Weekly Message from the County Executive Marc Elric: “‘Thrive 2050’ Is Not the Best Future Plan for Our County”

Dear Friends,

This month is Hispanic Heritage Month. It runs from September 15 to October 25. Over the course of the next 30 days, I’ll be on site visiting with businessmen and women from the Latino community representing a wide array of industries including retail, auto repair and childcare.

I want to thank the leaders in cities and communities hosting events for being so supportive of Hispanic Heritage Month. I encourage you to check out the calendars we have developed, which identify ceremonies, art projects, and other events that pay tribute to the history and culture of Latinos in each area of Montgomery County.

The latest census data showed 217,409 Latinos call Montgomery County home. That’s a 31 percent increase from 2010 with 21 percent of Montgomery County classified as Latino.

Latino students make up an even larger section of the MCPS school population, nearly one in three students. We have recognized this change by focusing more of our resources on helping Hispanic children and adults in a variety of different ways.

In our County you will find schools that have expanded programs to help students coming in from all over the world. There are now six schools that offer two-way language immersion classes to help Spanish-speaking children at the elementary school level. Efforts like that have helped MCPS raise its graduation rate for limited English students by nearly 10 percent in the last 5 years.

Montgomery College is also a resource for Latinos through the Hispanic Business and Training Institute. It offers classes in business, entrepreneurship, professional development, and licensure. These classes are taught in Spanish or are bilingual.

This summer Montgomery County opened up the procurement process to more Hispanic-owned businesses. We held a 3-part workshop on obtaining County contracts entirely in Spanish. That work continues over the course of this month with two business workshops for Latinos, with one focused on the working women.

Montgomery County’s Spanish-language health campaign led by the Latino Health Initiative used the Emmy-award winning character La Abuelina, to help encourage this community to take Covid seriously and get vaccinated. Those efforts saved lives and led to one of the highest vaccination rates among the Latino community, nationwide.

Many events are planned over the next month to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. Please join us as we honor and appreciate our Latino communities and their contributions to our County’s history.

Changes are needed to the Thrive 2050 Master Plan

This week we received a troubling update on the County’s Thrive 2050 proposed General Plan. Thrive 2050 is the County’s general planning document intended to guide all of our master plans moving forward for the next three decades. This document is important to the future of this County because it lays the framework for future zoning. It will influence our decisions over budget expenditures—billions of dollars—for education investments, transportation infrastructure, economic development, environmental protection, and affordable housing preservation and production, as well as our racial equity and social justice efforts.

For future zoning, while Thrive doesn’t include zoning itself, it recommends all future land uses that are the basis for zoning. The current version of Thrive recommends significant changes to our current land uses without sufficiently addressing the consequences produced by those changes. I have raised concerns about Thrive throughout the process – you can see what I’ve written here https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/exec/thrive2050.html, but the most recent development is the most concerning – the report from consultants about their racial equity and social justice review of Thrive 2050.

I’m glad the County Council commissioned this analysis https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/council/Resources/Files/agenda/col/2022/20220913/20220913_3.pdf because it had not been done by the Planning Board originally. This review was conducted quickly because of time constraints and was intended to solidify the plan moving forward, but it did the opposite. We now have more questions than answers. In fact, after one presentation by the consultants on the report, https://youtu.be/RZuLMG5k8oI, the Council has now added a new session next Tuesday to discuss in-depth the consultants’ RESJ review and recommendations for Thrive.

These recommendations were the impetus for the memo I sent to the County Council https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/OPI/Resources/Files/2022/Thrive2050_CEmemo_9-12-22.pdf

urging them to not move Thrive forward until fundamental issues with the plan and concerns regarding the lack of equity and community involvement are resolved.

I encourage everyone to watch the presentation of that review given to the Montgomery County Council earlier this week if you haven’t. Below are some of the excerpts from their report:

Here is some of what the review said:

In general, the report recommended substantial changes to Thrive – here are some of those excerpted below:

The feedback gathered by the consultant team over the summer and the significant changes they recommend is why I urged the Council to disapprove the Thrive 2050 plan – the Council does not have time to revise Thrive before the statutory deadline, which is October 25; it simply cannot be done in that time.

