The Montgomery County Planning Board is on the verge of sending the County Council a draft of the latest Master Plan of Highways and Transitways (soon to be called the Master Plan of Walkways and Bikeways, if planners get any more woke) that will do many terrible things, chief among which is permanently removing any chance of building the long-delayed M-83 MidCounty Highway Extended from Montgomery Village Avenue to Clarksburg. If approved by the Board at its meeting this Thursday, April 10, and the Council at a later date, it will be the realization of a long-held fever dream by the War-on-Cars folks who suffer from Highway Derangement Syndrome, virtually all of whom have motored to their Kill M-83 meetings in the very cars they claim you need to get out of. It will also be a theft and reckless disposal of one of the most valuable public holdings government can possess: a transportation right-of-way.
Passage of this Master Plan will drive the stake through the heart of M-83, and confirm that once again County officials were lying through their teeth when they promised all stakeholders and residents of the Upcounty that they would deliver the infrastructure needed to support the massive housing development they had proposed for rural Clarksburg and Damascus. As we all know, all of the new housing was approved and constructed. But none of the supporting elements were.
No M-83 Highway. No Corridor Cities Transitway light rail. And no high-wage jobs. All of these items were mandatory, but the Council didn't deliver a single one.
Now the Council is poised to throw away something that, frankly, is not theirs to discard. The highway project, and its right-of-way, belong to the taxpayers of Montgomery County. Planners are giddy to note in the Master Plan materials online that the County may not only remove the highway from the plan, but give the land away for free to the Councilmembers' developer sugar daddies. They've done this many times before, giving away public rights-of-way to developers via a "Declaration of No Further Need" abandonment.
A right-of-way is simply too valuable to waste. The Council is free to go down in history as the deranged and corrupt elected officials responsible for worsening traffic congestion, increased emissions from cars idling in traffic jams, and increased response times for police and fire calls by canceling an essential highway. It won't be the first time, as the Council already canceled the equally-long-planned new Potomac River crossing, the Northwest Freeway, the North Central Freeway, the Rockville Freeway, the Montrose Parkway East, and the Northern Parkway.
But a right-of-way is not theirs to give away. They have a responsibility to preserve it in total. No one can predict the needs of the future. Whether it is a road, or a railway, or some form of transportation or use we haven't even imagined yet, these are the scenarios for which smart governments obtain rights-of-way at great cost. Believe it or not, Montgomery County long ago had smart government.
This Master Plan draft represents a double betrayal of the public trust, first and foremost the trust of residents in Clarksburg, Damascus, and Goshen. People bought houses in Clarksburg and Damascus with the expectation of the M-83 and CCT providing viable options for commuting to the Shady Grove Metro station and beyond. Only to find the Planning Board and County Council pulling the rug out from under them after they had taken on their mortgage, and paid all the hefty fees and taxes to the County. But it is also the latest betrayal by the Council of one of its chief charges, stewardship of County assets and resources, which include planned highways and expensively-obtained rights-of-way. Canceling the M-83 is, quite simply, highway robbery.
11 comments:
I also read that Council want to change zoning to build more "work force housing" along Veirs Mill and also Route 29. So that will give incentives to gobble up real estate in those communities. I want zoning for workforce housing on 410 east of Sliver Spring.
Thank you Mr. Dyer for such in-depth information and concise commentary. I will direct others to this so we can be truly informed.
The M83 highway will barely fit in the so called right-away and would destroy many acres of wildlife corridor, wetlands and habitat plus add to the already congested Montgomery Village roadways.
2:10 you lost me at 'plus add to the already congested..." are our new neighbors who will be living up there getting Jetsons like vehicles? Or do you intend that they all just stay up there ?
Haha, good one!
The Khmer Rouge attempted this kind of “return to agrarian society” effort. (Road diets, bikes over cars, dense housing, restrictions on private property …) Worked out super for them !
Yesterday the Council enacted a new tax credit program for developers that convert partially vacant commercial space to housing. Conversion does have challenges but the bill includes demolitions so that developers can get the tax holiday for simply knocking a building down. The bill is drafted so broadly that the Fiscal impact statement estimates a cost of $2.6 billion. Taxes not collected from developers will shift to the rest of us or cause deep budget cuts. They turned back a series of amendments by Jawando to bring some fiscal sanity to it by putting caps on yearly expenditures, making it competitive so the county could negotiate how much is needed to make the project viable and which projects deliver greatest good and sunset in 5 years so that the program can be evaluated and a decision made about whether to continue. They also rejected an amendment by Sayles to promote home ownership units instead of just more rentals. The low point was when the staff acknowledged that the GEICO property in friendship Heights, soon to be sold or redeveloped, will be eligible for the 20 year tax holiday. They all sat silently with that news and voted 10-1 in favor of the bill. The most valuable pieces of real estate in the county will get a tax cut worth hundreds of millions over 20 years to build high end housing and retail with a small increment of affordable housing above what the law requires. It was gross. I hope you will cover it in this column. Everyone should watch the video and see the rush to throw money at developers.
I know who this is. YOU support Democrats! These are the people you worked to get elected! Why complain when they perform EXACTLY as advertised on the box?! This is your fault.
7:11 I'd support the Democrats any day in comparison to the party on the right whose only mission is the destruction of their country and its democratic principles. Until they come to their senses and rid the party of fascist, oligarchs, screw them all.
10:20 is a perfect example of TDS. You do realize that democrats were for tariffs before they were against it and Obama was the one who wanted to eliminate federal waste but that's a thing with the left, power over everything including what's best for the country and the fact that you would rather burn the country down before any successes by Trump is sad.
The democrat want to destroy male and female. At Hilary's convention they voted against God. They are in step with Stalin's replacement tactic by importing millions of illegals.
Post a Comment