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Fiddlywiffers t1_j3a5yra wrote

  1. Yes, very. It’s an extremely wholesome and family friendly place to live.

  2. People don’t necessarily have strong opinions about Columbia.

  3. No, it’s the safest city in America for the Seventh year in a row.

  4. Columbia itself actually doesn’t have a school system. That’s because it doesn’t have a city government. Howard county is the body that serves Columbia with Police, fire and rescue, utilities, and schools. That being said, the schools are all very good. Some are better than others. You’ll probably notice that RHHS or “River Hill High School” is highly rated, but I’ve gone there, and it’s garbage. Take my word for it. All the other schools are pretty good though.

  5. It’ll take from 45 min. to an hour

  6. Columbia is a very tightly knit community, so try getting to know your neighbors. Also, get a Columbia association membership. The Columbia association is a private organization that operates inside Columbia. They own pools, parks, gyms, etc. A membership will give you access to all of those things year round (including pools).

  7. Some people can be entitled and/or pretentious.

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Osetiya t1_j3cs7gz wrote

Curious on why you say River Hill is garbage, because my little sister might go to school there.

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SuddenBird4926 t1_j3cvke3 wrote

I would like to know also. That is a great school. Many other are way over capacity (Howard is at 130% capacity).

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Fiddlywiffers t1_j3d3k58 wrote

People are rude and stuck up, the workload is extremely heavy, and it’s so ‘clicky’. If you don’t make friends in the first few weeks, you’re screwed. And if you make friends with table-mates, you’ll lose them after the first quarter because teachers just love moving seats around every quarter, or sooner.

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gruntville t1_j3d2e56 wrote

Is there a specific section of Columbia(geographic north, east, etc) you’d recommend buying a home?

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Fiddlywiffers t1_j3d35z0 wrote

Not particularly, they’re all very good areas. It comes down to what you’re looking for.

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gruntville t1_j3d50yo wrote

To be honest, Columbia seems(from what I can tell) to have a great balance of schools for the kids, commute time to my potential job, and acceptable housing prices(however, coming from central PA, most of Maryland seems vastly expensive). I think those would be my top 3 interests; Safety, Schools, housing prices. I checked up the 270(the towns stemming off of it going NW away from Rockville) and most things seemed to be atleast 500k. I found multiple very nice options in Columbia in the 400s.

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SuddenBird4926 t1_j3cvdqa wrote

If I had to do it all over again, I would never pick Howard County. Schools are bursting at the seams. Do your own research outside of social media to get facts, not feelings. High school 13 is being built and there will be a huge redistricting (although many will deny this or try to down play it).

We have a CE who is funded by developers and they are throwing homes up on every square inch without the infrastructure to support it. He was just re-elected, sadly.

Traffic and congestion is terrible. That commute to work will be at least an hour. Each way.

Crime is also high in certain areas (the fake 'safest city' survey is funded by developers and top criteria is percentage vaccinated and probability of natural disaster.

It is very diverse and the parks are nice but so many other negatives. Please do your own research.

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Wx_Justin t1_j3fldgw wrote

"Please do your own research", but completely misunderstood the safest city survey. Less than 5 points out of 100 are COVID related. 30 points out of 100 are natural disaster related (and we are more prone to flooding/hurricanes/tornados than many other regions, so we must have scored pretty damn well in terms of home/financial safety).

Sure, development definitely needs to be slowed, but Kittleman wouldn't have done a damn thing about it (only Liz Walsh and Deb Jung actually care).

Redistricting is also necessary when done correctly. A lot of the complaints come from those who want their child to go to a specific school when there are one or two others that are closer.

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SuddenBird4926 t1_j3guv3u wrote

The damage to this county has been done. I said nothing great about Kittleman and stand by my statements about Ball, overcrowded schools, and poor infrastructure. I also forgot to add bus driver and bus shortage (as a county, we don't own buses and contract out for drivers) so many areas are doing double bus runs. Not unique to HOCO, but something to be aware of.

Take a look at the daily crime reports put out by the HOCO police department. I stand by my assessment of the safest city survey put out by Wallet hub 🙄

Redistricting won't be done correctly either as our BOE and CE are open to bribes to keep polygons from moving schools (polygon 147 donated a pile of cash and didn't get moved in 2018) The 2018 redistricting did nothing to help over crowding (nor did it do much in redistributing the FARM numbers...).

I did read a comment about a small group of woke liberals running the show here and that is very true. Anyone who has any different view or idea is deemed a racist anti LGBTQ asshole. Take those who support neighborhood schools (trying to keep kids as close to their homes as possible) - that is a very racist idea. The next round of redistricting will be epic. The worst is yet to come here.

Also, don't go near the mall after dark. The main event at the mall is now filled with cops once the sun goes down waiting for the next shooting or robbery. No thanks.

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Wx_Justin t1_j3gxysn wrote

  1. I always look at the crime reports. At the end of the day, violent crime decreased quite significantly under Ball. You can "stand by" your comments about crime, but you can also accept that you were spreading misinformation about the WalletHub report. It's ironic considering you claim to "do your own research".

  2. You must have missed the incendiary comments the last time redistricting was a topic of discussion. There were many racist comments made: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/10/racists-in-one-of-americas-richest-counties-are-freaking-out-over-a-forced-busing-proposal/ Like I mentioned before, many of those that promote neighborhood schools have 2 or 3 schools that are equidistant from their place of residence. They often gravitate towards one that is actually further away from the closest school due to preference of school "reputation", or they prefer the legacy school. "Pay to play" is a disgusting practice as well, but many that promote neighborhood schools are essentially doing just this: their voices become loudest as they continuously complain about how such redistricting will impact their property values. Fussing over the BOE is funny considering you've promoted Carroll County schools in the past (which has far-right members that are for banning books). At the end of the day, HoCo has FAR better schools than Carroll or Anne Arundel and consistently ranks at the top at the state level and near the top in the country.

We need more progressive county leaders like Walsh and Jung and fewer Neoliberals and Republicans (Yungmann) that cater to developers and the rich.

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