duchy trachtenberg: anti-trans fats, pro-onion rings

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

One of the elevators in the County Council Office Building has been broken for the past few weeks, so quite a few people are have packed themselves in for the ride down. There's myself and Henry from Silver Spring Scene, three or four County officials in suits and ties, and up against the door is Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At Large), wearing a big fur coat in spring weather. Everyone's talking and joking, shaking hands and making plans, and it's impossible for Henry and I to get off at the lobby. We ride it all the way down, all the way up, and back down again, as I wonder if the coat was real.

"I would like to see the social ills in this County make it on the map."

I didn't have the heart to ask. President of the Maryland chapter of NOW, "grassroots activist" (according to her bio), and a person who refers to the bathroom as "the loo," Duchy Trachtenberg doesn't spit grand promises like most politicians, but it seems like she's too soft-shelled to take those kinds of risks. Or perhaps freshmen councilmembers reserve the right to be so insecure.

In fact, the first thing she did was to jump down my throat in regards to some not-that-incendiary comments I made while trying to make this appointment last January. All I said was that her staff hadn't returned the two phone messages I'd left.

"I take this seriously because I've been told by my staff that you didn't call and I'm offended that you would put that on there," Trachtenberg says. "I find it hard to believe that my staff would not return a call."

Communications Director William Klein explained to me later that unreturned phone calls were "not her policy," but Duchy Trachtenberg still let a few slip through her fingers. Mea culpa, I know.

AFTER THE JUMP: The rest of the story.

Coming from a background in public health, Trachtenberg's main interests for this term are to improve the "delivery of health services" in Montgomery County. She herself is a "parent of a consumer" of health care services, citing her schizophrenic son, currently being held at a facility in New York state. "The quality in Maryland does not compare," she says, adding, "Maryland fares rather badly" in health care delivery nationwide.

For Henry and I, it became clear this wasn't going to be a discussion about development or quality-of-life. These things do not sound like Trachtenberg territory. "Do we make the maintenance of our infrastructure a higher priority?" Trachtenberg asks. (We can only presume that congestion doesn't play a major role in the less-than-two-mile commute from her Twinbrook home to Rockville Town Center.) "I would like to see the social ills in this County make it on the map."

"One thing I think we have to keep in mind is the current Bush administration."

Combating "social ills"? It makes me think of Prohibition. (With all of our liquor stores owned by the County, could Montgomery County bring it back!?) We don't know much about what she thinks about roads or slow-growth outside of ideals expressed on her website such as "County residents wanting to lessen their dependence on foreign oil should be accommodated with safer sidewalks and bike paths."

We do know, however, that former Action Committee for Transit Vice President Richard Hoye (pictured) is on her staff, and that I remember seeing him on my way from work last summer, speeding through the streets of Bethesda on a bike with a poster on the back bearing the soon-to-be Councilwoman's face. So, while our chat with Duchy Trachtenberg was mainly limited to her pet interests, we can assume she's looking out for bus riders as well.

"Ride On service [needs] to be funded to a larger degree," she notes at the one time we did manage to talk about transit. "Routes need to be extended into other parts of the County and the buses need to run longer."

But that was it. Perhaps there just isn't enough money to inspire bigger dreams. "We don't have adequate tax base in this state," she says. "We are down the totem pole in relation to the income level in this county. We do not have a large enough tax base . . . we really need to evaluate our current tax code."

When asked about affordable housing in the County, Trachtenberg took a swipe at the President, the first we've heard during the entire "County Government Head-to-Head Tour": "One thing I think we have to keep in mind is the current Bush administration," Trachtenberg insists. "Less and less money has been designated for these federal initiatives. Housing vouchers are one of them."

"We only have so much in the way of resources," Trachtenberg laments. "More and more of the burden falls on the shoulders of local government."

After an awkward half-hour of conversation, County Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At Large) has to leave for a meeting with Ike Leggett, but she offers up a concession: fried food. As we waited for the elevator, she invited us to a press conference for her first major bill of the session, a proposal to ban all trans fats from Montgomery County restaurants. "Come out to that," Trachtenberg says. "There'll be good french fries. I requested onion rings."

