Public Notices are primarily generated by the City Clerk and are mostly compromised of messages notifying residents and other stakeholders of public hearings.
Administrative Regulation 2018-1 – Outdoor Cafe Permit Regulation, regulates the establishment and permitting of outdoor cafes operating within the public right-of-way as authorized in Takoma Park Code Section 8.16.090. The regulation has been in effect since 2018. An amendment to the regulation is being proposed to increase the permit and lease fees, enable annual fee updates by publication of fees on July 1 of each year, and remove the requirement for a “processing fee.”
Pursuant to the requirements of the “Administrative Regulations Ordinance” (Authority: Chapter 2.12 “Administrative Regulations,” of the Takoma Park Code), a notice of the City’s intention to adopt, amend, or repeal an administrative regulation must be publicly noted allowing residents the opportunity to comment on the proposal.
To obtain further information about the proposed regulation, contact:
Ira Kowler, Acting Director Housing and Community Development Department, Tel: 301-891-7230 Email: IraK@takomaparkmd.gov.
Written comments on the proposed regulation may be emailed to Clerk@takomaparkmd.gov. The deadline for receipt of public comments is Monday, July 31, 2023.
The City of Takoma Park law (City Code Chapter 6.20 Rent Stabilization) maintains the affordability of rental units by limiting the number and amount of rent increases charged for a specific rental unit. Generally, the rent may be increased only once in any given 12-month period.
Beginning July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024, the Rent Stabilization Allowance is 3.7%. Landlords are required to comply with Takoma Park’s Rent Stabilization law and cannot increase the rent on occupied units any higher than this allowance.
Multi-family rental units and rental condominium units are subject to Rent Stabilization. Rent increases are limited to the percentage change in the Consumer Price Index published by the Department of Bureau of Labor Statistics for the period of March 2022 through March 2023.
Pursuant to the City Code, a two-month written notice must be provided to the tenant(s) before a landlord can legally increase the rent. (City Code Chapter 6.20.050(C) Notice of Annual Rent Increases).
Please note that the following units may be exempt from Rent Stabilization upon application to the City. The exemption is not automatic and must be approved by the City.
• Rental units leased to tenants under the Housing Choice Voucher Program;
• Any rental facility where the rents are regulated under contract by a governmental agency that controls the rent levels of not less than one-half of the rental units in the rental facility and restricts the occupancy of those rental units to low- and- moderate income tenants; and
• Newly constructed rental units for a period of five years after construction.
If you have any questions regarding your rent or need more information about the requirements of the City’s Rent Stabilization law, please contact Jean Kerr, Housing Specialist at 301-891-7216 or 240-672-1023 or email jeank@takomaparkmd.gov.
Thinking about changing up your garden? You can design a garden that is not only beautiful for you but also provides a helpful habitat for pollinators! Here are our tips for making a pollinator-friendly garden.
Plant Native
Not just any plant will make a pollinator-friendly garden. You need plenty of native plants to supply pollen and nectar for our little native friends. Ideally, you’ll have a mix of plants that will bloom from spring through summer and as late into the fall as possible to provide a continual resource for pollinators. For us in Maryland, see the recommended list of native plants. These will help attract bees, butterflies, and birds to your garden and help them on their pollinating journey!
Planting in groups allows the pollinators to work thoroughly and efficiently!
Plant in Groups
Instead of spacing out your pollinator-friendly plants, plant them in groups. Plant at least three to five types of pollinator plants together and layer them throughout your garden. Not only will you get beautiful drifts of color, but you’ll be helping bees and other pollinating insects out. When you space out plants, you make pollinating insects have to move around a great deal, and that can tire them out and slow them down. Groupings allow the pollinators to work these areas thoroughly and efficiently!
Go Natural
To combat pests, go natural instead of using synthetic chemicals. Many pesticides are toxic to bees and other beneficial organisms, so use sticky traps and pheromone traps instead. You can also work with nature to control pests and diseases by using organic fertilizer and quality compost and removing weeds and infected plants.
