Tag: M.C. Keegan-Ayer
What a week it’s been!!!
So much has happened this past week in Ye Olde Fredericktowne that your friendly Yokels have decided to do a weekly roundup. Let’s start with the County Council and happy budget fun time.
We’ve written two posts this week about budget talk. Read it here and here. However, we were very interested to find this in the Political Notes section of the paper this morning:
County Executive Jan Gardner’s budget announcement last Friday included a new little nugget. Well, five of them.
Gardner said she extended an invitation to all seven Frederick County Council members to talk about the budget, including a list of their priorities. Five members took her up on the offer: Democrats Jerry Donald, M.C. Keegan-Ayer and Jessica Fitzwater and Republicans Bud Otis and Tony Chmelik.
Gardner said she couldn’t meet all of their requests, but each was considered in her proposal.
Councilmen Billy Shreve and Kirby Delauter, also Republicans, didn’t take Gardner up on the offer, apparently.
It seems they have other plans.
Shreve, who is still upset the council doesn’t have a dedicated budget officer, gave handouts to his colleagues, showing that they are the only council in the state without such help. Nevertheless, Shreve said he was going to dig into the numbers.
“I’m going to work on this budget. Look at it. See if we can make some changes,” he said Tuesday. One major change he pitched included scrapping a plan to keep the county’s property tax rate steady — which will yield increased revenue — and instead lower the rate and cut spending.
“The easiest solution … is if you have the same amount of revenue as you did last year, you adopt the same budget you did last year,” Shreve said.
So not only are they refusing the County Executive’s invitation to come discuss the budget, which really is a dereliction of their duty, but Billy is all fine and dandy with keeping everything the same. Why should we strive to improve? A real brain stumper!
Next on our wrap up is Sheriff Jenkins. As we are sure you all know our Sheriff testified in front of Congress this week about illegal immigration. Last night, Sean Hannity had the Sheriff and two other guests on for four minutes of the most exquisite fear mongering we have ever seen.
Look, we here at the Yokel do not want anyone, be it citizens, immigrants, or illegal immigrants, committing crimes. And if someone had hurt our kids, we cannot say that we wouldn’t feel the same way that poor woman who testified with the Sheriff does. However, this kind of sensational talk does nothing to bring about meaningful immigration change. What it does do is incite fear and discrimination against the Latino community. Not one of us wants criminals running around our community. Building a wall is not a realistic solution towards that goal. Also, it is a known truth that huge numbers of “illegals” arrive by plane and overstay an expired, once-valid visa, so wasteful government spending on a stupid wall is stupid and wasteful. But now we totally get why Fox News watchers are so angry and paranoid all the time. Jeeze O’Flip that channel! And we also didn’t realize how scary a place Frederick is to live, the internets must be wrong about us.
Last on our roundup: You may have heard that a certain Presidential Contender was in town yesterday. Another nugget from the Political Notes section was this:
Apparently, that relationship stuck. Ahead of Cruz’s rally on Thursday, Hough picked Afzali to pick up the candidate from the airport. And if Cruz’s camp was impressed with Folden’s driving skills, they may have had a different review of the Afzali Cab Service. “My husband went slow, because I needed to talk to Ted,” Afzali said. “We had a lot to talk about.”
If you missed our tweets about his speech head on over to @fclocalyokel and take a looky look. The most disturbing story to come out of that mess was the transgender student who was thrown out of rally. You can read the story here. But James, we would be remiss if we did not officially give you a Yokel tip of the hat:
We really don’t get all this fervor over public bathrooms. Whether you like it or not transgender people have been using public bathrooms for years. And has society crumbled as a result? No! Because nothing bad has happened! You really should be more afraid of former Republican Speakers of the House and U.S. Senators. But if you can’t get past it, Kirby has a solution:
Billy says his world is great, and has Kirby been audited? Your April 19th roundup-Part 1!
Thank Zeus on his high mountain that tonight’s meeting has been divided into two parts! We need the break! Now on to our fine reporting.
Billy’s no where to be found, ran in late. So Kirby had the sole job of objecting to budget transfers. His issue? We have no proof that the bay can be saved by trees and stuff. We’ve heard this before. Science isn’t his thing. Passes and we moved on.
Installment Purchase Program Easements get no objections. Even talk to what a fine program it is. Protecting our agricultural land!
