WCRC meeting – March 2007
According to my postcard, the issues for tonight were a discussion about changing our county to an elected school board and possibly switching our meeting night to a night not opposite the Salisbury City Council meetings. (Maybe they won’t be nearly as controversial after the new Council comes in.) Oh, and we were supposed to get a legislative update, something I wanted to hear with bated breath considering my issues with our General Assembly.
However, the meeting change wasn’t discussed tonight, which is probably good because I think the officers should look into this further anyway before we bring it back up to the membership at-large. Nor we didn’t get the legislative update, which was a bummer. Of course, our legislators are hard at work. Hopefully the ones who would be most likely to come speak with us are figuring out ways to throw a monkey wrench into the liberal utopian works that the General Assembly is by and large trying to build.
*ahem* Anyway, we did get our meeting started with the normal business, and then most of the seven of us new officers were sworn in by Dr. John Bartkovich. Because he had to hurry back to his “real” job, he briefly touched on upcoming events and Central Committee business (Lincoln Day dinner, county GOP website, and donation policy.)
Incoming club President George Ossman then went through some of his goals for the upcoming year. Most of what he wanted to accomplish lay in the areas of growing our membership and fundraising capabilities. He also made mention of continuing the work of updating our by-laws and attempting to secure a speaker for each of our upcoming meetings. George then introduced our speaker tonight, Board of Elections head Anthony Gutierrez.
Mr. Gutierrez gave us a brief rundown of his Kansas background, as he was born and raised in the Sunflower State and worked in the elections field for the Kansas Secretary of State’s office and two of the state’s largest counties. In June 2006 he assumed his current role in Wicomico County, with part of the reason he was hired being his familiarity with a computer voting program similar to Maryland’s. (Shawnee County in Kansas was a beta site for this program.)
But he also had done some research into how Wicomico County could get an elected school board. As it stands, the process is up to the Maryland General Assembly. While this Sun article talks about the opposition of General Assembly leaders to the concept, Gutierrez noted that Worcester County’s effort was spearheaded by the late Delegate Bennett Bozman after it became apparent a petition drive was showing support from most of the county’s voters. So rather than go by the straw ballot method prescribed by the state (which can be either a binding or non-binding straw ballot), Bozman simply introduced the legislation and it was passed. In a nutshell, those are the three methods by which Wicomico County could join the 96% of the country that has an elected rather than appointed school board.
After some discussion, we decided on a method to determine how much support would be had locally for an elected school board. I did find out a little bit of history on the subject though. Apparently there have been at least two recent tries to get an elected school board in Wicomico County; an abortive one in the early 1980′s, and a petition drive begun in 2001 that was bearing fruit until the events of 9/11 occurred and shelved the effort.
Once Anthony was through, we took care of a little bit more business. Most of this centered around getting volunteers for the WCRC booth at the Salisbury Festival on April 27th and 28th. I won’t be working the booth, but I’m making brownies to sell there. (This is also the day of the Ben Layton walk, so I’ll be a busy guy!)
This month was a bit of a feeling-out process for the incoming officers, but now we have one meeting under our belts and next month should work a little more smoothly. In the meantime, I’ll need to assist in coordinating what will be on our new Wicomico GOP website. We’re planning on making what happens in our club essentially an open book, with by-laws, meeting minutes, upcoming events, and other features made accessible to anyone who wants to know. This should be an interesting year for us in the WCRC and if you want to see this all come down in person, feel free to come out for our next meeting April 23!
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