By Sharon Dooley.
Last Sunday evening showcased the first outing for the Democratic candidates for the special primary for the County Council District 4 seat. This meeting was held at the historic mansion headquarters of the local advocacy group, which was joined by several local progressive groups in promoting this meeting. (The special Primary is less than one month away on April 21st.)
All announced Democratic candidates attended and were joined by the Green Candidate George Gluck. The Democratic candidates were: (in alpha order) Martin Bigler, (a Silver Spring funeral director), Robert Goldman (a Burtonsville attorney), Tom Hardman (an Aspen Hill IT professional), Ben Kramer (a businessman/current D19 delegate from Olney), Cary Lamari, (a Norbeck area businessman and former President of the Civic Federation) and Nancy Navarro (a Silver Spring resident and member of the Board of Education).
After brief opening remarks, each candidate was asked questions that were given to them and to the audience at the start of the meeting. Each candidate was given one minute to answer each question. The questions and summaries of their responses follow:
A. Police disability reform: Most respondents indicated that this agreement needs to be re-evaluated and re-worked by contract; Tom Hardman felt that there should be a case by case evaluation, Nancy Navarro thought that this should be brought back to the negotiating table.
B. Ambulance fees – yes or no – Those in favor of imposing ambulance fees are Bigler, Goldman, Hardman, and Gluck; those opposed are: Kramer, Lamari and Navarro.
C. All candidates voiced support for campaign finance reform and were in favor of allowing Montgomery County to institute its own transparent process.
D. Knapp proposal concerning Historic preservation restrictions: Navarro was in favor if it would improve options for public housing, Goldman and Hardman wanted more information about it; Kramer, Lamari, Gluck and Bigler were opposed.
E. The questions about the Agricultural Reserve were divided into sand mounds, Child lots and BLT’s (should you explain these concepts in a sentence or two).
a) Sand mounds were not to be used for development and should be used only when systems failed according to Hardman, Kramer, Lamari, and Navarro; Bigler was undecided and Gluck and Goldman wanted more information.
b) All candidates deemed Child lots in need of monitoring and vigilant enforcement.
c) How to fund the Building Lot Termination (BLT) program – most candidates felt that this was a problem to be decided, perhaps by legislation in the future.
F. Master Plans to be decided for Germantown, Gaithersburg West and White Flint – none in District 4 - but all in need of infrastructure and to be decided by the council – how would you vote on these concerns?
Gluck – delay building until county can afford infrastructure
Navarro – there is a disconnect between the planning process and the follow through this must improve
Lamari – Process of development needs to be measurable and quantifiable; there should be no development districts
Kramer – First for the areas of the upcounty, the CCT needs to be built; need to have the transit hub in place before the JHU center is developed.
Hardman – need to ensure we have adequate water stores before we allow development; no Pay/Go.
Goldman – Need infrastructure first – District 4 has been neglected – Burtonsville has not been well planned.
Bigler – We need to have the roads in place first.
G. Budget/Education – How to find savings with large shortfall?
Bigler – don’t spend wildly – closer audits
Goldman – Don’t touch schools, keep COLAS
Hardman – Stop using Microsoft software and switch to Open Source software
Kramer – The cuts being made now by Ike are unsustainable; We must continue to find savings
Lamari – Cuts being made now are symptoms of a bigger problems; our culture is wrong – electronic boards too expensive
Navarro - Under my leadership as President of the Board of Education for 2 years, we worked with the unions, cur COLAS and found $50 millions in savings
Gluck - My wife and daughter are both teachers and find those electronic boards very helpful in their teaching – they have to learn how to use them but they are good for the students
H. 20% of the County budget is allowed for non-education/non-salary spending; what is your sacred cow that you would protect in the budget?
Gluck – No answer
Navarro – We need to have a safety net for HHS
Lamari - Need to protect the most vulnerable; care for mental health needs of those in jail
Kramer – HHS would be my first priority; Council member Trachtenberg has noted the needs for supplemental food and medication; we cannot forget the disadvantaged and those with mental health needs.
Hardman – We must prepare for the common defense and make certain we have supplies for our emergency responders and follow the Boy Scouts by being prepared. We also need to care for mental health.
Goldman - Must take care of public transit, not discontinue needed routes – cannot isolate Burtonsville from access to the rest of the county.
Bigler – need to protect Mental health and public safety
I. Affordable Housing needs are not met – how to address 10 year backlog?
Bigler - Needed at the Metro
Goldman - Developers need incentives offer at below market rates – subsidies for county employees
Hardman - cannot plan, too many foreclosures need to intersperse affordable housing
Kramer - Provide rent subsidies – currently no state or county monies
Lamari - need a tenants bill of rights; do not allow builders to buy out of requirement for MPDU’s, need funds for land trusts and to help first time home buyers
Navarro – We need a safety net, help those faced with foreclosures increase densities have rent stabilizations for condos
Gluck – need to put all of this on hold until we can provide the supportive infrastructure on hold
J. Undocumented felons who have committed violent crimes – do you approve of the compromise worked out by County Executive Leggett and Police Chief Manger? Yes or No answers – Yes – Navarro, (within limits) Lamari, Kramer – ( careful compromise) Hardman, Goldman, Bigler No – Gluck
K. Should the Council act on health matters such as Trans fats?
All responded Yes.
