Prince George's County? (Silver Spring, Bethesda, Gaithersburg: leasing, house prices, neighborhoods)

[RamblingMan]

Originally Posted by liliblu

People who honestly want a stronger communities work for them. They don't constantly live in negativity. That's why I encourage people who can't see anything but the negative to go. They do more harm than good.

Liliblu,

I have to agree with you on this. PG County has plenty of issues and I don't think anybody on this forum really denies that. But what is it that makes people want to rehash the same issues again and again and again? This whole pointless discussion started not because someone interested in living in PGC asked a legitimate question about what it is like to live in the County, but because someone who doesn't even live in the county restarted a thread that had been dead for five months. It even started with "Thread Necro".

I have no desire to live in DC, Northern Virginia, Howard County, Calvert County, or Detroit, but I don't feel compelled to get on those forums to make sweeping generalizations those places and tell other people they shouldn't live there.

[TCR25]

Originally Posted by EdwardA

I think in an earlier post I mentioned that PG lacks private development. They can get the Feds to locate here through strong arm tactics of the CBC but private capital investment of the likes we've seen in Moco forget about it.

Konterra up in Greenbelt is private; National Harbor and the planned additional developments there are private; on a much smaller scale, there are the developments on Route 1 in Hyattsville, Riverdale Park and College Park ... Some of these are still in discussions/planning and may not move forward and none are Science City, but it's a start ...

[liliblu]

Originally Posted by meatkins

I agree with you here. I volunteer too and hate when people devalued these kids. At the same time i'm not going to pretend that the people running our school system are doing their best. There are a lot of lazy apathetic people who work for pgcps who just don't care about them. That is the reason I remain critical of our schools. The kids deserve better and i think the workers administration deserves a good deal of blame.

There are a lot of great people working to improve the schools as well. Each school and each community comes with its own unique problems. Poverty and all the issues that come with it is problem in some areas but not all. Some schools have high levels of ESL students, lack of parental involvement, overcrowding, etc. All of these issues need to be addressed. There is no one size fits all solution. It looks like the school system is beginning to take this approach.

Yes there are teachers and administrators who need to go but most are working hard each day. We can advocate for the removal of ineffective teachers/administors without demonizing them all.

[kcmo]

^ southern Bowie is nice.

[justtitans]

Originally Posted by TCR25

Konterra up in Greenbelt is private; National Harbor and the planned additional developments there are private; on a much smaller scale, there are the developments on Route 1 in Hyattsville, Riverdale Park and College Park ... Some of these are still in discussions/planning and may not move forward and none are Science City, but it's a start ...

BTW konterra is laurel not greenbelt. Greenbelt has its own proposed development.

[liliblu]

Originally Posted by EdwardA

I think in an earlier post I mentioned that PG lacks private development. They can get the Feds to locate here through strong arm tactics of the CBC but private capital investment of the likes we've seen in Moco forget about it.

Also keep in mind the Feds do not pay Property taxes or I should say are not compelled to.

Federal dollars bring private dollars. Just look at Virginia. Imagine the commenwealth without U.S. Patent and Trade, INS, DISA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Science Foundation, the U.S Marshalls Service, DOD, the TSA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the Office of the Inspector General, and several more. All of those employees in Virginia every day, just waiting to spend those hard earned dollars. Business followed the money.

[justtitans]

Originally Posted by RamblingMan

Liliblu,

I have to agree with you on this. PG County has plenty of issues and I don't think anybody on this forum really denies that. But what is it that makes people want to rehash the same issues again and again and again? This whole pointless discussion started not because someone interested in living in PGC asked a legitimate question about what it is like to live in the County, but because someone who doesn't even live in the county restarted a thread that had been dead for five months. It even started with "Thread Necro".

I have no desire to live in DC, Northern Virginia, Howard County, Calvert County, or Detroit, but I don't feel compelled to get on those forums to make sweeping generalizations those places and tell other people they shouldn't live there.

I hate to say it but these discussions aren't going anywhere until the issues go away. Every forum on this site has the same problems of people complaining. I agree that I get tired of generalizations and people who don't live here commenting but I think at the same time there are some people like myself who are residents and have lived here majority of our lives who get criticized for bringing up some of these problems. There are just too many people that get defensive on here and it leads to the back and forth. A lot of time it has nothing to do if a person is correct or not but if what they are saying makes the county look bad. It's just childish. Although I'm tired of living here, this is my home and always will be. I want to see it do well just like most others but I think people need to learn to be more objective about the criticism instead of looking for excuses just because it sounds 'bad'

[Shadowlynx]

Hey, sorry. I thought it was an interesting thread and I wanted to offer an opinion that can be backed up pretty well by many sources including my own. I didn't expect the firestorm of angry rebuttals, so of course I'm going to defend my position when you come at me from that angle. I've done positive things to help build up the community on many occassions, and I've reached into my own pockets to help the less fortunate in PG, so please don't think that I have it in for the residents of the county or the county itself. I don't. If you guys are taking one person's opinion that personally, then I'll just stop right here and right now and be done with it. I looked forward to stimulating some interesting discussion, not responding to one personal attack after another over a mere opinion. It's called constructive criticism, and I wanted to generate something positive out of it, but I guess that is beyond the scope of those issuing personal attacks. So be it. I wish you the best and I hope things continue to improve in the county to the point that it is no longer the greater area's whipping boy.

[King_of_DC]

Originally Posted by Shadowlynx

I can take her directly to the grave sites of two brothers who were carjacked and shot in the face at point blank range while they were just driving to school. As a matter of fact, she can just read through all of the PG county threads on this forum and observe all of the horror stories from people who once lived in that area. This is just crime we're talking about, this isn't even touching on the crappy school system or the ridiculous amounts of ineptitude and corruption within the leadership of the county.

I met this lady last year who told me of her x-husband who was shot during a car jack a couple of years back... with her in the car. She said he was a nerd (ie no wanna be, etc) and they were coming in from eating dinner. Stopped at the light and boom.

She said PG looks nice during the day but is nothing more than the ghetto at night (her words). I thought, yea you have to drive through some bad areas at times to get the good parts.

Stories like that kill PG as a viable place to live for some.

[Shadowlynx]

Originally Posted by King_of_DC

I met this lady last year who told me of her x-husband who was shot during a car jack a couple of years back... with her in the car. She said he was a nerd (ie no wanna be, etc) and they were coming in from eating dinner. Stopped at the light and boom.

She said PG looks nice during the day but is nothing more than the ghetto at night (her words). I thought, yea you have to drive through some bad areas at times to get the good parts.

Stories like that kill PG as a viable place to live for some.

I'm sorry to hear about her experience. Bad things can happen anywhere from the places that everyone considers safe to the places that are best to avoid. I myself am guilty of focusing on the negative too much instead of recognizing the positive (and I apologize). There are bad areas in every county that are best avoided, but there are also good areas that are idea to raise a family. If a person avoids the bad areas and uses common sense, then they should be just fine in PG. These kinds of stories do not help the county, but the media latches on to them instead of also highlighting the good things that are actually happening. You know the old saying "if it bleeds it leads". There is a lot of spill-over from DC along the MD/DC border, so a lot of the crime is actually being committed by people who don't even live in the county to begin with.