No Kent Island Blues For Ridgely

Last night, the shopping center development plan for Route 480 was resubmitted to the Planning and Zoning Commission. Substantial changes were made to the plan and what is to be built will complement Ridgely's rich architectural heritage. The new proposal was approved and fits into the same footprint for the shopping center which was approved last spring. It has a porch and cupolas and will be one of the best buildings on this entrance into Ridgely. For those of you who are wondering, it won't have dormers. The dormer issue was much misrepresented by some, and, dormers were only one of many architectural devices that could be used to bring new Rt. 480 buildings into harmony with the rest of our town.

How many of you have passed through Kent Island and asked yourselves, how did this overdeveloped commercial eyesore come to exist? To the Planning Commission, the state of the Kent Island Rt. 50 commercial strip is a cautionary tale. It is why we are working hard to make our highway commercial strip(Rt. 480)an integral part of town instead of the type of chaotic commercial sprawl that blights too many of our American communities.

The Eastern Shore Land Conservancy and Ed McMahon have provided us with much information and inspiration in our efforts to keep Ridgely the beautiful community that it is. Their work is a much needed antidote for those communities struggling to hold the line against place destroying sprawl. As the late Commissioner Jare Wallace used to frequently say (while attending our Planning and Zoning meetings), "either you design your community or the developers coming here will". Words of wisdom which we have taken to heart over the last 10 years.

Contract Controversy Concluding

The controversy that erupted over the Town Manager's contract in September is now drawing to a conclusion. The more radical and dangerous proposals which would have reversed the role of the Town Manager with regard to the Commissioners are now history.

While not perfect, the document can be lived with. It is, however, only as strong as the will of the Commissioners to enforce its provisions. The Town Manager is being given a second chance to establish residency here. The requirement takes effect in six months which is, of course, after the Commissioner election. It will be up to this group to follow-up on this and other provisions (and, living here, certainly doesn't simply mean giving the Commissioners a new drivers license with a 21660 zip -- it means really living here -- the understanding of which has has been stated by the TM at many public meetings). Remember to vote for some backbone when the time comes.

Monday the 19th at 7:00 is the Commissioner's workshop. This will be the last chance for public comment on the issue before the formal vote in December. You can also comment on this blog below.

Thanks to the many who made their voices heard about the contract. The old America is still alive and well in Ridgely. People still stand up for their rights and we still have a free press (in the form of this blog) to shine the light of reason and publicity on what was a pretty awful proposal.

Finally, wouldn't be great to again have a town paper or blog? "Town Talk" as it used to exist couldn't be a forum that contained editorial content because it was the "official" town paper. Something which is independent is needed to air citizen concerns. My blog, as you have seen, isn't only about Ridgely. Although I'm happy to have been of assistance to the town's concerned citizens, we need something exclusively dedicated to this need. To accomplish this, it needs to be private or independent (in other words, not town financed). All blogs are public, of course, but all blogs aren't open to the type of criticism I've posted and hosted. We need to be free of the likelyhood of censorship that comes with being funded by town hall.

We don't need funding anyhow because setting up a blog is simple and free. However, maintaining it and filling it with stories can be time consuming. Many people contributed to "Town Talk" but two (Arlene Hege and Nancy Gearhart) did a huge amount of the work. We need to establish an independent and free press in this town but it does require a dedicated team to produce a quality blog. "Town Talk" can rise again on the blogosphere. Are there any volunteers out there?

Town Planning Process

There is still a lot of misinformation out there about a recent Planning Commission vote. Let me use the example of the largest proposed development project in Ridgely history, Ridgely Park, to clear up some misunderstandings about why we do what we do.

Ridgely Park is a traditional neighborhood development proposal which extends the well planned old town into adjacent farmland. It maintains our grid and alley street system and will be just as walkable as the rest of town. Its houses will be built on traditional size lots and the design of the homes is to reflect the style of our community. There are multiple entrances to the neighborhood which will disperse traffic away from any one street. It is not cut off from the rest of town. Simply put, it is a continuation of all that is good in our town plan.

