Tag: Billy Shreve

What do hotels, marijuana, solar panels and zoning have in common? Welcome to your August 30th drinking game!

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Happy now Shrelauter?!
Happy now Shrelauter?!

Since the council returned from their break, we’ve heard some pretty dumb things. We are still trying to recover from Billy telling us that we can safely drink from any stream in the county, when we clearly CANNOT. What misinformation is in store for our tender little ears this week? Grab a copy of your trusty agenda, pull up next to your favorite reality channel and batten down the hatches! And as always, this game is just for fun! No passing out in the alleys!

The very beginning of our evening begins behind closed doors. The council will interview a County Executive appointee. In honor of the torture this poor soul is about to embark on, who will have to endure some “interesting” questions from the entity we call Shrelauter, warm yourself up with a Secret Garden Cocktail. 

Not sure why they bother calling the meeting to order since a few will never abide. We begin with public comment, some idiot either abstaining or refusing to vote on the consent agenda and then the approval of three budget transfers. No school transfers this week so  Kirby won’t have the opportunity to throw out his dead horse speech about the teachers on the council lining their pockets. Oh what a shame!

Dr. Monica Grant is up for approval for the Director of the Citizens Service Director. Read more about her here.  

We have one first reading on a program Regarding Establishment of a Clean Energy Loan Program for Commercial Properties. Then the council has to make some decisions.

First up is the Adequate Facilities Code. When Kirby laments the fact that his super expensive plan to fund four schools was killed, shoot back some Tough to Hear shots. It’s really becoming tiresome isn’t it?

Next up, Jerry has a plan to make zoning changes more public, so people have a chance to actually know what’s going on in their neighborhoods. “Shouldn’t” be any problems with this, but if there is, mix yourself up a B-52.

Time to decide on the marijuana pilot program. We heard some rumor that the High Sheriff was on the radio saying that prostitution should be legal, however, pot is a danger this county should never know. When we get confirmation on whether or not our top law enforcement officer really thinks a plant is more dangerous than the abuse and degradation of poor, disadvantaged people we’ll certainly let you know. For now just have your self a Elixir Bloody Mary, because we all need our vitamins.

If you have seen any of these Facebook hotel accounts, you know that the proposed downtown hotel is a touchy subject for some. However, many people came out in support of raising this tax, so we are fairly certain it’s a done deal. If the talk gets a little dicey, slam back a Stinger.

If this doesn’t get us to 7:00, Billy will complain and moan about how Bud can’t foresee the exact time a meeting will take and we’ll want to slam every clock over that head of his! Yes, Billy we all know how busy you are, and none of us gives a rat’s ass.

Spongebob-Meme-Nobody-Cares-10
Billy, ranting about nothing just makes you look stoooopid.

Two public hearings on the agenda. Zoning, Adequate Facilities and Developer Rights are wrapped up all in one. The second deals with Solar Panel Installation. We’ll let your livers rest during this section of the evening. We do predict, however, that the second hearing will go smoother than the first.

Public comment and then what seems to do us in, Council Member comment. Before the C.M comment section of the evening commences fortify yourself with a Snickertini. For the only way to get through this mess anymore is to laugh.

 

Just one sip Kirby and Billy?

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Looks like it won't kill ya!
We promise it won’t kill ya! You’ll just need a full course of antibiotics.

At our last meeting Shrelauter questioned the importance of cleaning up our local waterways. Both of our anti-science darlings assured us that nobody has died. Billy even went so far as to proclaim that we could drink out of any stream in Frederick County! Any! But Oopsy Daisy, Billy may have spoke out of turn! That’s so out of character!:

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You can read both of these articles here and here.

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Well how in Hades’ underworld could this be right?! Billy assured us that we were fine. He’s even gone on about how we should wait until year 19 of the 20 year deadline to clean things up because…REASONS.

What does this mean specifically for Frederick? Take a gander:

Red is bad, very bad.
Red is bad, very bad.
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You can read more about Enterococci here.

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Look at that explanation above! Anything over 151 cfu’s is not suitable for any bathing or “full body contact”!  We aren’t mathematicians but all of those numbers are greater than that! Perhaps we need to get a nice set of shot glasses and fill them up with a sample from each of the above waterways! Let’s see if Kirby and Billy will put their money where their mouth is!

We’ve reached the end of our rope with the one named Shreve!

