Char'd has opened at 11881 Grand Park Avenue at the Pike & Rose development on Rockville Pike. The fast-casual burger restaurant is also welcoming those breaking their Ramadan fast each evening. Through the end of Ramadan on March 19, the restaurant is offering complimentary dates and tea during Iftar hour, and will stay open until midnight each night. The Char'd menu is halal, including the grass-fed beef.
In addition to the station improvements, the historic Hoyles Mill structure will be stabilized. It is essentially a ruin, but stabilization is needed to insure it doesn't collapse. Montgomery County has received a total of $590,000 in grants from state agencies for this purpose. According to the Library of Congress, much of the mill's sheathing and internal machinery remain intact, and it is one of a few timber-frame mills that remain standing in Montgomery County.
Overall, the goal of the project is to encourage more ridership for MARC from the Germantown and Clarksburg areas. Massive development was allowed in both, but the County Council engaged in a rug pull with new homebuyers who had expected to commute via a new Corridor Cities Transitway rail line, and M-83 Highway. After they purchased their homes, the Council pulled the plug on both projects. The Hoyles Mill MARC station project was approved in 2019, and is only now moving forward.
Dan Cox, a Republican candidate for Maryland Governor, has proposed placing a limit on property taxes in the state. The proposal would prevent the assessed property value calculated by the state from increasing above the price the current homeowner paid for the house at the time of purchase. Cox's running mate, Rob Krop, announced the platform plank on social media yesterday. "We need to stop taxing families out of their homes," Krop said.
CNN host Fareed Zakaria stirred controversy last week when he delivered straight talk on why many jurisdictions like Montgomery County have become simultaneously unaffordable while operating on fiscal thin ice. He mentioned a number of familiar factors, but he articulated a particular problem quite well: The fact that the growth of Montgomery County's budget and spending outstrip every other relevant growth factor from business growth and school enrollment to population growth. We know the County spends way too much, as evidenced by our structural budget deficit and the shocking doubling of the budget's size over just the last decade. But when you compare the lack of growth in these other benchmarks to the steadily ballooning amount of spending, the County Council's reckless budgeting looks truly ridiculous.
For example, looking at the supersizing of the County budget, you would think that Montgomery County was enjoying rapid population growth. But even as the budget has reached one record high after another, MoCo's population has actually been shrinking. The County experienced a net loss of more than 9500 residents between 2020 and 2022, and an additional net domestic migration loss of another 11,153 people between 2022 and 2023. And of course, as we know, the very rich are exiting, and the majority of the people moving in are low-income.
"The arithmetic is brutal," Zakaria said in describing a similar population loss (relative to size) over the same period in New York City. "A larger [tax] bill is divided among fewer payers."
Likewise, the budget of Montgomery County Public Schools has grown to obscene heights, even as enrollment has plummeted this decade. And the more generous the Council is with our taxpayer money toward MCPS, the worse the performance outcomes are. It's literally money flushed down the toilet.
"New York already sits at the extreme end of the American tax spectrum," Zakaria noted. So does Montgomery County, whose residents shoulder the highest total tax and fee burden in the Washington, D.C. region. Incredibly, the County Council is currently proposing to raise property taxes yet again this year, and to massively increase the already-gargantuan real estate recordation tax. Both play a role in the unaffordable housing market. Property taxes have become the equivalent of a second mortgage, and high recordation taxes already dissuade homeowners from selling their properties, reducing supply even further while jacking up prices for struggling buyers. Heckuva job, Brownie!
In Europe, Zakaria adds, the NYC and MoCo-level of extreme taxation earns you perks like "free" healthcare, university education, and "amazing infrastructure." In Montgomery County, you get an unfinished master plan highway system, an unbuilt Potomac River bridge, an unbuilt M-83 Highway, an unbuilt Corridor Cities Transitway rail system, an unbuilt Montrose Parkway East, and no bus service to Damascus on weekends and holidays. Trash collection is down to once a week, and is picked up at the curb, requiring homeowners to do most of the job by hauling bins down to the street and back. Snow from a January storm is still melting on many streets.
Jurisdictions like NYC and Montgomery County, Zakaria concluded, "are out of control, promising more, spending more, delivering less and pushing off the fiscal problems to some future date." And then he dispensed this well-worded diagnosis of a central problem in Montgomery County's "leadership:"
"Unaffordability is what happens when government becomes a machine that grows faster than the society it governs." That is exactly the situation in Montgomery County. In a County that hasn't attracted a single new major corporate headquarters in over 25 years, the only booming growth industry is Montgomery County Government, and the best position to be in is either an elected office chair, or one of the many cronies and crooks in the Montgomery County cartel who receive financial kickbacks of taxpayer funds in the bloated County budget.
Data collected during the pilot found that vehicle speeds were reduced, and that speed camera citations dropped 98%. However, the loss of 50% of vehicle throughput created significant traffic congestion on eastbound Redland during the peak afternoon/rush hour period. Combined with overwhelming public opposition to the road diet, the City has concluded that the Vision Zero project should not be implemented. Cynics might suggest the City just wants that speed camera money, but Montgomery County regularly ignores public testimony and simply steamrolls ahead with any project that makes driving more painful for their constituents.
Photo courtesy City of Rockville
Maryland Governor Wes Moore has touted artificial intelligence and quantum computing as "lighthouse industries" he wants to develop in the state, but yet another such firm has chosen Northern Virginia over Montgomery County. Florida-based KnowBe4 was seeking a location in the Washington, D.C. area to advance "the company’s continued investment in the public sector and its commitment to helping government organizations address workforce trust management, AI-enabled threats and evolving national security challenges." After an extensive search process, the firm chose Two Liberty Center at 4075 Wilson Boulevard in the Ballston area of Arlington County.
"KnowBe4’s strategic decision to expand its offices into Arlington, VA is a testament to the enduring strength of Arlington as a key destination for companies seeking top talent and a welcoming business climate," Arlington Economic Development Acting Director Kate Ange said in a statement. "KnowBe4 will benefit from a unique and thriving innovation ecosystem of federal cybersecurity policymakers and thought leaders working collaboratively with private enterprises and research institutions, all in Arlington." Meanwhile, Montgomery County and Maryland officials are on the sidelines again, watching helplessly as Virginia continues to eat our lunch just because the radical Marxist totalitarian-left elected officials on our side of the Potomac can't put their ideology aside for the good of their constituents.
Mark Warner, U.S. Senator from Virginia, participated in a ribbon-cutting at the new Arlington office on February 23 (see photo at top). KnowBe4's focus on human and agentic AI risk management is a topic of news headlines on a daily basis at the moment. Economic development in Montgomery County and Maryland is not. MoCo and Maryland haven't attracted a single new major corporate headquarters in over 25 years. Heckuva job, Brownie!
Photo courtesy KnowBe4