We have been working on this project for two years and have approved much of it. The actual construction of streets and water sewer infrastructure is set to begin as soon as the Maryland Department of the Environment approves plans for the waste water treatment plant that the developer is building for the town. We have specific commitments about the design of the homes to be built which are written into the Developers Rights and Responsibilities agreement. However, as of yet we don't have the "official" architect's renderings of the individual house plans. What would happen if the developer reneges on the home design standards which have been proposed since day one? This is unlikely since we are dealing with a very honorable developer. However, for the sake of argument, what if? Much would depend on the town government approaching the problem united and insisting that proposals made in good faith must be honored. Unfortunately, there is a lot of money at stake here and a lot of time has been put into this project. The possibility exists that the town Planning Commission could again find itself under pressure to cave in and take what it can get because Ridgely is thought to be over a barrel. However, if we stick to our guns we would get the proposal that we were originally shown. Only if another arm of town government were to take the side of the developer, would the Developers Rights and Responsibilities Agreement (contract) be undermined.

Why have requirements if two years or two weeks down the line we don't expect them to be honored? If we aren't taken seriously to follow through, anyone can take our town for whatever they can. New London is getting closer all the time.

For it to succeed, the Planning Commission must take the long view. What is proposed and built upon in the planning process sets precedents. We have to be consistent. I wish I were an artist and able to illustrate what I mean. (One picture would certainly do better than all the words I've spent on this issue.) I would show what this town would look like, if over the last 10 years, the Planning Commission had been inconsistent, weak, and wishy-washy. The picture would be bleak with fine old homes torn down and anything goes commercial development. It would be an ugly "nowhere" that sadly can be found almost everywhere in today's America. It certainly wouldn't be the Ridgely we love!

Thank You Veterans!

On this Veteran's day let's not forget to honor those who have done so much for us. Thanks to Frank Gearhart a veteran of World War Two who was with the first wave at Utah Beach, the liberation of Paris , battle of Huertgen forest and the liberation of Dachau concentration camp. Thank you Dad!

The Whole Story About The Planning Commission Vote On The Proposed Shopping Center

For about a year, the Ridgely Planning and Zoning Commission has been working on the proposed development of a shopping center on the land next to our community cemetery. One stormy meeting hashed out the details about the proper decorum needed at such a sensitive location where many of us have relatives buried. None of the people who live in town wanted a "big mac" being ordered over a drive through speaker while one of our loved ones was being buried. The packed room was able to come up with a site plan that satisfied town residents and those from out of town promoting the project. The Planning Commission approved this phase of the project and waited for a presentation of the actual building design plans.

From the beginning, the design has been promoted as one that would be in tune with Ridgely's traditional architecture. We were told of a building with a clock tower and shown a sketch of a building with dormers. What finally showed up was none of the above and not accepted by the Planning Commission.

Our Planning Commission has heard it all over the years as developers come here with a whole host of promises which somehow vanish when it's time to put up or shut up. Some of us consider this bait and switch, and, we are tired of being treated as a bunch of naive bumpkins. Now, of course, we are being accused of being hostile to economic development. Nonsense!

I'm very proud of the Planning Commission. Over the years it has stood as a bulwark against those who usually don't live here from ruining our town. How many half baked plans for demolishing homes (on the architectural gem that is Central Avenue) came before us? We just said no, and now look at Central Ave. Its homes have been lovingly restored by their new owners who are proud to live in a piece of American history. The saving of Central Avenue IS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. There is no way that the folks who are set to begin construction on Ridgely Park with its traditional neighborhood design would have looked twice at a Ridgely missing its Central Avenue homes. Once our new neighbors arrive, they will become customers for the businesses that will be reopened in our empty storefronts. They will also provide customers to whatever is eventually built next to the cemetery. Ridgely is hardly over a barrel on the issue.

The shopping center proposal should have been a win/win situation for all involved. It's demise certainly isn't the fault of the Planning Commission. We are all residents of the town who will continue to do what we must to protect the quality of life in our town.

Preserving The Republic One Town At A Time

"You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all the people all of the time." Abraham Lincoln

Most of us who are involved in small town government are volunteers or are paid only a token amount for our services. We are either elected or appointed to our boards, councils or commissions. We have families and jobs and are seldom political scientists or professional public servants. Not being professionals puts us at a decided disadvantage when dealing with the ever growing power of town managers over our communities. It is important to remember that it is the elected town government which employs the town manager. Increasingly, however, town managers seem to ignore this fact and act as if this arrangement was the other way around. The growth of the role of the non-resident and unelected town manager has led to many conflicts as citizens fight to keep control of their town's destiny.

