Nobody told your Lady Yokels that dead horse hunting season was now open in Frederick! Surprisingly, this week’s dead horse doesn’t symbolize Jerry and Jessica lining their pockets with all those gold doubloons. What horse’s bones are Billy and Kirby beating this time? Take a gander:
If being on the hook for millions, that’s right millions, of more dollars is solving the problem, then I guess for once he’s right!
What does Kirby have to say? Let’s summon him and find out:
Now we are forced to summon the ghost of Mark Twain:
We covered Kirby’s school construction workshop and Jan’s presentation concerning the acquisition of the nursing homes from Aurora. Why weren’t Kirby and Billy concerned about building schools when it was a developer free for all during the last BOCC? For, in a logical world, that would have been the perfect time to make sure our infrastructure and schools were up to snuff. Why, also, did they vote against funding schools above MOE? It clearly could not have been a secret that the people who were going to occupy these adobes would have offspring that they would like to be properly educated. Or was it? But of course this is all Jan’s fault! Every last bit of it!
As reliable and as looked forward to as our monthly menstrual cycles, Kirby publishes some drivel on the noodlely appendage. This month’s submission was so long that the Editor of said website had to publish this disclaimer:
Editor’s Note: County Councilman Delauter (sic) piece is quite lengthy, which was brought on by the detailed facts he presents. It is well worth the read.
Well that’s makes it tons more appealing!! It is really hard to decipher, we even think some paragraphs may be out of order, but we will give it the old college try!
As best as we can make out, here’s his main points:
David Gray-bad!
Jan Gardner-even worse!
Nursing home-money pit!
Jan targeting businesses!
Whoa! That’s a lot of numbers!
That’s the best we can do with this one. You can try it for yourself, but you may want to fortify yourself with some liquid courage first. We need to go lie down now.
We’ve been told by Blaine, Kirby and Billy that Frederick County is CLOSED for business. We’ve been told that our county is the most business unfriendly entity on the face of our entire planet. We’ve been told that our County Executive is a big vindictive meanie that targets businesses who flagrantly rip up our county’s regulations and set them on fire. So how can this story in the FNP be true? You can read it for yourselves, but we’ve pulled out the nice little chart for you:
You’ll remember a few weeks back when Kirby threw a fit about his leaseback idea not getting any traction. Somehow he thought it was within his authority to disband the entire task force. Well, Jan said no way Kirbo! Just because you didn’t get your way Mr. #, doesn’t mean the investigation process is over. So who is going to take up the torch that Kirby tried to extinguish? Today’s Political Notes answers that nicely:
Frederick County employees met with Councilman Tony Chmelik (R) this week, as plans are underway to revive a county task force that was examining options for leasing schools.
The meeting between Chmelik, Council Chief of Staff Ragen Cherney, and county finance and budget officers took place on Tuesday — when the School Build Lease Buy-Back Task Force was scheduled to meet.
Chmelik is taking the helm of the task force, which Councilman Kirby Delauter (R) said last month he was dissolving. Maybe.
Despite sending a confusing press release that he was disbanding a task force created by the county executive and notifying at least some of the members ahead of time via email, Delauter said he was not. Instead, he was no longer pursuing a specific leasing plan after the proposal was panned by County Executive Jan Gardner (D) as being too costly.
Gardner, at the time, said she intended for the task force to continue its work — with or without Delauter on board.
What do you mean? Work is going to continue with or without our precious # at the helm? So just because his one idea didn’t pan out that means the task force should continue investigating other ways of bringing down school construction costs?
We don’t understand this world of logic and problem solving y’all are throwing our way. Perhaps we’ve been stuck inside the Shrelauter echo chamber a little too long ourselves.
Happy weekend to you Yokels! On the front page of the FNP today there is a nice little story entitled: “Delauter Backs Off Of Leasing Strategy”. We’ve written about his workshop and were all so skeptical on how building a bunch of schools now and then incurring $102 million extra in debt was advantageous. Somehow between that meeting and today the plan was re-written to include “only” $50 million more in payments. Still a perplexing proposal from someone who claims to “govern like a taxpayer today.” Now who do you think Kirby is blaming for the dissolution of his idea? We are sure you don’t have to think too hard on that one!
