After last week’s complete turn about from Bud Otis, we don’t see much hope of things going well for the rest of the year. This week’s agenda sees the removal of two public hearings that were not given their time in the sun, and one for a very bad bill about MDX. It’s as though we’ve time warped back to the Young BOCC in the span of a week! We don’t have the spirit to go through the entire agenda this week, but we will call your attention to this item on the agenda (note: we are not the ones that highlighted it in yellow.):
M.C. is currently the council’s representative on Maryland Association of Counties Legislative Committee, but expect to see that change this evening. Also, we’ll see what Forest Resource Ordinance Bill gets through. Expect it to be the one more favorable to developer interests, for that is where we are now.
So, be safe, but drink whatever you need to do calm your nerves this evening.
Remember when we said Billy would waste everyone’s time trying to look like he was doing something productive but really wasn’t? Well, mostly that’s what just happened, except when he was even worse than that.
Ironically, he started with the Council Education Bill, looking to bring everyone up to his level of expertise (pfffffft! wait for more on what exactly that level is) concerning zoning, or else have them penalized by losing their voting rights on the council for zoning matters. This is…unconstituational completely implausible. Billy, you diminutive and dimwitted Banana Republican. Shut up!
We then learn that M.C. Keegan-Ayer took a two hour course on this out of personal interest, bless her heart, of course she did, and that sounds awful. Also, we learn that Billy did an online 15 minute thing back in The Y2K. If you can begin to imagine feeling smug about 15 minutes worth of education you got off the internet 18 years in the past, that’s what just happened! Before Twitter, even! Billy has the bittiest button of all.
Moving along to the Veterans Tax Credit Bill, which is state legislation he is presenting to the county, whilst giving the absolute impression that he has never read it before in his life. Do you have questions? Maybe someone else can answer them. “Caroline?” Like we said, moving along…
Just kidding. You didn’t get far.
The next part is the best, because he is trying to get rid of anonymous reporting of zoning violations and guess why! Because he can cite two examples of businesses, both of which were actually violating the law, and someone ratted them out, and that person…might not even live here…? One time a letter came from Baltimore. Little known and possibly fake news: all us supposed local yokels all actually live in Baltimore and just follow Frederick county politics because it is theater of the absurd, and oh so fun to incite discord down the road. Like Russians, but more neighborly.
Come on. If another wedding venue owner wants to complain that the side hustle at the tree farm over yonder is cheating by breaking all the rules, what kind of sense does it make to hinder the person reporting on the problem? There are many reasons to guarantee that a complaint may be filed without knowing who is filing it or where they live or the names of their children and their pets. For the most obvious available example, not everyone is mentally stable. Also sometimes an employee may have to report their employer, or some other health or safety reason may be relevant. Just. Gah. Enough. Obviously we shall be the patron saints of anonymity.
The Public Safety Facilities Exemption Bill means Billy wants the volunteer fire company not to need permits for events. Jerry wisely points out that the social halls shouldn’t be exempted, and as someone who annually attends a big event at the one in Walkersville, that sounds copacetic.
Voila, Billy’s participation trophy awaits. We do hope he will continue to remind us of his “greatest hits” as election season nears.
Seriously. Enough now. Time for the grownups to take over. 2018 cannot get her fast enough.
Remember a few months back when we published this story about Bud receiving a potted plant and yellow tie from a very angry member of the public? We took offense because, at the time, we believed that Bud was simply acting in the best interests of the county. But we Yokel gals can admit when we are wrong! We may not agree with this lady on much else, but in this instance Ms. Posey, it appears you may have had a point.
It’s been no secret that we’ve been big Bud Otis fans. We sincerely believed that he was an old time Republican that didn’t subscribe to the Trumpery that Shrelauter likes to spew forth. Well, a few weeks ago we started to get suspicious that things were going to go South. We have lots of connected friends here at the Yokel, and many of those friends were telling us that Bud wants to be county executive. And, since he has his eye on that particular prize, we were going to see some changes. Changes we wouldn’t like. The first evidence of this occurred when Bud refused to explained his competing Forest Ordinance Bill. In fact, he got quite snippy with M.C. when she asked for an explanation. As we said in that post, we hoped that Bud was just having a bad night. Now, we can no longer delude ourselves into thinking that’s the case.
