At-Large County Council Member Duchy Trachtenberg has hired Sligo Creek Golf Association co-founder and former journalist Woody Brosnan as her campaign manager. Following is her press release.
June 15, 2010
Press Release
Trachtenberg Names Campaign Manager
Duchy Trachtenberg is proud to announce that Woody Brosnan of Silver Spring has agreed to serve as her campaign manager in her bid for re-election to the Montgomery County Council as an at-large candidate.
“I wanted someone who is a community leader to run my grassroots campaign,” said Councilmember Trachtenberg. “Woody shares my values and my passion for helping people.”
“I am honored to work for this prudent progressive who understands the balance between protecting the taxpayers’ wallets and maintaining a high level of government services, especially for our county’s neediest citizens,” said Brosnan.
Brosnan is a community volunteer and civic activist in Silver Spring. As a journalist he covered Washington and politics for newspapers in Memphis, Albuquerque and Birmingham, including five presidential campaigns and numerous races for governor, senator and congressman.
As a civic activist Brosnan has served as president of the North Woodside Montgomery Hills Citizens Association, a member of the Presidents Council of Silver Spring Civic Associations and as the co-founder of Safe Silver Spring, which organized the 2009 summit on ways to prevent crime in Silver Spring.
Brosnan may be best known for his work to overturn the decision of the Montgomery County Revenue Authority to close the Sligo Creek Golf Course, a nine-hole golf course beloved by senior and beginner golfers and hackers of all ages.
He also is a volunteers with Meals on Wheels of Wheaton and as a county “weed warrior” battling invasive species in county parks.
“Duchy passes my three tests for good public officials,” said Brosnan.
“One, Duchy thinks outside the narrow confines of her assignments, as evidenced by her leadership in making Montgomery County the first in the nation to ban the use of trans fat in restaurants.
“Two, unlike many politicians, Duchy does not rely just on her staff or bureaucrats or special interests to shape her views, as evidenced by the way she listened to the Silver Spring community and cast a critical vote to keep Sligo Creek Golf Course open.
“Three, Duchy is courageous. She knows you sometimes even have to stand up to longtime allies when the choice is either to save or eliminate vital services.”
Councilmember Trachtenberg also publicly released a copy of a letter she wrote to the leaders of the county’s public employee unions explaining why she was not seeking their endorsement this year.
While Councilmember Trachtenberg continues to look forward to a good working relationship with union members she believes it would be a conflict-of-interest in her role as chair of the Council’s Management and Fiscal Policy Committee to pursue endorsements from those whose compensations and benefits she approves.
“Montgomery County is not an employment agency. Our job is to provide the best services we can to the citizens at the most prudent price. I know the vast majority of county employees share that commitment to service,” said Councilmember Trachtenberg.
Press Contact: Woody Brosnan
240-481-0309
woodybrosnan@verizon.net
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Trachtenberg Names Campaign Manager
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Two Courses, Two Different Standards
By Woody Brosnan.
When is it worth $1.9 million to invest in a money-losing golf course?
Answer: When the golf course is near one of the wealthiest parts of Montgomery County.
The Montgomery County Revenue Authority, which tried to close Sligo Creek Golf Course because it said the down-county course was losing money, wants to spend $1.9 million in county golfers’ money on improvements to the Poolesville Golf Course in western Montgomery County.
Let’s compare the two-golf courses.
Poolesville is an 18-hole course on West Willard Road and is the westernmost county course. It is half-an-hour from one of the county’s most popular courses, Falls Road. In between the two courses are Potomac and North Potomac, where coincidentally or not, a majority of the Revenue Authority board members reside. Poolesville had 35,000 rounds of golf in fiscal year 2008 and 30,000 rounds in fiscal year 2009.
Sligo Creek is a 9-hole course on Sligo Creek Parkway and is the only county course below the Beltway. Sligo had about 30,000 rounds of golf in fiscal year 2008 and about 25,000 in fiscal year 2009. By comparison, the county’s most popular course, Needwood, had 71,000 rounds in FY2008 and 65,000 in FY2009. (All county golf courses lost rounds last year because of awful weather.)