There is absolutely no urgency to pushing this plan forward. While it has been presented as the solution for affordable housing, the County already has a strong policy in favor of affordable housing. The previous housing element—which is only 10 years old and part of the current general plan—has more concrete solutions for affordable housing than this document. https://www.montgomeryplanning.org/community/housing/documents/HousingMasterPlan-FINAL_web.pdf

We need to get this right; we should not rush it. In fact, as one of the consultants noted during the hearing – “Compressed time frames are the enemy of equity and justice.” https://youtu.be/rcmWAiu1plI?t=7154 That is a powerful statement that we need to take to heart. We want to give our community the best road map moving forward, and we need to take the necessary time to draw that map.

Newly renovated rental community is helping preserve affordable housing in Rockville

Here is one example of how we’re working on our affordable housing needs sans a complete Thrive 2050.

Parkside Landing is a beautiful and affordable rental community near Dogwood Park in Rockville and within walking distance of downtown and a Metro station. This complex could have been the latest older community turned into a “market rate” apartments with sky high rent. Instead, we worked with property owners to lend them a little over $5 million. Other funding partners crucial to this project were the City of Rockville, Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development and HUD.

Rockville Housing Enterprises used the financing package to preserve 118 affordable units and produce 59 additional affordable units. With this project we protected the affordable housing already in place and also created new affordable units for renters.

This fiscal year we have $140 million earmarked for affordable housing. One hundred million of that will be used for capital lending, which is two-and-a-half-times the amount spent on affordable housing in previous budgets. One hundred million dollars of County financing can produce or preserve up to 2,000 dedicated-affordable housing units. We have already dedicated at least $40 million of that capital lending to keep 700 units facing increasing rent pressures affordable, like properties near the forthcoming Purple Line.

What we don’t want to see is more of our affordable housing options lost to market adjustments and new development. We only have around 22,000 units today down from 45,000. If we don’t make moves like this our affordable housing options will continue to disappear.

Failing to focus on affordable housing will lead to the loss of our workforce. Years ago, it was teachers, firefighters and other public employees who needed this protection. Now more people fall into the category of not making enough money to keep up with soaring home and rent prices. Solutions developed 50 years ago like the Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit (MPDU) programneed updating – today there are only 6,700 affordable rental units left from that well-intentioned and important program.

Over the next several months, you will see more updates on progress we are making toward producing, preserving, and protecting affordable housing. I look forward to continued updates as we move forward with the development of affordable housing on eighteen separate County-owned properties throughout the County. When we put out feelers to gauge interest in working with us on these projects we got back more than 100 responses from developers.

Just this month, the Department of General Services issued a series of Requests for Developer Proposals for County owned sites in Bethesda, Silver Spring, Glenmont, Rockville, and Wheaton to ensure we are selecting the best ideas and using every tool at our disposal to build more affordable housing units.

I will continue to talk extensively about our efforts and solutions to our affordable housing problem. If you would like to know more about my vision for creating more affordable housing in Montgomery County, please watch this video released I released this summer.

Covid community level remains at “Low,” receiving new bivalent booster is critical for increased protection

This week our COVID-19 community level remains ‘low’. Case rates continue to decline and our hospitalizations from Covid have decreased by about 25% over the past month.

I continue to encourage everyone to get vaccinated and stay up to date on booster shots. The newly authorized bivalent boosters, or “Omicron Boosters,” are designed to protect against the Omicron strains. Bivalent boosters are meant for anyone 12 and up who hasn’t had a booster in the last 2 months. They have replaced the boosters we had been giving out for months and are the only boosters available now. They are available through the County but many more have also been shipped to our local doctors and pharmacies.

The new boosters are critical to ensuring that we don’t have another winter like last year. It is imperative that folks get their shot over the upcoming weeks before the weather gets cold, everyone is inside more often, and the virus becomes more transmissible.