Here’s what happened tonight folks. On this evening’s workshop agenda was the following item:
Jessica asks Bud what this item means since the council, at least not her, M.C., and Jerry, were given any explanation on this very ambiguous item. Which we now know was purposely ambiguous because it was nothing but an organized coup!
Bud doesn’t respond but instead defers to Tony. Tony then picks up a piece of paper that appears to have been collaborated upon by the R’s on the council. In his distinct grandstanding way Tony goes on about the “far-reaching” legislation that the county executive has put forth and how he now wishes to put forth a motion to table Jan’s DRAA and school construction fee bills! We don’t think much of this motion because we are sure it will be defeated, and are only half listening really when we shockingly hear Bud’s aye. That’s right folks, Bud voted to table the bills on these two items! Even though, it’s evident to all that the policies of the Young BOCC have gotten us into a huge financial mess with all of their hand outs to developers, he voted to table! We cannot imagine there is an explanation satisfactory enough to explain why he did this! Therefore, we can only conclude that we are in for a very rough year in this county, and that Bud is only thinking of his political future. We don’t hold out much hope for Jan’s Forest Ordinance passing, and we truly question the political future of someone who is burning bridges with people on both sides of the aisle. If we agree with Mary Posey, who has had it in for us for a good spell here, that’s potentially problematic, dontchathink?
We all do now Muffin! Sigh.
The 2018 elections cannot get here fast enough peeps!
This evening the council will convene for the first time this year! One look at this evening’s agenda and our jaws pretty much dropped down to the floor:
You don’t need glasses folks! Billy is trying to introduce 4 bills!
So, someone must have told ol’ Billy that he wasn’t going to get elected to the Maryland Senate if his record is a bunch of abstentions and one failed, horribly written bill. If he thinks he’s going to last minute a bunch of work and pretend that’s his record, he’s got another thing coming! We can just imagine the look on the other council member’s faces when they saw all this nonsense.
Yeah, probably something along those lines!
Also, on the agenda are two, that’s right TWO, public hearings on the Forest Ordinance bills. We’ll let you know how it all turns out!
Though he’s never far from your Lady Yokel’s thoughts, we really haven’t been paying a lot of attention to #kirbydelauter lately. Maybe it’s because of Billy being so dumb, or maybe we’ve just grown weary. Maybe both! Anyway, a couple of interactions we’ve seen with him lately made us realize that we’ve got to keep getting the word out about him. Especially since he’s under the delusion that he should be our next county executive.
Works great for us!
If you haven’t already seen Kirby’s thoughts on global warming, click on over to this Facebook thread to read all about it. The gist of it is that Kirby can find us TWO scientists that don’t believe in global warming for every ONE that Kai Hagen can produce. That’s right 2 to 1! Who knew Kirby was acquainted with so many scientists! All kidding aside, these claims are certainly something Kirby should be required to prove. And here’s the rules Kirbo:
Scientists must have a degree in SCIENCE from an accredited university. NOT Trump University.
Scientists must study global warming.
Cannot be some guy that just posts on Brietbart.
Must produce better evidence than “it’s cold outside right now.”
We’ll be anxiously waiting to meet all these scientists!
Kirby wasn’t done Facechatting with Kai for this morning this took place!
So, we did a little social media looking to see what else our county executive hopeful has been up to!
Remember we warned ya!
In case you missed it, here’s the link to the above story. So, Kirby doesn’t believe any special attention should be paid to the fake news issue in our schools? That doesn’t surprise us since he has Fake News Provocateur, Cam Harris, on his payroll. The New York Times did a whole article on that guy, but what’s the prob? Is it bad to make up a story that deliberately misleads people right before an election? Is it bad to focus on this issue with children since it’s become such a pervasive problem in our society? Is it bad to hire someone who does something like this to help run your campaign? Should someone who hires someone who does things like this run our county? Is this the way in which a leader shows good judgment?
