Fun for the whole family at Westfield Annapolis this Sunday. Check it out at www.annapolisalive.org
After today's coverage of the charter amendment introduced by Alderman Israel on February 14th, the Washington Post's Arundel section finally decided to write "news" about this story. CP penned this letter to Post reporter Raymond McCaffrey:
Dear Ray McCaffrey:
I continue to question the relevance and the necessity of the Arundel weekly section which is mostly about sports, news from other places and puffery. When it attempts to cover "news" it does so long after it was new and the reporters, such as yourself, seem to be unaware and isolated from the news makers.
This has been the case every time a city issue is covered. Today, there was a piece about Alderman Israel's charter amendment, which was introduced at City Council on February 14th--ten days ago! By now, it has been written about even in The Baltimore Examiner, not to mention the other daily papers covering Annapolis which did so more than a week ago.
What also concerned me is that there was one citizen who testified against this bill and you never made any attempt to read that person's concerns or to communicate with that person, who has been speaking about and writing about this for over a year.
I expect more from the Washington Post, my hometown paper that I read while growing up, but the Arundel Section just does not seem to have any idea what it is doing or why.
Paul Foer
(Of course what CP did not tell Mr. McCaffrey that it was yours truly who testified against this bill. CP has long been a strong supporter of amending our charter to create a city manager form of government and opposes Alderman Israel's bill because it will dilute and confuse an already confused situation.)
CP appreciates comments from readers, even whey they disagree, but especially when they show appreciation for the public service CP is trying to provide. Below are some of the recent emails I have received. Thanks to all who write!
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "SERIOUS AND PRACTICAL CRIME-FIGHTING SOLUTIONS...":
"This letter is full of the greatest ideas I have ever read in regards to the problems in Annapolis. In fact, I am linking this page and emailing all of my friends about it. " (the referenced letter was actually written by Eastport resident Kate Rollason)
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Paul,
I have responded to e-mails from the Mayor and Ray Weaver, after they e-mailed me in
a somewhat contentious way, that a parade was underway and we in the parade would be overjoyed if she got in front of it. Two years is a long time for her to not do anything, as you point out so elegantly. A recall takes about 8000 signatures and probably would take a year to accomplish. Wasted time. We need the Mayor to actually focus on what the electorate wants--safety and security. Meanwhile she is introducing
legislations to put parking meters downtown to collect share change for the homeless. That is what Church socials do. What a waste of her time and energy.
Please keep up the good work.
Stanford Erickson
_________________
Paul:
I think your letter to the Mayor is very factual and heart-felt on your part. I hope that she will take not only the time to read it, but also to consider some of the well articulated points you make about her leadership style and lack of proper management of the City.
Good job, and please do not take any negative responses by her or her cronies personally. Scott Bowling
______________________
Paul,
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your bold and forthright comments to the mayor. You are right on the mark in every dimension of your letter. None of us have ever intended to be mean spirited and as a group, we have gone to great pains to insure that we stay on message and not get 'personal'. The mayor's remarks after the council meeting were absolutely insulting and perhaps a sign that she is tired or something else serious is going on with her. The situation with the entire city government is appalling and a something many of us are very concerned about.
I hope to meet you and thank you again in person at the next Task Force meeting.
Kindest regards,
(name withheld pending approval from author)
It has been said that the difference between a recession and a depression is that in a recession, it's the other guy who loses his job. This week's poll on our personal economic outlooks ended on the day after wild downward spirals in world markets and the Federal Reserve surprisingly cut interest rates by a whopping 3/4%. Here was this week's question: "With recession fears growing in some places, what is your personal economic outlook for 2008?"
We had 55 respondents with the following answers:
I am highly optimistic 7
I am somewhat optimistic 13
I am neutral 8
I am somewhat pessimistic 16
I am highly pessimistic 8
Brother, can you spare a dime 3
Okay, so the last one was a "trick question," but even so, this non-scientific poll gauges the sentiments of a self-selected, non-random, small sampling of CP readers and shows that while almost one out of three is "somewhat pessimistic" about one out of four is "somewhat optimistic." About one out of seven is highly pessimistic while one out eight is "highly optimistic." One out of seven is "neutral." Overall, our readers are leaning a bit more toward the pessimistic than the optimistic side, but once again, with the exception of last week's poll (our most popular by far), we see that CP readers tend to represent a wide range and balance of views and opinions (as of course does yours truly...truly).
