I have been championing our city developing a long-term vision, and that process began this year. Read about what we’ve done so far in this article:
strategy
The city updates our strategic plan each year. This is the latest:
Gaithersburg has begun a visioning exercise that will help in determining the city’s strategy going forward. The first step is a report from our consultants concerning trends in population and business in the city and in our region, which will be discussed at an all-day retreat on February 23rd.
The executive summary presentation is here: https://www.dropbox.com/…/Visioning%20Executive%20Summary%2…
The full report is available here:https://www.dropbox.com/s/krc48zuhm66px…/Final%20Report.pdf…
The Gaithersburg Economic Development staff has issued a report on the status and prospects for Lakeforest Mall. The report is available here: https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/a527dd81-faf8-41f7-9e72-4e771b22169c
My post was originally published on the Seventh State blog, August 8, 2017
In a recent meeting with the capital improvements team at MCPS, I suggested that it would take $1 billion in extra capital funding to provide enough classrooms and to fix dilapidated schools. The staff responded that the number was more like $2 billion or more. Ouch.
My guess was based on the basic cost for classroom space of $40K per student. So, an elementary school for 750 kids would cost $30 million. And we have 9,000 kids in portables ($360 million worth of classrooms) and we’re adding 2,500 new students each year ($100 million). I guessed at double that for renovations, but apparently that number is way worse than my rough guess.
In transportation, the situation is even worse. Not only is our system the most congested in the country, but in 25 years the congestion is projected to be 72% worse! In the past 15 years, we’ve added several hundred thousand new residents to the mid- and up-county, and the population will grow by 20%. We’re not keeping up.
The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB) made projections based on the regional long-range plan, which includes all the projects proposed and expected to be funded. The TPB recently looked at the 500 projects proposed but not expected to be funded, and building all of them “only” makes congestion 28% worse. I repeat: building every project proposed still makes congestion 28% worse!
One problem for the TPB is that the projects on their list are proposed by local jurisdictions: the states, counties, and cities, and are most often focused on local needs. There is no central authority over regionally significant ideas that will serve to improve transportation for everyone.
Another challenge is that there is such a huge focus on new transit that it crowds out roads. If you build a new Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) on a Metro Station and 60% of the new residents use Metro, then there are still 40% of the new residents in cars. One mode is not enough, and the current plans look like they are out of balance, with the vast majority of trips by auto in 25 years but most funding going to transit and not highways. To be clear: in 25 years with $100 billion spent on transit in our region, we increase ridership by 2% for work trips, with a huge increase in auto trips and little improvement in our road network.
The TPB bravely took it upon ourselves to develop a list of 10 “potentially game changing” projects, programs, and policies to study, to learn if there are ways to actually reduce congestion instead of surrendering to it. This has been a controversial process thanks to inclusion of a new northern Potomac crossing, but the TPB has recognized that desperate times require desperate measures.
So, where would the money come from to fix these problems, assuming we find good answers and the political will to address them?
For transportation, Northern Virginia has taken the lead. The Northern Virginia Transportation Authority collects a small surcharge on some taxes to create $330 million in new funding to reduce congestion. Under this new program, the state and the local jurisdictions are not allowed to reduce transportation funding, so the money goes directly to new programs.
For schools as well as transportation, Adam Pagnucco suggested that Montgomery County’s annual revenue grows by about $140 million each year due to increased income and property tax revenue. How about dedicating all this growth to infrastructure for the next few years, instead of operations? In five years or so, we could be all caught up.
These aren’t the only ways to get out of the hole. We could build schools like the Monarch Global Academy in Laurel, which cost one-third to one-half what MCPS spends on each school. That would stretch our dollars. We could look at the cost-effectiveness of transportation projects already in the pipeline and refocus on ones that make more of a difference.
I hope with the big election year in Montgomery County next year, we can direct the candidates to solve these big challenges as their top priority. We need to understand what projects will actually help and then find ways to pay for them.
Whatever we do, we know one thing – when you are in a hole, first stop digging.
