Please save the date of Wednesday, February 13, 2019 for the next Park Hills Civic Association to be held at Silver Spring International Middle School (SSIMS) in the Library/Media Center beginning at 7:30 pm.  Primary agenda items:

= Gary Skulnik, founder of Neighborhood Sun, will make a presentation about community solar.

= Staff from the Dept. of Transportation’s Vision Zero Montgomery County  will present an overview of Vision Zero, as well as examine ways to improve pedestrian safety on Wayne Avenue along the school and residential corridor.  Link to “What is Vision Zero” from the Vision Zero Network.   Also check out this smartly-illustrated piece from Quartz:

• “One Small Change to New York’s Intersections Is Saving Pedestrian’s Lives” Quartz  September 21, 2018

We hope you will join the community dialogue!

Chris Richardson

Park Hills Civic Association

WEB  https://parkhillscivic.com/

FB  https://www.facebook.com/groups/ParkHills/

Click on link to Park Hills Civic Association Newsletter – 2018 Highlights

Park Hills neighbors,

Thank you again to Joe Pospisil, Planning Specialist for the county’s Dept. of Transportation, for taking time last week to inform residents about the permit parking process in light of our proximity to the Purple Line transitway.  You may direct any follow-up questions or concerns to TrafficOps@montgomerycountymd.gov.

I saw a number of my neighbors at last night’s meeting for the Silver Spring CAT Team hosted by the Maryland Transit Administration and the Purple Line Transit Partners – including Alan Bowser, Tina Slater, Mary Clive, Darian Unger, Erin Johannson, and Karen Roper – along with members of the Silver Spring Library Advisory Committee, Julio Cerόn from Councilmember Hucker’s office and Austin Morris from Senator Van Hollen’s office.  The slide show presentation outlined Purple Line-related construction on Wayne Avenue planned for 2018 and beyond.  I will post that file later this week when it is made publicly available.

In the meantime, I wanted to bring your attention to MTA’s slide show presented at last May’s joint PHCA/SOECA meeting in the Civic Center – see the attached PDF file.  This presentation has also been posted on the PHCA website in the Purple Line section (at the top of the page).  I received this file from MTA’s Public Outreach person, Joy Hamilton, who recently left this position after many years of dedicated service – we will certainly miss Joy.

I will send around last night’s PowerPoint file and post it to the website as soon as it is available.

 

Chris Richardson

Park Hills residents,

My apologies for the late notice.

Much has been accomplished on the Park Hills Civic Association front, but last week’s “surprise” phone call from the County Executive’s office (about the newly-designed intersection at Wayne and Dale) tripped me up from getting everything accomplished in time since last October’s PHCA meeting, where new officers were elected.   I had hoped to postpone the joint Park Hills-SOECA meeting until after MCPS’s spring break, but SOECA had already published this date on its hard copy newsletter before I had received word from the County Executive about the new plan.  (Not to worry – Park Hills and SOECA are already in discussion about planning a joint meeting in May where the new Purple Line design for the Wayne corridor will be formally unveiled).

Tonight’s meeting details

Date:  Tuesday, April 4^th

Time:  7:30 – 9:00 pm

Place: SSIMS Cafeteria  (Silver Spring International Middle School – 313 Wayne Ave)

• Approval of Minutes
• Business update
• Announcements
• Purple Line Discussion
• Committee reports
• New business

Much is going on behind the scenes.  First of all, you may already be aware that the Park Hills website has been updated from top to bottom.  Just wanted to mention that when you click on the tab What is PHCA and scroll to the bottom, you will see a collection of ‘Park Hills History Moments’ that incorporate vintage documents from the civic association archives.   The latest entry in the series references the “2000 seated” stadium proposal for the former Montgomery Blair High School on Wayne Avenue.  Those of you who are familiar with WordPress might consider posting newsworthy announcements on the “News” side of the PHCA website.

Second, I just got done distributing to every Park Hills residence a two-page PHCA “identity” flyer that includes a color map that highlights all of our community “assets.”  The map makes it clear that if the Park Hills serving area really were supposed to be on the south side of Wayne, then you can see for yourself how comically-undersized Park Hills would be with just a relative few streets and only 200-something homes.  Even with 330-something homes in our actual serving area, we are still one of the smallest Silver Spring civic associations.

Third, members of the Wayne Working Group (including myself) will be meeting with representatives from the County Executive’s office, Dept. of Transportation and MTA/Purple Line Partners to receive information about the newly-designed intersection at the school crossing on Wayne.  This meeting is a long-awaited follow-up from the Wayne Working Group’s meeting with the County Executive in October, 2016.  Again, In a perfect world, Park Hill and SOECA would postpone their joint civic association meeting until after all of us have had time to receive and clarify this information, but alas that was not meant to be.   However, I do have a sense of what the basic design changes will be – happy to share what I know, with the understanding that a formal debriefing is to take place later this week.

More community highlights to be shared this evening – looking forward to seeing everyone tonight.  I will bring some Park Hills “vintage” history from the PHCA archives to share at tonight’s meeting.

Chris Richardson

http://parkhillscivic.com

 

 

You may have already noticed that the Park Hills Civic Association website has a new look and feel.  Look a little more closely, and you will see that we have also added tons of information for you to use!    There are now tabs at the top of the page for –

(a) What is PHCA:  Park Hills history overview (reaching back to the 1940s)

(b) Meeting Minutes:   PDFs of each Park Hills Civic Association meeting (from 2006 to the present)

(c) Purple Line:  Park Hills-specific documentation going back to 2004 (when the project was called “The Bi-County Transitway”)

(d) News:  Timely announcements about events of interest to the Park Hills community

We hope you find this information useful.  Check back periodically, as additional information is still being added to the website.

Very special thanks to Paul Guinnessy for his invaluable technical assistance!

P.S.

To keep up with the latest Silver Spring happenings, you may want to subscribe to the Regional Area Director‘s eNewsletter from the link found at

www.MontgomeryCountyMD.gov/SilverSpring