I just have one thing to say, "Brother, can you spare a dime?"
This week's poll concerns news media coverage of the presidential campaigns. I have decided not put in any "trick questions" although it would be so easy and fun. Thanks for voting and please keep on voting.
This is an open letter to Mayor Moyer:
Dear Mayor Moyer:
I write this letter to you because I still respect your hard work and your lifelong commitment to public service, and many of your achievements as an alderwoman and as mayor, but I think we are in a crisis of leadership and a crisis of violence, and a financial one may be looming. You must act now and act decisively.
Your disrespectful and argumentative comments, arrogance,and callous attitude toward so many issues and so many of my fellow residents are causing great enmity to keep boiling up from within our city. At the very least, you should immediately come forward and sincerely apologize for the rude remarks you made about Eastport residents who testified about crime at the recent City Council meeting. You have managed to alienate so many people, including longtime supporters including me, and I have privately and publicly defended and supported you on many occasions.
In the wake of the January 14th City Council meeting where over 40 Eastport residents pleaded for action on crime, followed by your inexcusable remarks in The Sun the following day, I wrote to and called three key individuals in government, urging them to speak with you and request that you immediately apologize to the Eastport residents and pledge to get busy on this serious issue of crime and violence. I never heard back from two of them and the third was indirect and vague. No surprise there, but I tried. One of them is one of your appointees. I had hoped their counsel would help you moderate your attitude and I have no idea whether they spoke with you or not. Now I am going public, even though you have repeatedly demonstrated to me and many others that you rarely if ever listen to anyone.
Our situation is serious, not only in terms of the obvious crime issue, but our local government is in crisis, in disarray. I really think you and your administration may be headed for disaster because of your apparent inability to provide leadership and direction to the ones who serve at your pleasure. While many of us are amazed at how thin-skinned and vicious you can be, I think we'll be satisfied with leadership or at least competent management.
Mayor Moyer, I implore you to take a serious look at how you have let us down. We have an ongoing Market House debacle and are now being sued and all you can say is that the plaintiffs don't like you. You refuse to fire the police chief who is at retirement age and has suffered from poor health. Like you, he seems unable or unwilling to confront our crime wave and we are engaged in another lawsuit over the police head-quarter's renovation. How did two major lawsuits over construction on city properties come about? I think it is because you have ineffective and incompetent managers who are given conflicting orders. We have an even more serious legal situation with the fire-fighter's pension issue, and we may very well have a looming fiscal crisis, but it's crime that is really on every one's mind right now.
While you are correct that there are many external reasons for vacancies in our police department that may be beyond our control , I believe you, Chief Johnson and Human Resources Director Kimla Milburn are responsible for letting this go on for so long. You seemed unaware that it was worsening, unable to plan for this situation and and were slow to react when it hit. Because it takes a long time and many initial applicants to bring a new recruit on to the streets in uniform, this is inexcusable. I give you credit for improving the salary and benefits for our police officers, but now we all need your help in bringing on more officers.
But please do not continue to brush off this festering vacancy problem as a non-issue. Please do not continue to tell us misleading statistics about officers per capita, national averages or whatever other statistic pleases you. This is a bureaucratic shell game. You and your highly-paid appointees have let us down. More police officers are set to retire this year.
You took off on a long jaunt to Europe this summer. Of course you deserve a vacation, but how many weeks were you away? Was it six or was it eight? You have focused much energy and time on sister cities issues, and you've been to I don't know how many conferences on global warming. You've spearheaded puffy things such as your Lacey Ann Regina campaign to stop littering and your self-touted Cloud Nine effort to develop a curriculum on clean air for school children.
I don't know whether it cleared our or air or eliminated trash, but I do know our air is dirtied with gun smoke and our ground is littered with corpses. How much did we spend to develop that clean air class? Was it $45,000? $50,000? More? Meanwhile, we could not get you to ride a bus or even try to ride a bike for Bike to Work Day or lift a finger to get employees out of their cars to get to work or pay attention to real and serious mismanagement at our transportation department. But I digress...or do I?
I have been a committed environmental advocate since before the first Earth Day in 1970 and I applaud many of your "green" efforts. However your overemphasis on beautification issues at the expense of our public safety is inexcusable. The ability to walk is an environmental issue. Violence on our streets is an environmental issue. Decrepit public housing projects are an environmental issue.