Both Poolesville and Sligo struggle to break even when you consider just expenses and revenues, and both courses lose money, more than $160,000 apiece in FY2009, when you add in the management fee charged by the Revenue Authority in Rockville for the costs of its bureaucracy.
In recent years, the Revenue Authority has offered substantial discounts through online tee-time sites to try to lure golfers to Poolesville. And of course the Revenue Authority tried to close Sligo but was blocked when the County Council came up with $150,000 to subsidize Sligo this year.
The Revenue Authority has now proposed a six-year capital improvements program (CIP) that would spend about $10 million of its golf revenues on county golf courses. It includes $1.9 million for the Poolesville Golf Course to add a new food and beverage area to the golf shop building, demolish an old unused clubhouse, replace the irrigation system and build a new parking lot.
Now, $1.9 million is roughly what it would cost to build a new irrigation system and clubhouse for Sligo Creek Golf Course AND replace the bunkers and make some other fixes. The Revenue Authority has argued that it does not make sense to invest its money in Sligo because the course would never generate the revenues to cover the cost of the projects.
At last Thursday’s meeting of the Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee, Council Member Marc Elrich effectively exposed the Revenue Authority’s double standard when he pointedly asked if the courses included in the CIP could cover the cost of the projects with revenues from those courses.
The Revenue Authority’s executive director, Keith Miller responded that the projects were not “revenue enhancements” but were designed to maintain the golf course system as a whole.
Elrich asked specifically whether Poolesville would generate enough revenues to cover the cost of the $1.9 million in capital improvements. Miller responded that the old clubhouse is unsafe and that the irrigation system has to be replaced to maintain the course.
Finally, when Elrich pressed Miller again, noting the difference between the argument now and what was said "about another course," Miller responded that Poolesville was the only county course in the western part of the county.
This is not to knock Miller, who is working with the Sligo Golf Course Golf Association to come up with ways to use volunteers and fund-raising efforts to keep Sligo going.
The Sligo Creek Golf Association and its representatives on the county’s Sligo Creek Golf Course did not ask to be included in this year’s CIP or for another subsidy. Instead, the task force recommended that the county explore the option of asking a private operator to take over Sligo. The Sligo Creek Golf Association also is planning its own fundraising efforts to invest in improvements at the course.
But we also agree with Miller. The county’s nine golf courses should be considered a system and it is important that every area of the county be served, including if necessary by using revenues from the most popular courses to make improvements at the less-utilized courses.
We have no wish to stop the improvements at Poolesville and the other courses. But we also believe that the County Council should make a decision about Sligo’s direction before it gives final approval to the Revenue Authority’s spending plan.
Woody Brosnan is the Chairman of political outreach for the Sligo Creek Golf Association.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Why Do People Get Angry with Government? A Golfer’s Story
By Woody Brosnan.
The moment was surreal. I was being ordered to leave an open meeting of the board of the Montgomery County Revenue Authority so they could meet behind closed doors with their lawyer to discuss... the Open Meetings Law.
Why, I asked. “It’s in the state code,” the lawyer responded.
But upon reflection the action Tuesday was only the latest example of the disdain for the public that I have seen from two of Montgomery County’s most powerful agencies as I worked with others to try to save the Sligo Creek Golf Course.
Public officials who express alarm over the hostility and lack of civility at town hall meetings and health care forums might consider that this behavior may not be just a reflection of the impact of hyperbolic talk show hosts, but also is the result of the encounters of citizens with the agencies to which elected officials have entrusted so much power.
As a reporter for 35 years, I covered both elected bodies and regulatory agencies. I received an AP award in Tennessee for a series on how state regulatory agencies often became captive of the industries they regulated and stifled competition.
