Montgomery County firefighter among 226 to be honored at National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Weekend

A former Montgomery County firefighter will be among 226 fallen firefighters to be honored at the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Weekend in Emmitsburg, Maryland on May 4 and 5, 2024. Master Firefighter Mark R. Fisher Jr. passed away on July 24, 2014 from illness related to his response to the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Fisher was also a member of the Maryland Task Force One Urban Search and Rescue Team, with whom he responded to other disasters, including Hurricane Katrina. He was with the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service for 22 years, and also served as an instructor for the department. 

Fisher was a member of the Johnny Swamper Club, Frederick Elks Lodge No. 684, and the Loyal Order of the Moose No. 948 in Charles Town, West Virginia, and a life member of the United Steam Fire Engine Company, No. 3 Frederick. He left behind a wife, three children and five grandchildren. Fisher briefly played pro football with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He was 59 years old at the time of his passing.

Two main events will be held on the memorial weekend at the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Park in Emmitsburg. The National Fallen Firefighters Candlelight Service will be held on May 4 at 7:30 pm ET, hosted by Fire Captain Garon Mosby of the St. Louis Fire Department. The National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Service is on May 5 at 10:00 am ET, and will be hosted by actor Jeremy Holm. Both events are open to the public, but will also be streamed online live for those who cannot attend in person.

Larry Hogan sets fundraising record for a Maryland U.S. Senate candidate

The unexpected chance to flip a U.S. Senate seat was expected to boost the inflow of campaign cash into the Maryland this year, but former Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has exceeded expectations, by setting a fundraising record for a U.S. Senate race in the heavily-Democratic state. Hogan has raised more than $3.1 million since his surprise last-minute entry into the contest on February 9, his campaign announced yesterday. That total marks the most raised by a Senate candidate in any quarter in state history, and outpaced the campaign of Democrat Angela Alsobrooks by $1 million in half the time. Alsobrooks is locked in a contentious Democratic primary race with billionaire David Trone, who is self-funding his campaign, and spending big on advertising.

Hogan greets a voter in
Leonardtown, Maryland yesterday

“Our team is incredibly humbled and grateful for the overwhelming amount of support and positive reception we have received across the state since announcing mid-February, and we are just getting started,” Hogan said in a statement Thursday. “In a race where we are likely to face either the billionaire trying to buy the election or the candidate of the Democratic machine, there is no doubt we are the financial underdog too. Every day, our focus is on getting our message out to Marylanders who are fed up and frustrated with politics as usual. It’s time to get back to work, fix the broken politics, and send a message to Washington!”

Hogan delivers fresh Dunkin' Donuts
to volunteer firefighters in
Prince Frederick, Maryland yesterday

Hogan is in the middle of a ten-day bus tour of the state. The tour coincides with the start of mail-in balloting in Maryland, as voters begin to receive their primary ballots in the mail this week.

Photos courtesy Hogan for Maryland, Inc.

Thief racks up $10,000 in tolls after stealing EZ-Pass from Rockville business

A thief has taken an expensive joyride after stealing an EZ-Pass toll transponder from a business in Rockville. The business has now received a bill for about $10,000 in toll charges from highways and bridges, according to Rockville City police. They say the EZ-Pass was stolen from a business in the 200 block of N. Stonestreet Avenue way back in December 2021. The charges apparently only came to the attention of the business recently, and they reported the theft to police on April 2, 2024.

Poll finds Maryland voters nostalgic for the Larry Hogan era

A new poll conducted by the University of Maryland and The Washington Post had good news for U.S. Senate candidate Larry Hogan (R). The results indicated that registered Maryland voters were much more pleased with the direction of the state under former Gov. Hogan than they are during the current term of his successor, Gov. Wes Moore (D). At the end of Hogan's first four-year term in 2018, 63% of Maryland voters thought the state was moving in the right direction. Only 46% believe Maryland is moving in the right direction as of March 2024. 

