Vision
How do I see Brunswick?
What are some things that I think are true about our city and its future?
These are questions that any candidate for office should answer. Here are my answers to them:
Brunswick is growing and changing, but it shouldn’t break with its past and present.
Every part of Brunswick is vital.
Brunswick is still a railroad town, just in a different way.
Brunswick is a small city, but its own city.
Brunswick is growing and changing, but it shouldn’t break with its past and present.
Brunswick is expected to have ten thousand residents sometime in the 2030s. That’s almost double how big the city was in 2010. Brunswick has also been a mostly blue-collar town for a long time, but more of the new people moving in have white-collar jobs. I’m one of them.
That’s quite a bit of change. There’s a lot of good that will come out of it: new shops, new parks, new restaurants that everyone can enjoy. A bigger population also means a bigger budget, which will let the City spruce up sidewalks, roads, and other things we all rely on.
Let Brunswick evolve rather than be transformed.
But that growth shouldn’t transform Brunswick into an entirely new city. No one wants to see the place they grew up in become unrecognizable. And those of us who came here more recently don’t want that, either. We all chose Brunswick because of things we like about it now: beautiful scenery, a distinct community, low crime, easy access to the river and trails, just to name a few.
So, we can manage it together. Let Brunswick evolve rather than be transformed. Let longtime residents recognize the needs of people who are now moving in. Let newer residents appreciate what’s good about Brunswick now and how that came to be over the years.
I’ll do my part to help us strike that balance.
Every part of Brunswick is vital.
Brunswick’s got a lot of parts, and they’re all pretty different: Downtown and the old B&O railroad town around it (the East and West Ends), Brunswick Crossing, Galyn Manor, Woodside Station near the high school, Maple Avenue, and the residential areas “up the hill” between 2nd and 9th Ave.
If they reinforce each other while Brunswick grows, the whole city will prosper. We’ll have a thriving downtown with lots of shops and restaurants, there’ll be parks and playgrounds all around town that we can get to and enjoy safely, and people from outside will want to visit us here.
If they reinforce each other while Brunswick grows, the whole city will prosper.
If they don’t, Brunswick will fragment. Some parts will get run down and others will end up being a sleeper town like Point of Rocks. Downtown won’t have a lot of options, we’ll have to drive to Frederick all the time to get the things we need, and people won’t want to come out here.
The key is to make sure that the pent-up demand for food, goods, and recreation in the fast-growing new developments has an outlet to the rest of Brunswick. That means making sure it’s easy to get around town. It also means keeping up on maintenance so that the older parts of town stay in good condition.
We can do this. It starts with elected representatives getting out to every part of Brunswick. I hope to see you when I hit the pavement during election season and after, no matter what part of town you live in.
Brunswick is still a railroad town, just in a different way.
Brunswick exists because of three routes inland from Washington and Baltimore: the Potomac River, the C&O Canal, and the B&O Railroad. The nature of those routes has changed, but their importance to our city has not.
The river and canal used to transport cargo, and now they carry cyclists, boaters, and hikers. The railroad made Brunswick boom servicing freight from Baltimore, and now it carries commuters and sightseers to and from D.C. on the appropriately-named MARC Brunswick Line.
Brunswick is the river and rail gateway from the D.C. metro area to western Maryland and the West Virginia panhandle.
Access to those routes is a big reason why people move here. Being accessible from those routes is what brings visitors in. The easier that access is and the more those routes are used, the better off Brunswick’s economy will be. That means more shops, more restaurants, and more jobs here in town. It’s also nice for us to have easy options for going places or enjoying ourselves outdoors.
We should do everything we can to keep those routes open and thriving. Together with Harpers Ferry, Brunswick is the river and rail gateway from the D.C. metro area to western Maryland and the West Virginia panhandle. Let’s make the most of it.
Brunswick is a small city, but its own city.
Brunswick relies on its connections to bigger cities. But that doesn’t mean that we’re just a sleeper community for Frederick or the D.C. metro area.
Brunswick (originally Berlin) has been around for more than two hundred years—longer than Washington, D.C. It has governed itself as an incorporated city for nearly a century and a half. We’ve got a unique identity linked to a lot of things: the railroad, the river, the canal, the mountains, the Civil War, our Veterans Day Parade, our downtown, not to mention our hills… and, well, if you’ve been in Brunswick for a bit you know how the rest of that saying goes.
What’s important is that it evolves in a unique Brunswick way.
The list of things that define Brunswick will keep expanding as times change and new folks (myself included) move here and bring our own experiences with us. What’s important is that it evolves in a unique Brunswick way, not in a copycat Frederick or D.C. way.
One thing that keeps Brunswick unique is that it has always been influenced by several different places, not just one big city. We should keep that up.
That means balancing our close ties to both the D.C. metro area and Frederick. It also means keeping up our links—transport, cultural, and recreational—to places like Lovettsville, Harper’s Ferry, Middletown, and the communities of the Canal Towns Partnership stretching from Poolesville to Cumberland. Doing that will help keep Brunswick, Brunswick.