L. The ICC is costing a lot of money. Would you support a scaled down version, perhaps along Rt. 198 and dropping section B?
All responded No.
There were also questions from the audience – all stated they supported the Purple line and answered additional questions about the environment, the ICC, the Patuxent watershed and public financing.
So generally, there was little controversy or conflict voiced during these discussions. The audience appeared engaged and the candidates seemed, for the most part, to follow the announced format. There were no startling admissions or surprising stances taken by any candidate. Most seemed knowledgeable concerning county issues and made few gaffes. Some astute listeners found slight errors or minor misstatements, but nothing occurred that was shattering to a campaign. Obviously the front-runners are Kramer and Navarro – they have gathered the most endorsements, (Kramer won the endorsements from the volunteer firefighters, a chamber PAC and Alison Praisner Klumpp, while Navarro touts her union endorsements and support from the same 4 council members who stood with her in 08). Past council members Ewing and Crenca have favored Lamari.
Where this race will go depends upon which candidate can turn out the voters, who have not exactly been excited by the race so far – but the debates, forums and discussions are just starting. The big precincts of Leisure World (LW) went for Don Praisner in 08. Many LW residents fondly remember Ben Kramer’s father, former County Executive Sid Kramer, who was said to be among the supporters of Nancy Navarro in the last race; that is not likely to be the case this year!
What a difference a year makes. Turnout was just a few thousand voters in the primary last year and Nancy Navarro lost by only a few hundred votes. In the District 19 race in 06, Ben Kramer came in third and narrowly beat the fourth place finisher in the 3 person Delegate race. Navarro has been said to be the candidate of the developers, based on her previous contributions, while Kramer - who self funded before and will probably do so again, for the most part - has stated he will accept no developer contributions. Many politicos in the know are awaiting the first required finance reports of the pre-primary period, since there were many accusations of hidden or delayed reporting in 08. Navarro is thought to have several thousands unspent from the previous race, but several contributing groups were noted to have maxed out then.
So message, turnout and money – all turns on how well these are delivered. District 4 voters need to listen, learn, do their homework and show up on Election Day! (And then there is the added Ficker Factor!)
Stay posted!
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Audubon Hosts a Horde of Candidates
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6 comments:
All in all, a very good and accurate summary, but I'd like to clarify and expand a little bit on my own answers.
First, despite the clever use of a matrix to record candidate responses, due to the time and format constraints, it was necessary that all of the candidates responded with a lot of compression, so to speak, packing as much information as possible into brief responses. Thus it was doubtless a little difficult to gather full nuance.
My response on the proposed Master Plans for Gaithersburg West and Germantown started out something like this:
"Anthropogenic global climate change has already resulted in significant shifts in the annual rainfall received in Maryland. In particular the last decade has seen some of the driest years in recorded history. Throughout much of the world, availability of water for both drinking and sanitation has become a major problem and thus availability of clean water and adequate treatment facilities must be foremost in our plans for development, we need to assure that if we're going to build the new and shining city, that there will be enough clean water at the taps. Furthermore, we also will need to have infrastructure fully in place before one brick is placed atop another in new development. We must say 'no' to Pay and Go".
I'd have thought that Audubon Naturalist might have picked up the references to Jared Diamond ("Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed") in which he points out that at least two long-lived and significant independently-arising civilizations collapsed primarily as a result of a combination of ecological destruction and water-supply crises, for example the Angkor Wat civilization in Cambodia and the Anasazi/Mogollon civilization in the present-day US southwest.
Indeed it's arguable that the history of the success of the Early Roman Republic is also the history of the success of early Civil Engineering, especially as regards provision of both ample and defensible water supplies (see also "aqueducts") and sanitation.
Of course, it's hard to get all of that out in a mere 60 seconds... and even harder to write it all down in 60 seconds.
As for the ICC, I did manage to reference the Romans, citing the Appian Way which has seen constant use for the last few thousand years. Though designed for foot, horse and chariot, in the modern day and in recent history it has carried foot, horse, cart, car, motorcycle, bus and even main battle tanks. The point, I made, is that it continues to exist because it links origins with destinations, and neither the origins nor destinations have changed in millennia. And whatever modes of transportation we may have in the future, the need for a route along more or less the present alignment of the ICC will remain with us for the forseeable future.
As for the alignment of MD-29/MD-198. With the exception of an utterly new stretch of roadbed from Layhill Road to New Hampshire Avenue (MD-650), that general alignment boasts some of the oldest constantly-maintained roadbed in the State, much of it of an age with the roadbed of MD-108 in and around Sandy Spring and Ashton. That general alignment would serve exceptionally well for a light/medium commuter/light-freight rail line that could eventually run at least from Laurel to Rockville and potentially beyond to connections in Virginia to their mass-transit systems.