And we don't know if there were onion rings at the event, but if there were, we commend Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg. Just Up The Pike found this encounter so frustrating that we couldn't write about it for a week and a half - but we can respect a woman (who fights for women's rights) and appreciates a good O-ring.

doug duncan, savior of college park?

BUT FIRST: We asked Duchy Trachtenberg to talk about transit and development, and instead we learned about public health and tax codes . . . we're still working on that profile.

Doug Duncan's back in the game, and this couldn't be a better time - or place. Just yesterday, the Diamondback reported that Doug Duncan - best known for doggedly spearheading the redevelopment of Downtown Silver Spring as Montgomery County executive - is going back to work, this time as VP of Administrative Affairs to the University of Maryland.

Recall that two weeks ago, we learned that Downtown Silver Spring developer Foulger-Pratt will be redeveloping the University of Maryland's East Campus, currently filled with service buildings and dorms a little past their prime. It looks like College Park really will be the new Silver SprUng.

Nonetheless, there are concerns that the Silver SprUng-ification of College Park - and the chain stores it brings - will destroy its character, or at least prevent future opportunities to create what Richard Layman calls "something organic." While I disagreed with his original assessment of the urbanity of Foulger-Pratt's earlier projects, he does make a good point later about the potential of a college town to remake itself, as has occurred in Ann Arbor, usually rated one of the best "college towns" in the country.

I do not think, though, that chain stores are a threat to a town that has little in the way of useful retail. MoCo state delegate Ana Sol Gutierrez may have complained to the Diamondback that Silver Spring "looks just like another Bethesda," I don't know a lot of people who aren't thankful for the new shopping and dining opportunities available Downtown. (And we will gladly take Downtown Silver Spring or College Park over Downtown Kensington, which Delegate Gutierrez represents, any day.)

Mom-and-pops are all good and well, but I doubt your average Long Island party girl who attends Maryland will want to shop for club clothes at a mom-and-pop. Before we talk about "rounding out" the retail offerings in College Park, we need to get a solid base in there - something that attract both students and people from the community at large. For better or for worse, that means chain stores - a Borders, an Urban Outfitters - which can bring in enough people to support smaller stores.

Keep in mind that College Park is far bigger than the three-block downtown on Route 1. The Hyattsville-College Park area is the nexus of North Prince George's County. If East Campus, with its potential to attract high-end, chain stores, is a threat to anything, it'll be to the University Town Center development currently going up in Hyattsville, or even the new Laurel Mall, both only a few miles away.

I suppose the best word is "complement." East Campus will have to complement the existing character of College Park, because as long as the bars are open, it can't change all that much. It'll also have to complement other developments in Hyattsville and Laurel. I don't know how much "neighborhood character" currently exists on Route 1. Big developers may not create an "organic" atmosphere, but at least it'll be more attractive than what we have now.

the "head-to-head tour" bus gets a flat tire

An interim stop, sort of, on Just Up The Pike's "County Government Head-to-Head Tour". Here's Part Two.

Spring Break at Just Up The Pike has proved to be anything but as we have hit more than a few snags up in Rockville. This morning, Henry from Silver Spring Scene and I braved rush-hour traffic to meet with Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg, only to discover that the councilwoman was quite disturbed by some comments I made in January while trying to make an appointment with her:

"We have yet to hear from Duchy Trachtenberg, Marc Elrich, or the increasingly elusive Ike Leggett, only bolstering my opinion that he does not like me."

If that should offend anyone, it should really be Ike Leggett, but we've already been there.

Nonetheless, Trachtenberg was not amused. "I take this serious because I've been told by my staff that you didn't call," she said testily, "and I'm offended that you would put that on there . . . I find it hard to believe that my staff would not return a call."

"I assure you, Ms. Trachtenberg," I said, surprised, "I would not lie about a missed call." I expect I will be corrected if I make a mistake anywhere on this blog, but I promise you that I wouldn't knowingly lie about something, even as minor as a phone call. This afternoon, I called her communications director, William Klein, to sort the situation out.