In 2018 under Hogan, 29% of voters said Maryland was "on the wrong track." In 2024, 44% now believe the state is moving in the wrong direction. The poll was conducted between March 5 and 12, 2024, and surveyed 1004 registered Maryland voters. Legislators returning to their pre-Hogan ways of raising taxes, along with ongoing inflation pressures and suddenly-shaky state finances, may explain some of the nostalgia for the former Republican governor's era. A FY-2025 budget proposal from the Maryland General Assembly has proposed $350-$450 million in new taxes and fees, which Hogan contrasted on Twitter with his record of cutting taxes in each of his eight years in office, totaling $4.7 billion in tax relief.

The poll results shed more light on why Hogan is currently leading Democratic frontrunners David Trone and Angela Alsobrooks in polling for the U.S. Senate race. Hogan's late entry into the contest, and his lead in the polls, have moved Maryland from the irrelevant column nationally into one of the most-watched states as the November election approaches. Maryland could well determine whether Democrats or the GOP control the U.S. Senate in 2025. 

Montgomery County's moribund economy just needs...more cowbell, Planning Dept. says

Montgomery County's moribund economy isn't a new problem. I've been writing about it for over a decade. In more recent years, The Washington Post editorial board has finally acknowledged that MoCo, once the economic engine of the Washington, D.C. region, has become stagnant - - though only in the service of their Ahab-like crusade against their chief nemesis, Marc Elrich. Even a handful of politicians have begun admitting it, from Elrich himself, to his twice-vanquished opponent David Blair, and even Maryland Gov. Wes Moore. But despite the arrival of more-powerful voices at the table, Montgomery County and Maryland's policies have yet to change. In fact, the Montgomery County Planning Department is now arguing that the solution is to double down on the failed path we've been on: "More cowbell!"

In a recent series on the department's relentlessly pro-developer blog, The Third Place, we find the latest example of the Montgomery County cartel phenomenon we might call, "Now more than ever..." Whatever the latest crisis to befall a sector, demographic or geographic area of the County, their solution is always the same: Build more luxury housing. Whether it's the moribund economy, failing schools, increasing poverty, or the decline of an area like Friendship Heights, our elected officials tell us the answer - "now more than ever" - is to build more luxury apartments.

The Third Place series is just the latest example of this "More cowbell!" argument. 

It is ostensibly a deep dive into the stagnation of the Montgomery County economy. But as the series advances beyond a deceptive twisting of statistics that aren't actually the root cause of the stagnation, it eventually arrives at a familiar conclusion - we need to build more luxury housing.

More cowbell!

Most residents will never read this blog series, but you the taxpayer are not the target audience, anyway. Like most reports generated by the Planning Department, the purpose is to provide Astroturf data and analysis our developer-funded elected officials can point to as justification for upzoning greater and greater areas of the County. But if a resident of one of the most highly-educated jurisdictions in America were to read this blog series, they would quickly sense that something is amiss.

For example, Part I classifies Montgomery County residents who make $138,750 and above as "high-income" residents. In the real world, that's called "barely-keeping-your-head-above-water" in Montgomery County. Many County residents skating by on maxed-out credit, the bank-of-Mom-and-Dad, and assorted other survival tactics would be shocked to learn that they are "rich." 

The reason for this low wealth bar becomes clear as you continue reading. It is a way to make it seem that the "rich" portion of the population has merely remained constant. In reality, the flight of the rich from Montgomery County has been well-documented, down to the amount of tax revenue in millions that those wealthy expats have taken with them to lower-tax jurisdictions in the area. 

Were we to classify "high-income" more accurately, we would see that those numbers have declined significantly. The exodus has been most clearly seen in Montgomery County plummeting entirely off of the Forbes Top Ten Richest Counties list last decade, and in the collapse of "Montgomery County's Rodeo Drive" in Friendship Heights, which in recent years has become a stretch of aging apartment buildings and vacant storefronts.

