News and Views
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Aquatic Access or Sharing May Not Always Be Caring
Read more: Aquatic Access or Sharing May Not Always Be CaringIf you utilize MoCo’s indoor pools you know it’s hard to get a lane during the regular school months because our public schools promote swim clubs and teams despite the schools having playing fields, but no pools. They get priority at tax-payer built municipal pools. Public school swim programs are allowed to reserve lanes, but not…
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ZTA 24-01: Living Closer to God
Read more: ZTA 24-01: Living Closer to GodThere are reasons I don’t get invited to parties, the most obvious being my enthusiasm over liberalization in zoning laws. A typical conversation when I meet someone new at a wedding goes like this. “What are your hobbies?” “Pushing for removal of height restrictions. Yours?” “I’ll go get myself another brewsky. You stay here.” Just…
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Another Quick Reminder: MoCo’s EV Promotion Isn’t Saving the Environment — In Fact It Is Damaging the Local Ecosystem
Read more: Another Quick Reminder: MoCo’s EV Promotion Isn’t Saving the Environment — In Fact It Is Damaging the Local EcosystemA quick follow-up to our May, 2023 post entitled “More Tire Toxicity in MoCo?” , because another report in the Miami Herald by Ashley Miznazi confirms what we published just a few months ago: Ah, yes, “getting away from gasoline” — just like MoCo’s Executive, the “green fiend” himself, Marc Elrich, wants you to do! Be…
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Evan Glass Endorses Ranked-Choice Voting
Read more: Evan Glass Endorses Ranked-Choice VotingGoing back to November 7, 2023, Council Member Evan Glass expressed his support for ranked-choice voting. It’s Election Day! Make sure to vote if there’s an election in your community. And let’s continue working to ensure that there’s ranked choice voting in more communities next year!#electionday #rankedchoicevoting #rcv #democracy pic.twitter.com/zvYS2O4NFN — Councilmember Evan Glass (@CMEvanGlass)…
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ZTA 23-10 Part 2: Sites for No-Parking Residences
Read more: ZTA 23-10 Part 2: Sites for No-Parking ResidencesIn Part 1 of this series we mentioned that Zoning Text Amendment 23-10 exempts residential construction from any parking requirements within a one-half mile of Metro, Purple Line, and Bus Transit Centers. Where are these sites, and what is within a half-mile radius around them? I drew circles around each of the county’s Metro, Purple…
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Roads into Bike-Paths
Read more: Roads into Bike-PathsWhat will happen next regarding Beach Drive? For some years now portions of Beach Drive, both in DC and MoCo, are closed for certain days: cars prohibited in order to give bikers a wide-open road and so we exacerbate the motorist versus bicyclist polarization, already long past the point of triggering random road rages. I…
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ZTA 23-10 Part 1: How Parking Mandates Restrict Affordable Housing
Read more: ZTA 23-10 Part 1: How Parking Mandates Restrict Affordable HousingWhen I came out of the closet, publicly and shamelessly, expressing a desire to eliminate residential zoning, fully one-half of my friends pruned me—so I’m now down to one. Let’s see if that remaining friendship will survive this series on relaxed parking requirements. Local jurisdictions have many ways of constricting the housing supply, thereby making…
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Household and Government Debt Way Up in Maryland… So of Course Montgomery County’s Exec Wants to… Spend More!
Read more: Household and Government Debt Way Up in Maryland… So of Course Montgomery County’s Exec Wants to… Spend More!New research from Forbes Advisor shows that Maryland sits just outside the top-five of states with the most “combined” debt. Forbes in this case defines total debt as “household debt” and “government debt”. Why does this matter? Well, for starters, elevated government debt thanks to Democrat-controlled Annapolis means that: When a state owes more than…
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MoCo’s “Friends of the Library” Non-Profit Defends Race-Based Pricing for Exclusionary “MoComCon”, Has Interesting “Core Staff”
Read more: MoCo’s “Friends of the Library” Non-Profit Defends Race-Based Pricing for Exclusionary “MoComCon”, Has Interesting “Core Staff”Montgomery County’s Friends of the Library (FOLMC) seems to think $50-$75 in additional tabling fees are “unaffordable” for “BIPOC” vendors at its upcoming “MoComCon” convention in Germantown, MD. First brought to our attention by this piece at The Washington Times entitled “White vendors pay more: MoCo libraries use race-based pricing for comic book convention”, the…
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Adventures in FOIA Requests: Part 1
Read more: Adventures in FOIA Requests: Part 1Part 1: The Relationship Between the MCPS, the Department of Homeland Security, and SMYAL In the fall of 2023, a concerned community member informed our Montgomery County chapter of Moms for Liberty that the Department of Homeland Security granted a D.C.-based non-profit over half a million dollars to work with children in Montgomery County, MD.…