Amici Miei Ristorante opens in new Rockville location (Photos)

Amici Miei Ristorante has made the move from Potomac to Rockville. The restaurant has opened in its new location at Courthouse Center at 6 N. Washington Street. They've posted some of their many awards inside the door of the entrance. Courthouse Center is sporting some new property-branded signage, one of which was lit on the north side of the structure.

MoCo exec candidate David Blair sets up campaign headquarters

David Blair, a Democratic candidate for Montgomery County Executive, has established a campaign headquarters in the ground floor of The Sterling, at 11700 Old Georgetown Road near the White Flint Metro station and across from Pike & Rose. With the primary election just over six months away, there was some activity inside the office even on New Year's Eve this past weekend.

The office has a high-visibility location along the heavily-traveled Rockville Pike corridor, where commuters stuck in traffic will have ample time to notice the Blair headquarters. Blair entered the race in November.

Founder and former CEO of Catalyst Health Solutions, and a lifelong resident of Montgomery County, Blair brings considerable personal wealth to the table. He is a minority partner in Monumental Sports and Entertainment, and along with his wife, recently opened Badlands Playspace in Rockville. Blair will be a strong contender for support within the business community. He has identified education, economic development and transportation as his key issues.

Blair was a co-founder of Empower Montgomery, a tax-exempt non-profit organization that advocates for open primaries that allow independents to vote for state and local office nominating contests, easing voter restrictions, expanding early and absentee voting, and engaging communities with low rates of voter participation. He has stepped aside from that role to run, leaving co-founders Charles Nulsen III, the president of Washington Property Company, and Chris Bruch, president and COO of The Donohoe Companies, to lead the organization, which has announced plans to be active in this year's County elections.

The Democratic executive race, into which yet more candidates may enter, is still developing. There are several lanes to victory. Blair and Bill Frick will compete in the "outsider" lane, despite Frick's longstanding time in the House of Delegates; Frick can honestly claim to have had no role in the disastrous County Council term that will end this November. Both are arguing for a more business-friendly atmosphere, in a county currently notorious nationwide as hostile to business.

Roger Berliner, Rose Krasnow and George Leventhal are jousting for support from the currently-ruling Montgomery County political cartel, a slim faction of the local Democratic party fueled by developer donations. All three played a major role in disastrous sector plans such as Westbard, which directly led to voters decisively approving term limits in November 2016.

Marc Elrich, despite a perplexing "Yes" vote on the Westbard plan, enters the race as the most popular Democrat in Montgomery County, as confirmed by his vote total in 2014. He brings strong support from labor, true progressives, civic associations and residents concerned about the impact of urbanization on existing neighborhoods, roads and schools. Washington Post columnist Robert McCartney predicted this past weekend that Elrich will be the winner in June and November.

The Democratic winner - as it stands for the moment - will take on Republican Robin Ficker, who has vocally opposed the tax hikes and development decisions that so angered residents into their term limit vote in 2016.

Doña Cecy's Pupuseria opens in Rockville (Photos)

Doña Cecy's Pupuseria is now open at 2002 Veirs Mill Road in Rockville. It is located in the Twinbrook Shopping Center. They've already got a 5-star rating on Facebook, and 4.5 stars on Yelp, so it sounds like they are off to a good start.

Montgomery County murders spike 31% in 2017

Long considered a low-crime jurisdiction, Montgomery County experienced a 31% increase in homicides last year.  Surprisingly, the Washington Post chose to run a "fake news" headline Sunday. A front-page splash read, "Killings fell in D.C. area in 2017." Only those who bothered to read the article on the inside pages would learn that murders actually increased in Montgomery County in 2017.

It appears the Post used the misleading headline to protect the soft-on-crime Montgomery County Council, who have proven impotent to stop the surge of violent crime in the County. While murders spiked in Montgomery, Fairfax had no increase, D.C. had fewer, and Prince William County's homicide rate plunged from 22 to 4. Increasing crime has so embarrassed Montgomery County elected officials, they have resorted to violating the County's open data law, by sabotaging the crime datasets.