Add Water
Adding water spots is a must for a pollinator-friendly garden. Providing water sources will attract more pollinators and help them stay hydrated in warm weather. Any water source, natural or man-made, will do. Adding a birdbath is a great way to add a water source as well as decoration to your garden. A hanging dripping bottle also works. Even a simple puddle will provide much-needed water to pollinators.
Provide Resting Spots
Bees, butterflies, and other pollinators need shelter to rest, protect themselves from the elements, hide from predators, and rear their young. If you can, allow part of your garden to grow a little wild. This will provide protection for pollinators as well as allow you to sit back, relax, and let nature do the work for you! You can also provide a pile of grass cutting or a decomposing log in a sunny place on the ground. Even keeping a dead tree standing creates necessary nooks for butterflies and bees.
Takoma Park has seen its tree canopy cover drop by 5.6% since 2009. Tree canopy cover is important to a number of environmental services, including shading and cooling the city, reducing energy bills, intercepting stormwater, and providing a robust ecological habitat. A large portion of the space suitable for tree planting in Takoma Park is located on private property. Properties that choose to plant canopy trees do the City a great service in restoring our urban tree canopy.
The City of Takoma Park has partnered with Casey Trees to provide native canopy trees to properties throughout Takoma Park for free through the Tree Takoma program. Along with the free trees, participants also receive a free consultation with an urban forester to determine the best locations and species for the property. The trees available each season are selected from the Medium and Large categories on the Takoma Park Approved Species List.
All private properties are eligible for Tree Takoma. Commercial, institutional, and rental properties are especially encouraged to participate. Applications are accepted, and consultations are conducted on a rolling basis. Trees are planted from Fall through Spring.
Mayor Talisha Searcy 7500 Maple Ave Takoma Park, MD 20912
Dear Tree City USA Community Member,
On behalf of the Arbor Day Foundation, I’m thrilled to congratulate Takoma Park on earning recognition as a 2022 Tree City USA. Residents of Takoma Park should be proud to live in a community that makes the planting and care of trees a priority.
Founded in 1976, Tree City USA is a partnership between the Arbor Day Foundation, the U.S. Forest Service, and the National Association of State Foresters. Takoma Park is part of an incredible network of more than 3,600 Tree City USA communities nationwide, with a combined population of 155 million.
Over the last few years, the value and importance of trees has become increasingly clear. Cities and towns across the globe are facing issues with air quality, water resources, personal health and well-being, and energy use. Takoma Park has taken steps to create to a brighter, greener future.
We hope you are as excited as we are to share this accomplishment with your local media and your residents. Enclosed in this packet is a press release for you to distribute at your convenience.
We’re excited to celebrate your commitment to the people and trees of Takoma Park. Thank you, again, for your efforts.
By Anna Mische John, Vegetation Maintenance Supervisor
Have you heard of the City Nature Challenge? How about a bioblitz? The City Nature Challenge is a friendly competition form of a bioblitz—an opportunity to observe and document plants, insects, animals, and fungi on a particular site.
On April 29, the City hosted its first City Nature Challenge event. While the City is new to hosting, some of our residents are veterans of the project and active in documenting living organisms through the iNaturalist website.
This event took place over one weekend, in 482 cities across 46 countries. Participation in the annual event has been steadily growing since 2018. The D.C. Metropolitan area ranked fifth worldwide for participants and ninth for the number of species logged.
For this event, we worked at Circle Woods, the two-acre site located between Cockerille and Poplar Aves. and Spring and Circle Aves. The day started off wet, but by the time our birding group gathered, the rain had stopped and held off for the remainder of the event. Over three hours, nearly 200 individual species of birds, insects, and plants were documented at Circle Woods. Some of our noted observations included a horsehair worm (a parasite not often seen outside of its host) and a wood thrush (a species of concern due to its population decline in recent decades). We also saw what turned out to be the most observed species globally: the mallard duck. A nesting pair has made Circle Woods their home.
