gaithersblog.net

Patricia Murret and Audrey Dutton write:

Two important figures in Montgomery County government —County Councilwoman Marilyn J. Praisner and Planning Board Commissioner Eugene Lynch — have died.

According to the County Council agenda for next Tuesday, January 22:

10:45 BRIEFING - County Property Use Initiative, a proposal to relocate services from Public Safety Training Academy (PSTA) and County Service Park to GE/Edison Tech Park in Gaithersburg

This meeting will be televised live on CCM Channels Comcast 6, RCN 6, and Verizon 30; repeated on 1/25/08 at 8 pm.

This page has information on additional ways to hear and see this session.

Gaithersblog readers may recall my earlier posts on this topic. Additionally, a Gaithersblog reader has pointed out to me that one of the primary uses the County has in mind for this property — County Liquor and School Cafeteria distribution warehouses — may in fact not be allowed under the current zoning (I-3) for this property. According to the City Code, Part II, Chapter 24, Article III, Division 15, I-3 Zone, Section 24-143 (emphasis mine):

(2)	Public buildings and uses subject to the following requirements:
	(a)	The minimum lot or parcel area shall be at least twenty (20) acres in size.
	(b)	No on-site parking or storage of trucks, either within a building or on the exterior, or motor vehicles other than automobiles for employees and customers of the facility are allowed.
	(c)	All parking areas shall be set back at least fifty (50) feet from any common property line or public right-of-way and shall be screened by fencing or planting at least four (4) feet in height.
	(d)	No distribution uses are allowed. For the purpose of this section “distribution uses” is defined as the primary use of the property for the collection and transfer or dispensing of personal property or equipment to public or private recipients.

Note this restriction on distribution uses only applies to public buildings and uses, and therefore the current Peapod grocery distribution warehouse is not excluded under this rule.

The County is currently asserting that they are not subject to City zoning — Ike Leggett said so in response to a question in his call-in show last month, and County Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Diane Schwartz Jones said as much in her presentation at the January 7 City Council Meeting. But for them to come in and blatantly violate not just the spirit but the letter of the City’s ordinances right from the get-go, is pretty offensive in my opinion.

In my mind, this raises the question of whether there will be any sort of controls whatsoever on that property once it is taken over by the County. If the County believes that the City’s zoning doesn’t apply, and the County doesn’t have any zoning for that property because it is outside the jurisdiction of M-NCPPC, would this not mean that the County can do just whatever it likes there? All the assurances that the County might be making about the compatibility of their activities on that property have to be taken with an enormous grain of salt.

Folks, I think that the City of Gaithersburg is about to get 100 acres smaller.

I missed this one in the Gazette the other day:

Sebastian Montes writes, Knapp: Upcounty immigrants need more:

When the idea of opening a day-laborer center upcounty first started being discussed more than two years ago, Knapp, (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown, hoped the idea might be expanded to inspire a new range of non-profit groups to meet the needs of the upcounty’s growing — and increasingly diverse — immigrant population.

City of Gaithersburg and county officials had agreed to call the center the Gaithersburg Upcounty Regional Employment Center.

But that plan crumbled under the weight of public outcry. In the heat of the ensuing controversy, Knapp said, many of the long-term human service issues the center was supposed to address got lost in the mix.

In this article, Mr. Knapp is quoted as stating that:

• CASA de Maryland was expected to run the day laborer center, but he’s now thinking that creating opportunities for new “non-profit groups specific to the upcounty” might be a better idea.
• He had hoped that the day labor placement would have been only one of many services for immigrants at the new center.
• He’s concerned that the temporary-trailers-and-porta-johns approach may not convey the “the kind of dignity and respect we think [day laborers] deserve”, and that he sees this as only delaying a permanent site.

First, I want to say that I really believe that for the day laborers, there is no loss in dignity in a trailer and some porta-johns. To my knowledge, and to the extent that they actually get jobs, they are typically working in construction and other outdoor work. More than likely, where they wind up working, everyone — from the foreman on down — is working out of trailers and using porta-johns. These sorts of facilities are a fact of life for people doing that sort of work (or at least, it was when I was doing it) and there is a strong likelihood that they would actually prefer these surroundings over whatever Mr. Knapp has in mind as conveying “dignity”. Imposing a white-collar, air-conditioned office mindset on this employment sector can actually be kind of insulting; not everyone wants to be coddled.