As the rich have fled, they have been replaced - and then some - by low-income residents. The Third Place acknowledges this. "Specifically, our analysis shows that between 2005 and 2022, Montgomery County’s low-income population grew faster than the other groups. Montgomery County’s middle-income population shrank." Charles, Frederick, Howard, Loudoun, and Prince William counties can surely attest to the latter, as they've welcomed those cash-strapped, taxed-to-death MoCo refugees, along with the Virginia exurbs.

While that tax revenue has flowed outward, our business growth has dropped to the lowest in the region. Our job creation numbers have collapsed, and even fallen behind Prince George's County in recent years. And Montgomery County hasn't attracted a single major corporate headquarters in over a quarter century, a time frame that neatly dovetails with the MoCo cartel's seizure of the County Council in 2002 with the "End Gridlock" slate. As does the shift of population growth to the bottom of the income scale.

What urgent strategic and policy changes does The Third Place recommend to turn the tide, and attract the business and commercial revenue we need?

"The main, actionable takeaway from this research is to encourage the production of market-rate infill housing."

We know, of course, that "market-rate" housing in Montgomery County is expensive. There's no shortage of expensive housing in the County. We also know, from hard experience since 2002, that massive construction of new luxury housing does not reduce rents or home prices. Period. And because new residential housing generates more costs in County services than it does in tax revenue, building more won't solve our structural budget deficit. Much less restore our moribund economy.

Did the rich flee Montgomery County because home prices were too cheap? Not quite. Would middle class residents return en masse from the exurbs if we produced more $1 million townhomes and $2 million duplexes? Nope.

What would actually make Montgomery County a booming jurisdiction, make it possible for more residents to afford living here, and fill the County's revenue coffers? High-wage jobs from major corporate employers. 

The Third Place worries that currently, "there will be nowhere for affordable-housing residents to go once they are ready to upgrade." But it doesn't explain how janitors, cooks and grocery store bakers will suddenly be flush with the cash needed to buy that luxury housing that The Third Place wants to overdevelop even more than today. 

Here's a hint: Jobs. Good jobs. The kind we haven't been attracting to Montgomery County for a couple of decades now.

Gov. Wes Moore seems to understand this, noting that Maryland's economy today simply can't provide the revenue to fund his ambitious agenda. This year's legislative session in Annapolis seems to indicate that his message fell on deaf ears among his General Assembly colleagues. Likewise, Elrich has come around to the idea that the County should be attracting high-wage jobs. But his legislative colleagues on the County Council haven't joined him yet. 

The cumulative impact of elected officials who write the laws remaining stubborn in their ways - and loyal to the real estate developers who elected them - will only hasten the exit of wealth and revenue from Montgomery County. In addition to the massive property and recordation tax hikes passed last year, low and middle-income workers will soon be paying several hundred dollars to register their work trucks and soccer mom minivans. A 75-cent tax on every Uber ride. Even a $1.25 more on each pack of smokes. All of these are extremely regressive taxes.

A quick look at the press release pages of Gov. Moore and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin gives just a small sense of the problem. Both men have Rolodexes stuffed with Wall Street and corporate connections. Surprisingly, Moore has so far failed to convince any of his friends in the Hamptons or Martha's Vineyard to relocate their Fortune 500 companies to Maryland. And that's even amid a downward trend for Virginia under Youngkin. The GOP 2028 aspirant's announcements of new, major corporate headquarters relocating to the Old Dominion have come at a much more sporadic pace than under his two Democratic predecessors.

But even as Virginia begins to flounder a bit, and budget woes creep up on legislators in Arlington and Fairfax counties who have begun to follow the big-spending ways of MoCo, we have not been able to seize any momentary advantage.

Not only has Youngkin failed to tee up many big wins, but when he does, he now has a legislature that is more like the one in Annapolis to block him. That's partly his own fault, for bizarrely making the last state election about abortion, a sure losing crusade even in red states - much less a blue one like Virginia. And he even turned away a Ford electric vehicle battery plant. Tired of winning, perhaps?