We know how to best beat Covid and it’s the vaccines. Yet, there’s still a myth out there that getting a vaccine doesn’t matter because you can get sick anyway.

Vaccines matter and the data bears it out. We share these charts detailing hospitalization and death rate differences between the vaccinated, unvaccinated, and boosted every week because there are real people dying still and most of them are people not protecting themselves. Please share the information with loved ones because vaccinations can be lifesavers. We cannot turn on back on this virus, every time we do, it re-appears.

Monkeypox/MPX new cases slowing, vaccinations supply/availability increasing

Case rates for Monkeypox in Montgomery County have begun to slow down recently. When you look back over the last few weeks of data shared by the Maryland Department of Health you’ll see new cases no longer growing at such a fast rate. Only 73 total cases have been identified so far which is only slightly higher than last week’s total of 69.

Montgomery County has for months now been proactive in its handling of the virus. It started with vaccinating and monitoring close contacts of positive cases earlier this summer and continues today by developing pre-registration lists and working our way through them. Around 1,000 vaccinations have been scheduled for this week.

We also had a successful second town hall on Monkeypox for the Latino community this past Monday. A third town hall focusing on the African American community is being planned. Expanding our educational efforts is leading to new questions from the public we didn’t get at our first town hall and that’s a good thing because it shows we’re reaching more people.

It’s important to watch for symptoms of MPX like itchy bumps or lesions on the skin which are highly contagious with skin-to-skin contact. Someone who is infected can spread MPX for 2 to 4 weeks.

Poolesville is the ‘place to be’ this Saturday:

This Saturday is the 30th Annual Poolesville Day Festival from 10am to 4pm. This a free event that also includes a 5K Run/Walk, a classic car show, and – my personal favorite – the largest National Drive Electric Vehicle Show in the world.

Last year more than 260 Electric Vehicles were featured, and more are expected this year. If you are EV owner and general car aficionado like I am, or you are thinking about making the switch to electric, Poolesville is where you want to be this weekend to meet owners, manufacturers, and learn about the all the tax credits and rebates you can earn by purchasing an EV.

I want to thank the residents of Poolesville, and specifically the folks at Poolesville Green, for their continued support and advocacy toward our Climate Action Plan goals and sustainability efforts.

Please go to PoolesvilleDay.com for more details.

Bring your family to the “Friendship Picnic” this Sunday in Wheaton:

This Sunday Wheaton will host the 9th annual Friendship Picnic. The goal is to bring together everyone in this highly diverse community.

This picnic runs from noon until 5 p.m. at Wheaton Regional Park. This is a free event is an initiative of the Montgomery County Committee Against Hate and Violence. This event features many kid-friendly activities like a petting zoo, music and dancing.

There will be free Kosher, Halal and vegetarian lunch options will be available along with traditional picnic offerings. There’s no need to register or bring your own food to the picnic.

Our Friendship Picnic is a wonderful opportunity to come together, say hi to neighbors and make new friends. It is events like this that help Montgomery County safer from hate and violence. We hope to see you there.

Historic Goshen United Methodist Church Celebrates 150th Anniversary

This weekend, I look forward to attending the Sesquicentennial Gala at Goshen United Methodist in the historic black community of Stewartown. This church was built by former slaves over 150 years ago. Goshen United Methodist Church is an institution in our County’s history and integral to our racial progress. They have also been a key partner with our Covid response, recovery, testing, and vaccination efforts.

I want to congratulate Rev. Dr. Jalene Chase and all the members of Goshen United Methodist Church for this important milestone. I also want to acknowledge Greg Wims, our UpCounty Regional Service Center Director, and Montgomery County Human Rights Hall of Fame Inductee, whose family helped build this church. Greg was also the founder of the Victims Rights Foundation. He started this organization 26 years ago at Goshen United Methodist Church and has since grown it to become the largest volunteer foundation in Montgomery County.

We are going to have a quite a celebration this weekend in Stewartown!

As always, my appreciation for all of you,

Marc Elrich
County Executive