“There was a disagreement on the finances and costs associated with the possibility of privately funded schools,” Delauter wrote in Friday’s news release. “We have been dealing with concerns for school construction for the past 20 years. I was diligently seeking ways to build schools in the future with the least amount of impact on the Frederick County taxpayers. It has become clear to me that the County Executive is stuck in yesterday’s thinking where you always turn to the taxpayers to pay for everything. I am truly sorry to the taxpayers that we were not able to work to find new solutions to an old problem.”
How in Poseidon’s blue ocean is this plan not turning to the taxpayers?! Just because we aren’t putting the money up right this very second, doesn’t mean we aren’t going to being paying out the wazoo for this later! It’s clear from every meeting and discussion of this topic this idea will cost us more. Not today, but surely tomorrow. WAIT! Have we finally discerned the meaning of the “govern like a taxpayer today” slogan! I think we have. Whew, that took a few years but we finally cracked the code!
Now, with this idea laid to rest, hopefully some more realistic solutions can be found to solve this very real problem. And quickly because this same article ended with this:
Delauter has said he’s seriously considering running against Gardner for the county executive spot in 2018.
We hope you had a fun 4th! After the ridiculousness that went on during last week’s workshop, we don’t have much hope for sanity this week. Grab your agenda, tune up your FCGTV and let’s do this!
We’ll be surprised if anyone comes to speak for the pre-meeting comment, since it’s failed to happen thus far. So we’ll skip ahead to one of our fave county employees, Rick Harcum. He’s here to speak of some budget adjustments. The list is long and we have little hope that our usual suspects will not grandstand. So when they do what they do, sip on your President cocktail in honor of Bud and all he has to put up with.
The High Sheriff will be in the house to discuss a joint grant application with the City of Frederick. This actually looks like some good stuff, with the money split between the Sheriff’s office and the Frederick City police. Click on the agenda to get all the details.
Up next is naming the County Attorney as the Resident Agent for the county as required by law. If this discussion is too much for some to comprehend, mix up a Roosevelt, since he’s probably spinning in his grave.
There are some first and third readings of bills proposed by the county executive on the agenda. Kirby threw this Facebook fit earlier:
Someone hasn’t read our post about what a traitor is. And these guys have a hard time comprehending what a legislative body does. Jan cannot introduce legislation. She needs someone on the council to do it for her. And quelle horror! She actually has some people on the council who think it’s advantageous to work together. If Kirby can get over his Ted Cruz style of legislatin’ we’ll all be better off. If he brings up anything on this Facebook rant mix up a batch of Martha Washington’s punch. Since we are fairly certain that’s what the good lady would do to him.
To round things up there’re two public hearings. One on sewage amendments and the other on charter amendments. There’s gonna be words. When there are slam back your Bear Witness. Since bearing witness to this all really can be a burden.
Grab some water and hydrate for public and council member comments. This can sometimes be the hardest part of the meeting.
So Shreve is dedicating his dozen brain cells to getting refunds for campaign contributions for those with buyer’s remorse who donated to Bud Otis. While it is a shame that they didn’t recognize that he wasn’t going to be a partisan hack, it really isn’t a crisis. It’s a good thing. We recommend visiting the link up top to Billy Shreve’s public page so that you can tell him how little sense he is making right now. Or on any given day.
