gaithersblog.net

According to the Washington Post,

President Bush swooped into Southern Maryland [Monday] to mark Labor Day with a call to reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign oil and develop technologies to help American workers and businesses compete in the changing global marketplace.

Bush heralded the 4.7 percent national unemployment rate as a “good sign” for workers in a speech centered on the domestic economy. The president, speaking at the Paul Hall Center for Maritime Training and Education in Piney Point, also urged lawmakers to make his tax cuts permanent.

But on a day considered the launching point of the fall election season, Maryland’s top two Republicans — Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich and Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele — did not appear with the president in the St. Mary’s County town. Their absence quickly became political fodder for Democrats, who accused the Republican officeholders of dodging the unpopular president even as they allow him to raise money for Ehrlich’s bid for reelection and Steele’s campaign for the U.S. Senate.

[…]

I think that’s a bit much to make out of something simple — the Governor, whoever it is, frequently makes it to the Gaithersburg parade, and if anything this amounted to attention-grabbing by the President. If the President wanted to be seen with Ehrlich & Steele, he could have come to Gaithersburg. Doesn’t he like parades? I can say that I saw both the Governor and Lt. Governor march by; I saw a lot of appreciation being expressed and didn’t see anyone asking why they weren’t at the President’s side…

I’d just like to throw out a mention of two free services provided by the City that can be pretty handy:

• Alert Gaithersburg. (see also this announcement) The City uses this service to send out immediate notice of public safety issues that may be of concern to people living and/or working in the City.  These notices can go out over most electronic messaging systems, such as email, pager and SMS (short message service). You can have the alerts sent over more than one of these services if that is useful. When you sign up, you can simultaneously sign up for the equivalent service from the County, which I recommend. I get the alerts via email and SMS to my smartphone. Generally they send out announcements of road closures (for accidents, construction, or whatever), National Weather Service weather alerts, and even notices of the capture of rabid animals and other public health and safety issues.
• MyGaithersburg email. This is an email that the City sends out once a week with links to items on the City website about upcoming events, meeting agendas and minutes, and other  announcements of varying levels of importance. The service is configurable, you can pick and choose what sorts of announcements they send to you.

Both of these are good services, although the Alert Gaithersburg service is the one I really think that everyone should use.

At the next Council meeting there will be a joint session of the Mayor & Council and the Planning Commission to consider a change to the zoning map. Quoting,

This is a proposal to rezone 1.2099 acres of land, currently known as Lot P-87, the Duane Property, located off Game Preserve Road between Arrowsmith Court and Travis Avenue in the City of Gaithersburg, from the existing C-2 (General Commercial) Zone to the E-1 (Urban Employment) Zone, under the Optional Method of rezoning, in accordance with §24-196 (map amendments) and §24-198 (optional method) of the City Code. This is a joint public hearing which allows the public an opportunity to participate and comment on the request. Contact the Planning and Code Administration City Planner listed below at 301-258-6330 if you should have any questions and/or to learn more about this process and your ability to offer testimony and input.

If I’ve got the City’s map right, the property in question can be seen in this aerial photo; it would be the treed area just behind those two power line towers in the foreground.

The City has posted outcomes documents for the most recent Mayor and Council and Planning Commission meetings. At the planning commission, generally everything was deferred, approved or approved with conditions. The archive video of the planning commission meeting is not yet up on the web. The outcomes document for the Mayor and Council does not include the HDC portion of the meeting and thus does not mention the planned public hearing regarding the destruction of 309 North Frederick Ave. It also does not include any mention of the text amendment discussion held at the end of the meeting. See my previous post for more on this. It does include the following statement from City Manager David Humpton regarding the day labor center:

Late last week I received notice from the property manager of the shopping center located at 117 North Frederick Avenue that it is the intention of the center owners to discontinue use of the parking lot there as an informal gathering site for the day laborers. I expect we will get formal notice of this sometime in the near future, though a specific date has not yet been set. It is my understanding the property manager has made outreach to Grace Church to inform them of this development and to gain their views on the matter.

For the time being we will continue to enforce the 9:30 a.m. time limit at the shopping center site and ask the workers to move from the area after that time and tell them not to return until the agreed-upon hours the next morning.

In the package you received last Friday I included a memo describing current enforcement tools and other proposed approaches relating to this issue. These will be employed as needed as the situation evolves.

The search continues for an acceptable site. It is important for our community, once the shopping center location is closed, to be able to clearly articulate where the workers are to go. I believe it is imperative that, at a minimum, a temporary site is found for the workers to go to given the shopping center’s recent decision. Not having a site will cause great tension in the community and could cause a long-lasting divide.

We are currently investigating one site at a shopping center within the City that staff believes meets the spirit of the task force criteria and the needs of the workers and the contractors. We had a positive conversation with the leasing representative for the property today. It is difficult to be optimistic at this point but by working with leaders in the Hispanic, faith and business communities, as well as the County government, I hope to have positive results shortly.

As we continue to explore the shopping center site, I believe parallel efforts are needed. With the Mayor and Council’s concurrence I would like to work with Montgomery County to evaluate sites in several purely industrial areas that are just outside the City limits.”