We Ladies of the Local Yokel are early birds, because let’s face it, if you go to the fair too late in the day you see stuff like this collection of whackadoodles at the GOP tent:
You idiots. Really. You are so stupid. And also deplorable.
Why did it not occur to these fools to at least pretend they might be in the half who weren’t going to hell in the handbasket of deplorables? What is WRONG?? with these people???? They might as well just tattoo, “I’m a racist, misogynistic xenophobe,” smack on the front of their bovine foreheads and call it done. We heard a rumor that the Republican tent is selling all their swag. So what this means is that there may be other losers who intend to buy this piece of garbage!
This is really not a bit like getting called a Yankee Doodle Dandy and then claiming the term as a badge of honor. There’s absolutely no way to fix this with some clever spin. They have always seemed pretty dumb, and pretty abhorrent. Points for self-awareness, we guess.
Wake us up when 2016 is over (also, PSA: don’t vote for Cindy Rose). K. Thx. Bye.
Is this man_______________?
A.) A Idiot
B.) a colossal asshat
C.) a stooge
D.) all of the above
In today’s paper we learn that Kirby the Esteemed Hashtag had his ill-conceived alt-budget published with a special political ad rate in the FNP. From the quality of it we will also guess that it was hastily crafted on the back of a thin paper napkin, scrawled with the splintered nub of an eyeliner tearing through the paper, just in the final 17 minutes before the start of the council meeting. And THEN he submitted for reimbursement from the county! For entirely unclear to us reasons “we the taxpayers,” for whom he is allegedly governing today, actually gave his money back. All for that fantastically stupid printed proposal!
#gotchafail
Meanwhile, seemingly encouraged by Frederick County Sen. Michael Hough, R-District 4, Kirby spews forth from the other side of his face to bellyache about Jan Gardner having used a county car that is reserved for county use to attend a county function at a library run by the county. And for the completely greedy reason that her personal vehicle had a flat tire that day. Quelle horreur!
We had a short workshop tonight! Not a good one, but a short one!
Jerry starts off nicely talking about how we can deal with blighted properties more effectively. And he wants to talk to the State Board of Education about taking teachers out of the classroom to fulfill other positions. He wants to know if these positions are really necessary when we have overcrowded classrooms.
Kirby opens up with talks of plagiarism. We reported on this very issue last night as did Frederick County Fact check. He got an email from someone accusing him of plagiarizing his list. He gets Regan to talk about how they search for legislation and since it’s a talking point and not legislation it doesn’t matter. Uh, okay.
Then he’s off explaining his legislative ideas. Since we already discussed them last night, we aren’t going to rehash the horror. We do feel the need to say something about his anti-union proposal though. We are going to postulate that perhaps Kirby isn’t aware of the history of labor in our country. Perhaps he is ignorant of the fact that our benevolent Titans of Industry didn’t give more than a rat’s ass about the workers in their factories.
That would be the only explanation we will accept as to why he said that since they’ve been doing this in the South they’ve been able to produce much better products. Jerry does take him to task on this, but of course he can’t answer any of his concerns. His stock answer was: “I don’t want to legislate that.” Oh no, he only wants to legislate getting RID of the union. He doesn’t care what the employer does next. We want to help Kirby become better educated. Especially since rumors are bouncing off the mountains that he’s going to run for CE. Therefore, Kirby please go to Amazon and order this book, if it’s too many words, would you at least read the Wikipedia entry on the History of the Labor Movement in the US? Pretty please?
Kirby and Billy had a meeting of the minds and decided that they want to eliminate all VEIP stations. Why, because private industry wants a little bit of that emission cash. Why wait in line at the VEIP station when you can wait for an appointment at your local car mechanic? I wonder if the price will go up? Hmmm.
Jessica wants legislation to help parents find drug treatment for their kids. And why do we only have two nice things to talk about tonight?
New business is last on the agenda. Billy must have missed Jan’s press conference because he’s in a tizzy about the nursing home again. And here’s the part where he acts like a jerk. After using the term “smoke and mirrors” about 5 times…
…he takes a turn on Bud. He starts shouting at him for not bringing this up on the agenda. Bud says that now the deal is done he will. Billy accuses him of stalling and doing everything the County Executive instructs him to do. He then shouts, “You don’t do anything!” Bud calmly replies that is his opinion and he is certainly entitled to it. To which Billy screams that he can ask a lot of people. Bud ends the meeting and we are very sorry Mr. Otis, that you had to put up with such antics on your birthday! We hope you can at least have a nice birthday dinner.
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:
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.
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.
Since we used the word ethics in our title, we’re sure you’ve already discerned we are talking about Ole #. Remember last year when he voted against the historical designation of Trout Run, stating if anyone was for it he didn’t hear from them? We were surprised and enchanted that Kirby took his constituents’ opinions into consideration! Someone or something (Xenu?) got to Kirby between then and now because he’s whistling a whole different tune. Not only did he refuse to vote for the council’s answer to the lawsuit, he sent a few emails to the Trout Run’s lawyer. Take a peek:
In what world is it okay for a council member to send emails to the lawyer of an entity that has a pending case before the council?!?! Why the hell does he think it’s all fine and dandy to give Bruce Dean a heads up? And does he not realize that his emails on this very subject are in the public domain? If anything is deserving of an ethics violation, it’s got to be this. Seriously people, is Kirby purposefully trying to destroy the county? Does he love Xenu more than the taxpayers of today?
All so very wrong #!What do y’all think of #’s new look? You should send him an email and recommend Stitch Fix or something, because this needs more work.
Your Yokels have mentioned that good ole Hashtag is planning to run for County Executive in 2018. But hold onto your hats, because rumors are swirling that local disgraced (yes, disgraced!) former BOCC President Blaine Young is planning to run for the Council seat for District 5.
We know you all remember this guy, who promised to disappear from politics after losing County Executive to Jan. This guy, who had an affair with a subordinate. This guy who was arrested for solicitation in a sting operation. This guy who seems to continually blame everyone else if they aren’t a big enough person to forgive him for his transgressions.
Well, I’m not sure how many chances you should get in your personal life, but in your professional life your chances are all used up. How can we trust you? You know the saying, “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”, well no one here is getting fooled.
As of right now, Mr. Has-been doesn’t even live in District 5. Maybe he is going to move in with friends. Watch your women folk District 5. We’ve heard he has turned over a new healthy leaf and has put all his energy into getting a super hot body to better recruit you to his cause. But, a leopard doesn’t change his spots. Still a good ole boys looking out for his own hide.
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?
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.
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.
Oh, man. Tread carefully around the landfill workshop held at Kirby’s behest. By the time we got through the new business, day drinking seemed like an attractive option. It seems that ‘ol Hashtag thought he was going to get a constituent issue addressed by calling the Waste Management staff out so he and his drinking buddies could needle them about how they figure out if people are allowed to bring trash from outside the county and dump it in our landfill or not, which is not allowed. There’s some cautioning from staff about making imprudent decisions that could inadvertently drastically increase the amount of trash, filling the landfill faster.
There is some general agreement amongst thinking council persons and county attorneys alike that if a legislative issue is going to be solved, a bill is needed. A mystery person will have to identify the problem and draft said bill, because the person who needs to understand how all this works has no idea what everyone else might be talking about. His main point in a nutshell seems to be, “I know about a complaint my constituent has. No one else thinks it is a problem. No one else will fix it for me, but if you don’t do what I want, I will continue to waste vast amounts of time AND be a loud mouthed blowhard.”
The fact that constituent issues are not on the agenda for discussion at this time prompts a huge Delauterburst man-tantrum during the staff briefing. And you don’t have to take our word for it, because did Kirby Delauter take his tantrum to social media (also, it’s at about 43 mins on the archived video)? Well, does a bear poo in the woods? You betcha. Look at that. He didn’t even have to write this himself.
“…have never ran?” You don’t say…well, we wouldn’t say that, but whatever. Language evolves, right? Semantics also take a big role in this whole brouhaha.
Bud tries to move on and thank the staff for their help during the briefing, and Billy cuts him short to say they aren’t done yet, and then says, “It’s like Romper Room in here.” Bud quietly offers back, “Sure is.” lololololololllllllllllll (indeed).
Billy and Kirby should watch Romper Room and refresh their manners.
Jessica proposes a workshop regarding human trafficking, because several counties have task forces applicable to the issue. And between the lines, right? If we are going to have a prominent former (and yet still aspiring politician) soliciting hookers, it becomes a pet local concern. Billy then says that there are lots of groups both for and against this issue, at which point we have to feel so grateful to Jerry Donald for saying (in the appropriate appalled voice) what we were shouting at our screens, “THERE ARE GROUPS THAT ARE FOR HUMAN TRAFFICKING?!?!?!?!?!” To which Billy mutters, “Well yah…depending on how you define human trafficking…” Good grief. The Confederacy lost, right? That passes 5-2 and we know you know which marionettes didn’t vote for that, right?
Billy has a whole festering bunch of ideas for workshops, making the entire New Business section of the agenda a train wreck. It’s hard to distill a word cloud of Billy’s brain into a cogent prose form. They are not even fully formed thoughts as Billy brings them forth as motions to add to the agenda, in most cases, and the others (with particular kudos to the patience of M.C. Keegan-Ayer here) try to divine what he means and reword these vague notions into something that can be worked within a “yea/nay” decision making format. This section is entirely analogous to his previous legislative priority to send to Annapolis, “Understanding what regulations impede the operation of roadside hot dog stands.” New readers, we swear we are not making this up.
These are various ideas along the lines of, “Understand how citizens make claims against the county, or how the county administers claims, what zoning stuff is obsolete, what it takes to file a complaint, a reasonable timeline for complaints, oh wait I mean for complying with zoning and building violations.” There are points at which Tony Chmelik seems to try and talk some sense into him, but he derides the need for word smithery. As though effective communication has no purpose in legislating. Tony notes that phone calls could be made to find out information.
Jerry Donald also suggests using email. Billy and Jerry repeatedly go at it, because Billy is peeved that you can’t just have a meeting every time he would rather not do anything like wait for a constituent concern, address it with legislation, and discuss it in a pertinent public hearing at that time. When Jerry Donald has to give an impromptu workshop on “How the County Council Works,” he gets called an elitist. It’s a point Billy throws at him repeatedly, when he continues to allude to the fact in rather diplomatic (if impatient) terms that he is wasting everyone’s valuable time. Not to be lost: knowing how to do your job is elitist in B.S. World.
Another infuriating problem through all of this is that Billy accuses the government of being dysfunctional because it is meant to follow a clear procedure, yet he seems to be on an open door lets-look-for-problems-no-one-has-identified-yet fact finding mission, so that someone–but definitely not him or Kirby—can write some new legislation.
Please, Frederick County, at the next local election let’s take out our trash.
frederick local yokel 