Another County Planner Is Headed for Alexandria

The exodus continues at Montgomery County's planning agency.

Gwen Wright, a veteran planner who served as acting planning director until the arrival of Rollin Stanley last winter, is jumping to the Alexandria planning agency to head its development division.

Wright will join Karl Moritz, who headed Montgomery's research and technology division and decamped to become Alexandria's deputy director in charge of long-range and strategic planning. Both were lured across the Potomac River by Faroll Hamer, who had been acting planning director in Montgomery, and are well respected by many in county government.

Last week at Moritz's farewell party, held at the planning agency, word of Wright's intended departure filtered out. She'll receive a $109,000 annual salary in her new post and will be looking at several sections of the city, including the area around the Landmark shopping mall and Potomac Yard, both potential sites for redevelopment.

Several staff members at the Montgomery agency said they were concerned that Moritz and Wright, who had been tapped to serve as Stanley's top deputies in an arrangement engineered by Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson, had decided to leave. They said they were not certain what the departures portend for Stanley's stewardship. Hanson said he is sorry to see Moritz and Wright depart.

Stanley has begun to reorganize the agency, rebranding its various divisions. Agency veteran Callum Murray took a poke at the new titles during Moritz's farewell party, noting that the development review section is now called "Build" and the community-based planning section is dubbed "Vision," or the "Vision Division," as Murray said. The environment section is called "Green."

Murray pondered the Vision moniker. "Most of the people in the division have about as much vision as Stevie Wonder," he said to laughter from the crowd of about 100 planners, development lawyers, County Council aides and community leaders in the auditorium.

And apparently, in development review, now called Build, there is no longer a no-build option, even though from time to time the section, headed by former Rockville mayor Rose Krasnow, does reject developers' plans.

Slots Lose Straw Vote By Democratic Committee

Montgomery's legislators have long been some of the loudest voices opposed to the expansion of slot machine gambling, so it was not surprising when a recent sampling found many local residents who share their views.

In a rather unscientific straw ballot conducted by the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee, more than half of participants said they oppose the slots measure backed by Gov. Martin O'Malley (D). Voters will be asked in the November election whether to allow up to 15,000 slot machines at five locations in the state.

The central committee polled about 600 people who stopped by its tent at the Montgomery County Fair this month. The results: 37 percent in favor; 56 percent opposed and 7 percent undecided, said Milton J. Minneman, a spokesman for the committee.

Straw pollsters did not check whether participants were registered voters or county residents, so the results are not a reliable indication of local sentiment.