Guest column by Link Hoewing.
In 2019, three members of the Fair Access Committee for the Western County published a Washington Post op-ed arguing that Montgomery County’s beloved, 93,000-acre Agricultural Reserve has a “dark side.” While recognized across the region for its scenic beauty, the Reserve’s vast open spaces and sparse population mean that the vital services, programs, and facilities enjoyed by down-county residents simply do not exist here in most cases. Geographic isolation heavily affects our older, lower-income, and infirm neighbors, while a sparse population dilutes our political influence. For decades, this combination has too often led down-county policymakers to overlook the very real social, environmental, and economic challenges we face.
As District 2 Councilmember Marilyn Balcombe, who represents the Western County, aptly noted in a recent campaign mailer: “For too long we were taken for granted.” Her observation highlights a deep historical imbalance. When leaders do not live in or understand a community, they struggle to comprehend the unique issues affecting its constituents. Downcounty, with its much larger population and higher voter turnout rates than Upcounty, has elected far more at-large members over time who do not live in the Upcounty. Geographic equity is too often given short shrift, yet its absence has shaped the Western County for decades.
A Legacy of Systemic Neglect
Recognizing this systemic neglect, residents and Town Commissioners established the Fair Access Committee for the Western County in 2018. From its inception, the Committee’s mission extended far beyond the Town of Poolesville; it was established to advocate on key equity issues affecting the citizens of the Western County, encompassing 66,000 acres and 93 square miles of the Agricultural Reserve.
Our first major battle was saving our decades-old high school. Beginning in 1985 and stretching across three decades, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) repeatedly scheduled Poolesville High School for modernization, only to “shelve” the project as the budget cycle moved forward. While there was never an “official” public plan to close the school, this persistent lack of investment severely undermined its appeal, status, and long-term viability. The county signaled a similar indifference in 2009 by proposing to close Monocacy Elementary. Though a fierce community defense successfully halted the closure, the attempt proved to residents that our rural schools were treated as little more than an afterthought.
The inequities extend far beyond education. The Western County suffers from a near-total absence of county-supported youth and senior programming; lacks a community center; and has virtually no public transit to serve isolated residents. Compounding this isolation is a severe lack of local healthcare. Residents must travel great distances to see specialists in Rockville, Gaithersburg, or Germantown. For those who lack reliable transportation, the consequences are measurably dire: a recent county study revealed that the Dickerson zip code suffers from the worst health outcomes in all of Montgomery County.
Overcoming Invisibility and Stereotypes
These systemic gaps stem to a significant degree from many public officials’ lack of familiarity with rural life, our farming community, and our small, family-owned business economy. When Fair Access was first organized, we presented these stark inequities to a joint meeting of county agency officials. At the conclusion of our presentation, a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) official asked, “I hear about health care access, but don’t you have a clinic out there?” I sat in near-stunned silence before replying, “No, we had one up until 1989, and then the county closed it.” We also had a “bare ribs” community center that shared space with the school library. It was closed after the County declined to fully fund an upgrade in 1978.
This lack of deep community knowledge has also led many outsiders to mistakenly assume our rural area lacks diversity. That misconception was shattered by a pivotal health care zip code study and the dedicated outreach of our local social services non-profit, WUMCO Help. WUMCO’s work demonstrated that many Hispanic families live in remote areas of the Western County – frequently working on horse farms – and critically lack healthcare access. To bridge these gaps, we are actively championing a first-of-its-kind, multi-generational community center equipped to serve youth, families, and seniors, complete with an attached, dedicated medical clinic.
Our economic vitality faces similar hurdles, exemplified by the grueling five-year struggle to reopen White’s Ferry. White’s Ferry Road is our region’s “main street,” and local small businesses reliant on agritourism and visitor traffic have suffered immensely during this prolonged closure. While Montgomery County stepped into a leadership role in working to try and reopen the Ferry and our state delegation has stepped up in many ways, we faced a frustrating lack of engagement and urgency from many leaders in Maryland and Virginia. It fell upon the Town of Poolesville and the Fair Access Committee to keep the spotlight on the issue, and we helped push strategies that have finally brought us closer to a resolution. It is understandable that local residents don’t believe government leaders care about their area given the fact that this dispute has carried on for five, long years. Many here say this would never have gone on so long in more populated areas of the county and who can blame them?
