gaithersblog.net

Following are links to a few letters in this weeks Gazette that I’d like to highlight:

• Demos Chrissos, Labor center issue could prompt recall move
• Cathy Drzyzgula, Cheryl Jones and Marge Krivda, Three Letters on the day laborer controversy
• Pamela Lindstrom, City should be a leader in affordable housing

There’s an item by Jaime Ciavarra in this week’s Gazette, on the City Council’s discussion of a redevelopment moratorium. I’ve written about this before.

[…]

A redevelopment moratorium would be a significant planning move that could have an effect on the revitalization of Olde Towne, Schlichting and Marraffa argue.

Recently, the city’s center has garnered some recent redevelopment interest along East Diamond Avenue, where a group of property owners have floated the idea of demolishing aged housing to make way for a 400-unit luxury condominium building.

‘‘We’ve been trying to gather speed for a long time, and a moratorium would just sap all of that energy,” said Tom Rowse, a member of the city’s Olde Towne Advisory Committee, a resident group that gives leaders input on revitalization efforts.

‘‘Anytime you curtail redevelopment, there will be an impact for a while. It may seem short term, but it’s going to have a very harsh effect,” he said.

[…]

I’m still trying to think through a longer post on the affordable housing issue. My major concern here is the extent to which the affordable housing debate is being contaminated by an effort at keeping lower-income folks contained in the central, older parts of Gaithersburg as well as some other urban parts of the County.

The Gazette also has a story about Demos Chrissos’ threat of a recall drive:

Specter of recall raised over day laborers

Frustrated residents cite lack of leadership

A complex debate over opening a day laborer center in Gaithersburg has grown uglier with residents now threatening to oust officials they say have lacked leadership on the issue.

A vocal crowd cheered and applauded when resident Demos Chrissos told city officials at a meeting last week that a growing group of irritated community members may petition to recall Mayor Sidney A. Katz and some members of the City Council.

[…]

‘‘The problem has been paralysis by analysis. There have been too many studies and not enough decision-making,” observed Julius J. Persensky, a former Gaithersburg councilman who follows city politics.

‘‘This issue, it has gone well-beyond Gaithersburg, and it could very well mean some [leaders] may not be reelected,” he said.

Katz, who has held an elected post in Gaithersburg since 1978, said he’s ‘‘concerned” with the recent questioning of his leadership.

[…]

‘‘It seems to me that other than [City Manager] Dave Humpton, these guys don’t think about it again until they walk into the room,” said Dan Searles, a resident who said he would be ‘‘tempted” to sign a recall petition. ‘‘Thanks for trying, but we expect our city leaders to solve problems.”

Others say no government, big or small, would easily tackle the problem.

‘‘This is not the type of issue that even professional politicians, who work on it only, would easily figure out in a quick and effective manner,” said Irwin L. Morris, political science professor at the University of Maryland.

‘‘It may be the political timing, but it really may just be that they are trying to make the best decision and they really don’t know what that is,” he said.

[…]

‘‘No matter what decision you make, you’re not going to please all the people,” [former Herndon Mayor Michael] O’Reilly said. ‘‘It’s not a case where, if you wait long enough, a better decision will come along. Eventually, you’ve got to make a decision and go through with it.”

As a co-worker of mine was wont to say: Phone, or get out of the booth.

Well, yes, I guess that does date me a bit…

Today’s Gazette has a story on the day laborer discussion at the 9/5/06 Council meeting (see my previous coverage on this meeting).

City may seek county’s help

Gaithersburg leaders agree it could be time to enlist aid on a central employment site

City leaders for the first time are saying it may be time to shift lead responsibility for establishing an employment center for day laborers in Gaithersburg to the county.

The city is continuing its search for a center site — with the latest possibility in an undisclosed shopping center — but Mayor Sidney A. Katz and the five council members last week conceded the city has come up short in addressing this emotional and complex issue.

[…]

‘‘Our understanding is that Gaithersburg has not exhausted its options within the city limits. It’s one thing to say, ‘There are no sites.’ It’s another thing to say, ‘We can’t decide on a site,’” Weaver said Friday.

‘‘It’s important to make the distinction between exhausting all possible options and just refusing to make a decision. That is something that is relevant and that we would bring to the table,” he said.

[…]

Dan Searles, one of the neighbors and a member of a task force the city created to study the issue earlier this year, said that the city’s leadership goes from being ‘‘marginally effective” to ‘‘incompetent” if it does not act by the City Hall meeting Monday night.

‘‘If the city hands this over to the county, what do we need the city for? … This is the issue of our times. It’s an issue for people of resolve, people of character, to stand up and be counted, consequences be damned.”

