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A JOYFUL Noise
Area choirs gather to spread the word on a region rich in talent. A-10
The Gazette DAMASCUS | CLARKSBURG
DAILY UPDATES ONLINE www.gazette.net
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
25 cents
Council plan limits Pulte, Peterson development
Damascus girl doesn’t miss a beat n
Despite heart ailment, she thrives through running, love of music BY
SARAH SCULLY STAFF WRITER
Ten-year-old Samantha Haley sits shyly on the couch at home in Damascus, legs curled beneath her, her freckled face tilted downward. She’s uninspired by conversation about pacemakers, heart defects and surgery. She looks up and laughs as her brothers, Jack, 6, and Connor, 2, race around the living room, crashing into things and causing the habitual mayhem of little boys. Usually Samantha’s right there with them, minus the crashing, which could jeopardize her pacemaker. Samantha has relied on a pacemaker to make her heart beat since her second month of life. A pacemaker is a small device implanted under the skin that uses electronic stimuli connected by tiny wires to the heart to keep it on rhythm. Samantha timed her most recent surgery — to replace her pacemaker about a year ago
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RAPHAEL TALISMAN/FOR THE GAZETTE
Samantha Haley (left), 10, and her friend Kaylee Walsman, 9, both of Damascus, play “Lightly Row”as a duet during a talent night on Jan. 30 at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mount Airy. Samantha was born with heart defects due to congenital heart disease. — so she would recover in time for her next 5-kilometer run with Girls on the Run. It was her fourth surgery. Because of her pacemaker, Samantha can’t play contact sports. But that certainly doesn’t hold her back. “I do triathlons and 5ks,” she said. This week, Feb. 7 to Feb. 14, is Congenital
“It was wretchedly scary. You’re thrown into this whole world of medical jargon and doctors.” Lindsay Haley, Samantha’s mother
Measure would help fund candidates but place limits on size of contributions BY RYAN MARSHALL STAFF WRITER
A bill to provide public funding for county executive and county council campaigns has drawn praise from a number of organizations dedicated to good gov-
ernment as an example for other jurisdictions to follow. The bill, sponsored by Councilman Philip M. Andrews (D-Dist. 3) of Gaithersburg and co-sponsored by all eight of his council colleagues, would allow candidates to receive public money to help fund their campaigns, but places limits on the size of contributions for candidates who accept it. The bill was introduced Tuesday. Andrews, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for county
VIRGINIA TERHUNE STAFF WRITER
director, Jennifer Bevan-Dangel, praised the legislation Monday as something that could be used in other counties. “We absolutely believe that Montgomery County is setting the model for other counties to follow and for the state to follow,” BevanDangel said. She said Howard and Anne Arundel counties are two that might take up similar legislation
See FUNDING, Page A-8
See COUNCIL, Page A-8
Heart Defect Awareness Week. Congenital heart defects are the most common birth defects. They affect about 1 in 100 infants — 40,000 every year — according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “When she was two weeks old, I went to a routine checkup and they said she had a heart murmur. And I wasn’t really concerned at first,” said Samantha’s mother, Lindsay Haley. She knew that many people have harmless heart murmurs. Holes usually are detected at around two to six weeks, said Dr. Gerard Martin, a cardiologist who specializes in congenital heart disease for Children’s National Health System. Screenings, during sonograms and by testing babies’ oxy-
See GIRL, Page A-8
executive in the June 24 primary, said Monday he believes the bill will encourage more candidates to run for office and more residents to participate in campaigns, as well as reduce the influence of special interests in government. Andrews said he’s been working on the issue since before his election to the council in 1998, including while serving as executive director of Common Cause Maryland from 1988 until 1994. That group’s current executive
BY
Some Montgomery County Council members have proposed scaling back three large developments to protect the Ten Mile Creek watershed in Clarksburg and Boyds. The plan would impose 8 percent caps on paved surfaces. That would reduce the amount of land disturbed on the proposed Pulte Homes development on farmland west of Interstate 270 and the Miles Coppola mixed-use and Egan residential sites east of I-270. “We will move that we treat all of the properties before us equally, and that we limit the level of imperviousness to 8 percent on each,” Councilman Roger Berliner (D-Dist. 1) of Potomac wrote in a memo to fellow council members on Monday night. He proposed the cap along with Councilmen Marc Elrich (D-At Large) of Takoma Park and Hans Riemer (D-At Large) of Takoma Park. Berliner introduced the proposal at a joint meeting on Tuesday afternoon of the Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy & Environment Committee, which he heads, and the Planning, Housing, and Economic Development Committee, headed by Councilwoman Nancy M. Floreen (D-At Large) of Garrett Park. The two committees are expected to discuss the proposal at their joint meeting Tuesday. They will make a recommendation to the full council, which will vote on how much development to allow in the watershed, considered one of the last relatively natural ones left in the county. “I think they’re moving in the right direction with less impervious surface,” said Diane Cameron, who heads the Save Ten Mile Creek coalition, which opposes any more large developments in the watershed. However, Cameron said the council is “trying to provide the best possible solution” to enable the envisioned build-out of Clarksburg, which is halfway toward a goal of 40,000 residents. The current level of impervious surface in the Ten Mile Creek watershed is estimated at 4 percent. The Berliner proposal would raise it to 6 percent. That as-
Andrews urges public campaign funding n
Proposal would impose cap on pavement to protect Ten Mile Creek watershed
Wintry assault assails county’s road salt supplies and budgets n
Cold temperatures, regular storms have kept crews busy BY
RYAN MARSHALL STAFF WRITER
Having survived last month’s polar vortex and with Punxsutawney Phil recently predicting six more weeks of winter weather, state, county and local officials are keeping an eye on the toll this winter’s weather has taken on their supplies and budgets. Montgomery County has used slightly less than 50,000 tons of road salt since the winter season started in November, said Keith Compton, the chief of the Division of
Highway Services in the county’s Department of Transportation. At $52 a ton from the county’s supplier at the Port of Baltimore, that’s about $2.6 million worth of salt so far this winter. The county tries to keep about 30,000 tons on hand so it will always be prepared for a major storm. “That’s the comfort zone,” Compton said. County road crews responded to eight weather events in January, and also had to deal with a lot of ice created by the unseasonably cold temperatures that sometimes dipped into the single digits, Compton said. The State Highway Administration has had to use liquid magnesium, designed
to make salt effective at much lower temperatures, in the state’s metropolitan areas where it’s usually not needed because the temperature of the pavement doesn’t generally get as cold as it has this year, said spokesman David Buck. About the only bright side has been that the cold temperatures have usually made the snow fluffy and easier to plow, he said. Buck said the winter has been a tough one around the state, with Garrett County accumulating more than 100 inches of snow and Ocean City getting about 13 inches. The highway agency has activated its emergency operations center 24 times since
See SALT, Page A-8
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A STEP UP? Petition urges varsity status for county high school hockey.
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TOUGH DECISIONS FOR ATHLETES Players make signing day commitments too early because of recruitment pressure.
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Salt trucks wait at a parking lot in Gaithersburg to start salting roads Monday.
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