Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) announced today he is establishing a task force to help the county coordinate programs aimed at cutting down on the county's carbon footprint.

"We want to make sure Montgomery County becomes a leader," he said at a press conference announcing the task force.

Leggett named 26 people to the panel, which will be co chaired by Department of Environmental Protection director Bob Hoyt and former Maryland environment chief Jane Nishida. Nishida served in the administration of Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) and now works on environmental issues at the World Bank.

The task force, whose nominees must be approved by the County Council, also includes Marc Chupka, who authored a Climate Change Action plan during the Clinton administration, and an array of local environmental activists and representatives of environmentally focused non-profits, as well as business officials from Marriott, Pepco Holdings, and IDI Group, a major developer in Montgomery County.

In addition, the panel includes representatives of the county's planning department, the public schools, and Montgomery College and the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission. It is expected to begin its work in September.

Council member Roger Berliner (D-Potomac, Bethesda) who recently won approval of a package of climate change bills, said the task force will be key to ensuring that the county "meets our goals and sets targets." Like many jurisdictions in the Washington region, Montgomery County has failed to meet standards for clean air compliance for several years.

Hoyt, who took over as the county's environment chief six months ago, said that the county has an array of programs, but "what is abundantly clear to me is we have to do more."

Montgomery County Council member Roger Berliner has modified a bill aimed at limiting construction of single-family houses of the kind whose height and bulk have roiled the close-in Washington suburbs.

Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda), whose district has become ground zero for tear-downs and McMansions, said several representatives of the building industry had agreed not to work against his bill in exchange for the modifications. Berliner's proposal would change the method of calculating maximum house size to take into account the size of the lot, resulting in slightly smaller houses.

The changes include focusing the legislation mostly on downcounty areas where propoerty owners are building large homes in many neighborhoods; delaying the legislation's effective date from the original 20 days after passage to 120 days; allowing a 240 square foot single-car detached garage that would not count against the allowable house size; and clarifying that a builder's obligation to notify neighbors of proposed plans doesn't mean the plans are fixed and could not be changed later.

The proposed legislation says that the maximum size of a house on a 6,000-square-foot lot, a common size in Berliner's district, would be 4,750 square feet, down from the 5,150 currently allowed under local zoning.

Last week, the Montgomery County Planning Board split 2-2 over whether to back the bill. Berliner announced his modifications hours before tonight's public hearing.

The Montgomery County Planning Board late tonight unanimously rejected a developer's proposal to add a 16-story office tower to the Bethesda Metro center, saying that it didn't fit in with longstanding county plans for the area and would crowd its neighbors.

But the panel agreed that the proposal by Meridian Group had sparked a long overdue conversation about the plaza and the subway station, saying both are sorely in need of an upgrade. And the board left the door open for Meridian to come back with a different proposal.

Here is full coverage.

The scene at the Greater Bethesda-Chevy Chase Chamber of Commerce's annual real estate breakfast might be a portent of things to come for the building industry.

On the one hand, real estate agent Jane Fairweather gave a gloom-and-doom report on the county's efforts to make some modest restrictions to house sizes, as a way to diminish complaints about mansionization. Fairweather was referring to a bill by council member Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda), as well as a report by a task force Berliner convened.

She also spoke unhappily about new county taxes on real estate transactions, one of several ways the council and County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) attempted to fill the budget shortfall.

A few minutes later, up to the podium strolled Rollin Stanley, the county's new planning director, who has ruffled some feathers by telling developers their plans are "horrible" and by criticizing the county, which he said seems at times more concerned about due process than about getting well-designed communities.

Stanley said he wasn't too worried about big houses having to be a bit smaller. The market, he suggested, isn't going to want those big houses anyway, because they will be too expensive to heat and cool, and will be too big for the empty nesters and baby boomers who will be living in them.

"Bigger houses, many people think they are the next slums. They are too big, and people are having trouble selling them," he said.

What the future market really wants, he told the audience of business leaders, is smaller, more energy-efficient housing near public transit.

He said he hopes that Montgomery will be a leader. "Phoenix, it's horrible. Shanghai, that's Phoenix on quaaludes," he said, referring to unregulated sprawl. "This is unsustainable. We can't keep going on like this."

"The mind-set in this country is wrong," said Stanley, a native of Canada who was the planning chief in St. Louis before arriving in Montgomery a few months ago.

After he spoke, emcee Dee Metz, a longtime fixture on the real estate scene, said: "It's wonderful to have someone who tells us how he really feels."

The Montgomery County Council's decision yesterday not to house a homeless family in a sprawling house in the Hillmead neighborhood of Bethesda has left a lot of hard feelings in its wake, with opponents and supporters trading insults.

But in Hillmead, some residents say they are just glad it's all over.

Harriet Kuhn, who along with neighbor Sue Ghosh Stricklett, proposed almost two years ago that the property be used to add to a local park, said she was happy the property "will be restored to its former state and the neighborhood will get a nice piece of green space."

Adriane Jons, among the most fiery opponents of the plan to put a homeless family in the site, said she thought the neighborhood was being unfairly characterized as anti-poor.