A weekly sampling of reader comments culled from trending Bethesda Beat stories.
Approval Expected for 1,000 Residences in White Flint
A plan for more than 1 million square feet of development and 1,000 residences in White Flint was expected to receive preliminary approval from the county Planning Board Thursday. The project at Executive Boulevard and Old Georgetown Road, near Pike & Rose, would include up to 110,169 square feet for retail and restaurant uses and 1,000 residences.
Comments
- So, 13% of the new homes are “affordable” for people making one specific income bracket of the lower middle class, and…87% are for the ultrawealthy? And not only that, they are probably one bedrooms/studios, not suitable for young families who actually want to stay here and raise children? So we’re only building homes for “urban professionals.” aka tech bros, consultants, high-earners who just want to drop in for a year or two and don’t care about the rest of us. Thank goodness we have Marc Elrich. He is the only voice of reason in our county government right now when it comes to development. Of course, developers now want to build exclusively homes for the kind of people who won’t vote for Marc Elrich.
- I’m all for high density development but even with the new north entrance coming to the White Flint Metro this will still be more than half a mile from the Metro. Walking along a very busy road with sidewalks right next to the road and unregulated egress and ingress points from the buildings lining the road.
- This is great news. Rockville Pike is the least congested road in MoCo, and needs much more traffic on it to justify its maintenance and upkeep.
MCPS, Bus Driver Reach Settlement over Discrimination Allegations
The Montgomery school system will begin developing new cultural competency guidelines and best practices after reaching a settlement over discrimination claims raised by a school bus driver who says he experienced a decade of harassment. Sawinder Singh, 45, a Sikh who wears a turban and has a beard as part of observing his religion, said he spent nearly a decade enduring constant harassment, from students calling him a “terrorist” to colleagues telling him to “go back to your country.”
Comments
- Cultural competency classes – badly needed in MCPS (#waltwhitman #churchill, #bradleyhillselementary) especially in the Whitman cluster among staff, faculty, student AND parents. It should be required for all of them. As for MCPS’ statement, ““We do not and will not tolerate behavior that is hateful, bigoted, racist or discriminatory,” well that’s bull—-. They have been tolerating it for decades. Under EEOC rules/regulations, it would be considered a hostile workplace,
- I would love to know the demographics of the kids who called him a terrorist.
- Were any of the employees who created a hostile work environment disciplined or is this another case in which MCPS didn’t enforce its policy? I don’t think MCPS is being well served by its legal counsel, which seems more concerned with reducing litigation risk through soft policies and inaction than in making sure that MCPS avoids problems in the first place and owns up to problems that it fails to manage effectively. The agreement itself ensures there will be no public accounting for this outrageous conduct by prohibiting the plaintiff from identifying any of the schools, students, or personnel involved. And MCPS didn’t even take responsibility (it expressly denied it) even though the plaintiff gave MCPS a full release.
County Allocates Grants For Immigration Assistance
The Montgomery County Council, in approving a $5.8 billion operating budget, allocated $14.5 million for 335 individual grants to community nonprofits. The largest share of funding will go toward immigration assistance programs. The Latino immigrant advocacy organization CASA de Maryland received $673,830, which will be used for eight separate grants for programs such as legal assistance for immigrants and vocational training. Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Greater Washington received $652,196 from the council, some of which will go toward pro-bono legal assistance for immigrants that have survived domestic violence as well as education programs for low-income immigrants.
Comments
- Vocational training? Does that mean they’re being trained to do still more jobs that Americans don’t want to do?
- How many other kinds of agencies serving specific ethnicities does the county help fund with taxpayer money? It’s rather biased to fund agencies that primarily, if not exclusively, serve a particular ethnicity, and also use taxpayer public dollars to provide legal assistance to primarily one ethnicity and for those accused of violating just one kind of law, and/ or vocational training also primarily to people of that ethnicity who are not even citizens! This entire setup is rife with bias.
- It’s no wonder why MoCo has budget problems.
Funding Restored for White Flint Metro Station Improvement Work
Funds for planning and designing a second entrance to the White Flint Metro station in North Bethesda have been restored to the county’s six-year capital improvements budget by the County Council. The regional transit agency would be in charge of the project — constructing a northern entrance to the station with an underground walkway connecting the northern end of the platform to the Pike & Rose shopping area on the west side of Rockville Pike – and determining construction costs
Comments
- A northern entrance makes so much sense, particularly with an underground connection to Pike and Rose. Will also provide better access for all the condos/apartments just north of the Metro station and more flexibility if and when anything finally gets built on the long-fallow portion of the LCOR site that’s virtually on top of the station.
- And how about designing to accommodate a “future” White Flint MARC [commuter rail] station?
- Good grief. Pike and Rose is a block away. People are making excuses about how horrible it is to walk on Rockville Pike on that stretch. I walk a ton around here, and there are a lot worse pedestrian issues than that stretch. I am all for encouraging people to take the metro, and for making it better for pedestrians, but some of this also seems indulgent to me. It’s a short walk! So we need a hermetically sealed special passageway to P & R so that some people don’t get their feet wet. For some reason this bothers me, because it shows that people just can’t walk if they don’t have the luxuries of their car to go along with it.
Full text and additional comments accompany the individual online stories and updates.
