11/22/2004 Committee meetings report
Last Monday, while I was spending the evening celebrating my sweetheart's birthday with her, there were back-to-back meetings of the Legislative and Finance Committees. I heard reports of those meetings yesterday.

Legislative

The two main topics discussed at the Legislative Committee meeting were the fire department's anti-false-alarm legislation, and CM Kiernan's campaign finance legislation.

I wish I could have been there for the false alarms discussion, because I was concerned about that legislation from before. I didn't hear much detail about it in my reports, and hope to find out more at tonight's council meeting.

It sounded like most of the council was on board for the Campaign Finance legislation, with the exception of CM Ray "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" Badders. I hope treats his car better than that -- if you don't change the oil and tune it up occasionally, when it "breaks" it will be very expensive to fix!! The committee did want the legislation to be focused a bit, to emphasize reporting donations rather than preventing "bad" donations, and to minimize paperwork while still meeting the goal of keeping finances clean. CM Kiernan hoped to have a simplified and focused version available for the council tonight.

Finance

The Finance Committee seemed to feel that the town's finances were in reasonable shape, and that with some modest belt-tightening (which the department heads had already done, at least on paper) the town would finish the fiscal year with a $15,000 (or so) surplus. That's pretty tight, but a lot better than the dire predictions we were hearing a few months ago.

Town resident Judy Gienger spoke to the finance committee at length about what she perceived as an incorrect method of reporting the town's surplus on the auditor's report. She has had a lot of experience with government finances, so it seems worthwhile to at least check out her suggestion. Mayor Tiberio used his standard line of "This is the way we've done it for years and years, we don't need to change it." While that may be true, I hope he's going to work to check it out before the town gets in trouble.

It's time now for me to get ready for the meeting.
- posted by Alan K. Thompson @ 7:37 PM 0 comments

 
Field of Dreams at the November 1 Town Council Meeting
As a newbie blogger, I'm still learning the ropes. One of the ropes, apparently, is not biting off more than you can chew.

Instead of writing a marathon blog on the whole 11/1/2004 Council meeting, I now realize, I should split it into pieces. Here's piece one.

CM Ray Badders, defying political reason, dragged the issue of selling the Field of Dreams back into the limelight. First he asked the town staff "How much does it cost the town to keep this as open space?" Included in this "cost" was lost tax revenue. Showing a lack of vision on the lost tax revenue, he just counted what it would be if someone else owned the empty lots, not if someone parked houses on the lots (quite a difference there). Also included in the cost was public works resources to keep it nicely mowed. Grand total: $7700/year.

CM Kiernan asked that a similar "cost" be generated for the recreation center used by the Boys and Girls Club. No-one asked that a similar "cost" be generated for the Volunteer Fire Department building; that might shed a little light on what is likely to happen over the next few years.

Under unfinished business, CM Badders brought up the appraisal of the Field of Dreams that was discussed at the previous council meeting (and incorrectly reported in the Town Crier). Town Admin Pat Prangley had gotten estimates for the cost of the appraisal, and it was going to run somewhere in the range of $1100-$1300. Badders moved to spend up to $1500 to get an appraisal.

The discussion of this motion was interesting. Mayor Tiberio took the position early on that this was a slap in the face of the voters, given the result of the referendum. CM Davis wanted the appraisal so she could have the "information" in case they had to sell the field to meet revenue needs. Read that sentence carefully -- CM Davis is ready to sell capital assets to pay operating expenses for the town. Would you raid your children's college fund to pay the cable bill?

CM Ray "Stick it to Ward 2" Badders was a little vague about his reasons for wanting to get an appraisal, but seemed to want to do it to show that the town wasn't having a fire sale when they tried to sell it for $300,000, that they were getting a fair price. We all need to remember that he's ready to drop $1500 just to show he didn't make a completely stupid decision, after the voters told him he made a stupid decision.

My new CM, David Hiles, wanted the appraisal "just to have the information". He has told me in the past that would like to have a non-profit foundation buy the lots and create a dedicated soccer field; an appraisal would help in making the political decision of how much the town was giving up in selling it below market value to a non-profit. Nice idea, but why not wait until the proposal process is further along?? Especially since the market price may shift.

CM Kiernan said that getting the appraisal should happen only after the town has a good sense of its current financial state -- if the town was in fine financial shape, why get an appraisal? If it was looking really bad, maybe an appraisal would be a good idea. Somewhere in between (which, of course, is almost certainly true) discuss getting an appraisal in the light of that knowledge. It's nice to hear reason from the council every now and then.

