Pull in your welcome mats, Urbana! Quickly! (Does anyone else find it curious that the Party of Lincoln!!!! is not the Party of Hoover?Or Davis or Bacon? Please don’t let it just be us who are perplexed…)
So remember last week when we had ournice little BOE meeting? The PTA Presidents exchanged contact information and one of our favorite readers told us that members of both PTAs gathered together at the end in a circle of solidarity. Who would want to ruin that!? That’s right, state delegate Kathy Afzali.
Let’s highlight a section of this letter:
The 2014 changes to Prevailing wage is impacting the entire State and you may have heard an elementary school in Frederick County must be back burnered because of significant costs increases as a result of the changes.
Have you heard?! Back burnered? Anyway, one more section please:
This Wednesday night beginning at 6:45 I will be meeting with the Urbana Elementary School PTA and explaining to them how they have been caught in the crosshairs of the law with regard to the county’s need to choose between them and Hillcrest.
So, let’s see here…a few questions? Is the Hillcrest PTA getting access to this same information? And why the hell is this the approach to solving this problem? We are not really going to advocate for lower wages in order to solve this are we? Because there is a little bit of a problem with low wages and subsequently poverty in this country. Maybe Del. Afzali has heard of it? This post is excellent to read in its entirety. Let us highlight this one section for now:
If the minimum wage had just kept pace with inflation since 1969, it would be around $10.70 today. If it had kept up with productivity growth, it would be $18.72. Meanwhile, if it matched the wage growth of the wealthiest 1 percent, it would be $28.34.
While the value of the minimum wage has fallen — thanks largely to congressional inaction for long stretches of time — the wealthiest 1 percent are doing quite well, thank you. Their real earnings have skyrocketed 275 percent over the past 30 years.
Remember how Henry Ford made a whole business based upon paying workers who could afford his products? It has been described as the mass production of consumers. Wouldn’t we hope to pay people who work for our community enough to be participating in the local economy? Shouldn’t this be especially popular with those people who are in the same party as those who think the local economy should be based on home building?
Realizing that the directive from ALEC compels Del. Afzali to do counterintuitive things, maybe she could focus on how the economy works for working class people instead of trying to divide and conquer the PTAs to her advantage. Maybe just implore our governor to do the honorable thing, and fund the schools.
Psssst…it should have the contraction “it’s” instead of the possessive “its” here. We didn’t make it. Education matters, evidently!
We were afraid that last night’s Board of Education meeting was going to turn into an ugly us vs. them shame fest.( If you want to watch the meeting, clickhere to get to FCPS’s TV channel). Thankfully, we were all so very wrong. First off let’s give an old yokel tip of the hat to Board of Education President Brad Young for setting the tone of last night’s meeting:
There has been a misrepresentation that this is an either/or situation. I don’t want to see this as one vs. the other. Both schools are needed.
This entire board 150% agrees that both schools are needed.
Just for you Mr. Young. Thank you for setting the tone for what could have been a very contentious meeting.
County Executive Jan Gardner also spoke:
We need to advocate together for our community’s needs. We are all in it together.
The Frederick News Post also reported that the speakers also kept that tone of togetherness. At the end of the meeting, it was reported, that the PTA Presidents exchanged contact information. Way to go ladies!
Brad Young, and others, have told us the main reason that we have these money problems is due to the prevailing wage. Back in 2014, the State passed a law that if they provided more than 50% of the school construction bill, wages need to be set at a certain level. This is why Frederick High’s costs have skyrocketed and also why these construction projects are in jeopardy. Now, before anyone villianizes the prevailing wage, let’s all remember to look at the big picture. We have a huge problem in this country of good folks working hard and not having enough money to pay their bills. If the prevailing wage measure helps with that, then it’s a good thing. We need to find a way to pay people well and get what our school system needs to educate our children properly.
So what can we do?
As we reported yesterday, we can petition Governor Hogan to release some of the education funds that he’s been holding on to. Click here to get to the petition.
Jan said she is going to work on raising the impact and school development fees so the developers pick up their fair share of the price tag. These builders shouldn’t be allowed to come into our county, make huge profits, and then leave us with clogged roads and overcrowded schools. When her bill comes to the county council, make sure they hear your voice. We suspect there may be, umm let’s see, at least three people who will be against this.
Email, call or visit our state and local officials. Here’s a nice listof all of them. Make sure they know how you feel about school funding in our county. Because……..
On this last day of June, a fine, fairly mild summer day, the Frederick County Council convened to take care of the business at hand. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of tonight’s meeting , dear readers, we must start off with a message to our BFF Bud Otis. We here at the Local Yokel sincerely hope that your wife is on the mend. We are very glad to hear that our EMT and 911 services are top-notch. And we are sure that since the “everything must be privatized” majority is gone they will continue to receive the funding necessary to keep them so. Mrs. Otis please accept our virtual flowers and very real well wishes:
At the top of the agenda was Budget Transfers. A fairly common occurrence, quickly discussed and voted on. Should be no surprise that Billy was the main hold out. But that’s become boring to us so let’s go to the next item.