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Well we have a whole lot of letters we can use to describe it.
Don’t worry we have a whole lot of letters we can use to describe it.

At the end of our very informative workshop on human trafficking, Billy lit everything on fire and we mean everything. We first have to commend County Attorney Kearney and Council Member Keegan-Ayres for not flying across the dais and taking a hold of that man’s neck. Seriously, we could not deal with his nonsense, which only seems to get worse as the weeks go by.

After sitting quietly through the presentation, our most useless council member decides he has some items that must be addressed. First off, he wants a formal investigation into why the County Executive returned the money to the City of Baltimore for expenses incurred during the Baltimore riot. Billy wants to know why his question has not been addressed! Well hold on there fella! Did you not receive the email that Ms. Kearney sent you detailing why this in fact was legal? Come on guys…you don’t expect Billy to read do you? So it is the opinion of the attorney that since they have a mutual aid agreement with Baltimore AND this money was not a budgeted item and therefore did not fall under the purview of the council, the Executive (like many across the State) was completely within her rights to return the money. Like because, uh, maybe we all want to help each other out around these here parts. I would imagine that if we were ever so unfortunate to have a disaster in Frederick we would be very appreciative if our neighbors lent a helping hand. Without expecting cash money in return.

You would think this is over, but my poor naive friends, you would be very wrong indeed. Because Billy wants a FORMAL INVESTIGATION into why this money was returned. You can’t believe a word out of Ms. Kearney’s mouth because she was hired by that “fox in the hen house” (Kirby’s words) Jan Gardner. So there’s some argument over this that goes along the usual lines. Billy ends up yelling at Bud, “You’re out of order, just ask anyone who voted for you!” Jessica and MC try to push the point that we can just ask people about this instead of having a FORMAL INVESTIGATION. And that’s what is going to end up happening because only Billy and Kirby voted for this nonsense.

We were all so hopeful that this would conclude our evening, but we were all so very wrong. Because: Nursing Home!! Billy wants all the details of the deal. He is informed that County Attorney Mathias does not want the details released to the public yet because it is still in litigation. Everyone seems to be fine with this except our two revenge seekers. Billy yells at Bud again about how he’s showing no leadership and how can he expect anything less and OMG Bud’s phone goes off and his ringtone is Bad to the Bone!!! We swear on Helena’s throne that is true! How in love with that are you? We’ll leave you with this last little pic that so exemplifies what Billy is doing to our county government:

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Oh what a coinkydink!

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195hwt
Cinnamon, we really don’t know where you come up with these crazy ideas!!! Nobody could possibly believe that!!!

Tuesday will bring us dueling human trafficking events. In one corner we have this:

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That’s right! It’s finally time for Blaine to face a judge over his prostitution arrest. Some may say that he’s irrelevant here in the county, seeing as how Jan trounced him in the last election. However, many birdies have told us that he wishes to become the shiny brand new District 5 Council representative once Kirby gets his butt whooped in the County Executive contest. So as long as he keeps trying to creep back into elected office, we will be here to remind you what a catastrophic mistake that would be.

Keep District 5 Blaine free!
Keep District 5 Blaine free!

The second event is an attempt to deal with the very real problem of human trafficking here in Frederick County:

2016-08-18

 

We highly recommend that you read through these pages and become educated on the problem. For this is a subject that is very dear to your Lady Yokel’s hearts. We firmly believe that   no person such be forced into any kind of slavery, sexual or otherwise.

Our faithful readers will remember back when a vote was taken on having this workshop. Billy voted against it because, and we quote, “There are groups both for and against this.” Jerry and Jessica were both incredulous as were we!  (Of course we kinda suspect this was all a cover to protect Blaine and his transgressions). There couldn’t possibly be people in favor of human trafficking, could there?  We are very sad to report that Billy may just be right. For those of you who are not yet acquainted with the watchdog group Frederick County Council Watch Watch you need to click on over and take a look. This page watches the Frederick County Council Watch page, and believe it or not  they have found people who think this whole human trafficking workshop is a huge conspiracy. Including a few people who are running for public office in these here parts.  

Look what you did to Spongebob and Patrick! Aren't you ashamed people!
Look what you did to Spongebob and Patrick! Aren’t you ashamed people!

As always, we’ll let you know the outcome of both the trial and the workshop. There is never a dull moment in Frederick politics.

