After At-Large Montgomery County Council member Gabe Albornoz announced he was stepping down with one year left in his term, the process of finding someone to replace him began.
There were 67 applicants for the at-large county seat — and none of those names were made public by the county council, which conducted the interviews of three finalists on Tuesday.
The three finalists include Shebra Evans, a former member of the Montgomery County Board of Education from 2016 to 2024; Henry Lee, who also served briefly on the Board of Education from July to October 2004; and Reemberto Rodriguez, who served as the director of the Silver Spring Regional Services Center from 2009 to 2021.
At Tuesday’s interview session, the applicants were asked how they would “engage with various constituencies throughout the county” by Council member Sidney Katz.
“I would go on a listening tour. I would make certain that people knew that I was available,” Evans said, adding that she would emphasize she would be serving in a caretaker role for the remainder of the term.
Lee said he would seek out the “unseen constituencies” by engaging in “legwork.”
“There’s no way you can get around legwork. You have to go ask people, you have to make the networks work for you,” he said.
Rodriguez said one of his favorite ways to learn about what’s going on in the community is to head to a barbershop. Or, he said, “Occasionally, go to the laundromat at midnight. Or walk the streets of our small business areas and literally — a non-scientific term — hang out.”
All three were also asked about how they would approach setting tax rates by Council member Andrew Friedson.
“My first thought would not be to raise taxes. I think people are having a difficult enough time as it is,” Evans said.
But she suggested, if conditions called for a tax increase, she said she would want to make sure that the council “would want to make certain to have conversations early and often with the community.”
Answering the same question on how he’d approach the council’s taxing authority, Lee said, “You can’t take raising taxes off the table,” but he said, if there’s a move to raise taxes, council members have to ask, “Are you going to lose residents? Are you going to lose businesses?”
“We’ve been guarding our AAA bond rating, and that’s critical,” Rodriguez said. “The issue of raising taxes again, looms large among all of us.”
“Economic growth is part of the solution for taking this county forward,” Rodriguez said.
All three applicants said they looked forward to working with the other 10 members of the council.
The council will choose the new at-large council member from among the three applicants at its next meeting on Dec. 9.
The council members also elected new officers at Tuesday’s meeting, choosing Natali Fani-González, of Wheaton, to serve as council president, and Marilyn Balcombe, of Germantown, to serve as vice president.
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