Silver Spring Inc.
By Silver Springer • Jul 21st, 2008 • Category: Government and Politics, MORE NEWS, Silver Springer
It’s the age-old question; should Silver Spring become an incorporated city, town, or whatever? One with a mayor and its own local government? You can occasionally come across this discussion at different political and community gatherings in Silver Spring, more so in the past few years though but it’s never been anything more than that. Probably a lot more talk during the time the “Mayor” was around; the honorary “Mayor Norman Lane”/homeless guy to whom officials dedicated Mayor Lane, statue head, promenade et al.
The bigger question is what would be the point? Where would you draw the boundaries? Could you even go as far as limiting incorporation to the Central Business District? Furthermore would it have a negative or positive impact on Silver Spring? In the end nothing could change at all besides the addition of a new layer of bureaucratic BS. We already have a Silver Spring tax district though but the taxes would be higher still .
Some argue that a major point of our incorporation would be our own Planning and Zoning authority with the balls to mediate building design elements like architecture in a form based code, and isn’t afraid of heights.
Another positive point and probably why proponents of incorporation want it so bad is because of the strong identity and voice it would create. Silver Spring would finally have a large dedicated group of representatives that could run their own show. Not to mention an official, cool seal and flag.
On the other hand we could end up like Takoma Park, Alexandria, or College Park. Despite the City of College Park containing a huge catalyst like the University of Maryland, the University still won’t let potential students venture off campus during orientation. Good move on their part because they probably wouldn’t come back. If you’re in Alexandria, rule of thumb: “don’t leave old town”.
It could be worse though, we could be caught somewhere in-between and morph into something as creepy as Columbia with its gigantic, oversized HOA that stops short of telling you what’s for dinner.
There seems to be very few good examples of incorporated cities and towns in the D.C. area. You could say Rockville, but it’s a County Seat and County Seats are usually safe-guarded against economic, political and social ills. Gaithersburg is the story of two cities, on one side you have the up kept areas like Washingtonian Center (part of which is the Town of Washington Grove?) and Kentlands and on the other side you have disaster zones like Lake Forest and Old Towne Gaithersburg.
Truth is, the best areas this region has to offer are unincorporated; the largest, wealthiest areas are unincorporated. This may not the case in the north east but the alternative doesn’t really exist. So if anybody can come up with other reasons why incorporating Silver Spring in this Mid-Atlantic region is a good idea I’d like to read it.
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It will never happen!
Washington Grove is on the other side of Gaithersburg, next to Old Town.
It would never happen, but if you drew the boundaries large enough (like all of Zip codes 20901-20910), you’d have some 250,000 people, automatically making Silver Spring the second-largest city in Maryland and one of the largest in the country. You’d probably also bankrupt Montgomery County in the process, because they’d have to give up some of their revenues to the quarter of the county that’s now in Silver Spring.
But talk about clout! All lesser municipalities would bow down to the juggernaut that is Silver Spring! Takoma Park would curl up into a ball and disappear. Chevy Chase would pay to build the Purple Line through the country club themselves lest they incur the wrath of Silver Spring. It would be beautiful.
Columbia isn’t incorporated.
You’re right, that’s why it’s some in-between place that doesn’t know what it wants to be with a giant HOA dictatorship.
Would Susan Hoffmann be Mayor of Silver Spring as well?
Sadly, an incorporated SS would become dominated by the same small group of anti-everythings who TRY to dominate it, already, via the civic associations. Every action would be subject to review by a committee of “right-thinking” people. Yeah, it’s just about that way under MoCo’s current system but at least the ultimate decision makers in Rockville have some ability to slow down speeding trains of bad policy, or to impose sensible things (like downtown redevelopment) even if a loud minority objects. With municipal govt., SS would be another Takoma Park — focused on being anti-nuclear and anti-foie gras at the expense of common sense.
We’d have outrageously high taxes tacked on to our already high property taxes just like Takoma Park.
I do think it should should have more distinct boundaries. Split it up and change the names - Let 20904 be White Oak/Springbrook, Md 20904, Hillandale should be Hillandale, Md 20903 and let 20902 be Wheaton, Md 20902 and so on and so on. The real Silver Spring, Md is 20910 and close-in parts of 20901. It’s just too big of an area and includes 6 zip codes. Each area is so different from the other in demographics and geography.
Sure would make it easier on us Real Estate Agents! When someone new comes to town and says they want to buy a place in Silver Spring, they have no idea there are 6-7 huge designated places (each coming with it’s own unique differences and quirks) that make up Silver Spring. They are usually totally confused and can’t believe it’s sooo big.
SS needs to be incorporated. I agree with the previous statements in that its confusing and incompasses too many opposite townships like Wheaton, White Oak, Hillandale, Takoma, Briggs Chaney and you never know when your in or out of Silver Spring if your not in the CBD. It needs to be broken up and defined. It should end at the beltway and go as far east as PG County then as far west as it already does to Grubb road. Its starting to act like a city so why not just make it into one?
@Incorporate it - Better yet, why don’t we claim everything all the way up to Route 29 to the Howard County border, take White Oak and let Takoma Park deal with the mess they started in Long Branch. Better yet lets get rid of everything east of the CBD (or at the most everything east of Piney Branch Road) and below the beltway. I’m still undecided about Wheaton.
FYI out of Wheaton, White Oak, Hillandale, Takoma, Briggs Chaney only Takoma is incorporated.