Groundbreakings Galore

Silver Spring takes one giant leap forward next week with the groundbreaking of two very important projects. Despite being $3 million over budget, construction of the new library will begin on Monday August 30 after a formal ceremony at 10:00am. The event will take place at the site of the future library.  And the excitement will continue to Thursday when the old JC Penny building officially begins its transition to the Fillmore music hall. That ceremony will be held at 11:00am by an entrance along Fenton Street and Coleseville Road. Like the library, this redevelopment project is similarly slated to be $3.2 million over budget.

Community Gardens

The South Silver Spring community has been clamoring for a community garden ever since Councilmember Valerie Ervin has championed the idea across the county. It appears that we may soon get our wish! Stay tuned for an update. But if you want to continue supporting these projects in the meantime, the Park and Recreation department will be holding a meeting to discuss their "Vision 2030" -- a 20-year plan to help guide the department's future opportunities, facility needs and potential partnerships. Community gardens will be discussed, as will public gardens like Brookside Gardens and McCrillis Gardens. The meeting will take place on Wednesday September 1 at 7:00pm in the Brookside Gardens Visitors Center in Wheaton. Please email Jane...@Montgomeryparks.org if you will be attending. 

Slow Food University

If you are interested in the slow food movement, then you might be interested in attending a potluck dinner and discussion about the food movement in the United States with Geoff Andrews, author of the Slow Food Story. Organizers ask that you bring a dish (presumably slow food friendly) and rsvp to sall...@gmail.com . The event will be on August 31 from 6:30pm - 8:00pm at nearby Pyramid Atlantic Art Center.

The Montgomery County Planning Department has released a very detailed study of statistics for different regions of the county. Details of the report go all the way down the the mundane, such as how much Bethesda/Potomac-area residents have spent at convenience stores in 2009 ($19.5 million, in case you're wondering).

One section I have found to be interesting is pages 29 and 30, listing the "cost of living" in particular areas. This is calculated as the average housing costs plus transportation costs. Silver Spring takes the prize for lowest cost of living, $9,419/year for transportation plus $18,444 per year for housing for a total of $27,863. Compare this to Ashton at $45,741 or Germantown at $36,154 and you quickly see the financial benefit of living in a walkable community with ample public transportation. Wheaton is runner-up for this metric with a total cost of $30,664.

I was unable to find in the report whether housing costs are only rent and mortgage, or whether it also includes other incidentals such as electricity, water, lawn care, household maintenance, etc. If those extras aren't included in this study, I'm sure that suburban, single-family homes would prove to be even more costly.

Also of interest is page 31 which lists Silver Spring and Bethesda as tied for most walkable communities.

Read the full report here (PDF warning)

Update: Apparently Evan and I both caught wind of this report at the same time and we each composed our posts simultaneously and hit "submit" within minutes of each other. Fortunately, we were both focused on entirely different aspects of the report, so we decided to keep both posts here since almost nothing we talk about has overlap. In other words, this is NOT a duplicate post.

We as a neighborhood continue to tirelessly ask for a public garden to open in our own community. We also have expressed our wish that more green space be created and maintained in the downtown Silver Spring area. So when a proposal came forth to advocate for vegetable and fruit gardens to be allowed on the grounds of our Montgomery County public schools – I jumped to support the idea as an extension of our green philosophy.

Below is a letter signed by nine Silver Spring civic association calling on the Montgomery County Public School officials to adopt the Montgomery Victory Gardens program, which allows students to learn and appreciate how their food is grown.

And here is a recent gazette article explaining the school system’s hesitation to allow such gardens on their property.

Dear Dr. Weast and Board of Education members,

After careful review of the idea to create vegetable gardens on public school property, we wish to add our name to the proposal being put forth by Montgomery Victory Gardens and Montgomery County Master Gardener Association, and ask that you lift the ban blocking such a fruitful measure.

Although our member civic associations typically express great respect for your leadership and support for MCPS programming, in this case we urge that you reconsider and reverse the ban. PREZCO advocates a policy that supports and facilitates public school-based vegetable gardening in those schools where administrators, faculty, student bodies and PTSAs commit to plant and maintain the gardens.

We also want to express our enthusiasm and gratitude to the Montgomery Victory Gardens and Montgomery County Master Gardener Association for their willingness to donate their expertise to our schools.

We agree with First Lady Michelle Obama that to engage children and teens in healthy eating and active lifestyles is a national priority. We further observe that practical, hands-on experience is a powerful way to learn. We believe this is a multifaceted opportunity for excellence in education that we simply cannot afford to refuse. We would argue that the benefits are mighty and many, the arguments against not based on data, and the real questions about summer maintenance easily managed by building into the plans relationships with the surrounding communities.

We have always found your leadership to be a dependable combination of pragmatism and vision. Public school-based vegetable gardening combines both to create new and innovative opportunities for students to learn and eat smarter.

Sincerely,

Indian Spring Civic Association
Linden Civic Association
North Woodside Civic Association
North Hills Civic Association
Park Hills Civic Association's Executive Committee
South Silver Spring Neighborhood Association
Woodside Civic Association
Woodside Forest Civic Association
Woodside Park Civic Association