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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Montgomery mall is perfectly nice. I don’t get the badmouthing comments here. It’s smaller than Tyson’s yes but it has everything I need for mall things. I get jeans from Macys, stuff from j crew and from the tailor downstairs, and the jewelers there (the ljungqvist place or however you call it) are super nice and attentive of my watches. Wheaton mall is a more average mall land yea, it’s seen better days [/quote]

If Westfield lets the mall become 50 percent vacant and builds a little housing on the property, they get a 20-year property tax abatement thanks to Andrew Friedson. Westfield and its local counsel have donated thousands of dollars to Friedson. [/quote]

Your anti Friedson posts are unhinged.  You aren't having the effect you want.  [/quote]

I get that his record isn’t what he claims it to be so you wouldn’t want people bringing it up. Notably you never claim these things aren’t true. That’s because they are.  [/quote]

Everyone on Council voted for that bill except Jawando.   Everyone on Council voted to overturn the veto except Jawando and Mink.  You act like Friedson functions in a silo and is all powerful.  He's not.

[/quote]

So, vote for Jawando.[/quote]

lol never. He's as self serving as Trump and will burn the rest of us down. It just feels more palatable because he's liberal. [/quote]

The other two candidates will crush us too.[/quote]

Friedson, with a somewhat moderate council - Ashman, Yang, Goldberg, Pope, Luedtke, Balcomb, McNulty maybe, and Stewart -- would be a breath of fresh good governance air.  They have a lot of damage to clean up.[/quote]

You think Stewart is moderate? Noooooo. She was mayor of Takoma Park and blew up the size of our municipal government. We have the highest property taxes in the county in Takoma Park, thanks in no small part to Stewart. [/quote]

It's why I listed her last. She's a progressive but her record on Council has been one of fiscal prudence. Running a municipality is a bit different than what they have to do at a county level, where county provides most services and the municipalities add concierge services on top of that. And that's what those extra taxes pay for. I am not in Takoma Park so I really can't comment on what she did there. But she has been pragmatic at the county level. She works well with others. Knows how to both compromise and build consensus.

Elrich and Jawando want tax increases. Here's the thing. If Elrich weren't such an insolent, autocratic "my way or the highway" kind of leader, he could have spent the past year working with council to propose a jointly supported tax increase that most of them could have lived with. With clear goals and outcomes that make it more palatable to residents. Instead he just thinks he's the smartest in the room and people should just do as he says. He claims the moral high ground and for some residents, that's enough to support him. But he completely sucks at governance. Council fights him at every turn. Including these proposed tax increases. And if they own any backbones, you will see services that you care about get cut so we don't get tax increases.  We are in this hell hole because of him.

Jawando will Elrich 2 if he wins. They have a similar approach and similar base. It's all about the feelings. The emotional tug about shared values rather than any real effective governance. Politically, Jawando is an island just like Elrich. he isn't capable of working with others, collaborating, COMPROMISING.  The whole "call the vote" debacle a few weeks ago shined a light on that. look forward to more bad government if he is elected.

Stewart is smart. And she works hard to move things along successfully. She collaborates with her fellow Councilmembers. She actually listens to constituents.  She thinks through policy and whether it can be operationalized effectively.  To her it's more than a social media post or catchy rallying call.

That doesn't mean I agree with her all the time. I often don't. That doesn't mean she's right all the time. It means she cares about the integrity of the process and the outcome.

None of the three executive candidates comes close to her. They all care about their careers more than about the county.  I wish Stewart had run for county executive this time. She would have blown those other three away.  Friedson is the closest to Stewart in terms of caring about the integrity of the process and outcome.  He's no Stewart but he's worlds better for the county than Jawando.

My prediction, tax increases will fail 9-2. Jawando and Mink will be the only votes yes. Jawando as chair of education, will hold 100 work sessions on the MCPS budget, do a LOT of talking, still not find one efficiency, and lazily approve it as written. Because that's what's best for HIM. [/quote]

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