July 14, 2008
Dear Friends:
It has been awhile since I reached out to you by email, and I hope we can use this new Friends of Joe Hoeffel website to stay in touch, share ideas and discuss the issues that challenge our neighborhoods and communities.
I would like to communicate with you every few weeks to update you on the latest political and governmental news in Montgomery County, and to share some views on other issues that face us at all levels of government.
Please let me hear from you with any thoughts, comments or advice. Feel free to share this message with friends and colleagues and urge them to sign up for emails on the website.
THE MONTGOMERY MIRACLE
A remarkable thing occured last winter in Montgomery County government: a Republican commissioner (Jim Matthews) and a Democratic commissioner (that would be me) formed a bi-partisan coalition to govern the county. I am happy to report that the coalition is going strong and promises to deliver some great improvements to the people of Montgomery County.
Of course, I didn't have much to do with the split in the GOP that gave me the opportunity to form the coalition - I was the proverbial right guy in the right place at the right time. The split between Republicans Jim Matthews and Bruce Castor was apparent during the 2007 campaign, and my teammate Ruth Damsker and I worked very hard to take advantage - but we came up just short with 48% of the vote as the Democratic team last fall.
Once Matthews, Castor and I started talking during the transition about how to organize the Board of Commissioners it quickly became clear to me how much Jim and Bruce don't like each other. They don't like each other even a little. Neither wanted to support the other for chairman, and neither would support me (yes, I tried that!).
It basically came down to my choice, and in the end the choice was easy. Jim and I found common ground on numerous issues we felt the county government should address, while Bruce simply couldn't provide a program or agenda for governing the county. Jim and I wanted a government run by a bi-partisan concensus, while Bruce wanted a government run by Bruce.
THE BI-PARTISAN AGENDA
We have set three primary goals for the county: economic development, transportation improvements, and greening the county through both conservation and land preservation.
Amazingly, Montco doesn't have an economic development plan. By this fall the county will have one, thanks to the hard work of the volunteer task force we appointed and the consultant we hired and the economic development cabinet we formed. We will focus on our older communities and downtowns throughout the county that have suffered from a lack of private investment in recent decades as developers and investors have put their money in shopping malls and projects in suburban communities. I am pushing for a new county economic development fund to give us some skin in the game of attracting private capital and state and federal subsidies for worthy projects.
Second, we intend to create a transportation improvement fund at the urging of our planning commission to help the county and our municipal governments finance road projects to improve traffic capacity and fight congestion. State and federal dollars are being primarily focused on bridge repairs and road reconstruction, leaving no money for the new left turn lanes and intersection improvements and traffic light synchronizations that keep local and regional traffic moving. We intend to provide this funding through a competitive matching grant program to do our part to fight traffic gridlock.
Finally, we are planning energy conservation steps for our county buildings and conservation incentives for our employees that, frankly, are long overdue. We will also continue the county's outstanding open space preservation program, and plan to reallocate some funds to speed up the assembly of green and protected land along the Schuylkill River corridor.
Well, this first email got too long - I hope you made it through. Please let me know what you think about these issues or anything else you would like to discuss. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