Complacent in your comfortable second term as mayor, you are seemingly more focused on telling people off than on building partnerships. Consider the remarks you have made about Mr. Eric Brown of the Housing Authority. I have never seen or heard of him making any such remarks about you. While you use The Capital as a bully pulpit to insult and fight with the Housing Authority, people are getting murdered! I'll bet the criminals are laughing because they know you're focusing on making political and personal enemies instead of catching them. Even worse, in our own city magazine which we pay for, you blame citizens who write letters to the editor for making it harder for you to fight crime and attract new officers.
Recently we had a double homicide, a huge cocaine bust and an officer was wounded during a raid in which a man was killed. One of the victim's has a ten-year old son at nearby Georgetown East. I wonder if he was taught your clean air curriculum? All of this occurred near my home. Why do we continue to have serious drug trafficking at and near public housing?
Mayor Moyer, you asked us what it is you're missing about crime. Many people have answered in many ways. Many people have tried to do and say what they can, but you do not listen. After you never answered a lengthy letter that an Eastport activist wrote to you with many suggestions about crime, I published it here. The fact that we were down so many police officers was bad enough. You have continually misused statistics and studies to claim that we have more than enough police officers, but we don't. I have repeatedly shown on this blog the lack of veracity in your claim which is easily refuted by a report from the International Association of Chiefs of Police and other readily available sources.
Your thin-skin is legendary. You never seem satisfied with supporters unless they give you 100% unquestioning loyalty. 99% loyalty makes them your enemy. You never let off about who did what or how you did something and never got thanked. You are the mayor. Be the mayor. Earn our respect. Stop whining, complaining and pointing fingers. Stop blaming us for being angry and concerned about increasing gun violence. Stop intimidating citizens who are doing what you asked us to do by giving you ideas!
It may be too late to get you to learn to be a listener. The habit of not listening, which you have so amply demonstrated to me personally on many occasions, is perhaps something that cannot be changed. All I know as a citizen is that it makes it incredibly difficult to communicate with you. Be that as it may, the big question is about governance and leadership, and not about whether you are liked or disliked, although it can impact your ability to govern and lead--and it has. You are an intelligent and highly accomplished woman. Be proud of that and be proud that you are our mayor. Now please be the mayor.
You have two years left. Key people need to go. We have a lot of dead wood in your administration, many of them being equally poor managers, but we, yes we have to pay them each over $100,000 per year. We demand results with our tax dollars. If you wait any longer,it will be impossible to replace them until after you are replaced. The sinecure that you have chosen as city administrator needs to do something useful or be replaced. If it's so bad that you sent him away to foreign countries to build sister cities during the last budget cycle, why not just eliminate the job and refund us his salary? We can use a tax rebate from the oppressive taxes we pay with increasingly less representation.
But most of all--tackle crime. Get cops on the street. Your recent change in operational shifts may improve matters a bit, but the jury is still out. Your idea to get a horse and a couple of $@%%# Segways is ridiculous. RIDICULOUS. Just because you like horses and *@^^# Segways does not mean they are a good idea. Set up a real plan with we the residents that comes with real performance standards for our police department. What are our expectations of service? Response time? How will we track results? This is what many police departments do, but do we do it? I am not aware of it. Instead you say that we are accredited and officers have received advanced training. That's good. We want to support our officers, but has that made a dent in crime?
Many of us want to implement real community policing. The chief tried to explain his vision of community service at a public meeting (after he was provided with the question in advance) and I was left wondering what he said. Figure out once and for all whether the Housing Authority is public or private, federal or city, and what role we will take--or must take. Make a plan to transform it, because it has got to go. The numerous housing projects in our midst are the result of a failed policy that is bringing us all down. They effectively serve nobody. They are a breeding grounds for crime, despair and cynicism. They are the main reason we have so much violent crime. This cannot be argued, the points can be analyzed and refined, but the fact is a fact. Just stop pointing fingers and blaming others, which seems to be your Achilles heel. Just lead and act. We don't care whether you like Eric Brown or not. We care that you work with him to fight crime.
What will it take for this to happen? More murders? More violence? More public protests?
You are the mayor. Be the mayor. In the words of Ted Turner, "Lead, follow or get out of the way."
In the words of what Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker in Spiderman:
"With great power comes great responsibility."
