Thanksgiving Parade this Saturday

Lady (my schnoodle) and I look forward to seeing you this Saturday at the 14th Annual Montgomery County Thanksgiving Parade. It will begin at 10:00 and will travel the same route as last year starting at Ellsworth Drive and Fenton Street, proceeding south on Georgia Avenue and ending at Silver Spring Avenue.

This year’s parade will feature some new elements including the Rolling Gingerbread House Balloon complete with the Gingerbread Man. Also new this year is a walking balloon Holiday Nutcracker, an inflatable turkey and an inflatable Rudolph. For the first time, there will be intermittent performances of the Ronald McDonald Magic Show on Silver Spring Avenue near the end of the parade route.

In addition to the giant balloons that have appeared in the parade for many years, there will be a wide variety of marching bands including the ever-popular Washington Redskins Marching Band. The Washington Nationals Baseball Club, dancing groups, beauty queens, clowns, fire engines and a number of rescue animal groups will also participate. As always, the parade will end with Santa’s sleigh accompanied by reindeer and elves handing out candy canes to the crowd.

The parade will be held rain or shine and will be broadcast live on News Channel 8. The telecast will be repeated on Thanksgiving Day.

What's Happening at the Pike Center?

Several people have written to me with questions about Bagel City, the Shell gas station and other retail establishments in the Pike Center in light of planned redevelopment there, so here is the letter I received from JBG Rosenfeld Retail detailing the status:

November 8, 2011

The Honorable Nancy Floreen
Montgomery County Council
100 Maryland Avenue
Rockville, MD 20850

Dear Ms. Floreen:

I am writing to share information with you about JBG Rosenfeld Retail's communications with Pike Center tenants, and to provide details regarding the lease arrangements that we have had with them in order to clarify any misunderstanding regarding this issue.

I want to emphasize that we value our relationships with all of our tenants and have been communicating with them throughout this process, to keep them informed of our plans. That is why I am mystified regarding the erroneous statements made over the past few weeks. The
below information will give you a better sense of the reality of the situation.

When JBGR acquired Pike Center in 2006, the property was already repositioned for
redevelopment with termination provisions included in all of the tenant leases.

• All of the tenants whose leases have expired since 2006 have been operating on short
term extensions, knowing that redevelopment of the Center was imminent.

• With the exception of the tenants who are expected to remain, all but three tenant leases
expire by October 2012.

As early as 2010, JBGR representatives began meeting with the Pike Center tenants to
inform them of our plans.

• Motiva (the corporate entity holding the Shell lease) has requested extensions ofterm for
at least 18 months and we have informed them on each occasion that we cannot extend
their lease due to our redevelopment plans. We have recently learned that Motiva did not
share this information with the operator of the station, Lobsang Wangkang

• Both David's Beautiful People and Bagel City have sought additional terms for their
respective leases and we have consistently informed them that we cannot give additional
terms due to our development plans . We offered to help them locate new space.

However, they both informed us that they have been looking for new space on Rockville
Pike for the past few months and each have identified available relocation options.

JBGR has been extremely sensitive to tenants' needs over the years and has worked to
accommodate the tenants during the recent lean economic times

• We significantly decreased rents for struggling tenants -- in some cases by 50% of market
rent.

• We have agreed to release tenants from their leasehold interests in advance of the
expiration of their term in order to facilitate their relocation.

The need for tenant relocation is in no way unique to Pike Center.

• The redevelopment of any property affects the existing tenants and often requires them to
relocate. What is to occur at Pike Center is the exact situation that will occur throughout
the County in connection with the redevelopment of existing shopping centers, including
those recently approved under the White Flint I Sector Plan.

I trust that this information helps to clarify this issue and would be glad to meet with you to
discuss this matter in greater detail if you so desire.