But I gained a new perspective this summer as an activist for Sligo Creek Golf Course in dealing with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission and the Revenue Authority. (I won’t go into the entire history of the golf course so well documented in this blog’s series. These opinions are my own and not that of the Sligo Creek Golf Association.)
On May 26, parks staff members held a community event to gather opinions on the reuse of the golf course. They encountered more than 100 golfers, many of whom had only learned of plans to close the course the week before. After some boisterous discussion, the parks staff, to their credit, agreed to include a golf course option in their recommendations to the planning board.
In the next few weeks, I and other golfers and non-golfers submitted their ideas to the staff for how to combine golf with other purposes at Sligo Creek. We and the County Council operated in the belief that M-NCPPC would come back to the Council in December with golf and non-golf options.
Those hopes were dashed July 16 when the planning board met. Perhaps it was a signal of the evening to come when Chairman Royce Hanson and then-board member John Robinson dallied over dinner, keeping the standing-room only crowd waiting 15 minutes past the scheduled start time.
After hearing from more than 30 witnesses, the vast majority of whom favored golf, Hanson declared he did not want “our staff to waste their time” on the golf course option. Gee, don’t they work for us, not them, I thought.
Jean Cryor looked down from the dais, and in a mama-to-little-children voice, said she did “not want to raise our expectations.”
That night spawned the Sligo Creek Golf Association, a community of golfers, neighbors and environmentalists who were once strangers. Now 68 days, 1,000 yard signs, and 2,000 signatures on petitions later, we have hope.
The County Council has met with us individually and collectively, and we are hopeful they will find a way on Tuesday to keep the course open past Oct. 1 so we can work together on a long-term solution.
So maybe I was expecting a little more receptiveness when fellow SCGA board member Ted Power and I dropped by the Revenue Authority board meeting Tuesday morning.
The authority’s Executive Director, the oft-maligned Keith Miller, was courteous. The board was another story.
Chairman Stephen Edwards accused me of setting “pre-conditions” when I said that SCGA wanted to discuss many options at the course but could not support lights or night-time activities on the course. Another board member asked our opinion on the Revenue Authority’s original proposal for a two-decker, 72-stall, course destroying, and lighted driving range. My god, I thought, they still think they can peddle that old chestnut.
Perhaps they had not seen the “Keep Sligo Golf Open” signs.
Four out of the five board members live in Potomac or North Potomac, according to the most recent appointment announced by County Executive Ike Leggett. Nothing against Potomac, but is it the only repository of knowledge about revenue bonds in the county?
But the reception was no better from the Silver Spring, but not-near-Sligo member, Phillip Feliciano. When I talked about making the course more attractive and an environmental education by planting flowers and native plants, Feliciano sneered, “Why don’t you make it into a park?”
Feliciano went on to recommend that the county close and sell the Margaret Schweinhaut Senior Center on Forest Glen Road near the course and use the proceeds and part of the property to build a driving range and a putt-putt course.
When I suggested that Sligo needs to be marketed as a community course to inside-the-Beltway businesses and residents, I was told that that the Revenue Authority markets “the system,” not individual courses. (Not true, in my opinion. The authority expends a great deal of effort to try to market Little Bennett Golf Course, the biggest money-loser in the system.)
These are the folks that SCGA is expected to work with in the coming months if we can keep the course open. I expect we’ll manage with the help of the county executive and the council.
In contrast to the agencies, county elected officials have treated the Sligo Creek community with respect and openness, even when some have a different point of view.
But I have a couple of suggestions for the executive and the council members when they appoint or confirm the members of these powerful boards.
Don’t just look at their technical qualifications or political background.
Quiz them on their knowledge of the Open Meetings and Open Records laws and make them swear fealty to both.
And then write up some guidelines for how to deal with citizens and make them swear to follow those too.
Why are these suggestions important? Because in the final analysis these boards/commissions will continue to negatively impact the public's image of elected government to the citizens of Montgomery County.
Woody Brosnan is the Chairman of the Political Outreach Committee, Sligo Creek Golf Association.
