Monday, March 05, 2007

Why I Can't Walk To Marilyn Praisner's House

The long-awaited third stop on Just Up The Pike's "County Government Head-to-Head Tour."

My first question to County Council President Marilyn Praisner (D-Calverton) was about her failed attempt to place a moratorium on new permits in Montgomery County, and it got our conversation off to a bad, bad start. Before I could finish my question, she cut me off: "Nothing 'went down,'" she insists, taking me to task for my unusual word choice. "Moratorium was and is a misnomer."

"I sought to accomplish a focus on trying to respond to the inadequacies of our Annual Growth Policy," she explains. "We've provided such a grace period that there's a lag time" between when policies are created and when they are implemented. Not taking building permits for six months would have allowed that lag time to disappear, she says.

Councilman George Leventhal (D-At Large) said that incidents such as these were signs that his fellow councilmembers thought they were "responding to the people" in their push to slow growth. It's a sign, he said, that citizens' groups such as the Neighbors for a Better Montgomery really are as influential as the media make them out to be.

Read the rest at Just Up The Pike.

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