Lowering vehicle emissions is a sham peeps! We can’t help but wonder if Kirby can find THREE scientists for every ONE that says these standards lower our air pollution. We’ll be waiting!
Pew! Pew! Merry Christmas!
It’s been awhile since we’ve seen any new additions to Kirby’s fashion line. Go ahead and take a peek at the other fine items he has for you! We swear all of those shirts actually exist!
Possessing generous hearts, we will give Kirby a chance if he promises to change the county flag to this:
Barring that, we’ll just have to err on the side of logic and vote for anyone else!
It’s that time of year folks! The time when we count down our most viewed stories of the year! Let’s get started before that ball drops!
10. Oh dear. When your Lady Yokels were in the running for the Frederick News Post’s Best of the Best award, one of our competitors crossed the line and had to get sent into the penalty box. No worries though, we made up with our hockey fans and now follow each other amicably.
9. Oh yes, the night some members of the council drove us to the drink. Billy attempted to mansplain a bunch of stuff to Jessica, so we were driven to Yokelsplain things to him. Oh how we can’t wait until Billy isn’t up there anymore!
8. Who could forget the night when we learned about the craziness that resides on the Carroll County council? Take a peek if you missed out on that super hot mess.
7. Ah, old # and his social media usage! Check out our post where we tried to discern the meaning of this!
6. We sure hope we never have see these “accomplishments” again! Wonder if Billy ever got any of those special ingredient BALLS he was speaking of.
5. LOL! LOL! This flow chart cheers all of your Lady Yokels up whenever we are down! It is the absolute best thing Kirby has ever created in the history of forever. Read our super duper analysis of it here.
4. Our PSA for our local teachers warning them of Cindy Rose’s prying eyes on social media did quite well. Watch out for this one, she’s threatening another run in 2018.
3. Kirby may want to ask Blaine to hold back his praise! Read our story about this fine endorsement, it’s really something!
2. We usually restrict ourselves to writing about public figures. However, when someone comes to a public meeting ,that will be aired to all the world, and offers yellow ties and potted plants, we can’t just let that go. And many of you agreed, as it was our second most viewed story of the year!
Wonder what 2018 has in store for us! Guessing it’s going to get way dramatic considering it’s an election year! Happy New Year to all our Yokel readers!
Monumental whatthef*#@ery. Also, if you can’t see it because the images are being cranky it is a Twitter tweety that has a bunch of statistics about men being mentally ill and prone to violence, and concludes that women have it better for sharing the planet with the violent and troubled other half of the population. Ahem. Also, let’s femsplain it to you: you know that women have been asking to be included equally in all aspects of the military and are not trying to place the responsibility of public safety on y’all men? The holdup has been a cocktail of “you’re not wanted here screwing up our camaraderie” and “we can’t stop you from getting raped, for some reason.” Ugh. Gah.
As you may or may not be able to tell from the image above, there is some rando on the internet who apparently does not have a social science background at all (and in all likelihood is some Russian poseur stimulating Billy’s antifeminist leanings). Billy Shreve is propagating his thoughts about how high statistics about suicide and homicide and warfare impacting men means that feminism is ridiculous. First of all, the way it is explained in sociology 101–where youngsters first learn about Émile Durkheim’s first ever study of the concept, self-evidently titled Suicide—women are less prone to suicide because they have all the responsibilities of keeping a brood of offspring alive and cared for resting on their shoulders, because they are likely married to Papa Berenstain Bear, who is insultingly idiotic and has no idea how to feed or clothe his cubs or stay up all night nursing them back to health or figure out where their doctor or orthodontist’s office is or what their teacher’s name is, or like know offhand the location of a grocery store to pick up bread on the way home after six months of living in this city. So maybe the big dumdum part has some realism on occasion. #notallmen, yes, we know…we know. We do like our husbands.
