{"id":7934,"date":"2017-05-10T16:53:03","date_gmt":"2017-05-10T20:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7934"},"modified":"2017-05-10T16:53:03","modified_gmt":"2017-05-10T20:53:03","slug":"dan-reed-for-planning-board","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7934","title":{"rendered":"Dan Reed for Planning Board"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of Montgomery County\u2019s most remarkable activist careers was started when a bus failed to show up on Route 29.\u00a0 Yes, it\u2019s true.\u00a0 Most of us would simply grouse about it for a few minutes, call a cab and move on with our lives.\u00a0 But Dan Reed wrote about it on the Internet<\/a> and wondered, \u201cWhy is Route 29 the only road across the Northwest Branch? A \u2018Route 29 spur\u2019 was proposed as part of the County’s Master Plan for roads that would have connected University Boulevard to 29 north of Lockwood Drive, bypassing Four Corners and the Burnt Mills Dam. Of course, this was forty years ago. The Right-Of-Way probably no longer exists – but, boy, would it have saved a lot of trouble this morning.\u201d\u00a0 And so began one of MoCo\u2019s greatest creative endeavors, Just Up the Pike<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Most people in MoCo who start out as transportation or land use activists begin local and stay local \u2013 very local.\u00a0 They\u2019re concerned with something that impacts their neighborhood.\u00a0 That\u2019s how Dan started, as someone who cared about his native East County and wanted to chronicle it, champion it and make sure it got the attention and respect it deserves.\u00a0 But he didn\u2019t stop there.\u00a0 He wrote and wrote and grew and grew.\u00a0 In his exploration of East County, he learned both about the technical aspects of transportation and land use planning as well as the differing views held by the many people who lived there.\u00a0 He combined this with his education in architecture and planning at U-Maryland and the University of Pennsylvania to become one of MoCo\u2019s preeminent story tellers, advocates and experts.\u00a0 He also branched out to take on subjects including local history, education, demography and politics.\u00a0 All of this has come to form a vision of MoCo combining the transit-oriented development and multi-modal priorities of the smart growth movement with the cultural sensibilities of millennials.\u00a0 Very few people have accomplished such a body of work in this county as has Dan Reed.<\/p>\n

Now Dan is applying for the Planning Board.\u00a0 This is an immensely powerful position.\u00a0 The five board members recommend master plans for the county\u2019s communities to the council.\u00a0 They also have input into the county\u2019s budgetary and transportation priorities.\u00a0 Finally, they approve specific plans for individual development projects that collectively and continuously transform the county.<\/p>\n

Planning Board members, who are selected by the County Council, have been a diverse lot over the years.\u00a0 They have included developers, attorneys, community activists, planning professionals and people of many other backgrounds.\u00a0 But there has never been a Planning Board applicant quite like Dan.\u00a0 It\u2019s rare that one person would have a comparable background in leadership, vision, advocacy, writing and professional expertise all in one package \u2013 and to have those characteristics developed, not regionally or nationally, but right here in MoCo.\u00a0 And from the perspective of diversity, few would argue that our county would benefit from the engagement of more young people and more African Americans, both groups of which Dan is a member.<\/p>\n

As a blogger for more than a decade, Dan has a point of view.\u00a0 But like all points of view, both its content and its expression are not universally appealing.\u00a0 David Lublin identified several things Dan has said over the years about residents in the western parts of the county<\/a> that they would understandably find to be displeasing.\u00a0 Let\u2019s consider Dan\u2019s writing in context.\u00a0 First, he began writing Just Up the Pike at the age of 18 and he wrote many of his posts in his early 20s.\u00a0 Males of that age are not known for their judiciousness, discretion and restraint but Dan was better than most.\u00a0 Dear reader \u2013 what were YOU doing at that age?\u00a0 Your author admits nothing, and if my fraternity brothers post pictures here, they will be promptly deleted!\u00a0 Second, Dan and I (and David Lublin) have written well over a thousand blog posts each over the last decade.\u00a0 Surely there are a few things in such a vast body of work that we might look back on and think, \u201cHmmmm.\u00a0 Maybe I would write that differently today, or maybe not at all.\u201d\u00a0 Does that invalidate the other 99% of content that might contain merit, and in Dan\u2019s case, significant merit?\u00a0 Reasonable people could disagree on that, but I would argue that with Dan, the 99% overwhelms the 1%.\u00a0 And third, on those occasions when Dan has pointed out differences in education, income, school performance and other factors between the county\u2019s regions, he was not wrong to do so.\u00a0 Might there have been more tactful ways to express such perspectives?\u00a0 Perhaps, but there is not a single one of us who has a perfect record of doing so.\u00a0 Dan may have some work to do on this, but so do I \u2013 and in our current benighted era of incivility, so do we all.<\/p>\n

What all of this means is that Dan Reed is a human being \u2013 highly educated, ridiculously qualified and gifted, but human nonetheless.\u00a0 Those of us who have read Just Up the Pike over the last decade have watched Dan grow up \u2013 a process that for the rest of us has mercifully occurred away from the Internet.\u00a0 The person Dan is now is an ideal candidate for public service.\u00a0 Few people combine his insight, vision, passion, knowledge and readiness.\u00a0 MoCo is lucky to have him.<\/p>\n

Dan Reed for Planning Board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. One of Montgomery County\u2019s most remarkable activist careers was started when a bus failed to show up on Route 29.\u00a0 Yes, it\u2019s true.\u00a0 Most of us would simply grouse about it for a few minutes, call a cab and move on with our lives.\u00a0 But Dan Reed wrote about it on the … Continue reading Dan Reed for Planning Board<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151],"tags":[1545,629,1950],"class_list":["post-7934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-dan-reed","tag-planning-board"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-23Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7934"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7936,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7934\/revisions\/7936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}