While I applaud his having come to the realization that there may be better options than using CASA de Maryland to run these centers, I’m concerned that he still hasn’t figured out a lot of the other problems associated with what appears to be his vision for a grand facility offering an immigrant-services smorgasbord. Among other things, I would prefer that he would be up front about the fact that many of the people he hopes to serve — the day laborers in particular — are not “immigrants” in the legal sense of the word. It occurs to me that many of the services needed by illegal migrants are somewhat different than those needed by immigrants. For example, illegal migrants often need help finding employers willing to break the law to hire them, while immigrants generally do not. Also, if the facility is a day laborer center first and a social service agency second, then there is the risk of the services being tied to the immigrant’s status as a day laborer. Would immigrants — especially legal immigrants with jobs — be happy about having to go to the day laborer center to get assistance?

I’m also curious as to why the locations he seems to prefer for providing these services are never in his district, which is even more “up-county” than Gaithersburg.

If Mr. Knapp wants there to be an up-county immigrant services agency, then fine, go ahead and propose that one be built. But go through the process, calling it an immigrant services agency, instead of trying to go through the back door to tack one on to a day-laborer center.

From the New MoCo Progressive:

County Councilman and retired CASA De Maryland board member George Leventhal’s comment that “At some point, they [the Gaithersburg city council] need to make a decision and understand that 100 percent of people are never going to be satisfied” has motivated Gaithersburg residents to unleash a firestorm of letters to Leventhal.

MoCo goes on to quote several of the letters.

I wrote of my reaction to Leventhal’s comments in an earlier post.

Don Libes reports,

Comcast was hit with a fine in the 2nd quarter and for the 3rd quarter has not submitted sufficient data to even know if it is in compliance. But partial figures show some decreases in customer service performance.

Complaints to the Cable Office are up 31% from 2nd quarter with 76% for service. (Complaints for RCN are down 40% for the same period.) CTC reported 2450 violations, up 11% from the 2nd quarter and 53% from a year ago. While many have now been corrected, CTC reports 1830 violations outstanding.

Picture freezing is mentioned as a notable problem which the county is receiving complaints about. Hasn’t this problem been going on ever since Comcast rolled out its digital service? Another problem mentioned is the issue of standard installations. This was supposed to have been settled but evidentally customers are still being overcharged.

Comcast is also well behind on its obligation to provide cable service to public facilities. Jane’s report shows 33 outstanding requests.

C. Benjamin Ford writes in the Gazette,

Montgomery County’s cable office received complaints about Comcast from 1,156 people, including from 506 in the past three months.

Comcast’s own records showed the company failed to meet customer service standards under the Montgomery County franchise agreement in six of the first eight months of this year. Data for the ninth month was not provided to the county.

‘‘I’m getting more and more complaints about this when I go to the grocery store,” said County Councilwoman Marilyn J. Praisner (D-Dist. 4) of Calverton, chairwoman of the Management and Fiscal Policy Committee which reviewed the cable office’s quarterly report on Monday.

Gaithersburg has its own cable franchise, but has the same franchisees, Comcast and RCN. I will try to obtain equvalent data for this contract. Notwithstanding this,

Janice Cadel, 48, of Gaithersburg recently found herself one of those who experienced Comcast’s customer service problems first hand, she told The Gazette.

When she called Comcast to change her billing because she added Comcast’s telephone service to her television and Internet service, ‘‘they literally closed out my Internet account,” Cadel said. ‘‘When I called the customer service line, I got hung up on several times.”

She managed to get through the next day and was told her Internet service would be restored in 24 to 48 hours. When it was not restored, Cadel said she called again and was told there was no record of her previous call. Her Internet connection was restored the next day, but Cadel said the e-mails the family received during the outage were lost.

Gaithersburg nears adoption of growth restrictions, by Jaime Ciavarra

After a year of public discussion, Gaithersburg leaders are honing regulations that will stop development in the city if it overburdens infrastructure such as schools or roads.

The proposed document, called an Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance, could come before the City Council for a vote as early as Nov. 6.

Advocates of the tighter restrictions say the county’s test to determine school capacity is flawed, and that Gaithersburg’s rules are a step in the right direction.

‘‘We’ve all seen stuff that’s been in the planning, [the school system’s] six-year plan, and hasn’t been funded in that time. It’s pretty clear that’s no guarantee,” said Jud Ashman, co-chair of the Quince Orchard school cluster. ‘‘The point of an APFO is to deal with what’s real, what’s funded, and what will be concurrent with residential development.”

