Route 1 Reporter (https://route1reporter.com/category/news/page/2/)
After mistakenly granting, then revoking, a tax break for a student-housing project, College Park City Council narrowly approved a measure granting the project a reduced tax break anyway under a new waiver created for this specific situation.
An endorsement from County Councilor Deni Taveras in Hyattsville’s mayoral race – and its deletion from a popular Hyattsville listserv afterward by a moderator – sparked a controversy Tuesday. Critics of Taveras focused on the ethics of using her official county email address to send the message. Critics of the moderator, Hyattsville activist Jim Groves, said the decision to remove the post from the forum was overzealous moderation at best, censorship at worst. In the end, both Groves and Taveras were pleading for understanding from the public.
Mount Rainier suddenly has a mayoral race featuring Ward 1 City Councilor Celina Benitez facing off against Ward 2 City Councilor Scott Cecil.
Ward Four City Councilor Edouard Haba issued a lengthy endorsement of mayoral hopeful and Ward Five City Councilor Joseph Solomon, rebuking “negative and unfounded” accusations from former mayor Candace Hollingsworth.
In the race to fill out the last two-years of her term, former Hyattsville Mayor Candace Hollingsworth said voters should choose interim Mayor Kevin Ward for the role. In the process, she also issued a stinging denunciation of mayoral hopeful and current Ward Five City Councilor Joseph Solomon that was quickly echoed by another current City Council member.
College Park City Council appears supportive of still-preliminary design plans for a cycle-centric overhaul of Rhode Island Avenue. But the plans are likely to disappoint some cycling safety advocates, who in previous meetings called for more robust separation between the bicycles and cars.
After a public hearing that saw dozens of city residents weigh in, Hyattsville City Council continues to be split over what to rename Magruder Park. Two options, however, have seemingly won the most vocal support from public commenters and City Council members – naming the park after either David C. Driskell or the Nacotchtank indigenous people who once inhabited the Anacostia River basin.
At least two industrial development projects are interested in buying the Stone Straw site in northern College Park, according to city officials. Further details remain a mystery, save one: a proposal to build a fish processing plant on the site, first revealed in 2020, seems to be dead.
Prince George’s County municipalities are set to receive a collective $160 million in federal pandemic recovery funds to spend over the next three years.
Hyattsville has begun to accept applications for the city’s Pandemic Relief Fund from artists and tradespeople.