The Circle Woods City Nature Challenge was a fun way to get out and explore our natural world and meet neighbors. We hope to continue to track biodiversity at the site over the coming years as the plant composition changes with ongoing restoration work.
This article was featured in the June 2023 Newsletter. Visit the Takoma Park Newsletter webpage to see the full list of past newsletters.
Years of training and athletic instinct come together in a microsecond as the striker accepts a pass from her teammate and spots an opening between defenders. The stadium reverberates with energy as she swings her leg with focused power under the ball to send it sailing out of the grasp of the keeper—into the net.
This decisive moment was captured graphically by Takoma Park illustrator Noah Macmillan, and it is being widely distributed on a self-adhesive pieces of paper, about an inch by an inch-and-a-half. You can get a copy of Noah’s work by visiting the Takoma Park Post Office—where you can also pick up copies to share with your friends through letters and postcards. Noah’s stamp commemorating the July 2023 Women’s World Cup was released earlier this year.
This is Noah’s final published piece. He passed away from colon cancer on July 31, 2022, at age 33. Shortly before he passed, Noah learned that his illustration had been chosen, but he was not allowed to share that information. On October 24, 2022, the U.S. Postal Service announced Noah’s image would be the official Women’s World Cup stamp.
“It’s very heartening,” says Lucinda Leach, Noah’s mom, a retired art teacher. “We don’t have him with us anymore, but we have his work, and his work is being distributed so widely. I think they said they’re going to print 20 million copies of the stamps. So 20 million little reminders of Noah are flying around the country. It’s really a wonderful thing.”
“If there was one piece of art to be remembered by, this is kind of this perfect culmination of his interests,” says Jeffrey Macmillan, Noah’s dad, a professional photographer, “because he was fiercely devoted to soccer and to art.”
Noah’s team was Arsenal.
As a professional illustrator, Noah’s unique vision appears on murals and has been featured in publications such as Smithsonian magazine, the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and Bloomberg Businessweek.
“I make pictures that tell stories with clear ideas, simple design, and obsessive attention to color,” said Noah, as quoted on his memorial page at the Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis, where he earned his undergraduate degree in communications design.
“After teaching 18 years, there are always a handful of students you will never forget. Noah MacMillan was one of those,” says John Hendrix, professor and chair of the MFA program in Illustration and Visual Culture. “Noah had a rare and sophisticated visual language that cut across both design and images. I was in awe of his ability to draw, use color, and think graphically about edge and shape so seamlessly. “He had it all inside when I met him. His voice simply had to find a home,” says Hendrix.
“When he was a little boy, Noah had trouble writing,” says Lucinda. “And his hand would kind of cramp up, and he’d be miserable. But then he would use that same hand to draw, and he would sit for hours and draw. He drew incredibly intricate scenes of battles and soccer games and other things. We just pretty much always knew that drawing was going to be a big part of his life.”
Like most kids growing up in Takoma Park, Noah started kicking the ball early through Takoma Soccer. He kept playing during his years at the Edmund Burke School and at Washington University in St. Louis.
Then at age 23, just as he was jumping into his illustration career, Noah was diagnosed with colon cancer. After a long year of treatment, he was given a clean bill of health.
“He ran a marathon to celebrate,” says Jeffrey. “He had seven years cancer-free. He felt great, got engaged. And then, bang, back again.”
“It’s not expected at that age,” says Jeffrey, “so it’s often overlooked”.
While living in St. Louis, Noah met his fiancée, Hitomi Inoue, also a Washington U. grad, whom Jeffrey calls Noah’s third passion (along with soccer and art). Hitomi recalls how excited Noah was to be asked to illustrate a stamp in the summer of 2020, even as he faced a relapse of colon cancer.
“He was in the middle of his first year of grad school, getting his MFA [masters of Fine Arts] at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and COVID happened,” says Hitomi. “[We] decided to go up to Vermont. We’re up there thinking we’re going to be there for three weeks. But then we ended up being there basically for a year.
Illustrator Noah Macmillan’s stamp design was chosen by the U.S. Postal Service as the official image of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which begins on July 20. Image courtesy USPS.