Most town managers are itinerant moving from town to town over the course of their careers. This profession has one of the highest turnover rates of any occupation. There are many reasons for this. Being a professional, town managers often quickly assume an attitude of thinking that they know what's best for their employer's town. Such an attitude inevitably leads them to indulge in all kinds of Machiavellian maneuvers to manipulate various members of the community to achieve their goals. After a few years of this, enough enemies will have been made so that the manager becomes an election issue and is then sent packing.

A second reason for the high turnover is the fact that many small towns are governed by charters that never envisioned the need for town managers. Such charters don't even mention the position and are full of ambiguities that allow for all kinds of mischief. No party clearly knows what is expected of the other. Often, these charters provide for no elected mayor or long term commission president to counter the machinations of a manager. The town where I live, for example, rotates its commission president yearly, making management of the town manager difficult at best. Again, over time, ill will builds up and the manager faces the risks of growing citizen hostility.

The third reason for the instability of the position is the fact that our own American political culture is changing. Many citizens have lost their political self respect and ability to act as sovereign decision makers. Our society is run more and more on a bureaucratized or corporate model with less opportunities for the development of these traditional citizenship characteristics. People are elected to office unprepared to govern. They act as if they are serving on a charity board instead of a real flesh and blood political entity. Once again, after a few years, these folks wake up, assert themselves and it's off to the hinterlands for the town manager. This constant turnover doesn't benefit any one. The towns suffer from inconsistent management and town managers suffer from unemployment.

Let me retrofit an old saying here. "town managers, you can't live with them and you can't live without them". For our citizen volunteers charged with governing our towns, their job is no small matter. We need the town manager's expertise. Without them, we will find ourselves rudely awoken one morning by our fellow citizens, ready to lynch us because the waste water treatment plant is overflowing and their toilets won't flush. There is no question that we need these policy wonks. However, we are the ones who know what is best for our towns and set the direction of the course where we want to take our towns. We must make it absolutely clear that we are in charge. Failure to do so leads to unbalanced budgets, higher taxes and water bills and excessive ugly development. These are problems concerning the town's quality of life which our elected resident legislators must be attuned to. They are the kind of problems that get little attention from a non-resident and unelected town manager. This creates the sad opportunity for a town government to morph into the strange proposition of being (to borrow and retrofit another old saying) " a government by and for the employees". Such a proposition gets expensive and the need for tax revenues will be ever growing. It's here that schemes including eminent domain abuse to raise more tax revenues raise their ugly head. In this situation, New London, Connecticut, the pioneer of eminent domain abuse is only right up the road. What's a concerned citizen to do?

First, the town manager should be a stakeholder in the community. They should be required to live in the town they will serve as a citizen and taxpayer. This doesn't mean renting an apartment to use a few nights a week. It means residency plain and simple which must be written into a contract and clearly understood before being hired. Then, residency must be enforced. The negligence of elected officials to carry through on this first step is setting the town manager up for failure. A potentially successful town manager could be wasted if allowed to ignore this important step. A strong correlation seems to exist between town manager residency and an absence of autocratic actions.

Elected officials must make it clear to the manager that they haven't hired a municipal union leader (sorry grandpa). The town manager is management and works for the elected officials serving the taxpaying town residents. This isn't to advocate not paying employees what they are worth. You won't, for example, be able to keep a police force in a small town with the state and county constantly trying to recruit your recruits with promises of more money. It is, however, about the loyalty of the town manager to the elected officials who hired him. Too often town managers view the employees as their first constituency. If the manager has somehow avoided step one and not really moved to town, what does it matter if requests for salaries and benefits for staff will far exceed the town taxpayer's median income? It's not money out of his pocket.

Development and growth for the sake of raising enough tax dollars to maintain an ever increasing payroll destroys towns. The town manager's bottom line is often in conflict with the town resident's interest in maintaining their quality of life. When a choice must be made between revenues or quality of life issues, the manager frequently favors the first. This is particularly true if he isn't a town resident. Great plans emphasizing "smart growth" and "traditional neighborhood development" will all fall by the wayside in an economic crunch. It is at this juncture that the mettle of elected officials and town planning commissions will really be tested.