Also some clari
My name is Ken Silverman, I am Nancy Navarro's Field Director. This is a great summary of what was a very productive debate, but I did want to make a few corrections, and mention a couple of things that were left out:
1. Knapp Proposal: Nancy did not express explicit support for Councilmember Knapp's proposal, she said she would study it closely. She did say that on the Falklands in particular, that it was her understanding that members of the community, like Action in Montgomery, had supported the affordable housing aspect of the compromise plan.
2. Budget/Education: Nancy's successful contract negotiations with the school employee unions led to them giving up their COLA's and saving the county $89 million, not $50 million (plus an additional several millions in budget cuts).
3. ICC: There was an important follow-up question about whether the candidates had supported the ICC to begin with. My recollection is the breakdown was:
Bigler, Yes
Goldman, Yes
Kramer, Yes
Hardman, I can't recall
Lamari, No
Navarro, No
Gluck, No
4. Pay & Go: There was also a very important back and forth on Pay & Go. Delegate Kramer indicated he supported commercial but not residential Pay & Go, and Cary Lamari vigorously opposed both. Nancy didn't get a chance to weigh in, but she agrees with Cary Lamari on this issue.
A correction for Ken:
I don't believe that I ever said "I can't recall".
I do recall that there was an unfortunate incident in which I had a bronchial spasm and had to withdraw for some privacy to use an inhaler, and when I returned someone asked a rather abstruse follow-up question and I said "I cannot offer an informed opinion at this time". The reason I said that was because I was literally choking, and could barely choke out even that response. Sorry about that.
However, there's no question that the Navarro campaign was there videotaping the entire session. Perhaps you can post to YouTube me saying "I can't recall".
Let's have some video documentation from people who are known to have it, please, rather than "according to my recollections".
...and let's have it for all of the candidates. Either they said something, or they did not. Don't even try to spin it to people who were not there. Post the video. All of it. Or STFU.
C. Campaign finance reform: I felt that not only should there be more campaign finance reform in the way of more disclosure of contributions, I also felt that Political Action Committees should be more forthcoming with membership, funding schemes, and there should be consequences when inaccurate literature that damages credibility of candidates and or damages veracity of a candidate without basis in fact. Such as was done to Blair Ewing in 2002. Reckless, unfounded attacks without basis on individuals seeking public office should be regulated.
Mr. Kramer then stated that there is a PAC that will be working to unfairly attack one candidate in this election however he did not state who that candidate was and how he knew this. I am still waiting to hear who he thinks will be a target with a slander campaign.
F. With respect to Master Plans, I articulated a process whereby we respect community input in order to achieve a comprehensive Master Plan. The county government must allow an open and transparent process, whereby residents, the business community, and non-profit organizations sit down to discuss the dynamics of their individual communities, then develop a targeted, strategic plan for their neighborhoods. We must implement a measurable and quantifiable growth policy. We need to identify where and how Montgomery County wants to grow and target that growth in an order of priority, which balances the need for infrastructure with available funding from the government as well as developer contributions. Developers must pay for the infrastructure needed for their projects.
I also stated I would not support a development district fee or tax similar to that was implemented in Clarksburg where residents who purchased homes learned only after receiving bills that in the numerous documents they had signed for the purchase of their homes that they would be paying for infrastructure necessary for their community for decades to come. Most of those homebuyers paid fair market value for their homes only to learn that they owed tens of thousands of dollars in bond payments for developer needed infrastructure that these homeowners thought was integrated in their original purchase price.
G. With respect to the electronic Boards I did not say they cost too much, I said regardless how good the technology of the electronic boards were that the Superintendent of schools violated the law. Nine days after last years CIP, where the County Council adopted a $698,000 appropriation as a pilot program for the purchase of electronic boards the Superintendent entered into a State piggyback contract with Dell Computers and purchased electronic boards without the necessary County Council approval. The MCPS committed Montgomery County to a 13, million dollar purchase of the Promethean Boards without the legally required supplemental appropriation from the County Council and now Montgomery County will be required to find 3.3 million dollars per year for 4 years for the purchase of these boards during a time of fiscal crisis. The Board of Education never held any Community discussion on the matter, the purchase was approved by the Board of Education as a consent Item, without communications with the County Council
http://parentscoalitionmc.blogspot.com/2009/03/weast-cant-make-lease-payment-on.html
This type of abuse is a systemic problem and a symptom of larger issues of waste and abuse. I have no question that the technology is a desired attribute of teachers however there is a process and the Council should exercise fiscal budgetary management with the support of agency heads. There is a hierarchy of authority and should go through necessary channels
Mr. Hardman:
I'm sorry that my phrasing was confusing, I meant that I couldn't remember what you said, not that you said "I can't recall."
I did try to videotape the debate, but unfortunately our camera broke about 20 minutes in. People who were there may have seen me fussing with it and finally giving up. I'm happy to give you the tape of what we did get if you want to try to clean it up and post it, but it's pretty unwatchable, cutting in and out repeatedly.
And Ken, I owe you an apology.
My own writing has been known to be a bit ambiguous at times. So I do apologize.
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