Rob Savidge, Alderman Ward 7

Happy Spring Equinox everyone! I for one am definitely looking forward to more sun and warmth, and fun in the water. Here are a few updates for Ward 7. Of note is information about our next Town Hall, where we will discuss the results of our survey results from our last meeting, the Sector Study, and hopefully will hear from the Mayor himself on some of his initiatives.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I hope everyone has a fun, but responsible, celebration. I have a few updates on some issues I raised last week dealing with Crystal Spring and the Sector Study. Also, the next Ward 7 Town Hall will be on April 3rd.

This has been a very frustrating past few weeks on the Council. Here’s why:

At this upcoming Council meeting you’ll have another opportunity to testify in regards to how development happens in the Ward, by commenting on the Eastport/Forest Drive Sector Study. In addition, the now 12-month old School Capacity Adequate Facilities ordinance is up for final action or postponement. Will we finally take action on this?

We had an excellent Town Hall meeting this past week. I’d like to thank everyone who came out to that, and thank everyone who helped distribute flyers (we distributed over 2,000 flyers across the Ward!). I’ll be sharing the results of all the brainstorming of 2019 priorities, including the point rating for each item (i.e. how many priority sticker votes each item received), once that information is compiled. I will likely present on this at a future Town Hall meeting, perhaps at the spring Town Hall meeting on April 3rd. Perhaps that would be a good meeting to invite the Mayor to as well.

Here is some information on the next Council meeting. There is an important items up for a public hearing, the Eastport-Forest Drive Sector Study that can potentially have widespread impacts to the Ward, for better or worse. I’ll explain more below.

Happy New Year!

Here is some information on the first City Council meeting for the new year, our next Town Hall meeting where we will be identifying Ward 7 priorities, an update on how the Crystal Spring Community Meeting went, and a list of some potential Ward 7 Capital projects that I would like your feedback on.

Happy New Year and Happy Holidays!

This will be a short newsletter, as I only have a few announcements for you (no upcoming Council meetings). Read on for information on the next Ward 7 Town Hall meeting (discussing and ranking Ward 7 priorities for 2019), a Community Meeting about the Village at Providence Point (aka Crystal Spring) project, and New Years events.

The big news I want to share with you is that my Ordinance O-27-18, “no net loss of forests”, passed with only one dissenting vote! What this means is that development projects like the Village at Providence Point (aka Crystal Spring) and Parole Place (a large development in the headwaters of Church Creek) will need to mitigate/replace every acre of forest they remove. This will help to ensure that our water and air quality doesn’t get worse for our next generation. I want to thank all of you who supported this legislation. We now have the strongest Forest Conservation laws in the entire State.

In regular news, there is only one City Council meeting in December: this upcoming Monday. There are a number of pieces of legislation up for a public hearing and final vote, which I’ll tell you about below. The one that will likely be of most interest to you is Ordinance O-8-18, which would address school overcrowding by preventing development for 6 years in districts that are over 100% capacity. I’ll go into this more below. Otherwise, I wish everyone happy holidays, and in case this is my only email update this month, happy new year!

This month there are two City Council meetings on back-to-back Mondays: the 19th and 26th. Tomorrow’s agenda is packed and I’ll include highlights below. The theme with most of the legislation up for a final vote is development, including my “no net loss of forests” Ordinance.

I’d also like to take a moment to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving and safe travels next week.

I’d like to start this week’s newsletter by asking you for some assistance. As you are hopefully aware, we have a fall Ward 7 Town Hall meeting scheduled for Wednesday, October 24th, from 6-8 at the Eastport-Annapolis Neck Library. I need some help getting the word out and distributing flyers for the event. We will be having a special guest, Mr. Andre Dillard, the principal of Georgetown East Elementary School, who will be speaking to you about the school and how you can help, whether or not you currently have kids of that age. But the majority of the meeting will still consist of the open Q&A format, with opening remarks from yours truly. However, for this to be a success, I once again am requesting your assistance. If you are able to help, let me know and I will get flyers to you for distribution in your community. It should take no more than an hour or so of your time.

Here’s the rest of my update: