Marc Elrich is wrong that transportation improvements don't reduce poverty

 

 

 

Here is the link to where then-councilmember Marc Elrich, sitting in the audience telling a transportation planner, under the guise of asking a question, that the planner was wrong in applying the knowledge in the presentation to Montgomery County.   In reality Marc Elrich was wrong.  Elrich's factually wrong statements come at 1:24:30 and run to 1:26:49 of the video.  Wealthy people can privatize costs of transportation by remote work that poorer people cannot because the work isn't able to be done remotely. 

 

 Marc Elrich also denied Montgomery County was a city to protect the resale value supremacist single family homeowner electoral base organized into civic, not homeowner, associations, on the edge of central business districts like Bethesda, Rockville, Silver Spring, Wheaton, and Gaithersburg with town center urbanism in Kentlands, Germantown and Olney. The difference between a civic and homeowner association is if ownership of property requires a fee or is voluntary.  The Civic Federation (montgomerycivic.org is one umbrella group of civic associations) member groups are a good starting point for learning the voluntary power centers in planning and land use in Montgomery County.  If the homeowner association membership is required as part of ownership the fees privatize public services, like trash and recycling collection or recreation facility operation or common area maintenance that the voluntary civic associations get with their, and HOA member, property taxes.   

The 3 screen shots above show how Marc Elrich was wrong.  The screen shots from archive.org are the only trace left, after the 2022 elections, of notmarcelrich.org that was a terrific web site.  The info should be reused in 2025 and 2026 when Marc Elrich runs for his third and final term.  Council members and executive terms are limited in Montgomery County, Md because of the 2016 term limits referendum.  It passed in a tax revolt to prevent property tax revenue from exceeding the inflation rate by unanimous council vote after the council complied with the restriction.  That was the third referendum by anti-tax increase activist and county perennial Republican candidate Robin Ficker after requiring a super majority (before 2006) and unanimity (2008 ballot question) to prevent raising property tax revenue over the inflation rate.  Robin Ficker supported another anti-tax candidate Mark Fennel in a special election won by Nancy Navarro, unfortunately term-limited off the council in 2023, to be the single vote against tax increases after the 2008 unanimous council requirement to raise property tax revenue above the inflation rate.  Voters for the Ficker question in 2016 literally couldn't take yes for an answer.  They actually were no better on fiscal policy issues than Republicans.