Yet, even as Virginia slips into a lower economic gear, 2024 has brought another major corporate HQ to Virginia. CoStar - which once was headquartered in Bethesda(!!), before fleeing to the District in 2010 - purchased the 1201 Wilson Boulevard office tower in Rosslyn for its new global HQ. It will bring its existing 500 jobs, and add 150 additional jobs in its new Virginia home. 

CoStar joins Northrup Grumman, Capital One, Hilton Hotels, Volkswagen, Lidl, Intelsat, Gannett, General Dynamics, Blackboard, Corporate Executive Board, Nestle, Gerber, Lego, and the rest of a truly-headspinning list of household-name companies to select Northern Virginia over Montgomery County in recent times.

During the same Q1 period in Maryland, Gov. Moore was only able to announce the relocation of Blink Charging Co. from Florida to Bowie. That's certainly a positive and welcome development, but it's not a major or Fortune 500 company. The number of existing corporate expansions in Maryland so far this year has also been dwarfed by the number in Virginia. 

Over the first three months of 2024, Gov. Youngkin issued press releases announcing 9 other new or expanding businesses adding jobs to the state. During the same period, Maryland only had 2, another resounding defeat in regional competition.

It was encouraging news that when Moore received the phone call about the Key Bridge collapse, he was on an unannounced business trip to Boston. This at least shows he may currently be working on something big behind the scenes.

Montgomery County was once the place where such big economic development news was made in the DC region. What I've argued for over a decade has been further vindicated by the collapse of the office market after the pandemic rise of working-from-home. 

We need to be attracting major corporate headquarters, and research and manufacturing facilities, from the aerospace, defense and tech sectors. These are the sectors that need large, secure campuses in suburban office parks, the kind we - thankfully, for now - still have plenty of. And room to build plenty more. The anonymous apologists for the County Council said I was a fool, and that companies wanted to be in traditional office buildings by Metro stations in urban areas. 

It turns out I was right. "Now more than ever," you might say.

Currently, the ever-increasing and regressive tax burden caused by our elected officials' profligate spending is falling almost entirely on residents. We are leaving all of the commercial, business tax revenue - and income revenue from high-wage jobs, on the table for our rivals in Virginia, for whom we've become a bedroom community. 

By adopting more-competitive business policies, adding missing infrastructure like a new Potomac River crossing to provide direct access to Dulles International Airport, and being aggressive in attracting the evergreen industries that provide high-income employment in good times and bad, we can ease the tax and fee burden on residents. 

Maryland officials knew for decades that a ship could cause Baltimore's Key Bridge to collapse

The only thing more shocking than the total collapse of the Key Bridge in Baltimore last week was the number of speculative conjectures stated by elected and appointed officials in the hours after it was struck by a container ship. Federal and state officials almost immediately declared it had not been a terrorist attack. While there has so far been no evidence whatsoever showing the crash was intentional, there had not been adequate time to investigate sufficiently to entirely rule it out at the time they made that declaration. More importantly, the claim was made - and then repeated ad nauseum by the media - that any type of bridge would have completely collapsed in this scenario. An investigative report published by The Washington Post this past Saturday has determined that claim to be false. 

A collapse of a similar bridge over Tampa Bay in Florida following a ship collision in 1980 resulted in federal authorities alerting highway agencies to review all bridges, to find out how many might have the same vulnerability, the Post learned. An engineer with the Maryland Department of Transportation confirmed to The Baltimore Sun that year that the Key Bridge was one of the state's bridges that fell into that category. "I'm talking about the main supports, a direct hit - it would knock it down," he told the Sun. 

Despite learning this in 1980, state and federal officials took no action to construct barriers or islands around the Key Bridge's support columns. "They had all this time to realize the danger, and it appears to me they did nothing about it," Florida attorney Steve Yerrid told the Post. Yerrid was a lawyer for the pilot of the ship that struck the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay. "Maryland officials should have moved aggressively to protect their bridges from collisions, despite the costs," the Post cited Yerrid as saying.