“So Noah gets rediagnosed with cancer in June [2020]. It’s this crazy time where he had just restarted chemo. We were living at the lake. It’s beautiful, but we’re also very isolated from everything,” Hitomi continues. “And he gets an email from this art director who works on a lot of the stamps.
“Noah was like, yeah, I’m gonna design a stamp. And I was like, what?” Hitomi laughs, “Like a postal service stamp? He was like, yeah, it’s real.
So it’s a very dynamic and powerful stamp,” says Hitomi. It reflects Noah’s years of experience capturing movement and emotion with clean efficiency.
“He has a history of having done a lot of soccer art,” says Jeffrey, “which is how he probably popped onto the radar of the art director. Many of his first jobs were working for soccer publications in the U.S. and in Europe—and he was just devout follower of soccer.”
Noah’s family and friends remember him as an extraordinary individual.
“Noah was a gentle soul,” says Lucinda. “He has two younger brothers who are twins [Seth and Julian]. He was just always sweet to them from the time they were born. Most kids, I think, would’ve resented having these other two babies come into their lives and turn everything upside down. But he just was always a really good big brother.
“And, you know, it’s a hard loss for them as well,” she adds.
“One of his best friends said that whatever you say about Noah sounds fake because it sounds too good to be true,” says Hitomi. “He was just very kind, like deeply kind and not superficially kind. He wasn’t really all about bullshit. He wasn’t going to be nice [just] to be nice, but because he was kind. He loved talking to younger artists and people who had just started freelancing to help them figure out how to set up an office, how to get new clients. How to do taxes.”
With Noah’s combination of training and talent—and kindness—in mind, the Macmillan family has established the Noah Philip MacMillan Portfolio Plus Scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis. This summer program provides intensive art classes to rising high school seniors to help them build their portfolios.
“It’s a really great program and hopefully we can fund more kids to go there and really build their confidence in artmaking and learn from the Wash U. professors, who are wonderful,” says Jeffrey.
Find out more about the Noah Philip MacMillan Portfolio Plus Scholarship at tinyurl.com/bddyrzf8. Proceeds from the sale of Noah’s prints will help fund the scholarship. You can find Noah’s work at society6.com (search for Noah Macmillan).
This article was featured in the May 2023 Newsletter. Visit the Takoma Park Newsletter webpage to see the full list of past newsletters.
The Takoma Park Recreation Department was fortunate to have a STEM Spring Break Camp this year. We wanted to highlight STEM camp instructor, Tosin Adetoro. Tosin taught the teens various STEM subjects, such as circuitry, robotics, and coding. Over Spring Break she kept the teen participants engaged and excited to learn about STEM.
Tosin has a bachelor’s in physics from Frostburg State University and a master’s in technology education from Virginia Tech. She also received her Educational Leadership and Administration Certificate from George Washington University.
“I believe that teaching STEM and STEAM in schools encourages creativity and problem-solving in students, while also teaching them how fun the world around them can be,” says Tosin. “The Spring Break camp with the City of Takoma Park challenged the campers to use the engineering design process and the 4Cs (collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking) to solve design challenges. I am looking forward to building upon these activities in the upcoming summer STEM camp in June.”
Another fun week of STEM camp is lined up for teens, June 26-June 30. Register now for a fun and educational week.
This article was featured in the May 2023 Newsletter. Visit the Takoma Park Newsletter webpage to see the full list of past newsletters.
Another farmers market also kicked off its newest season last month. The Crossroads Farmers Market—located on Anne St. at University Blvd. East—began its 17th season on Wednesday, April 26. Going through Nov. 22, the Crossroads Farmers Market is a “producers-only farmers market that features a range of vendors selling fresh fruits, vegetables, eggs, honey, coffee, flowers, and plants,” according to its website.
“Most of our vendors are returning and they come in year after year,” says Sara Servin, Senior Farmers Market Program Manager for Crossroads Community Food Network. “It’s smile-inducing to see everyone again after a long winter.”
