There's always a willing wannabe blogger/intern to write a Reamer puff piece. We have self proclaimed local journalists reporting a thrill going up their leg when a councilman mentions their name. :)

Anonymous said...

The County Council has reaped the whirlwind that it has sown.

The contempt with which the Council has treated its constituents has produced this result.

When I became active on the Westbard matter, I had the naive belief that the County would meet its constituents half-way. But the Berliner compromise did not materially reduce projects already proposed by private developers, and it became clear that the County's end game was to deliver 1.8 million square feet of "intense" (the Council's term) of mixed use space to an area adjacent to single-family neighborhoods.

A responsive Council would have scaled back Westbard, balancing the desires of developers and residents. This Council stonewalled its constituents. After close to two years of being ignored, I reluctantly concluded that term limits were the only remaining alternative.

I hope that the next Council will know the meanings of service and compromise.

Robert Dyer said...

10:25: Let me know when we get that "bunch of great Council members." In the meantime, thank God we now have term limits.

Robert Dyer said...

5:55: Valid question and concern, especially with the record of this Council. I think it would be unprecedented for a body to not enact term limits which had been approved by 70% of voters, and would become a national scandal and laughingstock. We already have a mini-Bell, California on our hands here as it is. I doubt they want to bring further federal attention to their misdeeds.

Anonymous said...

Seems like the insane Westbard plan was the last straw for a lot of Bethesda residents.

Maloney Concrete said...

Anyone check on Roger? Want to make sure he's ok.

Anonymous said...

Why do Westbard NIMBYs fantasize that Bethesda revolves around them?

Robert Dyer said...

5:26: You've missed the whole point of what happened yesterday - it wasn't just Westbard voting for term limits. It was East Bethesda and Chevy Chase, as well, and the other communities mentioned in the article above. It was a countywide repudiation of the Council.

Anonymous said...

Great news!

Anonymous said...

@10:25 says "Now, if you get a bunch of great council members, they'll have to go, too."

In 12 years.

Meanwhile, those that prefer voting members in or out can still be happy in 2 of 3 terms.

Maloney Concrete said...

Our county is among the most educated in the country...I'm sure we can somehow find a few qualified people every decade to run. It's not hard folks.

Anonymous said...

Leventhal & Berliner are channeling our new president: "I alone can fix MoCo".
No one else is qualified. Yeah, right. :)

Anonymous said...

10:25 here...
So now, whether they're good or bad, it'll have to be a new start every four years?

Hey Dwyer ... It's been 4 years of blogging. Now go find another job. It's time to "throw you out".

Anonymous said...

@ 11:11 AM - Actually 10 years. All the more reason to throw the bum out. Two more years, tops.

Anonymous said...

Nearly 7 in 10 MoCo voters voted to boot Leventhal and Berliner from their seats.

Anonymous said...

It wasn't just the Council's unanimous vote for Westbard overdevelopment it was the false promises of improved road reallignment, greater green space,
Creek improvements, all just a fallacy to reduce the backlash from residents.
The topper was Hands Reimer claiming Westbard was only a mile from Metrorail? When you have to lie to your constituents to justify your desires of Urbanizaton, You're Finished !