Some residents say the overall document is too restrictive and could ultimately lead to bad planning principles. The city’s proposal, especially in the school section, has more clear-cut, tighter rules than those under the county.

‘‘It’s inappropriate, in this era of smart growth, to have such an extraordinarily restrictive APFO,” said Kentlands resident Richard Arkin. ‘‘The ordinance is based on factors beyond the control of the council … and I see nothing in there that would permit the applicant to make a contribution,” such as build a school as a way to compensate for more development.

See here for previous gaithersblog discussion of the APFO.

Absentee ballots a hot item, by Janel Davis and C. Benjamin Ford

Worried about a repeat of September’s election debacle, voters have been asking for so many absentee ballots that they may cause the very problems they are trying to avoid, local elections officials say.

Many local boards, including Montgomery County’s, have not yet received all their ballots from the printing company, and officials are concerned that some voters may not be able to vote.

Speed cameras to debut in Rockville and Gaithersburg, by C. Benjamin Ford

Montgomery County’s speed cameras are expected to begin nabbing violators in December, but motorists caught over the speed limit in the first month will be issued warnings instead of tickets.

Police had expected to have the speed cameras operating in October, but procurement delays now have them looking at December to begin using them, said Lt. Ronald G. Smith of the Montgomery County Police Special Operations Division.

The county is working in partnership with Rockville, Gaithersburg and the Village of Chevy Chase to roll out the cameras at ‘‘roughly the same time,” said County Councilman Philip M. Andrews, chairman of the Public Safety Committee.

‘‘Pedestrian safety is very important, and we lose a dozen to 15 people a year to pedestrian fatalities,” said Andrews, (D-Dist. 3) of Gaithersburg. ‘‘Speed cameras can be an important tool to improve safety.”

I’d like to highlight a few letters in this week’s Gazette:

• David B. Humpton: City ‘committed to finding the right solution’ to day labor center issue
  

  The Sept. 27 Gazette editorial (‘‘Breaking the day labor stalemate”) criticized the city of Gaithersburg for its inability to find a site for a day laborer employment center. With terms like ‘‘flat footed” and ‘‘sitting on their hands,” the editorial unilaterally dismissed the efforts of an entire community to find a solution.

  […]

  This has been one of the most difficult issues we’ve encountered in Gaithersburg. Public input has been passionate on both sides. With no support from the federal level, local jurisdictions are left on their own to struggle with the quality of life and public safety issues that surround day laborer gathering sites. Have our deliberations taken a long time? Yes. But how long is ‘‘too long” to do what’s right?
  We urge the public to come forward and continue the dialog at our public work session at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 12 at City Hall, 31 S. Summit Ave., Gaithersburg. A storefront site at Festival at Muddy Branch has become available. With public support, this location, which meets much of the site criteria set forth by the Day Laborer Task Force, could begin housing a Montgomery County-operated employment center before winter.

• Michael Stumborg: city officials defended
  

  You mention the city manager’s lack of ‘‘political firepower” to impose a day labor center on an unwilling neighborhood as if that’s a bad thing. Exercising political firepower, as the county did when it unilaterally dismissed the city’s rejection of 17 N. Frederick Ave., is done by thugs, not leaders. Your faith in county leadership is woefully misplaced. Day laborers come from County Council Districts 2 and 3. While District 2 representative Mike Knapp attended the ad hoc meetings that ironically chose a District 3 site, District 3’s ‘‘Silent Phil” Andrews deferred site selection to the executive branch and disappeared from Olde Towne for a year. Neither action exhibits leadership.

• Stephen Schreiman: Illegal immigrant labor undermining legitimate businesses
  

  Our elected county officials have had four years to solve the day labor problem in Wheaton, Silver Spring and Takoma Park and have failed miserably. We need to throw the incumbents out of office on Nov. 7. Our tax dollars, along with funding from Casa of Maryland, pay for the day labor centers, and between them they have accomplished Casa’s goal of accommodating more illegal immigrants in Maryland.

• Susan Gross: Tower residents concerned about CCT station placement
  

  While residents of the Washingtonian Tower may or may not be in favor of the Corridor Cities Transitway, we are quite concerned regarding the proposed placement of transit station No. 4 as shown on the map.