Regards,

Krista Di Iaconi
Principal

Montgomery's Economic Outlook

Dr. Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis, George Mason University, addressed the economic forecast for Montgomery County as it relates to transportation, housing and workforce development issues at yesterday’s Council session. He also discussed what steps the County can take to anticipate and absorb growth as well as the best practices to spur economic development and to make the connections between economic development, housing, and transportation. I’m extremely grateful to Dr. Fuller for this thought-provoking presentation. You can see the slide show here, or better yet, watch the video of the presentation (click on November 8, agenda item 4).

Leaf Vacuuming Starts This Week

Our Department of Transportation's Division of Highway Services will conduct its annual vacuum collection of leaves in the southern part of the county from November 7 through mid-December. DHS makes two collections on every street in the vacuum leaf collection district during the fall.

Look for signs posted along the streets announcing the collection dates in your neighborhood. The green signs indicate the first collection, and red signs indicate the second and final collection. Place your leaves in piles or containers on the grass or behind the curb.

Holiday Schedule for Veterans Day

Here's our holiday schedule for Veterans Day on Friday, November 11:

~County Offices -- closed

~Libraries -- closed

~County liquor stores – open

~Ride On – Special modified holiday schedule

~Metrobus – Saturday supplemental

~Metrorail – Opens at 5 a.m.; closes at midnight

~TRiPS Commuter Stores (Silver Spring and Friendship Heights) – closed

~Refuse/recycling pickup – regular collection

~Transfer Station – open

~Parking at public garages, lots, curbside meters – free

~MCPS Administrative Offices – open

~State offices & courts – closed

Find Out About Veterans' Services

Our Commission on Veterans Affairs invites active duty military personnel, guard members, reservists, veterans and family members to a free resource fair on Saturday, November 5, 11:00-4:00 at White Flint Mall. More than two dozen organizations will be on-site to provide information and resources about veterans' service organizations; non-profit organizations serving military veterans and their families; and federal, state and local government agencies providing services. For more information, call 240-777-1724.

Helping Neighbors in Need Celebrate the Holidays

There is no better way to share in the holiday spirit than to help make the holidays better for our neighbors in need. For more than 30 years, the Holiday Giving Project of Montgomery County has helped low-income residents celebrate Thanksgiving and the December holidays. A coalition of non-profit agencies, local governments and faith groups collect and distribute donations those in need. To find out how you can help, visit A Wider Circle, the Holiday Giving Project’s coordinating agency.

Montgomery Business Development Corporation Delivers Report

The Montgomery Business Development Corporation (MBDC) delivered its first year’s report, saying the County must work to encourage the growth of for-profit businesses, advocate for increased transportation options and work collaboratively with educational institutions to develop needed workforce. In delivering its report, the corporation, whose board includes members of some of the County’s most prominent businesses and representatives of businesses of all sizes, pledged to work with us to achieve those goals.

I introduced the legislation which formed the MBDC last year and established the overall goal to promote practices that will help sustain current businesses and encourage new businesses to relocate to the County. From its origin, the MBDC has sought to engage executive level business leaders to establish a vision for the County’s long-term economic future; to develop and articulate strategies to achieve that vision; to advocate for strategic changes in practices and policies; and to set performance metrics and report on their achievement.

We are currently in an economic era unprecedented in our lifetimes, so we are grateful that key people in some of the County’s most significant business enterprises have volunteered to serve on this corporation, with the singular goal of helping Montgomery County remain as one of the nation’s economic engines. We have asked the MBDC how we can better send out the word that we are open for business, and now they have delivered the outline of a plan that can help do that.

MBDC board members who presented the report to the Council included Brian Gragnolati, president and CEO of Suburban Hospital (and chair of the MBDC board of directors); Robert Brewer, principal, Lerch, Early & Brewer Chartered; Deborah Marriott Harrison, senior vice president for government affairs of Marriott International; Brett McMahon, vice president of business development, Miller & Long; Mathew Mohebbi, vice president/general manager of Mobile Satellite, Hughes Network Systems; Susan Nemes, president and CEO, Social Solutions International, Inc.; and Lawrence Shulman, president, Shulman Rogers.