The CEO of Mercedes posted an article with predictions of the future. Here is a selection focused on public policy matters:
• Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don’t want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver’s license and will never own a car.
• It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% less cars for that. We can transform former parking spaces into parks. 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 60,000 miles (100,000 km), with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 6 million miles (10 million km). That will save a million lives each year.
• Insurance companies will have massive trouble because, without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.
• Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhood.
• Electric cars will become mainstream about 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can now see the burgeoning impact.
• Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil. Energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that can’t last. Technology will take care of that strategy.
Some conclusions: these changes would/will have a profound effect on infrastructure. We would reclaim the land now reserved for parking lots. The power grid is greatly diminished (don’t invest in electric utilities!). With electric automobiles, the oil business goes in the tank — which is why they are fighting so hard for every dollar they can get today.
In an era of left-right political strife, it looks to me like we can forget the basics. While we are arguing about policy and allocating resources right or left, we forget to provide the essentials that everyone needs government to provide.
When I led the large HOA in Kentlands, it became very clear that everyone cared a lot about a few things — collecting the trash, managing the pool, plowing snow from our alleys, maintaining common buildings and amenities, and making sure we were fiscally sound. Everything else was nice to have, but only once the basics were covered.
In municipal government, it’s much the same — collect the recycling, plow the snow, maintain the roads, manage parks and events, and keep everyone safe. Educating the children and keeping traffic moving are on the list, except they are out of our control as a municipality. When I joined the council, I made it my mission to work with outside agencies to improve the areas outside of the city’s direct control.
As a commuter, our region is a bit of a nightmare. We have some of the worst traffic congestion in the country. I spent some time commuting from Gaithersburg to Reston — no job is worth that daily commute. Coming home on Fridays could take 2 painful hours. It’s not like I made the choice to live here and work there — when I bought my house I worked locally, but things change. And I could not understand why one of the wealthiest regions in the wealthiest country in the world could not manage its transportation.
Classroom space in our schools is another huge issue. My nearest elementary school was built for 650 students and has well over 1000 now, and growing every year. I see schools all over Gaithersburg and beyond at higher capacity.
Our infrastructure is stretched because of many factors. Our region is attractive — good jobs, good schools, safe streets — so people want to live here. Even when we don’t build more housing, people keep coming — the number of people in a household keeps growing.
The answer is to balance infrastructure with the demands of a growing population. The answer is many things — more transit, more roads, more schools. We’re out of balance. To catch up with school capacity would cost close to a billion dollars — that would get all the kids out of portables, build new schools to accommodate the 2500+ new students added to MCPS each year, and repair or replace the schools that are becoming dilapidated. That’s a lot of money in a system where we are happy when the state provides an extra $10 million in a year for school construction — not enough for a single school building.
The transportation system is a much bigger challenge. WMATA just determined that it needs $25 billion (with a B!) over the next 10 years to catch up on its infrastructure, and Metro only handles 15% of the work commutes in the region. Many officials believe that focusing new construction at Metro stations is the answer — but unless ALL the new residents use Metro, the new housing adds still more congestion to our roads.
It’s time for a new approach — we need to look at how we are allocating the budgets in the region and re-think where the money goes. From what I see of budgets in the region, a lot of the new spending is going anywhere but to the basic infrastructure and services that are so desperately needed here.
I’m not running for anything, I was elected to the Gaithersburg City Council in 2015 and I’m just trying to do the job that I was elected to do. I am not advocating for or against growth, but I am observing that growth happens and we’re not doing our region justice by ignoring the infrastructure to keep up. We can get there if we balance our priorities and take care of the essentials.
This document was submitted to the Mayor and Council of the City of Gaithersburg as part of the package submitted to express my interest in becoming a member of the city council, late in 2014. It covers many of my priorities as a council member, and is still relevant.
Fiscal Responsibility and Budgeting
The top priority for any organization, before any other priorities can be addressed, is fiscal responsibility. The City of Gaithersburg is in an excellent condition in this regard, with recent budget surpluses and well-funded capital accounts. Maintaining and continuing to improve this status is a top priority for me.
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