HOCO Thursdays-follow up

A few weeks ago I spoke about my roads... and since then more work has been done and yep, they are even more jacked up.

It's bad.

At this point I'm getting a little worried about any type of long term damage it's going to do to my car. But in the interest of full disclosure I don't know a lot about cars either.

But I was told that Howard County IS backlogged on street paving and when the fiscal budget passes that they will be working that backlog.  But of course there is no guarantee that OUR street will be fixed.

Here's the thing, why should they?  With our backyards as a possible CSX depot why should Howard County spend a bunch of money on streets where the property value will tank?

Well, one reason is to assure the people of Hardwood park and of Elkidge that the local government has our backs, that they are willing to live up the the promises they made.  Watch the video to see.



Ok if you don't know what I'm talking about CSX wants to build a new intermodal facility in Maryland.  And honestly I'm cool with that.  it will solve a TON of problems and rails are WAY more efficient that trucks.


There are four site and long story short, the one in my backyard is PERFECT for CSX.  


For me it means more traffic, MORE trains, more noise pollution decrease property values.



Translation... I've got to move and quick, or at least by 2015. 

Now in all fairness a final decision has not been made.  And CSX has done three public workshops to help share information and easy the mind of the people.  I went to one on 4-21  and it was informative.  


I talked to many different MDOT employees and they were knowledgeable and reassuring.  Although I did point out that the cite was in a flight path that seemed to throw them off a little.


The results of the survey was posted online you can see here.  I was SHOCKED at the LACK of comment cards filled out.  There was at least 30 people there and only 7 people filled out cards. 


FAIL-- Howard County.  BIG FAIL.

I'll be keeping my eye on this.  I am by no means an expert but I'll keep you in the loop.   You can go to the the Patch for more information.  That's where I got all my news.


I will also say all the flowering trees are killing my allergies so I'm a little grumpy.
 hocoblogs@@@

HOCO Thursdays- the Library

So did you know there's this place were you can borrow books FOR FREE?  It's like Amazon but you don't have to pay for it and the book isn't gathering dust in your basement.

Did you also know there are people who work at these magical places who know EVERYTHING?  Yep, everything.  

It's call ed a library and it's the most awesome place on the planet.

I have the pleasure of living two minutes away from my library and it's amazing.  My daughter BEGS to go.

They have a children play and book area that rivals Barnes and Noble, which is saying something because B&N is there to make money and the library is FREE.

Did you know the Librarians will come to your school and TEACH for you.  Yep.  Every library has it's only set of schools it supports and the Teen coordinator will come to your school and talk to your kids about cool books.  Every time the Teen Coordinator from the Savage Branch comes to my classroom, my To Read Pile gets insanely long.

If you are a Hoco parent, email your child's teacher and ask if he or she knew about this program.

Oh and have you seen the WEBSITE.  OH it's wonderful. Do you need something to do with your child?  There's like a trillion different programs going on at once.   Are you looking for a new book to read?  BAM recommendations. Hey what new books did they order?  POOF you can search it and request them.

EEK from looking at this list I found a new to me  Simone Elkeles book.  SWOON.

I could do a blog post every Thursday for MONTHS about the website alone. 

Yep.  Hoco has the best libraries around.

Every time I walk in, I'm grateful I live here.  With the shocking number of library that are losing their funding and closing it makes me ache about the future of America.

Thank you, Howard County Libraries... thank you.

HOCO Thursdays- When the blogging world and the real world collide

Do you know where I went last night?  To a party.  ON A SCHOOL NIGHT.   I know, I couldn't believe it either.

So I live in Howard County and I'm a blogger which qualifies me for Hoco Blogs.  And once a month they have a blogger party.  This is what I learned at this party.

1) Ian is a real person.  Remember a few weeks ago when I posted about my road and then I wrote about it here:   Yep. I meant the County executive's chief of staff, in person.  And he's awesome.  And I'm NOT just saying that because there's a very good likelihood he's reading this blog.  He was down to Earth and talked honestly about local government.  

2) I met TJ. A few days ago, an email appeared in my inbox, and you might not know this about me but I'm a little OCD about checking my inbox.  Anyway he found my blog and asked if he could quote me in an article for The Patch about blogging.   He, too, is awesome. You can read the article here.