All the dead horses fit to be beaten were trotted out after the long council break

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This meeting started with all the regular malarkey. There was a grand opening event in the first public comment section. Thanks be to Yokel reader and frequent public commenter Patrick Schempp. He came with audio effects so that we could all hear Blaine Young at the last BOCC meeting brag about how he screwed us all for generations to come. That’s may be a slight paraphrase, but not at all a mischaracterization of the attitude. The AV Club presentation ran a little long, so by the fourth minute of the meeting Billy had already started his insolent griping at Bud about controlling the meeting. I think Mr. Schempp must’ve hurt Billy’s feelings…

Sorry to have to keep using this one folks. But it's kinda not our fault.
Sorry to have to keep using this one folks. But it’s kinda not our fault.

And then came the consent items, and Kirby took the opportunity to wail on the most brittle skeletal remains of his favorite dead horse. One of the consent items involved BOE money and that was going to affect Jerry and Jessica’s salaries. Oh. Mon. Dieu. How many times are we going to go over this? But he knows. He just wants the public to know that if they vote on the whole consent agenda one of the line items will give money to the BOE to decide what to do with it, and years down the road the teachers on the Council may benefit from it. Probably maybe eventually they will see seventeen cents more than they had yesterday. Shut up, Kirby. Shut. Up. We are bored of your stupidity. Jerry and Jessica both responded, kind of the same way they always do when Kirby pulls this crap (oh, consent items passed, in spite of time wasted).

Other Shrelauter horse carcass flogging included the continued denial of the science of water. Why should we comply with the Clean Water Act? Again (and this is a review for Kirby, too–goodness no wonder they have no respect for education issues, look how it helped them comprehend nothing at all). To ignore the problems with erosion and pollution that Shrelauter disbelieves, there are significant fines and prison time at stake. Why be bothered with reality, though. Also Billy says it is good thing that they have learned some of our local streams are polluted by animals. Tony jovially concluded that they need to shoot more deer. The thing is, we are pretty that you are NOT just allowed to go shoot the domesticated bovines standing in area streams, and their pies are so much more copious than the fewmets left by deer. But harharhar. Thriving animal populations or whatever. This is a positive spin a la “the Grand Canyon is beautiful and caused by erosion.” Psst Billy: our troubles here are generally caused by sediment deposition. Also, according to Billy our water is obviously fine. “No one has died.” (true story) O.K. Please explain how we are to listen to your possibly lead poisoned brain thoughts and reach the same “it’s all good” conclusion. We’ll be waiting…

A new and head-scratching thing occurred during the discussion concerning the payment in lieu of tax agreement to establish workforce housing on North Market Street. Billy seemed at a loss when he was told about fair housing laws. This means incentives can’t be given to certain classes of people. He was hoping it would be guaranteed somehow that the available units would be filled by teachers, nurses and first responders of the highest workforce caliber and obviously not some ambiguous lesser riffraff. Indignantly, he demanded to know what laws. This ignorance was shocking to your yokels, only because we have bought houses and dealt with realtors. Then we remembered: Billy is a realtor. We don’t know if our jaws will ever come off the floor.

A quick and dirty guide to the hot topics:

Everybody likes the hotel tax. Except Randy Cohen of the Holiday Inn (can’t really blame him for that, but try as he might that Holiday Inn is not going to move itself downtown, so…). He did bring a couple of friends. One of them was so angry about Redheaded Eskimos.

Nobody likes the medical marijuana pilot program. They all came out of the woodwork to say so.

Council member comments at the end of the evening had us laughing so hard we were unable to breathe and nearly passed out from lack of oxygen. Kirby is still complaining about his lease back option getting nixed. And just because it was obviously a terrible idea from the first day! Billy had a lot to say, and this post would be twice as long if we just focused on that (see yourself at 5 hours 43 minutes, no, that is not a typo). Jessica ducked out because of new motherhood, and she honestly must have been miserable by that point and probably wouldn’t have even been able to laugh at her neighbor on the dias. We highly recommend that she does as promised and goes back to watch them. Of course she will. She is a responsible council person.

There is another phrase kind of like beating a dead horse, but it is much cruder and involves a chicken. If this redundant stuff continues, we may be forced to drag that ghastly thing out. We can’t keep being forced to say the same things over and over again just because Shrelauter hasn’t had a fresh thought in over a year.

 

What’s going on at Councilman Billy Shreve’s Facebook page? More than you can imagine.

