The plan has benefitted from very extensive community involvement and input, particularly regarding the need to preserve and add affordable housing. We commend the community, and our affordable housing partners in particular, for helping to shape this plan and increase the number of committed affordable units. The plan has also benefited from the developer’s early inclusion of the nation’s top new urbanist architecture, town planning and transportation experts.
Category: Resources
Letter Supporting CB-2 “Adequate Pedestrian and Bikeway Facilities” to Prince George’s Council
We would like to express our strong support for this important bill, CB-2, which we call the “walk/bike connections” bill. This bill helps ensure that Prince George’s residents and visitors have better and safer transportation choices. By allowing the Planning Board to ensure that developments fill in missing links of essential sidewalk and other walk/bike facilities around a new development, the quality of development, as well as safety and access, will be improved. Offering multimodal transportation choices has been the intention of the county for several years through the “Complete Streets” policy adopted in the 2009 County Master Plan for Transportation. This bill helps implement this policy.
Testimony on SB 971 – Maryland Transportation Financing and Infrastructure Investment Act of 2012
The groups listed above support a vibrant transportation fund, and we recognize that the current economic downturn has hit the transportation trust fund hard. However, we believe that transportation revenues should be increased only if every new dollar is invested more wisely.
Testimony Regarding Leveraging the Value of D.C.’s Public Land Dispositions to Build Housing Affordable to D.C.’s Low- and Moderate-Income residents
The Gray administration’s focus on getting D.C. residents back to work is rightly the number one priority for the District – and it’s critical to helping communities and families across the District succeed. Going hand in hand with the success of increasing employment is ensuring that the workers D.C. invests in can also find a place to call home here in the District. Without affordable housing opportunities, newly trained workers may leave the city for cheaper housing, but longer commutes, taking away opportunity to grow D.C.’s tax base and strengthen our communities.
Support for Support CB-2-2012, Adequate Public Pedestrian and Bikeway Facilities in Centers and Corridors
I am here to express our strong support for this important bill, which we call the “walk/bike connections” bill. This bill helps ensure that Prince George’s residents and visitors have better and safer transportation choices. By allowing the Planning Board to ensure that developments fill in missing links of essential sidewalk and other walk/bike facilities around a new development, the quality of development, as well as safety and access, will be improved. Offering multimodal transportation choices has been the intention of the County for several years through the “Complete Streets” policy adopted in the 2009 County Master Plan for Transportation. This bill helps implement this policy in the development review process.
What’s Affordable “Workforce Housing” for the District of Columbia?
One of Mayor Vincent Gray’s stated priorities is to increase the supply of workforce housing, a component along the continuum of affordable housing needs. This is a laudable goal — seeking to make Washington, D.C. a place where residents can afford to live close to where they work. However, if D.C. officials use regional incomes to define “workforce housing,” it could result in policies that would fail to reach most of D.C.’s low- and moderate-income working households who have a difficult time finding an affordable place to live in D.C.’s expensive housing market.
Principles Linking Smart Growth & Stormwater
eams that feed it. Stormwater runoff from farms and development gouges out streams and pours pollutants such as farm and lawn fertilizers, livestock waste, and oil and gasoline from cars and trucks into the very water we drink and depend on for food and recreation. As our communities have spread out and our daily activities have become increasingly separated and car-dependent, we have consumed thousands of acres of forest and farm land for parking lots, roads and highways to accommodate our vehicles. This explosive increase in land consumption for paved or impervious surface has exacerbated and continues to exacerbate the stormwater runoff problem throughout the Chesapeake region.
Where and How Should Prince George’s Grow?
On January 26, 2012, leaders gathered with the Coalition for Smarter Growth and Envision Prince George’s Community Action Team for Transit-Oriented Development to discuss where and how Prince George’s County should grow.
Happier, Healthier, Sexier, and Smarter: Transportation and the Secret of Life
The “Happier, Healthier, Sexier, and Smarter: Transportation and the Secret of Life” forum was held on Tuesday, January 10, 2012. View a video recording of the event or download and view presenter Jeff Tumlin’s presentation.
Testimony: Support for D.C.’s West End Library and Fire Station project
We wish to express our support for this project. The proposed project will leverage the value of public land to build a new West End Library, a new fire station on Square 50, along with complementary retail and residential units. The combined project of the new library on Square 37 and the new fire station offer a tremendous public benefit for the residents of the District of Columbia that is not otherwise possible. We are only able to create these new state-of-the-art public facilities due to a joint public-private partnership where the full subsidy for the public benefits is derived from the air rights above the public facilities. This project renews important outdated public facilities, and does it at no cost to the District.