Other members of the board include Bryant Foulger of Foulger-Pratt; Douglas Liu of Qiagen Sciences, Inc.; Ron Paul of Eaglebank; and Daisy Wallace of Computer Technology Services, Inc. Ex officio members of the board are DeRionne Pollard, president of Montgomery College; Steve Silverman, director of the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development; Rollin Stanley, planning director of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission; and Joshua Starr, superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools.

Town Hall Meeting in Wheaton/Northern Silver Spring

Let us know what matters most to you at our Town Hall Meeting for the Wheaton/Northern Silver Spring area on Wednesday, November 2, at Mario Loiederman Middle School (12701 Goodhill Road in Silver Spring) beginning at 8 p.m. with a pre-meeting reception at 7:30. You can voice your opinions on specific issues and ask questions of us in an organized, but informal, setting. I hope to see you there.

The meeting will be taped for later broadcast on County Cable Montgomery (CCM—cable Channel 6 on Comcast and RCN, Channel 30 on Verizon). For more information about the Town Hall Meeting or about the broadcast times, call 240-777-7931.

New Zoning Means Montgomery is Open for Business

Check out my opinion piece which appeared in today's edition of The Gazette. I have reprinted it here for your convenience:

We have a new tool for economic development, and it comes from a place you wouldn’t suspect — the zoning code. In this case, changes to the zoning code represent modern and innovative action that helps the private sector create jobs and commerce right here in our communities. The new tool is what we call the commercial/residential, or CR, zones.

After months of study, the Montgomery County Council made bold changes to a complicated and sometimes inconsistent zoning code that has been characterized as unfriendly to both businesses and communities.

The new family of CR zones can strip away much of the red tape that has hindered business, particularly small business, for decades. By allowing a hodgepodge of commercial zones to be replaced with three flexible CR zones, we’re making our standards clearer, more predictable and ultimately more accessible to those who can create jobs and housing.

The CR zones do away with the traditional approach of land use planning by specific uses, such as commercial or hotel, and replace it with zones that allow commercial and residential uses to coexist in the same street or block. The zones strictly regulate the height and density of buildings, thereby creating attractive communities where people can pick up a pair of shoes, grab a bite to eat and catch a movie on their way home from work, all without getting in a car.

Some people have expressed fears that skyscrapers will go up right next door to their single-family homes. That couldn’t be further from the truth. CR zones provide incentives for business to develop in ways that benefit neighborhoods and focus density near transit. They are designed to create interactive streetscapes where people can live, work, shop and play all within one neighborhood. It is important to note that the zones will place absolute limits on the allowable total density and building height.

The original CR zone already has been applied to the White Flint Sector Plan, which centers on the White Flint Metro station and which the council adopted in 2010. That ambitious and complex plan soon will transform the White Flint area along Rockville Pike into an exciting destination where strip malls are replaced by housing, stores and restaurants located together. Now the CR zones, which include lower-density provisions for towns and neighborhoods, are ready for other locations to be determined through our master planning process.

My hat is off to the Planning Board, planning staff, community activists, council staff, the council’s Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee and all who participated in creating the family of CR zones. This new tool is an action statement to the business community that Montgomery County’s doors are indeed open for business, while at the same time serving as a commitment to residents and communities.

Nancy Floreen, Garrett Park

The writer is chairwoman of the Montgomery County Council’s Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee.

Proclamation Honoring Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Montgomery County is fortunate to have many partners across various disciplines that raise awareness about the importance of early detection of breast cancer as well as provide services to those who have been diagnosed with the disease. Today it was my privilege to recognize a few of them with a proclamation on behalf of the Council.

One of the recipients was the County’s own Women’s Cancer Control Program which provides breast and cervical cancer screening to low-income women. Also receiving proclamations were that programs partners, Adventist HealthCare, Holy Cross Hospital and Suburban Hospital (see my October 6 post about Key to the Cure).

