Leisure World town hall meeting on June 16

ROCKVILLE, Md., June 3, 2010—The Montgomery County Council will continue its efforts to find out what issues most concern residents when it hosts a Town Hall Meeting for the Leisure World / Northern Silver Spring area on Wednesday, June 16. The meeting at the Leisure World Social Hall will start at 2 p.m. This will be the third Town Hall Meeting hosted by the Council in 2010. The Council is composed of President Nancy Floreen, Vice President Valerie Ervin and Councilmembers Phil Andrews, Roger Berliner, Marc Elrich, Mike Knapp, George Leventhal, Nancy Navarro and Duchy Trachtenberg. In February, more than 400 attended as the Council hosted its first-ever Town Hall Meeting for students. A capacity crowd attended a meeting at the Housing Opportunities Commission Office in Kensington in March.

Leisure World is located at 3700 Rossmoor Blvd. in Silver Spring. Non-residents of the community must check in at the security gate before proceeding to the Town Hall Meeting. The meeting will enable residents to voice opinions on specific issues and will allow them to ask questions of the Councilmembers in an organized, but informal, setting. Topics expected to be of interest include the public safety, traffic, growth, the County budget, health programs and taxes—including the recently increased energy tax.

“We recently approved the Fiscal Year 2011 budget that required closing a shortfall of almost $1 billion due to decreasing revenues,” said Council President Floreen. “We made some very difficult decisions that will impact every resident of this County. This meeting will allow us to hear from residents about their priorities and their concerns. It also gives us the opportunity to explain some of the issues that are before us. This Council has made a priority of having better direct communication with residents, and Town Hall Meetings have proven to be an excellent way to do just that,” she said. “For residents, these meetings provide a forum where they can see their elected officials in a different format than a televised meeting or through a news release.”

The meeting will be taped for later broadcast on County Cable Montgomery (CCM—cable Channel 6 on Comcast and RCN, Channel 30 on Verizon). Susan Kenedy, a producer for the county station, will moderate the meeting. For more information about the Town Hall Meeting or about the broadcast times, call 240-777-7931. SOURCE: Montgomery County