When I went to the County Council meeting today, I was sort of expecting the County Council to approve having one meeting per month in the evening. Unfortunately, the body decided on a half-hearted compromise of just one evening meeting per quarter, a move which is bound to be more confusing than the original approach. Five of the six Council members voting on the amended resolution supported the compromise offered by Councilman William McCain, with Gail Bartkovich opposed because she preferred the monthly evening meetings. An earlier bid to table the resolution failed on a party-line vote, with the 3-3 tie broken by Council President John Cannon’s vote against tabling – all three Democrats wished to table and the four Republicans voted against it.
With the resolution as passed, the County Council will meet in the evenings on the first Tuesday of January, April, July, and October. The remaining 20 meetings will maintain their typical morning time, and the impact of evening meetings cost-wise will be figured as well. Today’s big concern voiced by District 4 Councilman David MacLeod (an opponent of the resolution) was on how much it would cost the county to have evening meetings, with the predicted impact being just about $110 per meeting, excluding comp time required from county employees who stay overtime to testify at the meetings. I’ll grant that the County Council is relatively prudent fiscally but to me this was penny wise and pound foolish.
Since I have the forum, it’s worth pointing out that two other major pieces of business were accomplished today. One is a furlough plan for county employees which will save the county about $700,000 – now they only have to come up with another $6 million or so to balance the budget due to state cuts.
The second was denying a Board of Education request to transfer $180,000 between accounts and enable the WCBOE to hire a total of 13 full- and part-time employees as teacher assistants and clerical staff. In questioning the BOE staff, Councilman MacLeod noted the “disconnect” between passing a resolution cutting employee salaries through furloughs to save money yet the BOE coming in looking for new hires – particularly during a period where the board was in a self-proclaimed “hiring freeze.”
In listening to the testimony by the BOE, I was struck most by the amount of red tape placed upon it by both state and federal mandates and guidelines. It’s bad enough that the state puts the counties through hoops called “maintenance of effort” in order to grant them funding, but then add the onus of Fedzilla and it’s no wonder the BOE needs staff just to figure out the labyrinthine regulations. Do I hear a second on eliminating the federal Department of Education? Start there and then we can work on straightening out the mess in Annapolis.
I suppose one advantage of a morning meeting is that the public hearing on the Barren Creek Estates subdivision was only an hour as NIMBYs and environmentalists combined for a barrage of pleas against the new development. It’s probable their wishes will be granted because all the delays (including the delay of consideration put forth today, until mid-November) will place the project under tougher state regulations. Even if not, since the anti-development advocates will get free legal representation – at least that’s how I understood Michael Pretl’s remarks – they can fight this out until there’s actually a housing market to deny the landowners’ cashing in on again.
So there were some big decisions and small victories today. I didn’t stick around for the BOE work session but I’m betting they’ll get some hard questions about their lack of sacrifice in the budget and give the same mealy-mouth, blame-shifting answers they’ve given already. I just hope next year the BOE budget is better scrutinized because apparently by what I heard today they had some phantom positions built in – maybe that’s the first cut of FY2011.