National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy also put to rest the idea that "no bridge could have survived this crash." She said the bridge designs of today have "redundancy" built in, so that the loss of one pier doesn't cause a total collapse. In contrast, Maryland officials knew that the Key Bridge was among the thousands of "fracture critical" bridges in America. "Fracture critical" means that "if one key piece fails, part or all of the bridge would likely collapse," the Post reported.

America's crumbling infrastructure is often in the news, but rarely in state and federal budgets. We know that trillions of dollars that could have been spent on new bridges and highway maintenance, high speed rail, utility networks, healthcare, poverty, housing for the homeless and other essential needs have instead gone to costly wars overseas, as just one example of nonsensical spending priorities.

Senator Chuck Schumer is reportedly having difficulty finding $10 million to correct major infrastructure issues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology campus right here in Gaithersburg, deficiencies that are currently threatening national security and the health of NIST employees. But the U.S. government had no difficulty finding $75 billion for the Ukraine War, at least $3 trillion for the Iraq War, $2.3 trillion for the Afghanistan War, $2.2 billion of weapons for rebels against the government of Syria, $17 billion on a military adventure in the former Yugoslavia, a $100 million drone base in Niger...the list goes on and on, and most of the money goes into the private profit pockets of the military-industrial complex. None of those outlays has resulted in a successful geopolitical victory for the United States.

At the same time, Maryland elected officials have spent big and repeatedly raised taxes since 1980. The completely-preventable collapse of the Key Bridge forces us to now evaluate just which frivolous things - and campaign donors - our representatives have spent all that tax revenue on instead.

In many photo-ops over the last week, our elected officials have striven to give us the impression they are here to save us from an economic catastrophe that also cost at least six human lives. As the Post report proves, they were actually the problem in the first place, having failed to act to modify or replace the Key Bridge for 44 years.

Ficker: David Trone's racial slur shows word was "on the tip of his tongue"

Maryland U.S. Senate candidate
David Trone (D)

Maryland U.S. Senate candidate David Trone (D), in his current role as representative for the state's 6th Congressional District, used a racial slur when speaking to a Black woman during a committee hearing on Thursday. Trone later issued a statement apologizing for using the word, claiming he had meant to use the term "bugaboo" instead. "That word has a long, dark, terrible history," Trone said of the slur in his statement. "It should never be used any time, anywhere, in any conversation." While Trone characterized his language as a mere gaffe, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Robin Ficker suggested it was more of a Freudian slip.

“I am appalled by David Trone’s use of this vile word, especially when addressing a black woman," Ficker said in a statement Friday. "That terrible word does not simply slip out of someone’s mouth unless it is constantly on the tip of their tongue. Trone’s attempt to pass this off as a harmless mistake is an affront to the voters’ intelligence."

Trone's unforced error couldn't have come at a worse time. Days earlier, a poll showed that former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) was far ahead of Trone and Democratic rival Angela Alsobrooks in the contest for outgoing U.S. Senator Ben Cardin's seat. The poll also showed that despite months of relentless, unskippable YouTube ads, Trone is not a a familiar name to most registered voters statewide.

Yet, the poll had only underlined the fact that the Democratic National Committee badly needs Trone and his personal wealth to defeat Hogan this fall. The entry into the race by popular former governor Hogan, who still enjoys bipartisan support and goodwill, means Republican donations and dark money will be pouring into a state that now represents a flippable seat in the Senate. But by the end of the week, Trone had wounded himself badly with his out-of-left-field use of a racial slur.

Trone now finds himself in a similar predicament as two of his Democratic colleagues in Virginia, as well as former Virginia Gov. George Allen (R). In 2019, then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) and then-Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring (D) were revealed to have worn blackface as adults. Northam was also accused of being one of two men in a yearbook photograph, whose identities were hidden by Ku Klux Klan robes and blackface. Northam initially admitted he was one of the two men in the photo, without identifying which one, but later retracted his confession. 

Allen used a racial slur when addressing a tracker from a rival campaign who was videotaping him at a campaign event in 2006. Despite yeoman's work by The Washington Post to revive Northam and Herring's prospects - and Northam's bizarre framing of collective penance by the state for his personal racist acts - Virginia voters had the last word, firing Herring during the 2021 election. The political careers of all three Virginians were ended by the episodes. But they gave voters a window into the world of politicians who profess one thing in daylight, but hold contrasting mores and values privately.