Then the public, yours truly included, commented.

Alan Tonelson, new resident in town, spoke about his addiction to information, and understanding the desire to have information, but this information would only make it easier to sell a capital asset to fund operating expenses, which would be really dumb except in a severe emergency. I think that Alan would agree that CM's losing their seats because they could not simultaneously maintain services and keep taxes constant doesn't qualify as a "severe emergency". (Remember that this is exactly the (dumb) reason given by CM Davis for wanting the information.)

I spoke, and said that while in the context of the budget $1500 wasn't a huge amount, it was more than I would pay this year in town property taxes, and I didn't approve of spending my entire tax payment going to getting information that probably would not, and probably should not, be used.

After the public comments, CM Taylor, finance chair, spoke and said that he thought delaying the appraisal until after a financial assessment was a good idea.

CM Davis made a moving and passionate plea for needing the information for budget planning purposes, and was gently but firmly criticized by Alan Tonelson, who said that you would only need that information if you were doing bad budget planning.

The council voted, as mentioned earlier, three for (Davis, Hiles, Badders), three against (Taylor, Kiernan, Webb). Mayor Tiberio seemed to agonize for a few seconds, and then voted against getting an appraisal.

The Finance Committee meets November 22 in joint session with the Legislative Committee.
- posted by Alan K. Thompson @ 7:27 AM 0 comments

 
Report from 11/3/2004 MUTC meeting
I have some more material to discuss from last Monday's Town Council meeting, but I'm going to write up the MUTC meeting from Wednesday (?) first. (I've got a few nieces and a sister-in-law in town this week, so things are pretty chaotic right now).

The main topic of the meeting was an application for a church to move into one of the beige brick storefronts in Town Center. The Town Center (and most of the Route 1 corridor) are in a new zone - the Mixed Use Town Center zone - and churches are not one of the explicitly permitted uses. Just as you can't put a grocery store in a residential zone, you can't (without going through a special process) put a church in a MUTC zone.

Part of that process is asking the Town's MUTC committee to make a recommendation (to the Town Council) for or against allowing the church to move in. The committee, concerned about a storefront that would usually be empty in the midst of a developing retail area, recommended against granting a waiver. I think this was a good idea, and hope the council supports it. The committee pointed out that there were areas in town that were zoned to allow churches, and recommended that the Town work with the church to find another location.

Then the interesting part of the meeting started.

The committee started discussing developments that were "on the horizon". The first was that an auto repair shop on Route 1 (I'll try to update with the name later, after I find my notes ;-)) was planning to become a "high-end" gas station / convenience store (this according to Chris Davis, Ward 1 Council Rep).

The second, and far more important, was that a developer was working to put in an enormous mixed-use development on Route 1 in Hyattsville (a little bit will be in Riverdale Park). According to Town Administrator Pat Prangley, the plan is for 500-700 housing units, and 80,000 sq ft of retail space. It will be a few stories tall, with retail on the ground floor, offices above, and loft apartments above that. This is going to have an enormous impact on the area.

Remember, you heard it here first! It would be nice if we heard about these things in the Town Crier.

A slightly more worrisome looming development is the athletic center at DeMatha High School. They are raising funds to build an athletic center, and there may be enormous traffic tie-ups and parking problems associated with it. We'll have to keep an eye on this project and work with DeMatha to make sure it doesn't cause too many problems.
- posted by Alan K. Thompson @ 9:16 AM 0 comments

 
Council Legislative Meeting Notes 11/1/2004
I just got home from the monthly Town Council meeting. For some reason, I wasn't appointed to be the Ward 2 Council Member. My neighbor down the street, David Hiles, was. I'm not surprised. A new member of the MUTC Committee was appointed to replace Matt Hart.

The council decided on a close vote against getting an appraisal for the Field of Dreams. Mayor Tiberio had to break a tie, and he voted against. I thanked him after the meeting.

They harassed me about the state of the town website, for which I am webmaster. I passed on a lot of the information about what I was doing for the web site (developing new content management software), some of which is discussed at a page begging for help.

Still no minutes from the August 9th meeting. Hmmmm.

There's more, but I need to get some sleep. I'll try to update this post (or write a new one) tomorrow.
- posted by Alan K. Thompson @ 11:23 PM 0 comments