A month-long crime data outage last summer only ended after I publicized the illegal blackout. Then block numbers were removed, making the data nearly useless for lengthy roads. Next, they restored block numbers, but disabled the sorting function of the date columns, so that you can only access random crimes from 2016 no matter which option you select for starting or ending date. Finally, as of this morning, I can no longer use the mouse to slide the columns right or left, only the keypad on my keyboard.

Ironically, the jurisdictions whose homicide rates declined last year provide more and more-accessible crime data to their residents than Montgomery County. We need new elected leadership that can stop the trend of rising homicides, not one that resorts to childish tactics like blocking crime data from the public. Sad!

Rockville construction update: Montrose Crossing addition (Photos)

The new retail-restaurant structure that is replacing Timpano Italian Chophouse at Montrose Crossing is nearing completion. Each individual restaurant and store still has to complete fit-out of their respective interiors. You can see the design, complete with stringed lights, pavers and decorative street lamps, is a nod to the contemporary "town center" more than to the old-fashioned strip mall.

Honeygrow is on track to be the
first business to open in the new
building at Montrose Crossing

Honeygrow is closest to opening, with their permanent sign already installed on the facade. CAVA Grill has Coming Soon signage in place. Expect this to be one of the buildings that continues to operate when Montrose Crossing is redeveloped as a mixed-use property in future years.

More Honeygrow signage

Honeygrow's doors are already
stenciled

Honeygrow interior

New pop-up boutique opens at Rockville Town Square

 Alicia L: The Boutique has opened at 107-D Gibbs Street at Rockville Town Square. The pop-up shop sells a wide variety of women's apparel and accessories, including labels such as Clara Sunwoo, Aldo Martins, Vineyard Vines, Hunter Boots, Joseph Ribkoff, Katherine Barclay, Comfy, Swell Water Bottles. Alicia L's main boutique is in Frederick.

MoCo Council prevents Robin Ficker from testifying on tax bill

Email from Montgomery County Council
President Hans Riemer to Robin Ficker on
Christmas night; there is no mandated limit
on how many speakers can testify at a hearing

Montgomery County Council President Hans Riemer rejected County resident Robin Ficker's request to testify at a hastily-scheduled public hearing Tuesday on a bill that would allow pre-payment of property taxes before December 31. Ficker is running against several members of the Council for the office of County Executive. This was a clear conflict-of-interest for the Council in excluding Ficker's testimony, as he would surely have discussed the Council's record property tax hikes in his remarks, and the narrow tax relief the bill would provide for only one tier of taxpayers. Some of his opponents on the Council used the taxpayer-funded Council public relations office to issue statements praising themselves following the hearing Tuesday, despite being the ones who forced County residents to pay more than $10,000 in property taxes in 2016.

Ficker is mobbed by supporters
outside the Council building earlier
this year

Ficker's exclusion raised eyebrows because the Council had all day to listen to testimony; this was an emergency session and there was no other item on the agenda, as anyone can confirm by examining it. The Council recently used a similar tactic to limit public participation in the debate over a proposed expansion of Old Angler's Inn, which left more observers in the hearing room than actual speakers.

Ficker's successful ballot
questions limiting Council terms
and tax increases have enraged
councilmembers, who prevented
him from testifying Tuesday

The tax bill passed 7-1 yesterday, with Councilmember Craig Rice voting against it, and Councilmember Tom Hucker absent. It remains uncertain if all or any taxpayers who pay more than $10,000 in property taxes will be ultimately be able to prepay and/or save money. But councilmembers were forced to reverse their opposition after other local jurisdictions quickly allowed their residents to prepay. Many of those paying that amount were only put over the $10,000 mark by the Council's record 2016 and 2017 tax hikes. While the Council took pains to blame Donald Trump, who is unpopular in blue Montgomery, it was the Council themselves who put so many of those affected by the federal tax changes into that position.