Alan Freeman wanted to mention the Churchill cluster.
“I think you have to get specific,” he said.
Freeman, a member of the Western Montgomery County Citizens Advisory Committee, was speaking at the committee’s meeting which discussed setting priorities of residents in the western part of the county for the upcoming Capital Improvements Program (CIP). The CIP sets which county facilities will be renovated or constructed.
The committee started with some core values in developing its recommendations.
“We want quality public education. We want uncompromised public safety,” said Committee Member Renee Kotz.
The committee’s final recommendations, while not finalized at presstime, will include several projects in the Potomac area.
One specific recommendation is the renovation of Cabin John Station 30. The fire station, located on Falls Road between River Road and MacArthur Boulevard, is considered too small to accommodate its equipment and staff.
Some of the most contentious debate came up over the topic of school renovations.
While Freeman wanted to draw specific attention to the Churchill Cluster, other members of the committee balked at the idea.
“I’m just worried about the board being perceived as taking sides on this,” said Committee Member Thomas Murphy.
Murphy pointed out that the board’s constituency covers four different clusters — Churchill, Whitman, B-CC, and Walter Johnson — and did not want it to seem as if they favored one over the other.
“If you were to get the PTA presidents of those four clusters in a room … you’d have quite a debate on your hands,” Murphy said.
Freeman, however, feared that unless specific schools were mentioned, they would be lost in the shuffle. “If there are particularly egregious examples, you’ve got to put them in there,” he said.
Murphy argued that if the committee mentioned schools from one cluster, it would have to give equal representation to the schools in each cluster. “In the Whitman cluster, renovating Pyle Middle School is a top priority,” he said. He also pointed out that of the four high schools, Walter Johnson is the only one which has not recently been modernized.
Rather than develop a laundry list of schools to be renovated, the committee decided to draw attention to a common problem, overcrowding and a lack of gymnasiums at elementary schools. “These are shared needs among the four clusters,” Murphy said.
The committee hopes to forward its final recommendations to the county executive by early next week.