Hyattsville

Hyattsville Council Endorses Plans for 316 Apartments

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Hyattsville City Council gave its blessing to a proposed apartment building near the soon-to-be-renamed Prince George’s Plaza Metro Station.

Mount Rainier gets new City Councilor to fill vacancy

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Mount Rainier elected officials voted to seat Jimmy Tarlau, a former state delegate and city councilor, to fill a City Council vacancy left by May’s election of Celina Benitez as mayor. 

Tarlau was voted in by a vote of three to one at Mount Rainier’s June 1, 2021, City Council meeting. Ward Two Councilor Scott Cecil voted against. Under Mount Rainier’s City Charter, the responsibility for selecting possible candidates to replace Benitez lies exclusively with the remaining Ward One representative, City Councilor Luke Chesek, who is allowed to forward up to three names for consideration. 

In nominating Tarlau, Chesek said Tarlau’s experience in city as well as state government will be an asset. 

“The biggest reason just has to do with experience,” said Chesek. “I just thought about a few people who had been in this role and Jimmy made the most sense.”

Tarlau said he was happy to be nominated to help Mount Rainier. “I’m really just here to help the Council fulfill its mission.

Mount Rainier City Hall is seen from the distance on a bright sunny day. Solar panels top the roof.
Mount Rainier

10 years later, solar panels start making big bucks for Mount Rainier

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Mount Rainier officials expect the solar panels atop city hall to generate around $100,000 for the city over the next year. That’s a big chunk of change for the city, which – due to a stale email address – earned nothing from the solar panels for the better part of a decade. The news was announced at Mount Rainier’s Sept. 2, 2020, City Council meeting by Councilor Bryan Knedler, who spearheaded the effort to get the panels installed in 2011. According to Knedler, the panels generated about $7,000 for the city last month.

Coronavirus

College Park won’t ask landlords for lease relief

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College Park City Council voted down a measure that would have seen the city endorse a letter from area elected officials calling on landlords to be lenient with student tenants who may not be returning to campus this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. The vote took place during a special voting session held after Council’s regularly-scheduled Aug. 4, 2020, worksession. College Park Mayor Patrick Wojahn, explaining his support for endorsing the letter, said University of Maryland officials expect about half of their students to attend class remotely this fall. Some students, as reported by The Diamondback and The Baltimore Sun, are now scrambling to cancel their plans to live on or near campus as a result of the pandemic’s impacts on in-person schooling.

College Park

College Park backs booze for Taqueria Habanero

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City officials are favorably disposed to Taqueria Habanero’s plans to serve alcohol at its College Park location. If all goes according to plan, the restaurant could be approved to serve boozy drinks on Baltimore Avenue by late December 2019. 

The restaurant’s application for a Class B Beer Wine and Liquor License was discussed by College Park City Council at its Oct. 22, 2019 worksession. Following a brief discussion, College Park City Council unanimously approved a measure expressing support for the restaurant’s liquor license application, which must be approved by the Prince George’s County Board of License Commissioners, more commonly known as the Liquor Board. The application goes before the Liquor Board Dec.

College Park

Analysis: ‘Water Wall’ debate shows power & powerlessness of College Park’s fiscal conservatives

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College Park is not like other Route 1 municipalities. Despite nominally being the “largest” city in the corridor, by virtue of the part-time presence of college students, it’s civic character and discourse is more influenced by the approximately 10,000 year-round households whose residents call the city home. In other words, and at least from a local politics perspective, College Park is a small town. And like many small suburban blue-state towns, a vocal contingent of small-government, fiscal conservative suburbanists occupy a place in the local discourse disproportionate to their ability meaningfully affect local policy decisions. Of late, their voices are most-often amplified on City Council by Fazlul Kabir, one of two representatives from northern College Park’s District One, a mostly-suburban character neighborhood roughly bound by the Beltway, Route 1 and the CSX railway.