You have great power. Get more police on the streets and make recruitment an ongoing priority. Work with HACA. Put officers out in the areas where crime occurs and when it occurs. Redouble your recruitment efforts. Gather, study and evaluate all crime reports with citizen input. Work with our civic associations. Develop volunteer community patrols and give us radios. Lead us on walks at night to "take back the streets." Show the criminals they are not welcome. Show them we will prevail. Stop arguing with and blaming HACA, Eastport residents and anyone else who speaks out. Stop pointing fingers.
But please be the mayor.
Many years ago, when you were still an Alderman, you told me, and I remember it clearly, that you had no desire to go further politically than serving as an Alderman. You told me that at your age at that time, you were not going to pursue higher office. But as have many politicians since time immemorial, you did--twice in fact. You now have two years left as mayor. You can create your legacy now. Your legacy can be that of a mayor who grabbed the reins of power, brought people together and cleaned up violent crime. Your legacy can be that of a mayor who transformed public housing for the benefit of all.
The alternative legacy, the one you are likely to have should you continue on this path, will be that of a mayor who planted trees and flowers that got fertilized by all the blood that was spilled. The alternative legacy will be that of the mayor who tried to clean up our streets that were littered with corpses by creating flowery Lacey Anne Regina graphics on trashcans.
I fully expect you to blow your top when you read this and start screaming and directing anger toward me and others. I'm not your problem. You have much bigger problems than me. I'm just the messenger. You are the mayor. Please be the mayor we want and we expect you to be.
Sincerely,
Paul Foer
Where have the scientists been? CP has been using this treatment and extolling its benefits for years. Perhaps you've heard about those netti pots? Recent media reports show that science, medicine and maybe even the drug industry say salt washes might work too! But just wait--they'll put it in some kind of special solution, give it a fancy name and make you pay for it--through the nose--at your local drug store. I can only hope that one day, the medical and drug establishment will figure out that eating right, drinking lots of water, exercising and sleeping well prevents disease. They just won't say so until they can figure a way to make money off so doing. And we wonder why health care cost so much? It's because we "medicalize" all ailments and need ten people to handle paperwork for each nurse or doctor.
(Bloggers can't always be serious, can we???) Popular entertainers Chuck Norris and Oprah Winfrey today announced their joint-candidacy for president of the United States. Norris, the white actor best known for his martial arts exploits, and Winfrey, the black hostess of her own talk show, said they planned a unique kind of power sharing if elected. The two said that their involvement in the campaigns of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee had been such a powerful experience that garnered more attention than did the candidates themselves only proved why the two of them should run together.
In a joint statement issued in Hollywood today, the two said, "With Hillary Clinton you get a strong woman and with Obama, you get a strong African American. But with the two of us, you get all of that and more. Besides, we can act, and that's important for a president. It's been shown many times. Reagan did it and everybody loved him. Same with Arnold. Nobody wants to cross Oprah, and nobody will dare mess with Chuck Norris. We're unbeatable," they declared.
Reactions from the news media were......oh never mind, I just had to write something about this......the whole thing just kills me.....
CP has been involved in the struggle to protect the Bay for so long that I almost qualify for "old fart" status. Over the many years, my ideas about how best to do this have evolved, and it seems to me that the real bogeyman here is private property and what has been labeled as "the tragedy of the commons." Nowhere is this more evident than with The Critical Areas Law. When it was enacted decades ago, it was seen as a far-reaching and very progressive state law to manage growth and development along the water's edge, seen as crucial to protecting the Bay. CP wrote letters and testified at hearings, and I clearly recall the fear mongering and whiny complaints emanating from developers, Realtors and even a front group set up by a business association masquerading as private property owner's defense group. "Oh, woe is me, this will make my property value go to nothing! We'll never be able to build again! The sky is falling, the economy will be ruined!" It's funny how the deep pocketed, power elites describe environmentalists as fear mongers, yet they have the concentrated money and power to loudly moan and fight, fight and fight.
Somehow or another, environmental sanity prevailed, or so we thought, and Maryland enacted the far-reaching Critical Areas Law. However, if you poke around the water as much as I do, you'll notice that in the last 25 years, there has been more and more and more over-development of our Critical Area. What happened? When we passed the law, it went through many modifications and was watered down, weakened and left many loopholes. It's just darn hard to fight to protect our Bay--darn hard. Environmentalists were and still are up against powerful foes. The rich and powerful build what they want and where they want.
But time has taken its toll on our waterfront. It's as if every time we make progress on the environmental front, it's a two steps forward and a step or two backwards. And our Bay keeps dying.
