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I’d like to highlight a few letters in this week’s Gazette:

• David B. Humpton: City ‘committed to finding the right solution’ to day labor center issue
  

  The Sept. 27 Gazette editorial (‘‘Breaking the day labor stalemate”) criticized the city of Gaithersburg for its inability to find a site for a day laborer employment center. With terms like ‘‘flat footed” and ‘‘sitting on their hands,” the editorial unilaterally dismissed the efforts of an entire community to find a solution.

  […]

  This has been one of the most difficult issues we’ve encountered in Gaithersburg. Public input has been passionate on both sides. With no support from the federal level, local jurisdictions are left on their own to struggle with the quality of life and public safety issues that surround day laborer gathering sites. Have our deliberations taken a long time? Yes. But how long is ‘‘too long” to do what’s right?
  We urge the public to come forward and continue the dialog at our public work session at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 12 at City Hall, 31 S. Summit Ave., Gaithersburg. A storefront site at Festival at Muddy Branch has become available. With public support, this location, which meets much of the site criteria set forth by the Day Laborer Task Force, could begin housing a Montgomery County-operated employment center before winter.

• Michael Stumborg: city officials defended
  

  You mention the city manager’s lack of ‘‘political firepower” to impose a day labor center on an unwilling neighborhood as if that’s a bad thing. Exercising political firepower, as the county did when it unilaterally dismissed the city’s rejection of 17 N. Frederick Ave., is done by thugs, not leaders. Your faith in county leadership is woefully misplaced. Day laborers come from County Council Districts 2 and 3. While District 2 representative Mike Knapp attended the ad hoc meetings that ironically chose a District 3 site, District 3’s ‘‘Silent Phil” Andrews deferred site selection to the executive branch and disappeared from Olde Towne for a year. Neither action exhibits leadership.

• Stephen Schreiman: Illegal immigrant labor undermining legitimate businesses
  

  Our elected county officials have had four years to solve the day labor problem in Wheaton, Silver Spring and Takoma Park and have failed miserably. We need to throw the incumbents out of office on Nov. 7. Our tax dollars, along with funding from Casa of Maryland, pay for the day labor centers, and between them they have accomplished Casa’s goal of accommodating more illegal immigrants in Maryland.

• Susan Gross: Tower residents concerned about CCT station placement
  

  While residents of the Washingtonian Tower may or may not be in favor of the Corridor Cities Transitway, we are quite concerned regarding the proposed placement of transit station No. 4 as shown on the map.

• Deborah A. Vollmer: ‘Let everyone vote on paper’
  

  I wish I could have some certainty about the results, but as we all know, the primary election in Maryland was a fiasco, with those access cards arriving hours late at many polling places, and other glitches in the system. How many folks were in fact denied a vote because their polling place was not prepared to proceed with the machines for lack of access cards, and also ran out of provisional ballots, we will never know.

A few articles covering Gaithersburg-related topics:

New to Gaithersburg, soldier found dead with gunshot wounds: Jaime Ciavarra writes in the Gazette:

Michael Anthony McQueen, a 22-year-old Army Ranger who returned in August from his third tour in Afghanistan, was found dead last week in his Gaithersburg apartment with apparent gunshot wounds.

[…]

Karen and Ray Moon, who live in the Streamside Apartments on the 400 block of North Summit Avenue where McQueen was found, say they heard a door slam four or five times in the early morning.

The Moons then heard McQueen’s roommate — who police have not identified — hysterical, yelling, ‘‘My roommate’s dead” as police arrived, they said.

Other neighbors on the second floor of the apartment, where McQueen’s unit is now roped off with police tape, say they didn’t hear anything that early morning — no struggle, gunshots, or screams.

I’ve previously covered this story.

Gaithersburg teen allegedly threatens school shooting: Jaime Ciavarra writes in the Gazette:

A Gaithersburg teen was taken into police custody for mental evaluation last week after allegedly threatening to bring a gun to school to shoot his classmates.

The 15-year-old student at Gaithersburg High School also mentioned the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado while talking with his study group on the afternoon of Sept. 25, county police report.

Police have not released the identity of the teen since he is a juvenile.

Retail site could be labor center: Sebastian Montes writes in the Gazette:

The city has faced growing scrutiny in recent months for failing to identify an acceptable site for a center to serve the roughly 75 day laborers who gather in various spots across the city every morning to find work.

The often emotional debate has been complicated by the fact that many of the day laborers, mostly Latino men, are illegal immigrants.

The potential site, which became available in recent weeks, is the former Atlantic Edge Scuba store near the shopping center’s east end.

It is the closest the city has come to finding a site since July, when Humpton proposed a building on East Diamond Avenue in Olde Towne that was rejected by city leaders after neighboring business owners balked.

