By Adam Pagnucco.
Passage of the county’s new rent control law is undoubtedly the most important thing to happen in MoCo this year. And regardless of whether folks supported it or opposed it, most observers seem to agree that it’s a significant event in recent county history. But how important is it? Montgomery County has a long and tumultuous history memorably chronicled in former Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson’s book, Suburb. How does rent control compare to other landmark events in Maryland’s largest county?
That’s a really hard question. In fact, it may be too hard for any one person to answer. So I consulted a group of some of my wisest, most thoughtful long-time sources. Let’s call them a panel of MoCo historians. All of them have many years of experience in living and/or working in the county, some for several decades. They include former and current elected officials, key government staffers and seasoned observers with insight far exceeding my own.
This series contains a list of MoCo’s most important events that we compiled together.
The first thing that we did was assemble a preliminary list of historical events from the 1960s on. I could have gone back further but I wanted to keep the list within the living memory of my historians. I also de-emphasized elections and specific elected officials for the most part. (That might be a separate series.) The preliminary list totaled 88 events.
When this list was complete, I emailed them this request:
A list of important structural events in county history since the 1960s appears below. (Most of these events were suggested by one of you!) I’d like you to place the most important of these events into each of the following buckets, which will contain five events each. Whether the events are good, bad or a mix of both, what’s relevant here is whether you believe they were important.
Bucket 1: Transformational (Top 5 events)
Bucket 2: Extremely Important (Second 5 events)
Bucket 3: Very Important (Third 5 events)
Bucket 4: Significant (Fourth 5 events)
I gave them two weeks to perform this exercise. Twenty of them responded. No two responses were alike. Sixty-nine different events were selected by at least one source. So I put them into a spreadsheet and crunched them because – hey folks! – that’s what I do.
Let me stress this: the exercise was HARD. I am very grateful to everyone who participated. And on top of their picks, many of my sources offered comments, some of which I will reprint.
So what did we pick as the most important events in recent MoCo history? Our panel of historians will speak soon, so keep reading!