Those lessons show the real political hot water Trone is now in. The woman he was addressing when a racial slur came to his mind was Black. His leading Democratic primary opponent is Black. And Maryland is one of the American states where Black voters have decisive power. No one can win a statewide election here if they are strongly opposed by African-American voters.

Hogan has not yet issued a public statement on Trone's use of the slur. Ficker, in his statement, recapped his political record on civil rights, including his participation in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. "Aside from marching with Dr. [Martin Luther] King, last year, I was asked to be on the hospitality committee for the 60th Reunion of the March led by Martin Luther King, III," Ficker recounted. "In 1976, I was appointed by Rosa Parks to be the first general counsel for the National Caucus on Black Aging."

"Unlike Congressman Trone, I have a track record of supporting the black community, instead of just giving them lip service," Ficker said. "I’m incredibly proud of my work to advance racial equality, and I will always be a friend to the Black community in the Senate.”

Rockville Catholic school students meet Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh hosted students from a Rockville Catholic school at the court Monday. Eighth graders from St. Elizabeth Catholic School were given the grand tour of the Court building by Kavanaugh, a Catholic and native of Montgomery County. Kavanaugh is well-known for volunteering his time as a basketball coach. His tour brought the students to what the school termed "the highest court in the land," a basketball court located above the courtroom. Kavanaugh also participated in a question-and-answer session with the students. 

Photos courtesy St. Elizabeth Catholic School

Montgomery County's first Wawa opens in Gaithersburg (Photos)

The first Wawa convenience store and mega gas station celebrated its Grand Opening yesterday, March 7, 2024 at 405 S. Frederick Avenue in Gaithersburg. Many of the price promotions for the opening remain in effect through Sunday, as you will see in some of the photos below. The gleaming interior holds, if not every snack you can imagine, every snack you need. 

Located directly across MD 355 from Gaithersburg High School, Wawa has posted a prohibition on having more than two minors inside the store at any time. Backpacks are also prohibited beyond the vestibule of the store. It will be interesting to compare gas prices at this Wawa with competitors Sheetz and Royal Farms up the road in the coming months.

IKEA sets opening date for first Montgomery County store

IKEA has set an opening date for its first Montgomery County store, a small-format Plan & Order Point store at 101 Boardwalk Place at Rio Lakefront in Gaithersburg. The store will open on Wednesday, March 13, 2024 at 11:00 AM. A grand opening celebration will be held from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM. There will be giveaways, free food (Swedish meatballs?), and free drinks. Attendees will also be able to compete for prizes in the Spin to Win game. See my sneak peek at the Plan & Order Point interior for an idea of what is in store at Montgomery County's first IKEA store.

"We are thrilled to bring the best of IKEA to our DMV neighbors," IKEA U.S. CEO & Chief Sustainability Officer Javier Quiñones said in a statement. "We’ve seen that customers are still eager for in-person experiences, and we hope that this new Plan and order point with Pick-up provides a new and convenient way to shop."

11 Maryland sheriffs endorse MDGOP crime agenda

Harford County, Maryland
Sheriff Jeff Gahler

Sheriffs from 11 counties across Maryland have endorsed an anti-crime agenda proposed by the Joint Republican Caucus in the Maryland General Assembly, and are calling on Democrats in Annapolis to back the five-point plan. The agenda would increase penalties for violent criminals and extend their prison sentences, deny bail for repeat offenders, make the theft of a firearm a felony, reverse the ban on traffic stop searches when officers smell marijuana in the vehicle, and "correct recent misguided laws" to restore accountability for juvenile offenders who commit serious crimes. Passage of the plan was endorsed yesterday by the elected sheriffs of Allegheny County, Caroline County, Carroll County, Cecil County, Frederick County, Harford County, Queen Anne's County, Talbot County, Washington County, Wicomico County and Worcester County.