[…]

My impression in the past has always been that Council’s SOP is to try to wait until a controversy blows over before making a decision, and then to avoid making the decision if at all possible. I will grant that it is often the case that this patience is rewarded — many times things resolve themselves, sometimes because an applicant will decide that compromise is a better alternative than waiting for the Council to finally act. Sometimes, by delaying, they simply manage to make the decision at a quiet council meeting free of the long lines of angry citizens waiting to speak on the issue. Sometimes, however, this strategy doesn’t work. In 2003, for example, they finally had to act on the Hair Bar demolition after three years of holding the record open.

In this case, the problem is that the controversy simply is not going away — if anything, it is getting worse. And with the heat rising, the Council seems to want to punt — let the County handle it. Now, there is a little bit of an argument in their favor here, in that it has from the start been the County that wanted to build the center in Gaithersburg, staffed with the County’s Division of Hispanic Outreach, otherwise known as Casa de Maryland. But the citizens of Gaithersburg have repeatedly let it be known that Casa de Maryland is not welcome here (even Casa seems to have gotten this message, as they rarely speak at Council meetings anymore), and that the City government needs to be intimately involved in this activity because the County just isn’t to be trusted on this issue.

But the Council is in a bind here, because there just isn’t any way to decide this thing that isn’t going to anger some significant constituency in the City. They can’t just do nothing — doing nothing is the status quo and it clearly isn’t working. If they choose a site in Gaithersburg, it will almost inevitably be near someone who does not want a day labor center near them and the more conservative citizens will be after them for assisting illegal immigrants. If they choose a site outside of Gaithersburg, the County will be unhappy and will likely withhold the operating funds. If they choose not to support day laborers and instead respond with enforcement, the liberals and the day labor advocates will have a cow. Since they have no vision here, no creativity, no conflict resolution skills, no cojones, they are talking again about punting this back up to the county. But the County doesn’t want that, and the citizens of Gaithersburg don’t want that. But it would seem to be the closest thing to doing nothing that they can come up with.

Avi Rubin, well known for his work on electronic voting security, served (as he did in 2004) as an election judge in Maryland. In his blog, he reports on his day at the polls. It could have gone better:

It appeared that this poll book was not getting synced with the others. I tested it by waiting for someone to sign in with a different poll book, and then a few minutes later trying to sign in that voter on the one in question. The voter was shown as having not voted yet. I repeated this test for about 20 minutes, but it never registered that voter as having voted, and the poll book was falling behind - about 30 by then - the other poll book machines. I suggested rebooting that machine, and we tried that, but it did not change anything.

The electronic poll books presented an even bigger problem, however. Every so often, about once every 15-25 minutes, after a voter signed in, and while that voter’s smartcard was being programmed with the ballot, the poll book was suddenly crash and reboot. Unfortunately, the smartcard would not be programmed at the end of this, so the poll worker would have to try again. However, the second time, the machine said that the voter had already voted. The first few times this happened, we had some very irate voters, and we had to call over the chief judge. Soon, however, we realized what was happening, and as soon as the poll book crashed, we warned the voter that it would come up saying that they had already voted, but that we knew they hadn’t. Then, the chief judge would have to come over, enter a password, and authorize that person to vote anyway. Then we had to make a log entry of the event and quarantine the offending smartcard.

I have a feeling that we’re going to see some results challenged. I highly recommend that everyone read his full report.
See also the Baltimore Sun on the voting problems, and this report in the Washington Post.

UPDATE: The Gazette also has an article on the snafus.

UPDATE: The Gazette took the MCPD press release and replaced some of the pronouns with proper nouns.
Anyone know what really happened? From a MCPD press release:

Yesterday at approximately 10:45 a.m., the Educational Facilities Officer (EFO) at Gaithersburg High School was alerted to a disturbance caused by a substitute teacher.

The EFO was in the main office of the school when a teacher entered the office visibly very upset. She had come to the office to inquire about a substitute teacher who was at the school that day to teach an English composition class.

The concerned teacher had been working during her free time in an English room with two students who were practicing a speech to be given at a 9/11 Memorial Service that evening. The students were using some Arabic words which included a term that means peace in Islam. The substitute teacher, who was not involved in the speech practice session, agitatedly expressed her feelings that speaking in Arabic was insulting, and making other disparaging comments about the speech.

The students and helping teacher decided to leave the room, but the substitute followed them down the hall yelling at them.

The substitute teacher went to the principal’s office and loudly expressed her displeasure about the speech and the assisting teacher. The principal told the substitute that her services were no longer needed at the school, however she refused to leave. The EFO was asked to escort her from the building. As she was leaving, she yelled at a Hispanic teacher about the inappropriateness of speaking to students in languages other than English.

Once the substitute was outside, she attempted to re-enter the building. The EFO attempted to place the substitute under arrest, but the woman resisted. An addition officer responded to assist.

Carol Joan McVey, age 49, of the 19600 block of Shaklene Manor Road in Olney, was taken into custody and charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, trespassing, and disturbing the peace. She was released on her own recognizance.