It seems like the budget season gets the tempers a flarin’! We are going to go back to our budget posts of a year ago to see how much of the rhetoric is the same. We predict A LOT. Tony, Billy and Kirby want the constant yield to be called a tax raise, all M.C. wants to do is take a vote to have a hearing on this issue so the public can discuss. How dare she interrupt their grandstanding? Billy informs us that we should all come into his world, it’s nice there he says.
Tony wants an answer as to whether or not the hearing equates to increasing the constant yield. Exasperated lawyer says this question should have been asked before the meeting so they could research the answer. Jerry then points out two of the members were on the BOCC, so shouldn’t they know the answer to that? What’s that Kirby and Billy?:
The hearing will be on May 3 for those of you who are interested.
Now, fellow Yokels, in all seriousness we are concerned about Kirby. Has he been audited? Because we remember commending him for voting against the Trout Run historical designation way back when. But tonight he’s singing a different tune. When the resolution, which is essentially the answer to Social Betterment’s lawsuit, was presented he voted no. No explanation just no. Billy wanted to know if he really had to vote for it at all since he was the lone wolf on the original vote, to which he was informed he in fact did.
We do really hope this hasn’t happened to Kirby:
We end with a nice presentation on a Maryland Development Block Grant. Meeting reconvenes at 7:00 for a public hearing on the budget.
New fun time: Council meeting bingo
We thought we’d mix it up a little this week. Here’s your agenda. In case you do feel compelled to drink at any point, we’ll recommend you toss back an Alien Secretion and encourage Xenu to scamper on outta here.
Item EFF on the agenda
The dreaded budget analyst conversation. The sole acceptable, qualified candidate for the job withdrew his name from consideration. One can only speculate why being at Billy (and Kirby)’s beck and call was unappealing. We didn’t apply for the job ourselves, that’s for dang sure.
A brief rundown of the discussion:
Right out of the gate Billy starts the sniping tone. Blah blah blah woof woof woof. Petulant child. You know the drill.
M.C. says they have endeavored to find out what is done elsewhere, looking at similar counties in Maryland. Turns out Wicomico, Cecil and Harford’s county councils don’t have budget analysts because they are legislative bodies. Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Howard’s have a county auditor, but that doesn’t make sense for Frederick because the council isn’t responsible for that function.
Jerry throws out a novel idea. Specifically ask the departments what they have, what they need, if things have been working out in the past, etc, etc, etc. As for these personal visits with county staff, “A number of us went to a number of things.” Jerry, ever the educator, charmingly refers to this as “the budget education process.” We are left to speculate about who amongst them made up the education seeking numbers. And also, based on the historical record, who probably didn’t.
M.C. reiterates this concept of communicating with the staff. Hiring someone takes time and money, and she points out the irony that she is taking the conservative position here (she didn’t say, “guess who isn’t,” but we’ve pointed that out before). Summing up her position, she (can do math?) doesn’t need someone to say, “Yup, those numbers balance.”
Tony: I agree with that.
M.C.: I have a little wax in my ears…
Local Yokel: hahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaa
Seems like nobody’s on poor Billy’s side anymore.
Who is calling the county council rudderless?
We are all familiar with last week’s county council meeting’s outcome. The Monrovia Town Center process is starting over from the beginning. We wrote about it, the Frederick News Post wrote about it and today Billy wrote about it:
Great Gods on Mount Olympus hear our cries for mercy!!!! So many things to point out here folks. Let’s do a nice bullet list:
- Why is Billy using the Fox News lie “Fair and Balanced”?
- Paul Smith very specifically said in his letter that he WOULD not submit an affidavit. And refused to even talk about it with the Frederick News Post. Why would he come and testify before the county council?
- Then there’s Blaine who said it was a “boldface lie” that he was invited. But somehow his fellow BOCC member, David Gray, was able to find out the day of the hearing and had no problem standing in line to testify. Maybe Blaine feels as though he needs a special engraved invitation to speak.
- And Kirby…what the hell are you talking about rudderless? Perhaps he needs one of these:
Finally Billy uses this quote from the judge’s order:
Read the Judges instructions on page 3, the last 3 lines: “Therefore, this Court must remand the matter to the County for further proceedings, including testimony, to resolve the issues raised in this Opinion“http://www.frederickcountymd.gov/DocumentCenter/View/280736
I don’t see how this proves his point. In fact it seems to support starting the process over. This is how the council has chosen to deal with the problems with the record, these two need to get over it and get on board. The vessel isn’t rudderless. Just because you don’t like the course, Kirby and Billy, doesn’t mean it isn’t going anywhere.
Maybe these guys need to stop using social media. Then again, it provides us with an endless source of information.
frederick local yokel 