"Maryland is in a crime crisis," Maryland Republican Party Chair Nicole Beus Harris said in a statement.  "While Governor Wes Moore and the rest of the Democrat Leadership deny this fact, pass laws that make the problem worse, or propose modest changes that won’t make a difference, the Republican lawmakers in Annapolis have a comprehensive plan to make Maryland safer. No one understands this crime crisis or the need for statutory changes better than our state’s law enforcement, and that is reflected in the support these top Sheriffs have given to the GOP Public Safety Agenda."

"Whether misinformed or willfully ignorant to the consequences legislated over the last few years, law-abiding citizens, the overwhelming majority of Marylanders, do not support the cruelty they have had to endure due to our elected officials granting clemency to the guilty," Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler said Friday. "Their political correctness does not make us safer; it only generates intolerance and hatred. Those legislators seeking to delegitimize the rule of law, and tear down law enforcement, have recklessly and deliberately caused avoidable harm to all Maryland citizens. Now is the time to shield and protect our communities from the very few among us who seek to cause us harm."

Monumental Sports Network to broadcast Old Glory DC pro rugby matches for 2024 season

Monumental Sports Network has reached an agreement to broadcast 13 of Old Glory DC's Major League Rugby matches during the 2024 season. Old Glory DC plays its home games here in Montgomery County, at the Maryland Soccerplex in Germantown. The season and broadcast schedule will begin with Old Glory DC's road opener against the New Orleans NOLA Gold this coming Saturday, March 2 at 4:00 PM EST. The games streamed by Monumental Sports Network can be watched through your Pay TV subscription on cable TV, on monumentalsportsnetwork.com, or by downloading the Monumental streaming app on iOS, Android, Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV, and using an "eligible TV Everywhere log-in."

"Monumental Sports Network is the ideal partner to carry Old Glory and bring all the action, intensity and elegance of professional rugby to the entire Greater Washington Region," Old Glory DC Chairman Chris Dunlavey said in a statement Wednesday. "Rugby is the greatest team sport in the world, and Monumental is bringing it to your living room."

“We are thrilled to welcome Old Glory to the Monumental Sports Network family,” Monumental Sports Network VP of Content & Programming Caitlin Mangum said. “We are happy to bolster our live programming lineup and offer D.C.-area sports fans the chance to enjoy this exciting and quickly growing sport.”

The schedule for Old Glory DC matches on Monumental Sports Network will be as follows:

Saturday, March 2 at NOLA Gold at 4pm

Saturday, March 9 at New England Free Jacks at 2pm

Saturday, March 16 vs. Chicago Hounds at 4pm

Saturday, March 23 vs. San Diego Legion at 4pm

Saturday, March 30 at Charlotte Rugby at 6pm

Saturday, April 6 vs. RFC Los Angeles at 5pm

Saturday, April 20 vs. Houston Sabercats at 5pm

Saturday, May 11 at Chicago Hounds at 6pm

Friday, May 24 at Seattle Seawolves at 10:30pm

Saturday, June 1 vs. Charlotte Rugby at 7pm

Saturday, June 8 vs. New England Free Jacks at 7pm

Saturday, June 22 at Miami Sharks at 7:30pm

Saturday, June 29 vs. NOLA Gold at 7pm

Aldi construction begins at Walnut Hill Shopping Center in Gaithersburg

Excitement is in the air at the venerable Walnut Hill Shopping Center at 16529 S. Frederick Avenue in Gaithersburg. Contractor HBW Construction of Rockville has begun work converting the former Weis Markets space for new anchor tenant Aldi. Renovations to update the shopping center's appearance are also underway at the property, as you can see below. 

