Thursday, May 16, 2013
Montgomery County Council Member Roger Berliner asked the Maryland Public Service Commission to require that substantial changes be made to electricity services in the state.
Is better electricity service in the future for Montgomery County? Montgomery County Councilmember Roger Berliner—chair of the council's Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy and Environment Committee—is pushing to make that happen. On Tuesday, Berliner filed a formal pleading asking the Maryland Public Service Commission to implement the "Utility 2.0" pilot program developed by the Energy Future Coalition, which was tasked by Governor Martin O'Malley's Grid Resiliency Task Force to come up with recommendations for improving electricity service in Maryland. The Utility 2.0 pilot program is "a system truly worthy of the 21st century—cleaner, more reliable, efficient, technologically advanced and consumer-driven. Montgomery County residents…
Thursday, January 31, 2013
And is being "hip" necessary to Montgomery County's future success?
Can suburban Montgomery County be made hip? County Councilman Hans Riemer reportedly believes so: "I really think that we are on the verge of a golden age in Montgomery County," Riemer said at a happy hour called "Can we make the suburbs hip? The future of White Flint," Bethesda Now reported. "The region that we are in is ... dynamic, growing, exciting... . ... But we have to and we are positioning ourselves in that region to capture that future growth," he added, Bethesda Now reported. The White Flint Sector (430 acres bounded by the CSX tracks, Montrose Parkway, Old Georgetown Road and the White Flint Mall) has been approved, so far, to be redeveloped with 2,220 residential units added to the existing housing stock of 2,321 units; 9,801 …
Monday, December 3, 2012
The sometimes outspoken councilman says the county has moved forward but "we have serious work to do."
On the eve of his final day as president of the Montgomery County Council, Roger Berliner met with reporters in Rockville to look back on a year that saw continued fiscal reforms, scuffles over Pepco's performance and steps the county took to stimulate small business and large-scale economic development. "We need to move beyond the old Montgomery County way," he said. "We have serious work to do."
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Ervin: ‘We’re turning on a faucet and only letting some drops drip out of the faucet, and then we’re pretending like that’s good enough.’
Officials, advocates and the community at large need to shed outdated ideas about the long-hailed strength of Montgomery’s affordable housing programs, councilmembers say, and come up with concrete plans that work effectively. More than a year in the making, the Department of Housing and Community Affairs has drafted a 100-page housing policy—the first update since 2001—that puts a priority on: Councilmembers want to make sure the county does not rest on the laurels of decades past, when initiatives like the MPDU program LINK made Montgomery a pioneer in affordable housing. “Before we start patting ourselves on the back and congratulating ourselves for all the wonderful things we’ve done, we still have to recognize that Montgomery County…
Monday, September 17, 2012
Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner pursues the idea of a public power system.
The question resurfaces: Should Montgomery County purchase Pepco's infrastructure and turn to public power options? The issue re-emerged this summer as hundreds of thousands of area residents endured a record heat wave without power following the June 29 derecho storm. Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner at the time revisited the idea of an option of a public power system, and on Thursday formally asked the county attorney, Marc Hansen, to review the idea. Hansen last year said the county would need special legislative permission. Another storm this month left 65,000 without power in the Washington area, and county lawmakers have been fielding complaints from business owners of thousands of dollars in lost business, …
Monday, July 9, 2012
Montgomery County Council president is harshly critical of Pepco response to June 29 storm. What do you think of his comments?
After almost 10 days of power outages amid a crippling heatwave, Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner says he’s fed up. In a statement released Monday, Berliner lambasted Pepco for its response to the June 29 derecho storm that left as many as 443,000 area residents without power, some up to a week or more. “Our residents have had enough,” Berliner said in a written statement following a press conference. “While this was a big storm and outages are to be expected, Pepco’s performance – on every level – was unacceptable. The length of the outages. The appalling communications. The computer glitches and data discrepancies. The list can go on and on.” Berliner’s suggestions to improve Montgomery County’s power source include: “…
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Effects of shift would devastate county budgets, executives say.
Leaders of counties from around Maryland said a plan to shift part of the cost of teacher pensions from the state would have serious consequences for the budgets of local governments. Nearly two dozen leaders from counties around the state, all members of the Maryland Association of Counties, met in Annapolis on Wednesday to show their opposition to Gov. Martin O'Malley's plan to shift to local governments. Montgomery County Council President Roger Berliner said his county is already dealing with a budget deficit of its own. "None of us up here are oblivious to the challenges the state faces in balancing its budget and its structural deficit," said Beliner, a Democrat. "We know because we've been doing it for years and years and years now…
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
An online tool gives first place to Councilmember Nancy Navarro, whose district will include Wheaton starting March 7.
Of all the members of the Montgomery County Council, Nancy Navarro has the most social media clout--or at least according to Klout, a popular online tool that analyzes data from social networks such as Twitter. A Klout Score “measures influence based on your ability to drive action.” The Klout score considers three things: the number of people you influence, the degree of influence, and how much influence your network exerts. Navarro, who is now vice president of the council, weighed in at 26, narrowly beating Councilmember (and now Council President) Roger Berliner, whose Klout Score is 25. Councilmember Hans Riemer is close behind, with a Klout Score of 24. Adam Fogel, Navarro's chief of staff, said that open communication with …
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Navarro approved as vice president.
The Montgomery County Council elected Councilmember Roger Berliner as its next president on Tuesday, choosing Councilmember Nancy Navarro as vice president. Berliner, who succeeds outgoing Council President Valerie Ervin, said Montgomery County's work to regain fiscal stability is not yet done, and that the county will face budgetary, transportation and environmental challenges in the future. "If we are to meet these challenges, we will have to meet the hardest of them all: becoming change agents rather than servants of the status quo," he said. "We need to introduce new words into our county’s business model, words like nimble, bold, entrepreneurial." Navarro, who represents District 4, is the county's first Hispanic female vice …
Costco Gas Man
3:16 pm on Thursday, May 16, 2013
New communities throughout the country have buried cables. Homes in these modern communities go for $142,000 on the average. Utility costs are reasonable in many of them. So how is it that PEPCO can avoid it? Ever notice how the council rips them a new one now and again? It's all for show. They council will never force PEPCO to do anything. There's your answer. The envelopes full of cash are more… more ›