Approval of the Frederick Community College FY 2016 operating budget. Very nicely presented by FCC representative Dana McDonald I must say. She explains how the county contribution has helped the school. Most importantly, how the contribution has helped keep tuition increases low. I don’t know about you but I believe that FCC is a wonderful institution. It’s a great place to start college without the high price tag or to gain a certification or simply expand your knowledge. One would have to be living under a rock to have not heard of the crippling student debt that many young people carry. It would be very hard to imagine that an elected public official would be ignorant of the fact that the high price tag of a Bachelor’s degree is a real concern in these United States of America.
Who is living here?
Just kidding, we totally can image who…Billy! Not only is he the only one to give this poor woman any grief, but he once again renders a presenter speechless with his inquiries. He wants to know why county residents can’t pay more in tuition if they want to! He wants to know why county residents are given any special “subsidy” at all, because folks he would love to charge them all the out-of-state rate! Every single meeting we are presented with more and more proof that Mr. Shreve is not a big picture kind of guy. I offer this article on the economic impacts of high student debtso Billy can come out of the darkness and into the light. Fortunately, the other council members see the value in an affordable post-secondary educational institution and the budget was approved 6-1.
Time for another item of common occurrence…County Executive appointments. All passed unanimously, except for the planning commission in which Billy is trying to make some point about Trout Run by voting no.
Earlier in the week we posted about item d. on the agenda. Local Yokel is not a fan of giving Mr. Smith any money at this point. Well, the only council member who agreed with us was M.C.. She argued that, “as a lawyer he should have known better.” But with 6-1 she was clearly in the minority and Mr. Smith will be receiving almost $12,000 in legal fees that he claims were associated with his duties as a former county commissioner.
A couple of items about plumbing code and an amendment to the moderately priced dwelling unit bill and then we are on to the big-ticket item: Monrovia Town Center. In short, no decision. Of course Tony would love to see this rushed through and at one point he became very agitated at Jessica for asking a question that he deemed irrelevant. Thankfully, because of the leadership of M.C. Keegan-Ayer, the council is going to review this information on the MTC dating from January 2014 to the present. The council wants to make sure they can make a thoughtful, educated decision about what has certainly turned into a nightmare for everyone involved. Even though Tony wanted a 30 day limit to this thoughtful deliberation, more reasonable heads prevailed and a decision will be deferred until September.
A few thoughts on public comment. It is very sad to us that people have to thank the county council for behaving in a thoughtful, deliberate manner. Shouldn’t that be a given? But that’s exactly what speaker after speaker did this evening. Whether Kirby or Billy want to admit it, the last four years of the board of county commissioners was a dark time in our county’s history. Citizens felt disrespected and it was really frightening to us that our county government was in the hands of a group of people who don’t really believe that government should exist at all. Billy gave us a flash back of this disrespectful behavior when he openly sparred with a member of our community, and then Jessica, over some concerns this community member has over Route 75. Billy was consistently rude and out-of-order during this whole interaction. As one woman stated, it is embarrassing to think this man represents our county.
Blaine’s not there to back you up anymore! It’s time to behave if you want to sit at the grown up table!
Another point concerning public comments is that Tony took the brunt of the criticisms this evening. He was accused of not answering communications, not properly representing his district and the people are not happy! He tried to answer these accusations in his comments, telling people to stop smirking, but it’s fairly evident where Tony’s loyalties lay. He’s got a lot of fences to mend if he hopes for another shot at this council seat.
Is he listening? Time will tell.
Not sure what’s going on with Kirby lately. He needs someone to fix his microphone because once again it was very hard to hear him. His comment at the end of the meeting was very strange. He announced that he received a text that a cement truck dumped its load on the side of a road and will someone look into it? This all seemed really out-of-place. Why is someone texting Kirby with this information? And why announce it at the meeting? Does he want us to know that people call him as well? Maybe he’s tired of Billy getting all the credit.
We will end this post with a Twitter update from Jen Fifield of the Frederick News Post:
What’s this about? Why is the developer getting a police escort?
Yeah, we let our caption contest spiral out of control a bit. Excuse our tardiness in announcing a winner. Uh, drumroll please…
Anonuser takes the prize, uncontested, for the previous contest with “Ne ne na na nu.” We raise our Red Solo Cup to you, Anonymous commenter.
We feel sure you will all enjoy this next contest. Not one of us can look at it without dissolving into fits of giggles. Please revel in captioning this photographic festival of crazy. The more you look at it, the more you see. Like a Where’s Waldo of weird stuff. Enter as many times as you like. Eventually someone will be declared a winner.
Please caption this hot mess! We know you can knock this one out of the park. Photo taken from our dearly departed Gazette: support your local media, peeps!
I know our readers are going to be shocked by this news. In this morning’s Frederick News Post, we are made aware of the fact that some of Blaine & Co.’s policies were fiscally irresponsible. “How can this be?”, you may be asking yourself. Oh, it be. In addition to extending the life of county vehicles, which seems to have been a huge mistake, the cost of contracting out these repairs has been “twice as expensive as previously expected.” We found this handy article about how mechanics not only charge for their labor, but they also mark up the parts. Therefore it’s super curious as to how it was ever conceived that outsourcing these repairs would ever be cheaper than having a mechanic on staff. Will this guy please explain all this to us?
Well, ummm. Government is bad? Is that the correct answer?
frederick local yokel 