Sometimes one can go through a number of days having time to tend to personal affairs because the opportunity to engage officials isn’t particularly urgent – at least not in a public venue, anyway. Those of you who took a few minutes out of your day to contact Congressman Kratovil about Pelosicare should be commended regardless of which side you were on. In my case, the skirmish was won but we lost the overall battle. Next up will be our Senators, but the chances of winning that skirmish are far smaller because they make no pretense of being independent – they’re hardcore leftists.
But I digress. Today and tomorrow are two days where the calendar is filled with opportunities for civic engagement.
On Saturday I received a request to place a notice about tonight’s Salisbury City Council meeting and taking the opportunity to speak out during the public comment period; after all:
This is an urgent call to action because crime in Salisbury is out of control.
Crime doesn’t care if you’re conservative, liberal or middle of the road.
Crime doesn’t care if you’re Republican, Democrat or Independent.
Crime doesn’t care if you’re an employee or a business owner.
The question is…
Who DOES care about stopping the crime in Salisbury that threatens our lives and livelihoods, families, students, the elderly?
This Monday night, November 9th at 6 p.m., at the Government Office Building, face the Salisbury City Council and ask:
“Will you continue to support the rising crime rate or will you take action against crime, starting now?”
During Public Comment, state your name and full address, keep it civil, keep it brief, and speak from your heart.
Join Americans for Prosperity, Progressive Delmarva, and many other citizens in letting their voices be heard.
Don’t worry, I have my take on this and I’ll get to it before you know it. But tomorrow brings TWO meetings worth attending – unfortunately they happen at the same time.
First of all, there will be a public hearing of the Maryland Public Service Commission at Salisbury University. The hearing will be at 7:00 PM in the Nanticoke Room (Room 236) of the Guerrieri Center.
The purpose behind the hearing is to give Delmarva Power the opportunity to face their public regarding a proposed rate increase.
Then Wicomico County residents will have the chance to speak out on budget cuts at a public hearing scheduled for Tuesday, November 10th at 7pm at the Wicomico Civic Center, in the Midway Room. Of course, the county Board of Education rescheduled their meeting to an early afternoon timeslot just so they can justify their existence and refusal to meaningfully partake in the sacrifice other county agencies must endure at the evening meeting.
Oh, and don’t forget the sure sob story from County Executive Rick Pollitt about laboring under a voter-imposed revenue cap.
So let’s return to the meeting of Salisbury City Council scheduled for tonight.
Obviously crime is a problem in Salisbury, as it is in a number of other locales. But the slant of the full message to me basically called for the dismissal of SPD Chief Allan Webster. Perhaps a fresh leader would help, but a changing of the guard at the top does little to address a number of other underlying problems which lie beyond the scope the SPD can work on – poor parenting, a subpar local economy, the glorification of the “thug culture”, and influx of illegal immigrants who are easy targets for criminal activity.
And then we have Delmarva Power. Unquestionably their costs are going up, particularly the price of purchasing the raw materials required to create electricity. But another component of their cost is conforming to the ever-expanding maze of regulations and mandates placed upon them by Fedzilla and the state governments – case in point, Maryland’s requirement for a percentage of generation to come from “renewable” sources. These generally cost more per kilowatt-hour than the standard fuels used for power generation. Coal and natural gas may be villified as fossil fuels but they’re also cheaper than getting electricity from renewable sources.
Wicomico County is a primary user of Delmarva Power’s services, and a rate increase would have to be factored into their next budget. It’s a scary prospect because a large portion of the county’s reserve funds are going to go into balancing this year’s ledger so they won’t have that cushion to fall back upon, made even more scary because next year is an election year for the entirety of county government.
Perhaps the largest problem Pollitt has in balancing his budget is a state mandate called “maintenance of effort.” That makes it most difficult to enact any cuts on the half of county expenditures going to educate Wicomico County’s public schoolchildren. Moreover, much of the education budget goes to labor and it’s mostly regulated by union contracts, so cutting there comes at the risk of a teachers’ strike.
Obviously it’s important to make our voices heard locally. But solving the underlying problems addressed by these meetings isn’t just something which can be done at a local level. The dependence of local governments on state and federal funding comes at a great cost in losing the ability to solve these dilemmas in-house.
Limiting the size and scope of government then, in effect, becomes a chicken-and-egg argument. It’s difficult to bring the federal government to its knees and much easier to achieve victories locally. But to achieve a more lasting solution to what ails our nation and economy, the federal beast has to be brought under control and relief given to state and local governments in the manner of cutting back on mandates and regulations on them. In turn, the states need to loosen their iron grip on local governments.
We can’t address these issues directly tonight and tomorrow. But it’s a point which deserves to be made.
