Friday News Round Up...
All this zoning talk recently has taken me away from what truly brings me joy: News Round Ups. Completely lacking in substance and intelligence, Round Ups give me a chance to broadcast news and comments without even trying. Well, I try…just not that hard.
Since it’s Friday and there’s a lengthy backlog of items that have gone unmentioned on this page, I’m breaking out the whip and rounding up some news.
YEEHAW!
Brace yourself: Planning for infrastructure – namely schools – and planning for development aren’t linked. Of course, if you read this report, you would have already known this. I’d like to say we can chalk this up to typical bureaucratic bumbling, but stuff like this – different departments working in silos – happens everywhere, even (for shame!) in the private sector.
Quitting time: Smokers and smoking bars, you have until June 1, 2007. Smoke ‘em while you can.
Democracy is on the march: A few residents are pushing for CA to adopt a direct democracy, rather than the representative style that we use now (and that has shaped the greatest country ever). Meanwhile, the rest of Columbia fails to notice.
Drop in the bucket: The county council passed a couple of symbolic affordable housing bills earlier this week. Advocates are hopeful that a new task force will develop better, more effective solutions that won’t be gutted before coming to the council.
Really?!? You mean Howard County Republicans don’t want a former CA representative who was banned from a village center and suspended from health clubs running as one of them for the District 2 council seat? Weird.
Rock Opera: Well, yes and no. Rather than an opera based on rock music, it is a rock concert based on opera music. Anyway, it is the East Village Opera Company, performing at the Columbia Festival of the Arts next week.
Meanwhile, this weekend get your entertainment fix at the Columbia LakeFest. Music, food, art, cardboard boat races and a birthday cake for Columbia, which turns 39 this month. Here's a picture of the event's set-up taken on my way home from work.
And that’s all for today. More Sunday!
2 comments:
From Friday's regional growth workshop -
"With most participants choosing to place new housing and jobs along rail and subway lines, she (Marsha McLaughlin) said, she hopes that might build public support for upgrading the region's transit system."
"It takes a lot of will to find the money," she said.
It would take less money if more efficient transit systems were chosen. Planners of such systems estimate they'll cost 1/50th what light rail costs, go 6 times faster, require a smaller footprint, and be more convenient (no waiting at more-distant stations since personal-sized vehicles would already be waiting at neighborhood stations for passengers). That would make developing near them all the more attractive and take a lot less will to find the money.
Infill is broken and needs to be fixed.
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