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Now look what you've done Billy! You've gotten Sweetums in a tizzy!
Now look what you’ve done Billy! You’ve gotten Sweetums in a tizzy!

If you want to keep up on Billy’s perspective of what’s going on in the county, then please look up Councilman Billy Shreve’s page on Facebook. Don’t worry you don’t have to friend him, it’s public for all the world to see. We decided to hop on over and see how his  gun safety class went. And according to his posts, which include videos, not so good! First off, we have a TV segment about the class in which it appears that only Billy and one other person showed up. And secondly, if you have about 10 minutes, you can watch Billy shoot in the dark and get reprimanded for not following instructions. You’ll have to scroll down a few posts to see it.

Another post that caught our eye was some more wedding venue drama. It has to do with the property in Emmitsburg that we wrote about a few weeks back. We asked why Billy and Kirby weren’t championing this cause. Well, Kirby hasn’t piped up, despite this property being in his district, but Billy sure has:

Frederick County Council Member Billy Shreve said he believes someone is targeting event venues in the county, trying to get them shut down.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” Shreve said. “It’s bad for business, and it’s bad for Frederick County.”

And…

Shreve said the blame rests with County Executive Jan Gardner.

Jan’s response?:

Egendi (sic) Estates near Emmitsburg sought approval in 2014 for a wedding venue and was unanimously denied by the Frederick County Board of Zoning Appeals after a public hearing process. Neighbors opposed this application. Until Egendi has an approval by the Frederick County Board of Appeals for a special exception use, they cannot legally operate as a wedding venue. To the best of my knowledge, they have not applied for a new approval from the Frederick County Board of Appeals. It is important to recognize that the denial of this business happened during the prior administration (not this administration).

Well, well, well it’s a good thing Billy is out there playing the blame game. For how else will we ever see results in this county? It’s really perplexing to us why any business would seek Billy or Kirby out to help them out with Frederick politics. For it seems they could only be hurting their cause. Edit: we have no reason to suspect that this business has sought Shreve’s attention; only noting that those who have sought it out may want to carefully consider whether this buffoon does them more harm than good.

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Hear, ye! Hear, ye! “omygosh did you hear that????”

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A press release fortuitously slid its way into our inbox today, and you will never guess what that’s about! Apparently everyone in Frederick County is just worked into a lather after Cleveland FearMongerfest 2016. During the Two Eleventybazillion Minutes Hate we all learned about the scary and terrible no longer great country that we live in, where crime is up and the sky is falling and there is random violence everywhere. Facts say that crime has been on the decline over the last several years (thanks, Obama). Even though there has been terrible news just recently, the long term trend shows that police are safer at work, too. Luckily Newt Gingrich was available to assert that feelings are more important than facts in some sort of diabolical twist where willful ignorance is a.) a virtue and b.) no longer bliss, but a dystopian nightmare. Voila, local nuttery ensues?

Did we say nuts? Truck Nutz.
Truck Nutz.

Some guy–who lets face it, is probably a friend of Billy’s, because Billy has never appeared to be real motivated to bother with anything up to and including cast votes during a council meeting–out of Washington County is offering “Wear and Carry” classes. At first we thought this was about wearing and carrying Pampers, because…it’s weeeelly, weeeelly scaaaawey out thewe. The GingGrinch said so.

But NO! Billy wants to let us know he signed up for a class. Betcha never thought you’d hear about Billy taking a class, right? He’s wanting all of Frederick County (but not in Frederick County; you have to drive to Washington County) to come learn about guns pew! pew! pew! at Hinder Shot Sports. No, that’s not right…Hey, if you want to know when and where, find out somewhere else. This is so not our bag. This is even for the “never ever shooter.” That, folks, is a direct quote. As a devoted never ever shooter, one might think a benefit of said philosophy would be that you don’t have hang out with Billy Shreve at a gun range, examining autopsy reports (yup! autopsy reports!).

Also, too. What is this sudden interest in learning? Attaining knowledge in advance is not in the Shrelauter Code. Which is kept on a different shelf than Robert’s Rules, which are hidden using a suuuuuuper secret code developed by Dewey of the Order of the Decimal System, probably.

If you have any questions, you can call Councilman Shreve. (lolololololol) Also, keep that on the D.L. because we remember that Kirby said he can teach this stuff, and it seems like it might hurt his feelieweelies if he finds out this came down the pipe while he was on vacation.