Michelle Wolf has a super fantastic special on HBO right now called Nice Lady where she covers the important subject, “actually you can’t have it all,” and that’s really well worth watching. ***SPOILER ALERT: she talks about how it is impossible to be a good mom, and so she isn’t going to try, but also how she wishes she could be a good dad because the bar is so much lower and you get to avoid the issues presented with the absolutely unrealistic expectations placed on women in a judgmental country with no public policy to support working women and their families. This is because as a woman you have to have the kid, feed the kid, better be by breast but for goodness sake not in public; also go back to work (like yesterday), you can pump in the bathroom, and don’t take time off to take care of the kid that is constantly in need of both well visits and sick visits especially for a couple of years, and why are you distracted from your performance at work this week, and hurry up go have sex with your husband he’s going to find it elsewhere if you don’t, “And honey, why don’t you smile??????” (We don’t smile because people like Billy Shreve exist; also sometimes we do smile because people like Billy Shreve exist, but he does seem to become increasingly infuriating according to duration of exposure.)
Did Mark Twain really say this? Who the heck knows. We would Google it, but we don’t care. We didn’t even Google to see if the statistics in the original tweet were correct; odds are high that they aren’t.
Dare we suggest it might actually be better for men, too, if women weren’t so stressed out? And no doubt for their children as well.
Furthermore, we think it is super rich that this is coming from Billy “victim of sexual harassment” Shreve. You know, sometimes sexual harassment isn’t a snide remark, but a thing that happens to everyone from auto workers to actresses where they have to actually have sex with the boss if they want to keep their job. For Pete’s Sake! Read a flipping newspaper once in awhile. You might even learn from reading that 55% of women victims of homicide are killed by a domestic partner, where this is only true of about 5-7% of men. Isn’t that fascinating? Isn’t this mysterious information? Men are violent, and (according to Billy and co.) women are lucky to be murdered by men rather than the ones doing the murdering. What weird logic.
You know what else, Billy Shreve once said people are in favor of human trafficking, most likely because his bestest good buddy is a big ol fan of hookers. Don’t ever forget that one.
Man, this turned into a long rant. Yeah, we do have a bug up our asses, actually. Thank you for reading installment eleventybajillion in, “Do not reelect Billy Shreve to anything.”
This continues our ongoing series to share some of our own Yokel family traditions to help you get in the holiday spirit.
Cousin Earl really likes to fish. Well, truth be told, he likes to drink beer in peace, and going fishing provides him with peace and quiet to drink to his content. What does that have to do with the Yokel family Christmas? Well cousin Earl brings his favorite fishing snack to our annual gathering.
Beer pickled eggs are the perfect protein to keep you fortified while fishing and to share while waiting for dinner.
Cousin Earl’s Pickled Eggs
2 dozen hard boiled eggs, peeled
1.5 cans of beer
2 cups vinegar
Red pepper flakes
Boil and peel eggs. Cousin Earl thinks you should already know how to did this, so use the interweb if you can’t boil a damn egg. Mix beer, vinegar and red pepper flakes in a big her. Add eggs. Drink extra half can of beer. Let eggs sit a day or 2. Eat. Repeat.
The biggest observation we can make about this evening was how very quickly Bud wanted this meeting over. He rushed through parts of the agenda, cut off the auditor before his presentation was over, and asked Tim Goodfellow if he would go faster when presenting the sewer and water amendments. None of us much want to work this time of year, but jeeze o’flip was the heck was up with all that?
We had some shiny nice time at the beginning of the meeting. Chip Jewell received recognition for his many years of service to the Frederick County Fire Services. Students from the CTC were given a good pat on the back for a project they worked on. And, the Oakdale volleyball team received many fine congratulations for winning the state championship!
Indeed!
Billy abstains from voting on the agenda. No public commenters. Veteran’s Advisory Council vote is pushed back. Billy casts the sole brave vote against the budget adjustments. Then, we are off to another positive presentation from Lori Depies and the outside auditor, We learn just how financially healthy things are in our county. Take a look at the PowerPoint and see for yourself! Kirby needs to question anything good, so he starts off by saying, “I am not an accountant, OK?” Oh we know hashtag! He tries his hand at algebra by saying x represents this and x represents that, so simple math, voila!
