Quoted: Councilmember George Leventhal on Wheaton Revitalization

The Department of Housing and Human Services is considering

The idea is not part of the six-year Capital Improvements Program, but was presented to a joint meeting of the Montgomery County Council’s Housing and Human Services and Planning, Housing, and Economic Development committees on March 5.

Councilmembers discussed how the possibility of the department making a substantial move to a new facility in Wheaton intersects with the Wheaton redevelopment program currently under consideration in the CIP budget.

Councilmember George Leventhal wrapped up the meeting with these words:

We're being told that we don’t know precisely where this relocated HHS building will go, but it’s somewhere in the midst of Wheaton revitalization. Meanwhile, we’re not entirely sure which county facilities are going to occupy precisely which spaces, but we’ve got a commitment with B.F. Saul and if we don’t appropriate $42 million precisely, then we’re insufficiently committed to Wheaton revitalization and all we care about is the Purple Line. Do I have it right now?

I don’t feel that the administration has tied all the loose ends on this project in such a manner as to underscore the politicization that has gone on in Wheaton, the scaring of my constituents in Wheaton, the emails that have been sent, the alarmist tones that have been sounded by senior officials in this administration in Wheaton. I don’t think the administration has done its job in Wheaton because I don’t think this plan is fully tied together.

We want to revitalize Wheaton, and we want county facilities to exist in efficient and logical space, and to put us on the hot seat as the county executive has done, and to suggest that somehow we’re underfunding Wheaton - which we haven’t even appropriated or taken away a single dollar for - is the most surprising example I’ve seen of politicization of a process that ought to be cooperative.

I think that Director [of Health and Human Services Uma] Ahluwalia and Director [of General Services David] Dise are absolutely people of good will and they’re trying to proceed in a good faith manner to work out these issues.

What I deeply resent is the way in which my constituents in Wheaton have had it suggested to them that I personally am trying to tear their project apart or take money away from their project. I haven’t taken a dollar in or out of their project. I still don’t understand their project. We’re going to discuss it on Monday.  More questions have been raised in this discussion than answers have been offered.

So I just don’t think that this Wheaton vision is fully realized or well explained. I would like to fund a project in Wheaton. I give Councilmember [Nancy] Navarro full credit for her championing this and I would like to support whatever is the vision in Wheaton. But I don’t feel it’s been well-articulated, and I think that responsibility lies with the executive branch, not with the county council. We haven’t even begun our work in Wheaton. (...)

I hope that this scare-mongering in Wheaton will stop.