It's ironic that with over 400 miles of shoreline, our county has no boat for inspectors to visit and view waterfronts to check on building violations. However, it's been left up to privately-funded citizen's support groups to do this kind of monitoring. See today's Baltimore Sun for one perspective.
www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bay_environment/bal-te.md.critical21jan21,0,1779024.story?coll=bal_tab01_layout
A bit of good news--really good news! Downtown Annapolis will be getting a farmer's market on Sundays. Yeah! CP plans to pedal down on his bike with a knapsack to load up. Let's wish it every success and let's praise Mayor Moyer and Economic Development (Director? Coordinator?) MIke Miron and others for making this happen. Since it's open air, can we assume there won't be a ventilation problem? How long will it be before we get sued over the lease? Ooooh, c'mon, you know I just could not let that slip.
See The Capital's article at
www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2008/01_20-39/BUS
It's time to start restricting automobile traffic downtown on Sunday. This would be a great way to kick off this new market. Walk your way to freshness...
You see, the blogosphere is a contagion and the Mayor just sneezed.
Government by news release. CP has commented on this before. To paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, "when the going gets tough, issue a fact sheet." Some sort of report or email by Mayor Moyer on crime and our police has been making the rounds and CP recommends that readers visit Annapolis Politics for the text and a cogent, and as always, snarky, analysis by publisher Brian Gill: www.annapolispolitics.blogspot.com/2008/01/police-department-did-you-know.html
Before you go there, be warned. The mayor will cite a bunch of statistics and facts, some of which are pertinent, others of which are misleading and not terribly relevant. For example, she cites how a bunch of our top officers have been to special training academies. That's nice. That's good. Continued training is important. But we are in the midst of a record crime wave, so I just want to know how that is helping us fight crime. The mayor continues to obfuscate and mislead about the number of police officers per capita. CP has explained that issue more than a few times. The mayor is simply wrong. We need more officers and she and her staff are not recruiting them.
Finally, our police department is accredited. That's nice too, but what does it mean when we have more and more murders more drug dealing and more gunshots? CP attended and testified at the public hearing last year when the department was undergoing accreditation. CP was THE ONLY CITIZEN WHO DID SO. The panel basically smiled and said thanks and told me to take up my concerns with the chief. So, I must ask, why does the mayor think that I or anyone else cares that our department is accredited? Has it helped us recruit one more officer?
I can imagine the conversation between two potential police recruits:
Recruit 1: Hey Fred, I am thinking about joining the Annapolis Police Department. What about you?
Recruit 2: I am not sure, Mary. I hear the pay is better elsewhere.
Recruit 1: But they are accredited and many top officers have been to the FBI Academy. Maybe I can ride the horse or Segway.
Recruit 2: Yeah but they have a tremendous amount of really dangerous, high-crime public housing projects and nothing ever seems to get done to improve that.
Recruit 1: Yes but they are accredited and many top officers have been to the FBI Academy. Maybe I can ride the horse or Segway.
Recruit 2: Well, I hear the mayor argues with the police chief and they both argue with the Housing Authority.
Recruit 1: Yes but they are accredited. And many top officers have been to the FBI Academy. Maybe I can ride the horse or Segway.
Recruit 2: I understand the new police station is way behind schedule and the contractor quit and is involved in a lawsuit with the City.
Recruit 1: Yes but they are accredited. And many top officers have been to the FBI Academy. Maybe I can ride the horse or Segway.
the beat goes on....
CP has written and testified against Alderman Israel's proposed charter amendment and now Mayor Moyer provides her two cents at the Baltimore Sun www.baltimoresun.com/services/newspaper/printedition/sunday/annearundelcounty/bal-ar.column20jan20,0,3711120.story
She is opposed to it as well, although as one might expect, for very different reasons. CP believes the mayor of Annapolis is vested with too much executive authority as both the effective CEO and Board Chairperson, and with too few checks and balances. The power of the City Council is seriously weakened as a result. Furthermore, we are not finding the appropriate level of managerial expertise to run a large and complex bureaucracy and budget through an elected mayor. CP has long supported the creation of a city manager form of government. Alderman Israel's amendment simply mixes up waters that are already muddy, if you'll pardon the metaphor. It does not go far enough but will make a mess of an already bad situation, that will need another amendment to repair. This issue is not going away anytime soon, and if CP's hunch is correct, it will lead into a full-blown discussion of a broader proposal to restructure city government, rather than just amend the powers of the City Administrator.
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