Especially when your equation is all wrong!
We are not even going to attempt to parse out his point because he doesn’t really have one and he’s wrong and we are done with deciphering his nonsense! Billy jumps in with that was also my question too and how are we doing compared with our peer groups. The answer is excellent so let’s move on.
Myersville asks permission to annex some property-permission granted. Bud’s phone give us the Bad to the Bone ringtone that we’ve heard before. Wonder if whomever was calling was the reason he wanted out of there so quickly.
Quick First reading on MDX uses. The FNP reporter asked Bud about this after the meeting, so be sure to read about that here.
The bulk of the meeting was over some amendments to change the language used when putting in water and sewer lines. The predictable three were all in arms, even though it was explained to them over and over that what they were changing was how things were already done, they just wished to clarify some language. Billy kept yelling: workshop, workshop, but he couldn’t get anyone to agree. Tony wins a slight victory with some removal of words, and the first amendment was finally passed. The next four, Bud wishes to rush through, and they are all passed without incident.
No public comment at the end. Kirby wants us all to bow down to the accomplishments of the sacred Young BOCC.
Looks like Slick took the drinking game a little too far!
Did you know that because of the Young BOCC, Myersville had to come before the council to ask for annexation rights? M.C. later disagrees with Kirby’s logic, but hey whatcha gonna do?
Everyone else has nice things to say! We are ignoring Billy’s part here because we want some semblance of sanity to remain with us for the holidays!
Have a wonderful holiday season Yokels! We love you!
Wish we knew Patches! Don’t destroy your liver over him though!
FA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA! Merry Happy Winter Solstice to thee! It’s the last meeting of 2017, and what a year it has been following this county council. Stay tuned, in the next week or so we’ll be publishing our top 10 stories of the year! For now, grab your agenda, turn on FCGTV, and don’t forget to take care! Shrelauter would love it if something happened to your liver and you couldn’t vote for their opponent next year.
We sure hope Kirby had some time to go through the agenda and prepare this weekend. Seeing as he was busy spreading his “freedom seeds” around:
Big deep sigh! Any hoo! We are starting off this meeting with lots of recognition and accolades. It gives us a nice warm feeling to see all the good that is done by people in our community.
Next is public comment, should there be any, budget adjustments, and approval of prior meeting’s minutes. We don’t know why this shouldn’t go smoothly, however, since we have a few people up there who like to grandstand and, we suspect, really don’t know what’s going on, there’s bound to be a hiccup here and there. If you should need something to calm your nerves, pop open a nice tall bottle of Belligerent Ass.
We always love it when Lori Depies comes to present. She so professionally handles the questions from the nincompoops, while also correcting their erroneous assumptions. In her honor, we’ll stray away from the beer theme for a moment, to crack open a bottle of our best champagne! Thanks for all you do and have to put up with Ms. Depies!
Next on the list is approval of an annexation in Myersville. The town of Myersville already voted yes, and it appears the owners of the land want this, so if anyone causes a ruckus, go ahead and slam back a Raging Bitch.
There’s a first reading on a bill on Permitted Uses in a MXD. First readings only take a moment. Then it’s off to a third reading, which means a final council vote, on the Veteran’s Advisory Council. In honor of our men and women in uniform, toast them with an Eagle Lager.
Oh, zzzzzz, a public hearing on water and sewer amendments. We know this stuff is super important, but man oh man, it’s hard to stay awake. Maybe we need to go out and find some caffeinated beer.
We end with one more chance for public comment, and then the last council member comments of 2017. If anyone decides to go on and on, or becomes oh so very rude, break out that college beer bong and fill it with some Grumpy Bear Honey Wheat.
Have a wonderful holiday season our faithful Yokels! We’ll all need to stick together next year when the county election season is in full force! There’s no way this isn’t going to be dramatic!
frederick local yokel 