Who’s On First?

Is there a little bit of confusion about White Flint planning?

Throughout the Montgomery County Planning Board’s and Council’s considerations of the White Flint Sector Plan, it was a given that there would be intense monitoring of the progress of the Plan. Monitoring, among other things, gives residents the confidence that infrastructure will match development. The Plan itself limits development in each stage to do just that. The Plan also creates a new biennial review process, the Council required the Board to set up a new White Flint Implementation Committee to help monitor and oversee progress, and last Monday, Dan Hardy, a top planner for the County, discussed the new CLATR transportation issue review process with the new Implementation Committee.

Hardy even mentioned that the planning staff was intending to have a public database with all development and infrastructure projects. Friends of White Flint (which is revising its Web site to reflect the newly-approved Plan) is exploring how to make that database easily accessible to the public. All of that involves fairly constant monitoring, or at least knowledge of what’s happening in White Flint.

So it was a little surprising to see Francoise Carrier, the new Chair of the Planning Board, tell the Gazette that she doesn’t think it would be “practical” to monitor the development of the Plan. “I am reluctant to have our staff track every single project,” she said.

But how else will the planning staff know when the staging limits are met? That was what Dan Hardy asked the White Flint Implementation Committee on Monday night.  

Perhaps Planning Board Chair Carrier might meet with the White Flint Implementation Committee? It would be the first time any of the Planning Board has met with the new Committee.

The next Committee meeting is Monday, January 10, and the main topic of discussion is parks, libraries and other community amenities. The Committee has asked to hold the meeting in or near White Flint, which would help Carrier attend; she is a White Flint resident.

Barnaby Zall