Mileah Kromer, a political science professor at Goucher College, said campaign refunds are typically initiated by candidates who receive illegal donations or money from unsavory donors. Refunds are also typically made or requested during the election cycle, Kromer said. “This is not the common practice,” Kromer said. “You don’t hear about this every day.” Kromer said she knew of no legal obligation Otis had to return donations. (FNP, June 7, 2016)
Particularly astonishing in light of Shreve’s “campaign for a refund” is to read in the paper today that Shrelauter’s BFFs at the hybrid tree-farm-wedding-venue are getting sued for a whole slew of stuff related to the fact that they took money for weddings and now can’t have the weddings because they simply refused to even apply for the necessary temporary permits. But nope, they still aren’t giving the deposit money back. Maybe our two most chivalrous and concerned county level representatives could stop telling illegal operating businesses to do whattheheckever they want, consequences be damned. How about telling these business owners to give back the money they owe these couples? Is this the utopia they envision when they “make doing business easier,” folks? Aren’t most of us more often on the customer end of a transaction, and expecting that we will not be taken advantage of with encouragement from our public officials? All Shrelauter cares about is playing childish games. Furthermore, at the last meeting, Tony Chmelik was more than happy to create a situation where Kirby could get online and spin that Jan was trying to get more money via Tony’s proposed amendment, and then accuse M.C. of playing partisan politics. We’ve been passing around a book amongst the Yokel writers. Based upon our studies, it sounds like we are dealing with some particular cases. We’ll let you decide.
So most of the evening was tame. We smirked at the fact that no one showed up for the before meeting public comment. Billy couldn’t round up just one of the watchers? Lots of presentations tonight. Maryland Association of Counties, Solid Waste Commission and the Agricultural Preservation all expanded our knowledge of our fine county. We are breezing through all this, however, because the meat of the meeting, the crazy of the crazy was in the council member amendments.
We will try to walk you down the path of what happened. But it’s confusing, so don’t feel bad if you get lost. Yesterday we posted about Tony’s amendment to increase the County Executive’s pay. Kirby had a Facebook fit over it and Tony decided to say a few things about it. However, he decided to pull that amendment. Now, remember that readers. He PULLED the amendment. Well, now Billy was not having any of that. He wants to talk about an amendment that is not going to be put forth and he’s going to talk about it real good. So Tony puts the amendment back on, even though he doesn’t want it anymore, and Billy goes on this whole cray cray time discussion. He finds it funny that people are upset that the teachers are the lowest paid in the State but no one is lamenting the fact that they are the lowest paid officials.
Kirby then goes on to say that if you are getting into politics for money then you aren’t doing it for the right reasons.(We know people, we know). But the gold star of the evening goes to M.C.. She asks Tony if he asked the County Executive about this before proposing this amendment. He gives a snarky, “Why should I?” Uh, we don’t know, because she would be the only person thus far that would have an opinion as to whether or not the salary matches the expectations and skills required of the job? But no, Tony accuses M.C. of playing politics. So for keeping your cool in an unbelievably difficult situation, Council woman Keegan-Ayer, you deserve a Yokel tip of the hat:
And, in the end, Tony pulls the amendment…again. Incidentally, just like he pulled his first and sixth amendments, which concerned compensation for council members. Let’s reflect a moment on his desire for minimal government–as far as he is concerned, he would do his job for nothing. Yet, somehow if you care to step through the looking glass with him, he will go to bat for a concept he would ordinarily want to dismantle.
It’s time for Kirby’s amendments. Jerry’s face kinda sums up this section of the evening:
Keep in mind folks, Jerry is a seasoned high school teacher. So it must take a lot to get his feathers ruffled.
Kirby plagiarized one of his amendments from Cecil county. And then couldn’t remember his reasoning behind proposing three members of the council be able to make budget decisions (oh we are so sure). Weird. There are three in a group of stooges. We thought three was the magic number. Since memory failed when he was pressed to defend these shenanigans, he decided to pull the amendment. Whew!
Now Billy wants to make it clear that if a council member changes their political affiliation and then leaves the council, the central committee of the party that the elected official ran under should be allowed to choose their replacement. How timely. And we must ask here, why is an elected official allowed to be the chairperson of the central committee. Wouldn’t it be a total conflict of interest for Billy to appoint someone to sit up there with him?
To go back to our title, during council member comments, M.C. hands out summer reading pamphlets to all of the council members. Well, one of the pamphlets fights tooth and nail to prevent itself from landing in Billy’s hand. We understand, summer reading pamphlet, we understand.
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