"No one here has any record of your calling," Klein said. "Duchy was unhappy to see that [comment] on your blog because that's not her policy. I just hope you would be able to put this behind you and we can move on from there."

"Duchy respects bloggers and cares about the County," he continued. "We respect Just Up The Pike, and we read it."

And I'm glad to hear it. Come back TOMORROW to read more about our meeting with Duchy Trachtenberg. And, AFTER THE JUMP: our not-quite-a-meeting with Councilman Roger Berliner.


Monday's meeting with Councilman Roger Berliner was cut short due to a committee hearing Berliner wanted to attend. I was allowed to sit on the meeting, which covered a report called "Residential Infill Construction: A Review of County Laws, Regulations and Practices."

To be completely honest, the jargon of zoning laws is something that cannot be taken on an empty stomach, and even an aspiring planner like myself couldn't help but dream about the goodies being served in the Council Office Building Cafeteria seven stories below. (As it would turn out, it was closed.)

I did, however, pay close attention to the behavior of the four councilmembers in attendance - Berliner, of course, but also the three memebers of the Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee: Marilyn Praisner, Nancy Floreen, and Marc Elrich. At any given time, at least two of the four councilmembers at the meeting had their chins propped up. Nancy Floreen left the room twice, presumably to the bathroom or water fountain. And Marc Elrich, embracing the spring weather, was the only one in the room wearing short sleeves.

An Evil Developer, or what I assume an Evil Developer would look like if NeighborsPAC did a portrait of one, sat in the back room, glaring at everyone and everything and twiddling his thick mustache. I couldn't help but wonder if he was going to follow the councilmembers back to their offices afterwards with a thick folder of Evil Development Plans to show them.

marc elrich, gingerly planning for moco's future

BUT FIRST: Why isn't Downtown Silver Spring good enough for some urban planners? Read more.

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

Upon first glance, Marc Elrich, Montgomery County Councilman (D-At Large) seems a little intimidating. He's very quiet and reserved, but with a presence that seems to fill a room, noticeable even in his tiny office in the County Council building. The first few minutes of our meeting are all business - hand shaking, card exchanges, an explanation of what I was here for.

"I'm not sure if you've read Just Up The Pike before," I begin -

"I've read it. I read blogs," Elrich says, as all county councilmembers take to saying now. (He did, during the campaign, keep one himself, called El Blog de El-Rich.) He notices the buttons on my messenger bag. "Have any good buttons?" he asks.

I'm a little thrown off. "Just for bands," I mumble, a little embarassed that the County Councilman wants to know about my interest in the band Something Corporate. "I'm always looking to see good political buttons," Elrich adds. I think of the Kerry-Edwards pin lying on my desk at home. Was that a joke? It didn't feel like one.

At first I wondered if I'd caught him at a bad time. It was 2:00 on a Tuesday afternoon - our meeting was scheduled for 1:30, but the receptionist explained to me that an emergency budget meeting had just been called, and I'd caught catch councilmembers Valerie Ervin and Nancy Floreen on their way in.

Floreen takes a second to sit down with me. "I have something to tell you about the Annual Growth Policy," she says. "The annual growth rate has been less than one percent."

"Over the last year?" I ask. "No. For a long time," Floreen says.

One percent growth? How would Marc Elrich respond to that? Former city councilman for Takoma Park, dubbed "Berkeley East," memberships in a litany of environmental groups, according to his biography, a campaign for County Council run on limiting developer influence - Marc Elrich is, to many, the new face of slow growth in Montgomery County, as much as Ike Leggett himself.

"I'm very happy" with Ike Leggett's new budget, Elrich says. "He sets the right tone. It's hard . . . to recast a budget for an entire year. He took a very conservative approach." Conservative's not a word you hear often around Takoma Park, but for Elrich, it's just what Montgomery County needs right now. "We're really facing some long-term costs," he continues. "Development brings you revenues, that's fine, but it also brings you liabilities."