We also recognized the Montgomery County firefighters and their union for the pink shirt campaign which allows firefighters to wear pink t-shirts emblazoned with “Fighting for a Cure.” throughout the month as an optional part of their regular uniform. Included among the firefighters was Marshall Moneymaker who lost three sisters to breast cancer and now dedicates much of his time to raising awareness and money for organizations fighting the disease. He is known for wearing all pink, including the pink turn-out gear he received from fellow firefighters.

More than 600 Montgomery County women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year. Although Montgomery County has the highest incidence of breast cancer in the state, it also has the lowest mortality rate. That’s due in part to the fact that approximately 2,500 uninsured women receive free mammograms in Montgomery County.

Have you had your mammogram this year?

Unveiling New Agricultural Reserve Sign

Montgomery County’s efforts to protect more than 93,000 acres of farmland and woodland will be better known after this Saturday’s formal unveiling of a new sign telling drivers that they are in the County’s Agricultural Reserve area.

I, along with Phil Andrews, Ike Leggett and representatives of the Agricultural Services Division of the County’s Department of Economic Development, will celebrate the unveiling with the Greater Goshen Civic Association, which used its own funds to purchase and install the sign. It will be the sixth sign in the County that declares “Welcome to the Agricultural Reserve.”

The sign to be unveiled at 1:00 is located at the intersection of Brink Road and Wightman Road, at the northern end of Montgomery Village. Parking is available nearby and the Greater Goshen Civic Association will be hosting a picnic immediately afterward for all those who attend.

The Agriculture Reserve was established in 1980 by the Preservation of Agriculture and Rural Open Space Functional Master Plan. The plan seeks to protect about 93,000 of the County’s 316,000 acres for farming and horticultural use. Montgomery currently has about 570 farms and 350 horticultural enterprises.

Intern's Thoughts on Youth Town Hall

My intern, Seth Ross, who is a senior at Churchill High School, attended this week’s Youth Town Hall, so I asked him for his thoughts on the evening. Here is what Seth has to say:

At first glance, you might think the Youth Town Hall meeting this week was a full work session devoted to the teen curfew. However, teens filled the hearing room to capacity and asked many questions pertaining to their own education and the county’s mystifying budget.

Right off the bat, the first question was about the curfew. The question included a fair amount of research about constitutional rights that the student believed would be infringed upon if the proposed curfew bill were to be passed. Quick to respond was Councilmember Berliner who made it very clear that the Council did not propose this bill, and that is was being reviewed as a favor to the County Executive. Things began to heat up when a teenager raised the notion that some of the Councilmembers may just be passing the curfew to gain votes in the next election. I believe this is a possible tactic the Councilmembers are using to appeal to voters who live in areas with higher crime rates. Councilmember Andrews was the only Councilmember to be upfront and direct with his opposition to the curfew. I thought he was spot on when he explained that crime is not being committed by youth 22 and under during curfew hours and that youth crime in general is declining. Why is it necessary to impose a curfew when youth crime is going down?

While there were many teens opposed to the curfew, many others came to question the Council’s budget regarding MCPS. Councilmember Floreen got right to the point in clarifying that the Council gives approximately half of the $4.4 billion budget to MCPS. At first, what most students did not seem to grasp is that the roughly $2 billion for education is directly handed to the School Board. From there, the School Board is in charge of doing what they see fit with the money. It seems like neither teens nor adults can really understand our County’s budget!

Council Approves Commercial/Residential Zones

After months of work, we approved Zoning Test Amendment 11-01 that adds changes to the County’s Commercial/Residential Zone (CR Zone) and will greatly influence the scope of future development near Metro stations. The changes will encourage more urbanized, mixed-use development in those areas, allowing neighborhoods to evolve with retail, restaurants, services, entertainment, offices and near public transportation.

