View source for File:Planning Commission - Phil childs Circa 1960s.jpg

== Summary ==
In Brunswick’s transition from a one-industry railroad town to the community it is today, Phil Childs played a pivotal role as chairman of the Brunswick Planning Commission in the 1960s. The commission was responsible for getting Title 701 Federal Government money and zoning to Brunswick by showing the town’s potential as a bedroom community for local workers for the government and private industry in and around Washington, DC.

Remembering the battle to get a new high school built after the B&O switching yards pulled out of town, Childs said “we pushed like hell. We twisted arms like they’d never been twisted before.”

Sonny Cannon was skeptical of the Planning Commission’s work, saying “These fellas are playing like big city boys. This is a small town, and they’d better remember it. They told you they were making this into a Washington suburb? They’re lying—it’s too far away.”

(Photo and information from the Washington Post, October 29, 1967

[[Category:Smoketown Politics and Public Works]]