Certain citizens drive autocratic town managers nuts. They are usually the better educated activist types and they overwhelmingly make up a town's volunteer commissions. These are the natural enemy for autocratic town managers because they also think they know something about how their town should be run. They also can still think and act like old fashioned American citizens. Usually they aren't of one political persuasion. One of my favorite towns has an interesting coalition including Greens and Paleo-Conservatives. As long as national issues are avoided, they work well together trying to preserve their town from what Russell Kirk termed "the enemies of the permanent things".

If your town manager is having activist troubles, expect him to exploit resentment of the activist group. Good old fashion class war works for a time. Because many of the activists are better off and new arrivals, it's not hard to fan the flames of resentment among old timers of lesser means. However, once the water bills and taxes start to rise because of town manager policies, all will reunite in opposition to their common oppressor.

Town manager misuse of the town council executive session (which is basically a secret meeting) is a serious problem. Most states allow this for personnel reasons or talking to the town attorney about litigation. Unfortunately, it's often abused. Here the town manager strikes out at dissidents or even elected officials threatening them or accusing them of just about anything. Yes, anything, and the elected officials can't go public about this tactic or risk dismissal through their own ethics board. Usually, publicity aids the elected officials but now they must remain silent. Only when the town manager puts his "anything" into action can a resistance take form. Those he has targeted will have no need to restrain themselves at this point because the consequences of the secret agenda will have made their impact. The result is outrage from the community.

Most of us don't want any of the above to happen. To start with, elected officials ought to start acting like they understand the power that they exercise on behalf of their constituents. Then, there are the ways to address the problem of inadequate old town charters which fail to address the role of the town manager. Ambiguity must be banished from these documents. A strong and consistent council presidency or mayor commission type of government must be established. This is absolutely essential to manage the town manager. It's a classic check and balance type of arrangement that can work well.

Those who should serve on a charter change commission need know something about government and should be recruited from the various volunteer boards and commissions serving the town. This should also include former commission members as well as resident business people, clergy, volunteer firemen and the town attorney. To be representative of all the town, it probably needs to be at least as large as twelve people. The commission needs people with a strong sense of their role as American citizens. We need people who understand ordered liberty and checks and balances to the concentration of power.

Charter change is not the panacea for all of the problems towns have with their town managers. It's possible that a completely spineless mayor could be elected who actually sees nothing wrong with schemes for over development or using eminent domain to fatten tax rolls to cover overspending. However, in such cases,the citizen has a recourse through the ballot box. At least elected officials have records that can be made campaign issues. It's even possible for a charter to have a town manager who is an elected official too. Once again, the recourse to the ballot box provides a proper check to abuse.

Benjamin Franklin's observation at the conclusion of the Constitutional convention applies here. When asked what had been accomplished, he replied that: "You have a republic, if you can keep it". The history of republics is littered with failures from Rome to Weimar. All too often, it is the citizens themselves through their apathy, fear, or lack of knowledge, that allow the abrogation of their rights. We need to get to work here in our small towns to "keep" alive our part of this republic.

Toblog's Biggest Hits

Welcome to Toblog. It's time to catch up here. If you are new to this blog or are just feeling nostalgic, let me refer you to four blog posts of note. "Save Our Small Town Democracy" (9/6/07) is a complete overview of the problem presented by the town manager type of government in many small towns. If you are concerned about the corrosive effects of Political Correctness, refer to "Politically Correct Beyond Words" (10/3/07)and "Politically Correct United Statians" (9/28/07). Finally, this blog started out considering new technologies and their impact on libraries. See "Week 9, Thing 23" (8/20/07)and what the future holds for libraries.

Happy reading and commenting.

Politically Correct Beyond Words

Political Correctness is a phenomenon that increasingly reaches beyond simply neutering our language. Sadly, we now have Politically Correct toilets across the pond. Recently, British prisons, at taxpayer expense, had to remodel their restrooms so that the toilets wouldn't face Mecca. Muslim prisoners had been sitting sideways creating a number of hygienic issues for prison officials. The new toilets are now placed in a direction that no matter what business needs to be taken care of, it won't be done in the direction of Mecca. I suppose the toilets now face Washington.