The Planning Board proposed ZTA 11-01. In our reviews, we made significant changes in the ZTA. Our revisions better protect communities by limiting land uses in CR Neighborhood zones, increase respect for master plans by implementing them through site plans, add increased incentives for affordable housing and create more certainty for communities and developers by clarifying the sketch plan process.

The ZTA provides incentives for developers to build near Metro stations. Current Commercial/Residential Zones allow for buildings in some circumstances to be between 16 and 27 stories high. To get permission to build, developers must meet specific criteria, which award “points.” Developments closer to Metro stations qualify for more points than those further from the stations. The new regulations clarify the criteria to get points, while also adding more options for developers to add points. For example, making buildings more environmentally friendly would earn additional points.

By this week’s adopting of two additional series of zones with lower building heights and density than allowed by current mixed-used zones, the Council will have more flexibility to respond to the competing demands of commercial and residential property owners reflected in master plans.

Future development will be required to get site plan approval to a greater extent than current standards, providing increased opportunities for the involvement of neighbors.

Those developing under the new zoning will be able to choose from a longer list of land uses. Dense development will still be required to provide public benefits, but development in the new zones will have to provide fewer public benefits than currently required on higher density mixed-use development.

The Commercial/Residential Neighborhood (CRN) and Commercial/Residential Town (CRT) zones were developed for areas where there are smaller properties, lower densities and more challenging economic conditions than where the Commercial/ Residential (CR) zones apply.

The new zones are structured like the current CR zones. The total floor area ratio (FAR), the residential FAR, the non-residential FAR and the maximum building height are identified with each zone.

One zoning series will apply to areas where existing commercial zones are located next to single-family residential neighborhoods. Another zoning series will apply to areas where requiring too many public benefits might impede redevelopment.

The allowed land uses and development standards vary with each zone. The CR Neighborhood zones would have the most limited land uses of the three commercial/residential zones.

Optional method development—where developers are often granted permission to build higher structures than would be permitted under regular zoning in exchange for providing certain public benefits—would not be allowed in CR Neighborhood zones.

The CR Zones will apply in some aspects to the future stops along the planned Purple Line and Corridor Cities Transitway, depending upon provisions of master plans for those areas.

Apply Now to Merit System Protection Board

We’re taking applications for appointment to a three-year term on the Merit System Protection Board. Generally, the board is expected to oversee the Merit System and to protect employee and applicant rights guaranteed under the County Merit System. Get your application in by November 9.

By law, no more than two of the three members of the Merit System Protection Board may be of the same political party. The appointee to this term may be a Republican or someone who declines to affiliate with a party. In addition, the appointee may be a member of another party officially recognized by the Board of Elections.

The County Merit System Protection Board's mission is to oversee the Merit System for the protection of employee's and applicant's rights guaranteed under the Merit System. There are two methods in which the board processes appeals:
• A written decision issued after a review and discussion of a written record
• A written decision issued after a pre-hearing conference and a formal hearing in cases involving a suspension, demotion or dismissal

The board holds hearings during the day, which can take the full day, with any additional proceedings scheduled for subsequent evening(s). Also, the board normally meets for approximately an hour in the evening once or twice every month. Additional time is also required for preparatory work. Members of the board receive $7,467 per year, which is adjusted annually to reflect 50 percent of the percentage change in the Washington Area Consumer Price Index.

Board members are restricted in political activity while serving. Section 403 of the County Charter states in part "... No member shall hold political office or participate in any campaign for any political or public office during the member's term of office." Members of County boards, committees and commissions may not serve on more than one such group at a time.

Letters of application are made public as part of the appointment process. Letters expressing interest, including a resume listing professional and civic experience, should be addressed to: Council President Valerie Ervin, Montgomery County Council, 100 Maryland Avenue, Rockville, MD 20850.

For more information on the Merit System Protection Board appointment, call 240-777-7979.