Time to Vote - October Update

It's time to vote!

Early voting starts today and runs until next Thursday (October 31). Hours are 7am until 8pm. Here are a few early voting sites near our area.

If you are voting by mail, the local drop boxes for ballots around District 16 are listed below. If you need reminders about mail-in voting, here is information on the State Board of Election website. By the way, if you apply to vote by mail, I highly recommend that you choose to receive the ballot by mail and not email delivery. Email delivery is convenient but it requires you to print your own ballot and--after you mail it back in--the Board of Elections needs to copy it over to a standard ballot for counting which slows down the overall process.

Of course, you can also vote on Election Day, Tuesday November 5th from 7am to 8pm. Find your polling place here.
LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
On October 22nd, the House Environment and Transportation Committee that I chair held a briefing on the Governor's recent executive order on climate pollution reduction and other issues the Maryland Department of Environment is working on. You can watch the briefing here.
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I had the opportunity to discuss some of the work of the House Environment & Transportation Committee recently. You can watch the interview here.
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I recently earned 100% on the Maryland League of Conservation Voters scorecard. You can read about the environmental initiatives they included here.
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Each fall the Montgomery County Delegation has a series of meetings virtually and in Rockville to lead into the next legislative session. Those meetings kick off tonight with the annual Consolidated Transportation Program presentation. Further information about the meetings is below

BUDGET UPDATEThe Board of Revenue estimates met at the end of September. Current year (fy25) estimates were increased $88m (corporate tax and interest income largely driving the change). Next year's (fy26) first estimates assume .9% growth in general fund.
Keep in mind, General Fund is important but we have lots of special funds and more sales tax and lottery revenue has been directed towards them. But sales tax growth has been slow. Interest income, incidentally, is being redirected more to the general fund.
Review the full presentation here.
Watch the full meeting here.

TRANSPORTATION UPDATE
​Although not in our area, the Port of Baltimore is important to the entire state and region and was hit hard by the vessel that collided into--and collapsed--the Francis Scott Key Bridge. I have been monitoring the Port's recovery and thought others might be interested.
August numbers for the Maryland Port Administration are now up. The good news is that there is a sustained recovery including on lagging container traffic. A few smaller categories, however, are down from last month. This should all improve more as the labor situation becomes more clear.
Data source: https://mpa.maryland.gov/Pages/cargo-stats.aspx

​COMMUNITY NEWS
​Montgomery County Public Schools recently released its new Capital Improvement Plan. You can read it here.
So what is important for District 16 to know?
The Radnor Center off of Bradley Blvd continues to have no planned uses. The school system has done some work to clean this site up and fix up the playground for local use but it is time to make some long term decisions about this virtually abandoned building.
In the BCC Cluster, Bethesda Elementary is 84 students over capacity--my daughter's second grade has 30 kids--while the adjacent Somerset is 237 under capacity. These differences continue into the out years where no other school in the cluster but one is over capacity.
The Board of Education proposed a capacity study for elementary schools in this cluster and WJ but the funds have been pushed to the out years so no change is in sight.
BCC Is also part of the boundary study for the new Woodward High School on Old Georgetown Road. And HVAC dollars have been included for Westland.
In the Churchill cluster, the biggest challenge is high school capacity. Churchill is part of the boundary study for the new Crown High School in Gaithersburg.
In the WJ cluster, capacity challenges include the high school--the new Woodward will help considerably--North Bethesda, Ashburton (where my son used to go!), and Farmland. As noted above, the WJ cluster is part of a future elementary planning study with BCC. Funds are also proposed to add an auditorium to Woodward.
Whitman is part of the new Woodward boundary study. A study for Burning Tree capital expansion has been included. Also funding for further Whitman HVAC work is included.
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Montgomery County has launched a new composting program. For those in Bethesda, it means easy compost drop-off at the Bethesda Farmer's Market on Sundays. More information is here.

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Caroline Freeland Urban Park is reopening soon. A ribbon cutting is scheduled for November 9th at 2pm to 3:30pm, but they will have a “soft opening” prior to the ribbon cutting when the public has access to the park before its official opening. More details on the changes here.
As Montgomery County Parks explained to me:
“The construction period was lengthy for this project but for good reason. During construction, the crew discovered utility lines on the site that were not on any maps. They also discovered structures from previous buildings that were unknown prior to digging. These things are not unheard of in urban environments, but they take time to work around. More recently, several weeks of consistent rain has delayed work.”
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For those of you in or near Friendship Heights, there is a prescription drug drop off on Saturday, October 26th.

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Several District 16 residents have been appointed to County Boards and Commissions:
Kevin Beverly, Early Care and Education Coordinating Entity
Elaine Binder, Friendship Heights Transportation Management District Advisory Committee
Gretchen Blankenship, Board of Education Compensation Commission
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Two District 16 residents have been named Daily Record Icon award winners: Judge Irma Raker and former University of Maryland School of Law Dean Karen Rothenberg.
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District 16 resident Whitney Ellenby did a TedX talk on the Autism Ambassadors program she runs. Watch it here.
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Congratulations to Bruce Adams, recipient of the AARP Maryland Andrus Award for Community Service.