"[Moratorium] was a word used by the press and developers to start a panic and scare people."

I don't really have to ask whether that less-than-one percent growth Nancy Floreen mentioned is too much for Elrich, whose campaign signs carried the words "DEVELOPER FUNDING" with a big slash over it. But as Marilyn Praisner and Ike Leggett have insisted before him, what happened last December was not, in fact, a "moratorium."

"We never proposed a moratorium," Elrich says. "It was a word used by the press and developers to start a panic and scare people." But as Valerie Ervin noted, Elrich and Praisner (who first proposed the not-moratorium) both "gutted" the original proposal. "I listened to hours of developers' testimony and came back with some modifications," Elrich explains. "When you first prepare something, you put it on the table to discuss it. If I'm not going to be serious about public input, why bother having a public hearing?"

And why shouldn't he be serious about anything? The County's facing some tough times ahead. "We're really facing some long-term costs" in the future, Elrich laments. "We're building the first fire stations since 1981. [We] never collected enough money to fund the infrastructure." The road situation is no better. "All [planners'] projections suggest things are getting worse," he continues. "If I told you 'things were getting better,' you'd expect it to get better tomorrow. We shouldn't be simply planning for things to get worse."

Marc Elrich's ideal for Montgomery County couldn't be described as worse - or better, for that matter. When asked about what he'd like to see forty years from now, he responds, "That's really complex. Like, woebegone comes to mind." Creases form in his forehead. "I'd like to see a county where our kids are reasonably successful in school," he continues. "Having communities that are safe and people want to live in . . . being able to find work within a reasonable commute . . . dealing with the transportation system so we don't continue to slide into gridlock."

Note the repetition of "reasonable." Marc Elrich doesn't make the sort of big promises for Montgomery County that gets other politicians in trouble. In fact, if Elrich had a grand vision for the County, maybe it's of a place where grand visions take a backseat to pragmatic governance, the sort for which Montgomery County's become famous for over the years.

"You come in with ideas . . . but you don't come in with all the information."

But that isn't what our elected officials have been doing lately. "People say 'well, growth's just gonna happen' . . . but it's not like we can't manage it better," he says. "When it's something [people] wanna do, they're powerful. And when it's something they don't wanna do, they're powerless."

Because of that mentality, our elected officials have been making a lot of promises they may not be able to keep, especially in regards to transportation. "Legislators are gonna be very reluctant to give us ICC, CCT, the Purple Line, the $500 million that Metro wants," he insists. "The State legislators say 'Montgomery County just did off three billion dollars [the cost of the ICC alone] . . . they're not getting anything else.'"

"I'd like to ask [Governor Martin] O'Malley, 'How much money are we really gonna get?'"

"We oughta prioritize the two rail projects over the ICC," Elrich proposes. "The purpose of the ICC is going to be undermined by the way the ICC is funded," referring to the high tolls that may be charged on the highway, sending drivers back to local roads and exacerbating traffic. Meanwhile, he says, "it's just gonna open up that part of the County to still more development."

"I think we're far less successful than we say we are."

The frustrations of local politics have certainly taken a toll on Elrich's daily life over the past few months. When asked about how many engagements he has on a normal day, Elrich responds, "I can't even average them. My weeks seem endless, and my weekends do too. Dale [Tibbitts, his chief of staff] will show me my schedule, and I'll say, 'what have you done to my life today?'" It's a far cry from his days of teaching fifth grade at Rolling Terrace Elementary School in Takoma Park. "Being a teacher, there's something satisfying every day, and that doesn't happen here," Elrich says.

"I think we're far less successful than we say we are," Elrich notes. Living in the county for nearly a half-century, he's seen us go from bedroom community to economic powerhouse. To him, it's clear that we have a long way to go in becoming the kind of all-inclusive, supportive community we appear to be. While big promises may not be his style, Marc Elrich remains committed to making that ideal a reality.

But, before I go, he has one more thing to tell me: "For the record, I have yet to have a NeighborsPAC meeting," he says. "Lots of developers, no NeighborsPAC."