Live Where They Work for Our Civil Servants!

Looking at the RealtyTrac website, at This Page. it seems that there are 109 Bank Owned Properties right here near Aspen Hill, in the "East Rockville" zipcode 20853 which includes Aspen Hill.

Just a quick glance finds at least a dozen right here within the membership bounds of the Aspen Hill Civic Association, Inc.

That means that there are a dozen empty houses right here in Aspen Hill!

Aspen Hill has a crime problem. Also, about 50 percent of Montgomery County Department of Police's fine officers can't afford to live in Montgomery County.

Let's move those police officers' families into this dozen bank-owned homes. Problem Solved!

I'm good at that, solving problems, I mean.

"But," you ask, "how can we afford to do this when you yourself admit that we have to cut wasteful programs and be more efficient so that we can balance the County budget without raising taxes?"

Like I said, I am good at solving problems.

Simply stated, this will cost the county less than it costs the county to have police officers commute from Frederick, show up at work already tired from the commute, and be less than perfectly fresh and rested when they start their busy day.

Furthermore, abandoned or foreclosed empty properties attract squatters and breed crime. This is well and widely known as it's one of the "official causes" of Detroit's inner city neighborhood meltdowns.

Moving public servants into abandoned properties has been known to work locally, and government subsidy of exactly such process is credited with turning around parts of the District's formerly scary Petworth neighborhood.

Just the savings in "calls for service" or investigations of major crimes is widely believed to have covered the city's initial investment.

And in solving this particular problem in my unerringly elegant and intellectually rigorous way, I have solved another problem. Most of the Community Services budget could conceivably be drastically reduced, simply because there's no possible better Community Service officer than one that lives where they work, and is seen each and every day setting a fine example in the community they need to impress. Rather than having officers drive in from Frederick to deliver community-service messages for 8 hours a day in a place that's just another job site for a commuter, this will be their community. And rather than being some guy that drives in from out of town, the Citizen On Patrol will be a neighbor, someone you can depend on "24/7" unless they take a well-deserved vacation that they can finally afford because they aren't wasting all of their money on a two-hour commute to work among strangers.

Two problems solved in under a dozen paragraphs!

This is why a vote for me is a vote for safer streets: I won't just put more officers on patrol, I'll put more officers in houses in your neighborhood.