This year, the market will feature a few new vendors, including Swamp Rose Cooperative, a worker-owned native plant nursery and landscaping company based in Montgomery County. Crossroads also partners with Takoma Park Presbyterian Church’s community kitchen to bring in ButterQueen Bakery, a Black-owned bakery specializing in southern homestyle pound cakes and treats with vegan and gluten-free options; and Cookie Yay, a father-daughter business that provides natural, gourmet, gluten free, vegan, non-GMO, and allergen-friendly cookie options.
Like the Takoma Park Farmers Market, Crossroads accepts federal nutrition benefits.
“We were the first in the U.S. to match SNAP at farmers markets and have been doing it for 17 seasons,” says Servin. “We match up to $60 in SNAP funds, and WIC is $1-to-$1 without a limit. I think that the WIC sales make up about a third of total market sales, so it’s pretty significant.”
Servin says Crossroads is about much more than just the produce. The goal is to make it a social event for those looking for fresh produce, including hosting concerts and special events like health screenings, cooking demonstrations, and seed giveaways.
“We do a lot of activities that bring in the community and get people coming back week after week,” says Servin.
On May 10, Crossroads is holding special events for Mother’s Day, including plant giveaways, raffles and special discounts for moms. For information on Crossroads Farmers Market, visit crossroadscommunityfoodnetwork.org/farmers-market.
This article was featured in the May 2023 Newsletter. Visit the Takoma Park Newsletter webpage to see the full list of past newsletters.
It’s that time of the year again. The days are getting longer, bees are buzzing, and the flowers are blooming. That also means it’s the season for fresh, local produce at the city’s farmers markets.
On Sunday, April 16, the Takoma Park Farmers Market—located at 6931 Laurel Ave.—kicked off its 40th season with Mayor Talisha Searcy ringing the opening bell.
The market runs on Sundays year-round and has fresh, seasonal produce, breads, meats, cheeses and more, all sourced within 125 miles of Takoma Park. When the market began in 1983, it was the D.C. area’s first Sunday market and had only six vendors along Laurel Avenue.
“It started as a small market that the city of Takoma Park introduced to bring fresh local produce to its residents,” says Laura Barclay of Main Street Takoma. “Now it’s completely farmer-run. There’s 24 full-time vendors and very little vendor turnover. When a space opens up, they look to replace the farmer or producer with something similar. If they lose a meat vendor, they look to add a meat vendor. It’s very curated to make sure everyone’s shopping needs are met.”
According to a proclamation from Mayor Searcy marking the 40th anniversary, three family farms have continued to be a part of the market since the earliest years: Potomac Vegetable Farms (40 years), Twin Springs Fruit Farm (40 years), and Black Rock Orchard (39 years).
“The Takoma Park Farmers Market is a Takoma Park institution that is a lively, weekly shopping destination for residents and visitors and a favorite meeting place for neighbors,” the mayor’s proclamation reads.
This year, the Takoma Park Farmers Market has a new vendor—Oksana’s Produce Farm—which offers a variety of fermented foods including pickles, kraut, kimchi, pickled onions, and much more.
The Takoma Park Farmers Market is a proud supporter of federal benefits, and vendors accept credits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program(SNAP); Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT); the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program; Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Assistance (Senior FMNP); and D.C. WIC.
“The market has been a longtime supporter of the programs and offers the ability for EBT, WIC, and SNAP users to use their benefits at the market,” says Barclay. “The market applies for grants and matches a portion of what’s spent.”
The market is currently matching the first $10 spent through nutrition benefit programs.
In addition to accepting nutrition benefits, the market also partners with Shepherd’s Table and Small Things Matter to collect unsold food to serve the unhoused and others in need.
The market also hosts special events, like an upcoming garlic day that will feature cooking demonstrations and its annual pie contest in September that raises over $1,000.
“Last year, we had people lined up down the block to try the pies,” says Barclay. “There was a very strong sense of community pride.”
for pollinators! Here are our tips for making a pollinator-friendly garden.
