An Accolade for a Frederick County Sidewalk

New sidewalk would protect Monocacy Middle, Frederick News-Post (March 19, 2013)

The article above describes a project near a Frederick County public school that exemplifies quality planning. In this instance, a local school facility planing director decided to make a difference in order to help middle school students safely travel to and from school.

 

Monocacy Middle School

Over the past several years MDP has urged public school construction officials across Maryland take a more active role in Safe Routes to Schools projects. Ray Barnes, Executive Director for Facility Services with Frederick County Public Schools took it upon himself to apply for a grant to complete a sidewalk located along a road off of the school property. A sidewalk was clearly need on this segment of Opossumtown Pike

New logo for MDP

We’re unveiling a new logo today for the Maryland Department of Planning. It’s the first change in the agency’s logo in about a dozen years. It was created by the agency’s graphic designer Mark Praetorius. We hope you like it.

Picking up an award for Governor O’Malley

Md Planning Secretary Richard E. Hall with APA award for Governor O'Malley

By Richard Eberhart Hall

I was honored yesterday to accept a national planning award on behalf of Governor Martin O’Malley at the national conference of the American Planning Association, the largest professional planning organization in the country, representing 40,000 members. The APA selected Governor O’Malley for its 2012 National Planning Leadership Award for his advocacy of green policy and smart-growth planning.

La Plata: Turning adversity into opportunity

Second of two parts (See Part 1: The La Plata tornado — Testament to planning)

La Plata town hall plaque

From a planning perspective, the small bronze plaque on the front of the new town hall in La Plata says it well: “This building is dedicated to all of the people of La Plata who have always been able to turn adversity into opportunity.” Town leaders were determined to not just replace the central business district in the wake of destruction from a tornado 10 years ago, but to improve it.

“It was a tragedy but it was also seen as an opportunity from the very beginning. Even though people were in shock, that’s the way (town leaders) saw it and that was just extraordinary,” said Susan Van Buren, a former planner at the Maryland Department of Planning who worked on the La Plata design guidelines and now runs an energy consulting firm, TerraLogos, in Baltimore’s Bolton Hill. “There was occasional push back, but most everyone was seeing it for the greater good.”

La Plata’s tornado: Testament to planning

First of two parts

William F. Eckman remembers the late afternoon of April 28, 2002 as bright and sunny in his yard in La Plata. Forecasts on radio and TV described a storm moving through but predicted it farther north in Charles County. The sky did change and he noticed that, strangely, debris began to swirl about off the ground. But Eckman, who had been mayor of the town for 17 years at that point, said he didn’t think much of it until his town manager called. “Mayor,” he said, “we just got hit and hit hard.” All seemed fairly normal on Eckman’s block, although he was startled when his neighbor said he’d heard the hospital in town had lost water pressure and he wondered whether something had happened to the town’s water tower. “No, the tower can’t be down,” the mayor said.

He learned very shortly that indeed the strongest tornado in recorded history in Maryland struck La Plata that day. It claimed four lives, including a heart attack victim. The tornado – measured at F4 on the Fujita Scale, the second-highest intensity — carved a path about three football fields wide through the middle of town.