{"id":3384,"date":"2025-08-18T21:56:49","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T01:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/18\/county-officials-to-spend-15-million-on-community-engagement-for-50k-playground\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T21:57:36","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T01:57:36","slug":"county-officials-to-spend-15-million-on-community-engagement-for-50k-playground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/18\/county-officials-to-spend-15-million-on-community-engagement-for-50k-playground\/","title":{"rendered":"County Officials to Spend $15 Million on Community Engagement For $50k Playground"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo Credit: Cuchulain\/Wikipedia Commons <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

ROCKVILLE, MD – Montgomery County officials proudly announced plans to invest $15 million in \u201crobust and meaningful community engagement\u201d before approving construction of a modest $50,000 playground in Chevy Chase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite thousands of mailed postcards, an eight-part Zoom series, and a TikTok campaign featuring Planning Board staffers dancing on a swingset, neighbors opposed to the playground insist the outreach has been \u201cinsufficient.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel blindsided,” remarked one county resident. “The county should have warned us about this playground at least five years before my grandchildren were born.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concerns have also surfaced that the playground could displace residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis tragic yet predictable consequence could have been avoided with a deeper and more inclusive engagement strategy,\u201d said George H.W. Witherspoon IV, president of the Chevy Chase Section 3 Citizens Association. \u201cA swing set today, and tomorrow you\u2019ve priced out all the low-income families that want to live in our exclusive neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others argued the playground could simultaneously attract too many undesirable people. \u201cFirst it\u2019s homeless people, then it\u2019s noisy children. Both are bad, but in different, contradictory ways,\u201d explained one neighbor. \u201cIt\u2019s both a magnet for the wrong kind of people and a bulldozer pushing them out. And don\u2019t get me started on the traffic from families driving in to use OUR playground!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid the uproar, the Planning Board agreed to expand the budget by an additional $10 million to fund more impact studies, including one specifically about whether the sound of children laughing will penetrate triple pane windows.

Unfortunately, the ballooning $25 million engagement tab forced the county to cancel the actual playground, citing cost overruns amid discussions of a property tax increase. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ROCKVILLE, MD – Montgomery County officials proudly announced plans to invest $15 million in \u201crobust and meaningful community engagement\u201d before approving construction of a modest $50,000 playground in Chevy Chase. Despite thousands of mailed postcards, an eight-part Zoom series, and a TikTok campaign featuring Planning Board staffers dancing on a swingset, neighbors opposed to the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[403,1754,114,389,184,724,1808,183,516,95,1735,482,1009,1101,24,77,970,1130,916,370,140,853,489,806,1136,1253,807,371,368,979,386,1838,1224,340,141,1387,490,49,617,1288,1593,317,189,640,2078,1339,399,311,309,668,638,130,445,1733,1925,339,1204,116,935,82,805,94,1959,882,1214,803,542,137,93,136,878,4,2,718,104,1840,153,38,387,615,313,934,406,115],"class_list":["post-3384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-affordable-housing","tag-all-are-welcome-here","tag-amazon","tag-apartments","tag-bethesda","tag-bethesdafication","tag-bluesky","tag-chevy-chase","tag-cnn","tag-comedy","tag-community-vision-for-takoma","tag-dc","tag-dc-humor","tag-dc-news","tag-dc-satire","tag-disney-plus","tag-dmv-news","tag-dmv-satire","tag-downtown-silver-spring","tag-facebook","tag-fake-news","tag-forest-glen","tag-funny","tag-gaithersburg","tag-gentrification","tag-georgetown","tag-germantown","tag-gmail","tag-google","tag-google-news","tag-housing","tag-housing-crisis","tag-housing-shortage","tag-hulu","tag-humor","tag-instagram","tag-jokes","tag-karen","tag-kensington","tag-kristin-mink","tag-local-satire","tag-marc-elrich","tag-maryland","tag-maryland-satire","tag-mcdot","tag-minor-master-plan","tag-missing-middle","tag-mncppc","tag-moco","tag-moco-planning-board","tag-moco-satire","tag-montgomery-county","tag-montgomery-county-planning","tag-montgomery-county-satire","tag-more-housing-now","tag-netflix","tag-nimbee","tag-nimby","tag-north-bethesda","tag-northwest-dc","tag-olney","tag-parody","tag-permits","tag-pg-county-news","tag-planning-board","tag-potomac","tag-reddit","tag-rockville","tag-satire","tag-silver-spring","tag-single-family-zoning","tag-takoma","tag-takoma-park","tag-takoma-park-satire","tag-takoma-torch","tag-tiktok","tag-tkpk","tag-twitter","tag-urbanism","tag-washington-dc","tag-wheaton","tag-white-flint-metro","tag-will-jawando","tag-yimby","wpcat-17-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/takomatorch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/playground_24821636943586538549.jpg?fit=1280%2C956&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paPZSG-SA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3385,"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384\/revisions\/3385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takomatorch.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}