New Location Proposed for Day-Laborer Center: Channel 7 has a story and a video:

City manager David Humpton says they have a letter of intent to lease storefront space at the Festival Center at Muddy Branch, near Interstate 270 on Muddy Branch Road.

The city council plans to hold a special session on the proposal October 12th at Gaithersburg City Hall.

The Montgomery County Council has been pushing the city to find a place to accommodate the laborers. The workers have been gathering each morning in the parking lot between another shopping center and a church. But city police started enforcing loitering laws and made them leave two weeks ago.

Slowing housing market stymies West Deer Park plans: Jaime Ciavarra writes in the Gazette:

The garden-style apartments have been empty since late June, when the remaining tenants — most of them lower-income renters — were told to pack their bags and move. RST bought the project in August 2005.

Gaithersburg’s Planning and Code Director Greg Ossont, who has contacted RST, said the firm is analyzing its next move.

‘‘They indicated they’re having difficulty getting the project moving due to market conditions,” Ossont said.

RST representatives did not return Gazette phone calls.

The situation highlights a broader trend that is hitting the area as developers with residential plans realize a waning real estate market and rapidly increasing construction costs, experts say.

This was the development that triggered the affordable housing brouhaha in the city.

Update: The City has posted the video of last night’s meeting, as well as the final, approved versions of the minutes of the 09/05/06 and 09/18/06 Council meetings. The 09/05/06 minutes still do not have the HDC portion.

I don’t have a lot of time to write a long post, so I’ll try to quickly summarize what happened tonight, and will try to follow up with more detail when I have some more time.

• The minutes for both the 09/05/06 and 09/18/06 meetings were approved. The HDC portion of the 9/05/06 meeting, regarding the destruction of the Talbott House, was omitted from the minutes without comment. I expect that, at a minimum, it is undergoing a thorough legal review.
• The City Manager read a statement regarding progress in the day labor center. There was essentially nothing new beyond the previous press release.
  Correction: As George points out, one difference between the statement at the meeting and the press release was the City Manager’s support for an anti-solicitation ordinance. Later in the session, the Council members expressed support for this as well, and directed the City Manager to have staff prepare a draft ordinance sooner rather than later.
• Public appearances went on for quite a while; most people spoke on the labor center issue. Generally the Olde Towne residents who have been putting up with the existing site were supportive, but repeatedly made the point that the center needed to be combined with an anti-solicitation ordinance or there would be no way for the City to deal with the continued existence of ad hoc sites. Demos Chrissos and Susan Payne were dead set against the proposed site, but were also dead set against any labor center anywhere in the city. They promised to do everything possible to stop it from happening, but I don’t recall hearing them suggest any positive steps that the City government could take to shut down the informal laborer hiring sites scattered through the city. From what they’ve said at previous Council meetings, however, I have the impression that they favor having the City police round up all the illegals in the city and hand them over to ICE, thus creating an illegal-free zone that would have no need for a labor center, but I suppose I could be misunderstanding their position.
• The hearing on SDP-06-003 was largely a non-event; I suggest watching it on the video if this affects you.
• The hearing on the affordable housing ordinance brought out a long parade of speakers. Action in Montgomery had a big turnout, and many members spoke of the need to preserve all the affordable housing in Gaithersburg, no matter how decrepit; one person did suggest that it would be best if the developers could renovate such housing as long as they didn’t then raise the rents or evict existing tenants. The point was made that an MPDU requrement for new construction would do nothing for a large number of residents of Olde Towne, who are currently benefiting from ongoing disinvestment and could not afford even apartments at MPDU rental rates. One Asbury resident spoke of the need for low-wage Asbury employees to have a place to live within walking distance, but did not address the possibility of either paying them enough to be able to afford a car or a better place nearby, or building some affordable housing on Asbury grounds. Several businessmen and residents spoke to the need for continued investment in Olde Towne CBD zones in particular. Jim Clifford pointed out that in the past ten years there has not been a single unsubsidized development in Olde Towne, that the most recent development of any sort was three years ago, and that 97% of the dwelling units in Olde Towne met workforce housing standards, while 70% met MPDU standards as far as cost was concerned. Many speakers supported excluding Olde Towne from the affordable housing requirements, as Olde Towne already has an oversupply of affordable housing and an under supply of mid-priced and luxury dwelling units. Many also spoke of the need for this ordinance to cause affordable housing to be created throughout the city. In the end, the Council choose to go forward with a policy discussion on the option two ordinance, which does exclude Olde Towne.

I have not been able to watch the remainder of the meeting, and will report on that once I’ve had the opportunity to do so.

OK, maybe it wasn’t such a short summary after all.