"Montogmery's Growth Policy in Challenging Times"

Naomi Bloch represented the Trachtenberg office at the Sunday, January 24th discussion: “Montgomery’s Growth Policy in Challenging Times” that took place in the Roseborough Building Community Room on the Asbury Methodist Village campus off of Odendhal Road, in Gaithersburg.

The guest speakers/panelists were: Mr. Rollin Stanley, the Planning Commission Director; County Council President, Nancy Floreen and Councilmember Marc Elrich. This program was hosted by and was the inaugural event of four cooperating Democratic Clubs: D-15, D-17, D-39 and the Asbury Democratic Club.

Mr. Stanley was the lead speaker and his presentation offered up an overview of the history and future vision for Montgomery County. Mr. Stanley touched on how Montgomery County needs to change with regard to development density and also touched on the very real shifts with regard to the over all demographic make up of Montgomery County in the years ahead and the very real impacts these changes will have on our local economy.

Council President Floreen followed and focused her remarks on the need to look beyond mere “plans” and how critical it was for Montgomery County to figure out how to create more jobs because without jobs Montgomery County wouldn’t have the necessary economic resources to fund all these exciting plans.

Councilmember Elrich provided a sobering sense of the realities facing the County with regard to the present, ongoing and future infrastructure needs of our schools, roads, water, etc, and how Montgomery County needed to do a better job of getting all the interested parties to work together in order to fund these critical needs. He felt that ultimately this was a quality of life issue and that all the various vested interests had to work collectively in order to properly fund and maintain these infrastructure needs.

The event was very well attended and a good discussion took place during the Q&A period after each of the speakers had made their initial presentations.