• Deborah A. Vollmer: ‘Let everyone vote on paper’
  

  I wish I could have some certainty about the results, but as we all know, the primary election in Maryland was a fiasco, with those access cards arriving hours late at many polling places, and other glitches in the system. How many folks were in fact denied a vote because their polling place was not prepared to proceed with the machines for lack of access cards, and also ran out of provisional ballots, we will never know.

First, I want to make it clear: I do not in the least intend this to be an anti-day-laborer or anti-immigrant blog. However, I do want to provide information on events in Gaithersburg, and I hope that everyone understands that this has in fact been one of the biggest, if not the biggest story in Gaithersburg for nearly the entire time I’ve been doing this blog, since late August. Also, I want to make clear that to the extent that I have a problem with the way things are going, it has less to do with the day laborers themselves (although I do wish they’d be a little more respectful of us and our property, and I do want the City to find an appropriate place for them to solicit work) as with the media, advocates and government officials who attempt to exploit and distort the news about the laborers to advance their own agendas. I try, in my posts, to be generally supportive of those who are making positive efforts to find real, practical solutions.

Anyway, one thing I intend to do over the coming weeks is to try to minimize the number of posts I put up with links to news reports about the day laborer situation, so that this issue pops up to the top of the post stack a little less often. Toward that end, I will simply put up a single post today and append to that any additional links I encounter over the rest of this week. As I add links, I will change the title to reflect the update, but the permalink will remain the same. If I come across a news item that merits special attention, such as the Washington Post editorial this morning, I will add it as a separate post.

Update 3: The Gazette has two items on the day laborers today, an article and an editorial. The article is entitled “County defies city’s ruling“:

But within hours of the enforcement last week, county officials let it be known to the day laborers — mostly Latino men, many of whom are also illegal immigrants — that they could use a nearby site under lease to the county government.

That site, a vacant commercial building and parking lot at 17 North Frederick, was slated last year to become an official employment center in Gaithersburg, but city officials rejected the plan, saying it was an inappropriate neighborhood location.

Early Thursday morning, a dozen day laborers were at the new lot pulling weeds and readying the overgrown site for their daily business. They were led in prayer by the Revs. David Rocha and Simon Bautista, who have advocated for the men in months of debate.

[…]

Humpton held an impromptu meeting with those gathered. Responding to the St. Martin’s proposal he reminded the group that temporary trailers next to City Hall had been proposed and rejected last month.

‘‘I’m a realist,” Humpton said. ‘‘My reaction … is that we’ll have as just much a fight from the community over there [as] we do at Walker Avenue — that people will come out and say, ‘Aha, City Council, you’re moving it from one area to another.’”

He predicted it would take a ‘‘huge coalition” to support the idea and get it through the City Council.

Several religious leaders and Latino advocates met privately Thursday morning to continue work on the idea.

The focus of the group — which includes representatives of Grace Church, St. Martin’s, Episcopal Church of the Ascension and the Latino advocacy nonprofit Casa de Maryland — is to create a broader coalition of religious and civic groups in support of St. Martin’s offer and, in the meantime, to help supervise the day laborers gathering at the county site at 17 North Frederick.

If only the local religious leaders had been willing to build this coalition months ago, when the Day Labor Task Force recommended it; perhaps we wouldn’t be having this stalemate now. Also, I expect that if CASA de Maryland’s role in this is more than as an interested party providing some input and advice to the coalition, we can expect significant public resistance to the arrangement.

The editorial makes it clear that the Gazette has no thought for the residents of any neighborhood that might be home to a day labor center:

[…]

Gaithersburg can’t wait for another winter to come and go with no place for these workers to shelter themselves from the elements while they wait for jobs that others consider too menial. And the situation mustn’t be encumbered by debate over federal immigration policy and reform.

This is one thing I still just don’t get. By and large, the jobs that these laborers get are outside, even in the winter. Can anyone explain to me why they need better conditions while they are waiting then they have while they are working? In Herndon, they wait outside under a canopy, 12 months a year, and are reportedly happy to do so. Propane space heaters — as are used on construction sites — can also be used to provide some releif when it gets particularly cold.

In more than a year of trying, examining almost 30 locations, about all Gaithersburg has been able to offer up in recent days is the suggestion that churches help with bus fare to ferry the workers to existing county-supported labor centers in Wheaton and Silver Spring.

