July 21, 2025 | Ginny Bixby | Bethesda Magazine
“It’s a plain and simple fact that our county needs more housing,” said Carrie Kisicki, Montgomery advocacy manager for the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a Washington, D.C. metro region nonprofit focused on housing affordability and transit access, at a public hearing on the legislation in March. “People want housing that they can afford, and they do not want to have to spend their lives sitting in traffic just to get to work.”
As the Montgomery County Council prepares to hold a work session and probable vote on Tuesday, The Coalition for Smarter Growth is proud to voice our support for Zoning Text Amendment 25-02. By making it easier to build more duplexes, triplexes, and small apartments near transit and jobs, ZTA 25-02 is an important step toward more sustainable housing options in Montgomery County.
This ZTA is a straightforward application of the principles identified in the county’s Thrive 2050 general plan. Our county needs more homes that are affordable to more people and located near transit, jobs, and amenities.
July 21, 2025 | Dana Munro | Washington Post
But that trend of people being priced out of Montgomery County is already happening, said Carrie Kisicki, a 26-year-old Silver Spring resident and Montgomery advocacy manager with the Coalition for Smarter Growth, who is in favor of the change.
More units, and especially units in larger complexes that will have the price restrictions under the zoning change, will help increase inventory and the variety of homes affordable to younger and middle-income residents, she said.
“The zoning status quo isn’t working, either for affordability or for the environment,” Kisicki said. “We need to be looking at both the subsidized affordable housing investments but also thinking more expansively about what affordability means when so many people in our communities are experiencing struggles with housing affordability that don’t always fall into the traditional categories we think about.”
From the beginning the VDOT study has been fatally flawed by a conclusions-first approach – defining their purpose and need as “extending express toll lanes” which forecloses other alternatives. Moreover, they have not provided all the information necessary for an informed decision – particularly the traffic impact on connecting roads. Given the missing information and strong concerns expressed by Fairfax, Prince George’s, Alexandria, Charles, WMATA, and state legislators in Virginia and Maryland, this project is not ready for inclusion in the regional plan.
We urge you to adopt the recommendations of the Planning Board and remove the unbuilt northern portion of M-83 from the Master Plan of Highways and Transitways.
M-83 is not the right path forward to provide better transportation options upcounty. The ways of thinking that informed plans for this road decades ago are fundamentally out of step with what we know today about best practices to address transportation needs, and about the vital connections between environmental health, climate resilience, and human health.
Mid-County Highway Extended (M-83) wouldn’t relieve traffic upcounty long-term—but it would cut a divide through existing communities and destroy farmlands, forests, and sensitive wetlands in its path.
The County Council is finally considering removing M-83 from county plans this month, and we need you to weigh in.
June 28, 2025 | Dana Munro and Rachel Weiner | Washington Post
Also featuring Montgomery for All Steering Committee Mike Larkin!
One major concern of the free buses, Larkin said, is that the lack of revenue coming in could justify the county disinvesting in the system, especially as Montgomery County deals with the economic impacts of the Trump administration’s massive federal spending cuts and job cuts.
Carrie Kisicki, Montgomery advocacy manager with the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a group that advocates for more accessible communities around the D.C. region, agreed.
Residents and lawmakers “might see other problems going on in the community that are more visible to them or maybe more part of their everyday experience and wonder ‘should transit be a priority or not’ and it absolutely needs to be,” she said.
Read the full story here.
June 27, 2025 | Ethan Goffman | Greater Greater Washington
“This is a plan that has been on the books a long time, and they’re taking lots of steps to finally build this network out,” said Carrie Kisicki, Montgomery Advocacy Manager at the Coalition for Smarter Growth. […]
Kisicki also emphasized the need for better pedestrian comfort and safety: “It’s already a very wide road, it’s already a harrowing place for pedestrians, it’s very much built as a suburban arterial, not considering the experience of people outside of cars.” Planned expansion of the right of way for a buffer and shared-use path will be welcome, she said, and will work in tandem with improved transit. “This is a huge investment,” she emphasized. “This is our shot to do it right.”