Howardcounty

The recent publishing of proposed revised Howard County Council district lines has pushed me to try to finish this series before the new lines are actually adopted. So onward. . . . As noted in part 12, 1990 saw the Howard County political scene shaken up by the election of Republican Charles Ecker as County Executive, accompanied by Republican Darrel Drown being elected to County Council to join Charles Feaga and cut the Democratic majority from 4–1 to 3–2. Since 1990 was also a census year, this led to one of the most interesting episodes in council redistricting history:1 ...

Part 11 of this series took us through the 1990 party primaries for the second election year featuring county council districts; in this part we see how the results of the 1990 general election compare to those of 1986. October 1990. Now that the primaries are over the candidates position themselves for the general election. Republican Charles Ecker faces an uphill fight in his campaign for county executive, at least on the money front: Reports out in late September for fundraising through August 31 show him trailing Democratic incumbent Elizabeth Bobo in terms of attracting major donors (contributing $200 or more), raising under $6K from thirteen major donors versus Bobo’s total of over $60K from 184 major donors. Undaunted, Ecker channels Ronald Reagan as he asks Howard County voters “Are you better off now than you were four years ago” and accuses Bobo of “killing Route 100.” Bobo in turns accuses Ecker of hypocrisy on the matter of county spending: “He asked me to spend the money [when Ecker was deputy superintendent of schools]. . . . Has he changed his mind?” ...

A continuation of my history of Howard County Council redistricting series is coming soon (I promise! really!), but after an evening at the HoCo Blogtail party I’m not in any shape to do any serious historical blogging (even one blogtail will do that to you). I thought I’d use the opportunity instead to plug my other blog math.hecker.org, on which I publish worked out exercises from my attempt to relearn various branches of mathematics. I’m starting with linear algebra, a field of study that isn’t as well known as calculus but in some ways is even more important as a basis for a lot of real-life applications. ...

After a long hiatus, I’m happy to announce that I’m resuming my series on the history of County Council redistricting in Howard County (which is also, as in this post, somewhat of a potted history of Howard County politics in the modern era). I hope to finish the series in a timely manner, and possibly do a couple of extra things in this general line. If you recall, at the conclusion of part 10 Howard County had just completed its first set of council elections based on the new district lines, with the election producing a 4–1 Democratic majority on the council along with a Democratic count executive. (The electoral results were very similar to those of the 2010 elections—almost scarily so, in fact.) We now jump forward to 1990 and the second set of county elections held under the district boundaries adopted in 1986. Because 1990 was a census year, the 1990 elections were also the last set of elections under those district boundaries, with boundaries to be redrawn after the election (and hence the importance of that election, as we shall see).1 ...

I happened to stumble on this New York Times article this evening: “Calling Off Auction, Borders Plans to Liquidate.” According to the article, “Borders said it would proceed with a proposal . . . to close down its 399 remaining stores. . . . The company will begin closing its remaining stores as soon as Friday, and the liquidation is expected to run through September.” I presume that the Borders store in Columbia Crossing will be closed in the coming weeks as part of this plan, along with the Borders Express store in the Mall at Columbia. Whether another bookseller will move into either of these locations is an open question. The article speculates that “Other national book chains, like Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million, could move into stores vacated by Borders.” but also notes that “Some competing bookstores are already nearby. A spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble said that 70 percent of Barnes & Noble’s stores are within five miles of an existing Borders store.” This is true locally: The Ellicott City location of Barnes and Noble is just around five miles away in driving distance from the Columbia Crossing Borders, and less than five miles away as the crow flies. ...

Now that I’ve set the scene for Chris Leinberger’s presentation on the shift to walkable urbanism, let’s move on to the actual talk. I took notes during the presentation (on my iPhone—how 21st century is that?), and for this post I’ve basically taken those notes and expanded them, adding a few parenthetical comments along the way. If you see any inaccuracies or omissions please contact me and I’ll update the post to correct them. ...

Tonight I attended the presentation by Chris Leinberger on “walkable urbanism” at the Spear Center in the Howard Hughes Corporation building in downtown Columbia. I hope to have more to say about the presentation later, but right now I wanted to reflect a bit on the room and the building in which it took place. The building was the original headquarters office of the Rouse Company; I gather it used to be named the “Rouse Building,” but I don’t know if that name is used anymore, at least officially. It’s one of architect Frank Gehry’s earliest designs; though he’s now famous, Gehry was at the beginning of his career when he designed several structures in Columbia, and the building shows little hint of what later become Gehry’s signature style. ...

A month or two back I donated in support of HoCo Rising’s personal “End Homelessness in Howard County” drive, and have through the years also donated to other local organizations and causes. It’s natural to do so, and if I were more involved in Howard County affairs than I currently am I’m sure I’d encounter many more opportunities to promote and donate to local Howard County and Maryland charities. However today I’m going to stop and consider the question: In one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, should we really be spending our charity dollars locally? ...

Before heading home after a recent family visit to attend the Philadelphia Flower Show, we stopped to see the Liberty Bell. One of the most interesting aspects of the bell’s history (which I hadn’t fully appreciated before my visit) is that for almost the first hundred years of its life (it was cast in 1753) it didn’t really serve as a symbol of liberty or freedom, despite the quote from Leviticus 25:10 (“Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof”) inscribed on the bell. It was simply the bell that hung in the Pennsylvania State House and was rung on special occasions, including possibly on July 8, 1776, to mark the reading of the Declaration of Independence. ...

Yesterday HoCo Connect posted an interesting article on whether Columbia’s village centers are still relevant, including a look back at the original village center vision as laid out by Jim Rouse and others. I was moved in response to offer my own two cents on the village center issue. So without further ado, my thoughts: We need to think of village centers as resources for Howard County as a whole, and not just for the Columbia village in which they’re situated. I don’t happen to live in Columbia, and hence my opinion would be considered somewhat irrelevant in the context in which the village centers were created. However I think the original village center vision is not sustainable, at least not as the main function of a center. Village residents no longer see their center as a primary destination, instead driving by it on the way to the Mall in Columbia, big box developments like Gateway Overlook, or other places scattered around Columbia and the county (e.g., off Dobbin Road). This means that village centers can survive (let alone thrive) only if they can become major destinations for others elsewhere in Columbia and in the county at large. ...