It’s poll time-What will Shrelauter do with their break?!

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First things first, let’s close out the old poll:

Seems as though our readers believe she’ll insert her religion into school board policies. Hopefully we won’t have to test this theory out!

Afraid so Mr. Grasshopper
Afraid so Mr. Grasshopper

The county council is on a meeting break until August 15. How do you think Shrelauter is going to spend this time? Maybe writing new legislation or studying up on the issues? Ha ha! Just kidding. Let us know what you think:

 

Time keeps on ticking , ticking… your public hearing section of the July 19th meeting.

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The council reconvened at 7:00 for the public hearing to extend the fee in lieu of building Moderately Priced Dwelling Units (MPDUs). This is being done in order to allow time for the completion of a housing study. This ordinance was set to expire in September but will now be continued until June 30, 2017. There was a nice presentation from Jessica, Milton Bailey (the new Director of Housing and Community Development) and three members of the public in support of the extension.

No takers for the public comment.

Jerry starts out the council member comments tonight. The new paved path is officially open through Middletown Park. There will be more information about his new bill concerning notification of re-zoning. And, he encourages people to get out to their local carnivals to support the firefighters.

Tony passes. In fact we did not hear a peep out of him the entire evening.

Jessica thanks the people who came out for the public hearing and praised the upcoming Ballenger Run project for including affordable rental units in their development plan. She also thanks everyone for having patience with the council as they modify their procedures and processes. She hopes they can continue to have positive dialogue.

Kirby congratulates the Thurmont Little League for making it to the State Tournament. Makes us aware that Little League is not only about winning but also about learning how to lose gracefully. Huh? We can only hope our beloved # learns this lesson himself. Very, very, soon.

He also discusses the new hotel bill. He has some issues with the stormwater management (shocker) and parking. He hasn’t gotten the answers he wanted from the city so he wants to know why are we pushing this forward.

Billy piggybacks on Jessica’s appreciation of people’s patience with the council. But of course, he’s going to complain about the time schedule again. He doesn’t like that the meeting begins at 4:30 and then the public hearing is to begin at 7:00. Tonight’s meeting was short enough for them to have a 2 hour break and it’s ridiculous! Unless and until Billy can predict how long the meeting will last, for we have seen some short ones and some that run all the way up to 7:00, he’s just blowing a lot of hot air. It is more convenient for the public to schedule it this way because then you know what portion of the meeting to show up for. But his time is way valuable people!

No more valuable than anyone else's Batman!
No more valuable than anyone else’s Batman!

M.C. talks about the extension of the bike path out to Rosemont Ave and commends the first graduating class of community health workers. These graduates will go out in our community to provide health care in those regions of our county where people don’t readily have access. A good program indeed.

Bud asks Chief of Staff Cherney to help Kirby get the information that he was seeking about the hotel. Mr. Otis also talks about the grant to Hood’s nursing program and the re-establishment of the I-270 coalition. He finishes up by reminding us that the Fireworks in Baker Park will be held on July 24 and a Veteran’s Rally in the Valley will be held on July 30 at the fairgrounds.

No more meetings until August 15!

 

Laissez les mauvais temps rouler! The First 1/2 of your July 19th meeting!

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65967871

Short and sweet. The council will reconvene at 7:00 for a public hearing but here is what has happened thus far…

Billy votes against the agenda, no one signed up for pre-meeting public comment, Billy abstains from the consent agenda. Before getting into the meat of the meeting Bud commends Jerry for his suggestion on putting cell phones aside. Billy yells: “Let’s stick to the agenda.” We all know that he and Kirby cannot function up there if they don’t have the texts from the puppet master to guide their way. Oh whatever would they do?

All County Executive confirmations pass. Charter amendments will go through on the November ballot with one change. Council member Fitzwater made a motion to change 2 business days to 4 when it came to bill amendment notices. All three passed and will be grouped as two questions (One will deal with the two budget issues and the other bill amendments) for the good voters to decide upon this November.

Three bills are introduced:

  1. Jerry is working on a bill that steps up the requirements for a zoning change. This will make sure that the neighbors of a property that is asking to be re-zoned are aware of what is going on.
  2. M.C. wants to try out a medical cannabis pilot program in agricultural areas.
  3. Bud introduces a bill from the County Executive concerning changes to the hotel tax.

We’ll let ya know how the public hearing turns out!