3) Elizabeth she is the editor for The Patch in Elkridge.  In a work...awesome.   Are you detecting a trend here?

4) Blogger in Howard County come in all shapes, ages, ethnic background.  As soon as I walked in to the Stain Glass Pub, i felt like I instantly belonged.   Every blogger I spoke with genuinely cared about connecting with other bloggers and sharing their interests IRL (in real life- for those of you who aren't down with the tech speak)

5)Jessie Newburn ROCKS at throwing parties.  She runs the hocoblogs.com website and organized the par-tay.  She came around talked with everyone-- she very cool tech guru who is reaching out to the communities of Howard County and trying to bring us all together.  Oh and something magical will happen if I do the hocoblogs@@@ in my blog post.  go to hocoblogs.com to see what it was.

6) Blogging, like writing, always felt like a solo thing I did.  It wasn't until Mo suggested I join hocoblogs that I ever considered writing about my home town.

7)The food at The Stain Glass Pub was amazing (you thought I was going to say awesome, did you?)

8) People like free drinks... they really really like them.  Our waitress seemed shocked when I ordered a sprite, I think I was the only adult drinking a soda.  Didn't everyone else know it was school night?  To go along with that, our waitress was nothing sure of amazingly awesome.

9) I was stressed about writing this post because I have a shameful confession.

10) I'm a sticker slut.   (Although some of them my daughter put on me)

I had a sticker that said #geek but I'm pretty sure with my shirt it was a little redundant.

HOCO Thursdays-HOWARD COUNTY IS THE BEST hocoblogs@@@

Yes, I live in the greatest place in America.  My hometown rocks and every place else sucks.

Um, you know what, I'm pretty sure statements like the one above is how wars get started.

So let me rephrase that, Howard County is the Beatles and every place else is Twisted Sister.

Hey, Twisted Sister is pretty cool, they were mentioned in the greatest movie of the 1980's Flight of the Navigator:  Compliance. 

Back to my point, Howard County is awesome.

Last week I posted a blog about the street I live on. 

By 9:45 I received this comment:

Just after the information was tweeted I received this comment:

Are you kidding me?   The COUNTY EXECUTIVE'S DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF commented on MY BLOG.

So I did email him about the exact street names and so on.  He got back to me in the matter of hours.
He said he'd keep me in the loop about the progress of my streets and that he's looking into the problem.

By Monday he emailed me with more information.  WOW!  Amazing.
Wow!

Local government at work.

Also there's a website called The Patch and they focus on Hyper Local news.  From my super quick research,  Howard county has  Columbia Patch, Ellicott City Patch, Laurel Patch and Elkridge Patch

For those of you who don't live in Howard County, go check out if your own town has a Patch website. 

It's amazing what a little local networking can do and what a huge difference that can be made.

I'll keep you up to date about my road.

HOCO Thursdays-The road I live on

I live in Howard County, it's one of the wealthiest area's in the nation.  It's been voted one of the best places to meet a geek and to live.  (I like geeks, they are my people, so being able to meet a geek would naturally make it a great place to live)

However not all places in HOCO are created equal.  I live in the "not as rich" part of the county.

A few weeks ago they started to fix the very old water main under our roads.  Now I realize that construction is going on and things won't be pretty.  However, my concern is more about what will happen when the construction is over, and what will happen to our roads. 

NEWLY PAVED--- LAST WEEK

Yeah, they didn't know WHAT that is.

The main street of my development

Patch work from a year ago.

A road that was NEVER paved

This is in front of a house

Where the NEW patchwork cracked the road.

New patch work next to the OLD patch work

The road I have to drive down to leave my house

This road was NEVER EVER patched. 

I know it's asking a lot to repave the road when construction is complete.  It will be expensive and a burden on the tax payers.  I too, am a tax payer, I've lived in Howard County for ten years now.  I know all of the money is spent in Columbia, and I know Elkridge has the misfortune of being on the "wrong side of 95" but still, I'm a member of this community too.  I know how I feel when I drive down a road that hasn't been cared for.

It makes me feel worthless, like my home, my neighborhood isn't valued.

So Ken Ulman and all the people who are in charge, will you fix my road?  Thank you.