This might be humorous, except that we all know what the reaction would have been if some Western sensitivity had been offended. All over the West, it's the same story as with hardly a whimper we accommodate the most frivolous demands. Political Correctness in its many manifestations weakens all Western nations. How have we arrived at this point?

What has evolved into Political Correctness has its origins in Cultural Marxism which developed after World War I. Antonio Gramsci of Italy and Georg Lucas of Hungary pioneered the idea that Western Civilization itself was the main reason for the failure of Communist revolutions. The culture itself kept the "workers" from seeing their true class interests and rising up. The trick, then, was to deconstruct the culture first and the revolution would follow.

Lucas and his ideas migrated to Germany and he become a part of a think tank called innocently enough, the Institute for Social Research. Historians now refer to this as the Frankfurt School. Here devout Marxists married their ideology with Freudian ideas which begot Critical Theory. The term Critical Theory is best described by Bill Lind as "ingenious because you're tempted to ask, "What is the theory? The theory is to criticize. The theory is that the way to bring down Western culture and the Capitalist order is not to lay down an alternative....What Critical Theory is about is simply criticizing. It calls for the most destructive criticism possible...designed to bring the current order down."

The Frankfurt School members emigrated to America with the rise of Hitler. Here a quiet academic aberration gets a new lease on life. New members Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse add the sexual liberation element and thus the finishing touches to Political Correctness. With the rise of the counter culture in the 60s it's "hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture has got to go". Yesterdays radicals made their "long march" through the universities where today they "teach" and torture future corporate executives into line. Now, Political Correctness is everywhere in the West. It's in our language, in our rewritten history textbooks and now, of course, in our toilets.

Is there a road back? It's a long difficult one where the individual Westerner confronts growing cultural amnesia. Political Correctness is the new creed of an ever increasing segment of our cultural and governing elite. The first step, however, is to "know thy enemy" and understand how this attack on our civilization came to be. In particular, if you are an American, you can start by rejecting the newest Politically Correct terms such as "United Statians" (see my blog - 9/28/07)which are attempting to move into our vocabulary. This term is particularly insidious robbing Americans of even the name by which we've been known for centuries.

Also,take the time to take a look at your children's textbooks. History books, in particular, now leave out a whole host of heroes and accomplishments that made our nations and civilization. Those who remain are subject to relentless criticism (in line with Critical Theory script) turning former heroes into villains. However, textbooks can be challenged and changed. There have been individuals who have successfully taken on school boards and won. They have been able to bring back to their school districts more balanced histories of our nations and the West.

People have passed off Political Correctness as some kind of joke but the joke has been on us. It's a very dangerous form of identity theft causing cultural amnesia and robbing us of being able to find even the words with which to defend ourselves. The very intolerant enemies of our way of life certainly aren't silent. Wake up before it's too late and we are all silenced like Theo Van Gogh.

Best Example Of The Worst

What follows is a comment by someone called "dvelcro" on my blog which you all need to think about. This is a great example of the kind of thinking that is very contrary to the interests of the citizens of any town. We can't be certain who this person is but we can sure take this case of "attitude" as a cautionary tale as our Commissioners continue work on the Town Manager's contract.

Dear concerned,
The issue at hand appears to be paragraph 2, a new contract is being negotiated.

Except it's not. I don't see any negotiation here. "Manager, sell your house (at a loss) and move to 21660 or else ..." what? We'll find someone who will move here for the sake of an at-will position at a modest wage in a small town in a rural county in the isolated hinterland of the Bo-Wash sprawl? I'd say Ridgely is over a barrel unless the town can negotiate to get what it really wants.
Residency or ownership does not equal a sense of responsibility. How many investors who own property would just as easily accomodate shady developers because their interests are in increasing the value of their investment rather than the quality of their community?
Wasting the energy groaning over gas mileage is to me a distraction from the real concern: What are the traits and actions of a manager who takes seriously the interests and concerns of the citizens he/she serves? Who is going to talk seriously about what will make Ridgely a better place at the end of 5 years than it is today?
By the way this Blogger/Google set-up is buggy, it took half an hour for it to recognize my password to send this. I will not be posting again.

New Website For Our Hometown

Look at this labor of love. The new website for Ridgely is up. Many thanks to Webmaster Arlene Hege and also Nancy Gearhart for all the work they are doing bringing Ridgley to the world. Go to: http://www.ridgelymd.org/