Continue to patronize your favorite businesses at the center, as despite the tarps and scaffolding, all tenants remain open during the renovations. A second Gaithersburg location of Sheetz will add to the buzz at the shopping center in the future. The City of Gaithersburg recently approved the annexation of Walnut Hill into the city, in large part to secure the agreement with Sheetz. That Sheetz deal became a critical linchpin in Walnut Hill's plan to revitalize the property. Walnut Hill's ownership said the revenue from the Sheetz would finance the renovations to the center, property upgrades that Aldi had required as a condition of its lease. Sheetz opened its first Gaithersburg store last year, and shortly thereafter declared it was "highly-impressed with the performance" of the location.

Old Glory DC pro rugby team to host open training session for fans today in Germantown

Professional rugby arrives at the Maryland Soccerplex at 18031 Central Park Drive in Germantown today, February 24, 2024. Old Glory DC, a Major League Rugby team, will host an open training session from 1:00 to 3:00 PM this afternoon. In addition to a preview of the team in action, fans can meet the coaches and players after the session ends. Team ambassadors will provide "Rugby 101" explanations and provide real-time match analysis, and food and beverages (including adult beverages) will be available for sale from vendors on-site. Admission to the event is free.

Old Glory DC's new head coach is Simon Cross. This season's roster features stars from 11 countries around the world, including Team Captain Jamason Faanana-Schultz (AUS), DC native Jack Iscaro (USA) Rob Harley (GBR) of the Glasgow Warriors, Damien Hoyland (GBR) of the Edinburgh Rugby Club, Axel Muller (ARG), and Perry Humphreys (GBR). 

The team's season will begin March 2, 2024 with a road game against the New Orleans NOLA Gold. Old Glory DC's home opener at the Soccerplex will be on March 16, when the club hosts the Chicago Hounds. Single match and season tickets can be purchased during today's event, or online.

Bethesda Black cemetery advocates to protest at Jamie Raskin campaign event tonight

The Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition will hold a protest rally outside of a campaign event for Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin (D) tonight, February 22, 2024, at 7:00 PM at the Silver Spring Civic Building. Advocates for the desecrated Moses African Cemetery in Bethesda have been seeking Raskin's help in getting federal action on the historic gravesite, which is hidden under parking lots behind the Westwood Tower apartments. BACC President Marsha Coleman-Adebayo says that the cemetery is in Raskin's district, but that he "refuses to condemn the desecration and flooding" of the burial ground.

Those interesting in participating in tonight's protest are asked to meet up at Ben and Jerry's at 903 Ellsworth Drive in Silver Spring (across from the Civic Building) at 6:00 PM tonight. But if you can't get there that early, just head to the Civic Building at 7:00.

Wawa Burtonsville plan advances to Montgomery County Planning Board as Gaithersburg awaits opening

The first Wawa in Montgomery County hasn't even opened yet, and the company is already moving forward on a second. A proposal to open a Wawa convenience store and mega gas station at 15585-15595 Old Columbia Pike in Burtonsville will be reviewed by the Montgomery County Planning Boad at its February 29, 2024 meeting. Montgomery County planners are recommending approval of the project, with conditions. Wawa will need to obtain a special exception from Montgomery County to accommodate the project's size, and comply with conditions of a forest conservation plan, before it can pull permits to construct the store. 

The site is currently home to a 7-Eleven, a gas station, and a Mattress Barn store. All would be demolished to make way for the Wawa.

The property owners have proposed construction of a new signalized intersection to facilitate safer ingress and egress from the Wawa onto Old Columbia Pike. They have also agreed to construct a 10'-wide "sidepath" along Old Columbia Pike, and a 16'-wide "bike breezeway" (first time I've heard this term in Montgomery County planning) along the ramp to Route 29. A new trash enclosure would be constructed, and up to nine electric vehicle charging spaces would be provided at the Wawa.

Rockville Lunar New Year celebration set for February 17, 2024

Save the date for the City of Rockville's annual Lunar New Year celebration this coming Saturday, February 17, 2024 from 10:00 AM to 12:30 PM, at Rockville High School at 2100 Baltimore Road. Celebrate the good luck of the Year of the Dragon with live cultural performances, interactive displays, craft activities for kids, and to-go snack boxes (while supplies last). Admission is free. The event is co-sponsored by the Asian Pacific American Task Force.