Montgomery Village Master Plan Citizens Committee

The 9/25/2014 Gaithersburg Gazette article entitled “Looking to the Future” reported that Montgomery County Council President Craig Rice would support forming an official citizens committee for the Montgomery Village Master Plan process.

I requested Council President Craig Rice by email to consider me for a position on the Montgomery Village Master Plan citizens committee: “I would be pleased to serve on this committee to bring forward the perspective of a long term resident who has seen Montgomery Village progress from the Kettler vision forward and who appreciates the necessity for forward looking actions that will contribute to the well being of all the residents of this diverse community.”

A citizens committee is needed to: systematically frame the needs and vision of the community; distill the consequential issues of population density, roads, and development; and fairly assess the balance of benefits and impacts on Village residents in the HOA’s, Montgomery Village as a whole, and the adjoining City of Gaithersburg.

Activities to be undertaken by the citizens committee include:

1. Gathering usage stories associated with the Montgomery Village Golf Course property, population and density limits, road improvements, and business development.
2. Engaging stakeholders in the value propositions for each usage story, the underlying analytics for each story, and the expected benefits and impacts to Village residents. Stakeholders would include Village residents, HOA’s, Village Citizens group, Montgomery Village Foundation, Monument Reality, and Montgomery Village Center business owners.
3. Structuring alternatives. On the golf course, alternatives might include keeping the golf course a golf course, permitting residential development up to the limit of remaining population credits, and waiving population and density limits just for the golf course with no change to the Town Sector Zone.
4. Highlighting consequential outcomes and tabulating the benefits and impacts to Village residents and business community reconciling issues of fairness.