The county has more experience with labor centers, witness its involvement nearly two decades ago when workers gathered before dawn each morning in the parking lot of a Takoma Park convenience store, prompting the first center operated by an advocacy group./p>

The county has more experience with labor centers, this is true. The success of those centers is open to debate and highly dependant on how you define “success”. If success is measured by the number of day laborers getting jobs at the centers and the lack of day laborers remaining at ad-hoc sites near the centers, they are failures. If success is measured by the ability of politicians to say they’ve dealt with the problem, or by the steady stream of money flowing from the public coffers into CASA de Maryland’s bank accounts, then yes, they’ve been highly successful.

Gaithersburg’s leaders still have a number of options. They include supporting a center in the county-leased building, working with Saint Martin for buildings at the church property, coming up with another centrally located site or continuing to fret and sit on their hands.

Remind me again why it has to be central to Gaithersburg, other than that the County has some agenda to put it there? Many of the laborers come to the existing site on busses, so they could ride busses to some other site as well. I’m not aware that any of the Gazette’s editors live near this location, surely they could recommend locations near their own homes. Or perhaps the Gazette’s editors live where no busses go.

Perhaps the best option is to admit they’re incapable of making a decision and let the county come to the rescue. When the mayor and council are up for re-election, the voters can decide whether that’s the kind of leadership they want.

Whatever they decide, I certainly hope that we do a better job selecting leaders than has the County as a whole.

Update 2: Aparently Martin O’Malley and Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM) are having a press conference today at CASA de Maryland’s facility in Silver Spring:

O’Malley’s news conference with Richardson today will be in Silver Spring at CASA of Maryland, where he will aim to bring out more Latino voters.

Other than the comment on mocoprogressive that first tipped me off to the event, this sentence in the Post is the only mention I’ve been able to find regarding the press conference. If I find more information I may make a separate post about this.

Update 1: I missed this when it was put up a few days ago at the Washington Post: Video of Gaithersburg worker protest

Laborer site still sought

Publish Date: 09/23/06

By Sonia Boin
News-Post Staff

GAITHERSBURG — Day laborers who were threatened with arrest if they continued to gather at a commercial parking lot in Gaithersburg have moved up the street to a site Montgomery County is leasing.

But that doesn’t settle a yearlong search for a permanent site that can accommodate an employment center without bringing down a hail of complaints from neighbors or store customers.

Gaithersburg Mayor Sidney Katz said the city is waiting to see if another shopping center, one that has an adequate existing building, will agree to let the laborers use its premises.

“If that doesn’t come to fruition,” he said, “we might ask the county for a place close to the city limits.”

Mr. Katz was less than enthusiastic about a new possibility raised Wednesday, a field across from St. Martin’s Catholic Church with a trailer to accommodate the laborers.

He said the laborers would stand on the lawn, but potential employers can’t park on Md. 355 to pick them up.

I have also heard that there are no sewer connections on that lot, so that portable toilets would be required; something that some advocates have in the past identified as unacceptable, even though many of the laborers work on construction sites where such toilets are a standard part of the work environment.

Asked for their take on seeking a place outside the city limits for the average 100 laborers who gather every day, councilmembers who represent Gaithersburg and the upcounty said their minds are open.

Michael Knapp said he doesn’t have a problem with a site outside the city.

The article doesn’t say if this includes locations in his district, which includes parts of Montgomery County immediately to the north of the City limits, or if he’s thinking more to the east, south and west of the City, which would still leave it in Mr. Andrews’ district. Mr. Knapp was the most active of all the Council members in the early, secretive meetings among day laborer advocates and City and County officials and staff which resulted in the leasing by the County of the Gaithersburg site now being used without permit by Rev. Rocha and the day laborers, in collusion with Mr. Romer’s office.

Phil Andrews, who represents Gaithersburg and Rockville, said, “Gaithersburg needs to keep at it. It’s important to find a location that works for residents and day laborers and can be supervised.”

Asked about a location outside the city, Mr. Andrews said he has an open mind.

I’m surprised that Mr. Andrews has expressed any opinion at all on this issue; as far as I’ve been able to determine, he has been almost completely absent from this debate, and has done little to nothing to support his Gaithersburg constituents in their dispute with the County. In the one opportunity I had to speak with him, he stated that he thought these sorts of operational details were not the responsibility of the legislative branch, an ethical stance that in my opinion serves no purpose when his colleague is attempting to place a day labor site right under Mr. Andrews’ nose.