Update: The video of this meeting is now available on the City’s website.
Update 2: See below regarding a new Gazette article.
It’s late, so I can’t cover everything, but here’s a bit of an overview of what happened:
- The Mayor and Council tonight decided to defer yet again to the leadership of the the County on the day laborer situation. Despite assurances from the City Attorney regarding the supportability of the proposed text, the majority of the Council — everyone except Henry Marraffa — came out against approval of the anti-solicitation ordinance (actually, no one would second Mr. Marraffa’s motion) and in favor of deferring the decision until after the City has more opportunity to negotiate with the new County Administration. It was a contentious meeting. The Council had to deal with what was probably one of the rowdiest audiences I’ve seen there, at least since the last time this came up, and it wasn’t even a public hearing. The day laborers and their advocates, who undoubtedly had a heads-up that nothing bad was going to happen, stayed away in droves. Thus it was mostly Olde Towne residents, sick to death of all the dithering and inaction, who created the tension. Most of the Council members yet again asserted their ostensible concern over the situation these residents were dealing with, while offering them nothing in the way of a realistic solution or even leadership in that direction.
Just last November, the City had given up on finding a place for a center — a decision which led to a nasty epistolary exchange between the City Manager and the County Chief Administrative Officer. Quoting one of Mr. Humpton’s letters,
I discussed this matter publicly with our Mayor and City Council during their regular meeting of November 6, 2006. They unanimously concurred with my conclusion that, after an exhaustive search, it does not appear possible to have a site located in the City which meets the spirit of our Task Force’s criteria and is acceptable to a property owner.
Now, in tonight’s meeting, some Council members appeared to want to dig at this scab and start looking around the City again for some place to have a temporary, or even permanent site. From what I can tell this is to placate the County, which seems to have this unexplained jones for a center within the City limits (although see below, and I swear I wrote the previous sentence before seeing the Gazette story). Meanwhile, dozens of day laborers continue their unsupervised daily assembly at 17 N Frederick (as well as several other spots up and down MD 355) to stand around in in the unseasonably mild weather and wonder what it would be like to get work, and the Olde Towne residents wonder if the City is ever going to find a solution which will give them their neighborhood back.
- Remarkably, despite the County’s objections and concern over a law that appears to require the City not to have APFO regulations more restrictive than the County’s, the Council voted 3-2 to pass the APFO that is sensitive to the two-year MCPS funding horizon for school construction, rather than the 6-year fantasy horizon in which all good things are not only possible but likely.
- A motion to approve Hazma Halici’s application to destroy the Talbott House failed on a 3-3 vote. The Mayor, John Schlichting and Mike Sesma all voted against the motion. Henry Maraffa voted for it, apparently out of general hostility toward the principals of historic preservation, while Geri Edens and Stanley Alster voted for it, largely because they voted for it the last time, but also because they thought the standard was too weak and they hadn’t bothered to change it since the last time this came up.
Sebastian Montes has another article in the online Gazette:
Once it became clear that the council would defer the fate of the controversial anti-solicitation ordinance, last night’s meeting devolved into open heckling and verbal tirades against city leaders. The group of outraged residents, mostly from Olde Towne, at one point stormed out of the meeting in disgust.
‘‘They’re gutless. They know what the right thing to do is, but they’re looking for political cover,” said resident Dan Searles after as the group discussed the recall outside City Hall. ‘‘This is a time for real people, real adults, real leaders, to stand up. And they refuse.”
‘‘The mayor told us he was committed to passing this ordinance. And we trusted him. And we waited — we waited all the way to January because we had his word that they were committed to passing this,” said Olde Towne resident Mike Stumborg.
The angry residents raised the specter of a recall in the fall, but held off to give city leaders time. After last night’s inaction, they said they are ready to pursue a recall.
‘‘We waited to give these guys a second chance to see if they would do even anything. And they’ve done nothing. How much longer can or should we wait for them to lead the city?” Stumborg said Wednesday morning. ‘‘The five of them [besides Marraffa] didn’t even have the backbone to allow it to be voted down so that the people of Gaithersburg could see where they stood. It’s spineless, unconscionable, shameful and shows no leadership. And it sends a message to the county that Gaithersburg can be walked all over.”
Several of the residents were members of a city-appointed task force that studied the day-laborer issue last year, including its chairman, Prentiss Searles, who won wide praise for even-handedly navigating the task force through the contentious issue.
The ordinance was one of the task force’s key recommendations.
As a footnote to the day laborer topic, I notice now an article by Sebastian Montes in this week’s Gazette, concerning Chuck Short’s return to County Government to take on the day laborer issue. Quoting,
With ‘‘adequate blame to be spread on everyone” for having so far failed to open a center, Short said he is interested more in moving forward than in picking at old wounds.
‘‘It’s not my goal to win a battle, it’s to find a solution that addresses the common good,” he said.
To that end, Short met ‘‘over coffee” three weeks ago with Gaithersburg City Manager David B. Humpton. Their professional relationship goes back several years.
The early talks are already yielding possibilities that have them feeling optimistic, they both said in interviews with The Gazette.
While Short believes that the city has some level of obligation, he said he is not going to ‘‘obsess over the city limits issue” — the notion that the center must be in Gaithersburg proper.
That question had become a bone of contention in recent months.
‘‘We’re percolating ideas,” Humpton said, both short- and long-term, including a number of specific sites that are ‘‘proximate” to Gaithersburg.
Both added that they are arranging a meeting between Leggett (D) and Mayor Sidney A. Katz (D), probably in the next few weeks.
The question I have is: If the County relents and builds a center outside of the City limits, will the Council take that as a signal that they don’t have to enact an anti-solicitation ordinance after all? Or will — is? — dropping the ordinance be part of a deal with the County in return for such a compromise?