ADDRESS, COMBINED MEETING OF SERVICE CLUBS
OF PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY

COLLEGE PARK

March 16, 1960

I am grateful for this opportunity to speak to a group such as
this which collectively constitutes the core of the business and civic
leadership of this pleasant and progressive county. You and your
families are living in the very heart of what is at once the most
interesting and most challenging social development of our time—
a changing America whose population, predominantly rural only
a few years ago, now is four-fifths urban or suburban.

In few places in this country is this condition so manifest as it is
in Prince Georges County, where the population of a big city spills
over in torrents into what just a few decades ago were the peaceful
farmlands of Southern Maryland....

Within Maryland there are two gigantic metropolitan areas—the
City of Baltimore and its suburban environs and the Maryland por-
tion of suburban Washington, the two being separated by a dis-
tance of only about 40 miles. Together, they account for well over
two-thirds of the estimated population of our State. Such drastic
change in the complexion of our terrain and our way of living
creates many perplexing problems. I should like to enumerate a
few of them:

1. An ever-increasing school population, accompanied by serious
financial dislocations and rapidly rising tax rates.

2. Demands for adequate water supply, sewers, garbage and trash
disposal, fire and police protection and numerous other public serv-
ices required by people in thickly populated communities.

3. Transportation difficulties and traffic congestion.

4. Planning and zoning requirements to protect open-space and
recreation areas and prevent the blight and decay of neighborhoods.

I should like to discuss with you this evening some of the views
I have about measures we can take to resolve these difficulties....
A basic concept of our form of government is that governmental
authority should reside as closely as possible to the people — that
power or authority should be vested in the smallest possible juris-
diction. It follows, therefore, under that concept that a greater part

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