Building Political Voice and Resilience
Some political observers point to historically lower voter turnout in the Western County and Poolesville as the root of our political challenges. With decades of experience working in politics and in Congress, I can understand this perspective, but it ignores the underlying psychology that has bred distrust of politicians and the system. Decades of systemic neglect inevitably erode the public’s faith in the electoral process too. Why vote when nothing changes? When government repeatedly fails to acknowledge your issues, citizens stop believing their votes matter. As my old boss used to say: it is not excusable, but it is entirely explainable.
We see this disillusionment reinforced by the agonizingly slow process of closing the Dickerson Waste Incinerator. When it was originally conceived in 1986, County Executive Charles Gilchrist bypassed the alternative proposal to locate the incinerator at the Shady Grove Transfer Station because, he claimed, it “seemed to be basic good sense” to put a massive trash-burning facility in a remote and green farming area. Gilchrist’s decision significantly increased both costs and operational complexity. At the time, Gilchrist explicitly acknowledged that choosing the Dickerson site was nearly one-third more costly than building it at the more heavily populated transfer station site in Gaithersburg.
The decision added long-term structural complexity to the county’s waste management system by creating a multi-step logistics chain. All waste must first be hauled by trucks to the Shady Grove Transfer Station in Derwood. The trash is compacted into intermodal steel containers and loaded onto railcars using gantry cranes. CSX transportation must assemble and haul a dedicated train 20 miles to the Dickerson Resource Recovery Facility every single day. The containers are off-loaded and trucked from the on-site railyard to the actual boiler facility. Given all these factors and the added cost, it is no wonder rural residents in our area believe their voices are routinely ignored.
To combat the decades long failure to listen to our residents, we recognized that we had to aggressively protect and expand our political voice during the recent county redistricting process. We actively advocated for the new District 2 map, which far better reflects our rural lifestyle, our agricultural economy, and the shared needs of Dickerson, Barnesville, Beallsville, Poolesville, and rural Boyds. Previously, we were grouped into District 1, which stretched all the way from Dickerson to Bethesda – an urban center that outpopulated the Western County by more than five to one. We were fortunate that our former Councilmember, Andrew Friedson and County Executive Marc Elrich, prioritized our needs despite that population imbalance. However, securing a new district tailored to our actual geography and community values helps ensure strong, responsive representation for the future, a reality demonstrated by the leadership of Councilmember Marilyn Balcombe.
The “Secret Sauce” of the Western County
Rather than waiting around for the county to rescue us, our small community has consistently lifted itself up by its bootstraps. Organizations like WUMCO Help, Riverworks, and Poolesville Seniors step into the void every day, providing the vital social, cultural, and recreational programming that the county government fails to deliver. Our “secret sauce” has always been our deep community ties and an unwavering willingness to work together to achieve results, regardless of our political or personal differences.
We cannot do it all alone. We need and deserve our fair share of county support. Today, the tide is finally turning. The comprehensive rebuild of Poolesville High School is complete, progress on the new community center is moving forward, and our campaign to install a year-round bubble over the Sarah E. Auer local pool is gaining real momentum.
The election of Marilyn Balcombe to the Council and Dawn Luedtke who together represent the Ag Reserve, have trained a much brighter light on the Reserve and its needs. We are fortunate too to have a member of our D-15 state delegation – David Fraser Hidalgo – as a resident of rural Boyds. By acting as a persistent, unified “squeaky wheel,” we have developed strong relationships with our elected leaders and proved that we can achieve tangible results. It takes a significant amount of time to restore a community’s trust in government after decades of neglect, but we are making measurable progress every single day. As budgets get strained and elected officials increasingly prioritize projects, the goal is to remind them that this side of the county doesn’t deserve to be squeezed out – recent progress and momentum must continue. I believe deeply in our community and the deep seated belief in equity in this County. The future can only be brighter.
Link Hoewing is the Chair of the Fair Access Committee. These comments are offered from his own perspective as a community member and long-time activist and are not intended to be the official views of the Committee or the Town of Poolesville. Any errors are his responsibility alone.