Good afternoon! I hope you have found an opportunity to get outside today and enjoy this mild weather before winter returns tomorrow! I have a few updates for you along with a Council meeting briefing for Monday.

We have six pieces of legislation up for a public hearing, which I’ll describe below. But I want to start off with an update on the Parkside Preserve (aka Reserve at Quiet Waters) pollution saga. If you care about this issue, care about our Park, I implore you to sign up to testify at our virtual Council meeting on Monday, to help support the emergency Resolution I’ll be introducing.

Another pollution emergency in Quiet Waters Park – emergency Resolution needs your support

I’ve mentioned previously how a development off Old Annapolis Neck Rd, in our Ward, has been sending pollution into Quiet Waters park. This is entirely preventable pollution that the contractor, Reliable Contracting Inc, has been discharging because they are not and have not been following our environmental regulations. The City’s Department of Public Works is the enforcement agency and they have not escalated enforcement or held this contractor accountable, and now we have had a fifth instance of pollution entering the park. (You can get a detailed chronology/summary here)

I’ve drafted an emergency Resolution whose purpose is to express the Council’s will that the City to utilize the laws we have passed to their fullest extent to secure compliance. If the City staff won’t do their jobs the Council needs to step in. I have an additional amendment that would express that we resolve that Reliable’s permit be suspended (or revoked) pending a full review by the City and the public, and requiring that a new agreement be drafted to ensure compliance and responsiveness to the public concerns.

But to get this passed I need your help. I need your testimony (limited to 3 minutes) at the meeting. My colleagues on the Council need to know how this has been impacting you, how pollution of our park is unacceptable, and how you want them to stand up for our Ward and support us on this. Our Council meeting will be virtual so it couldn’t be easier to sign up to testify. Just fill out this form and click the “live testimony” box. The meeting starts at 7PM and I expect the general public testimony period to start around 7:30, but that could be more or less.

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

Here is a chronology of some of the pollution discharge events we have had at Quiet Waters Park, due to the failure of the contrator, Reliable Contracting Inc, to follow our environmental regulations, and also due to a failure of the City's enforcement arm (Department of Public Works) to do effective enforcement to achieve compliance. Besides the environmental impacts, they have also failed to comply with our traffic control (dangerous to residents), noise restrictions (impacts residents), work hour restrictions (residents kept up at night), and pavement standards (danger to cars).

This is a DEFCON 1 situation environmentally. We have laws to prevent sediment pollution for a reason. It contributes to the creation of dead zones (areas devoid of all oxygen and life) in our waterways, toxic algal blooms, and flesh-eating bacteria. I'm an environmental scientist. I know very well the impacts this pollution causes; hence my sense of outrage. And now we have our most sacred public park that has been impacted. 

The first Council meeting of the new year is this Monday. There are two pieces of legislation up for a public hearing and two up for a final vote, but nothing too controversial. On Monday January 17^th is a virtual Dr. Martin Luthor King Jr breakfast; information below.

Enjoy the snow and winter weather and happy new year!

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

First of all, happy holidays! Second of all, thank you for re-electing me to serve as your Alderman! I look forward to serving you for the next term. As you may have noticed, I’ve tried to take a bit of a break here between Council terms, but, alas, it feels like that went by rather quickly and here we are with our first Council meeting of this term coming up on Monday. Given that this is our first meeting, there isn’t too much on the agenda. I’ve provided a summary below. As always, feel free to reach out to me witih any comments.

There are a number of important updates at the end of this email, including information about upcoming hearings about Ward redistricting, a community safety meeting with the Police Chief, and an update on the Parkside Preserve pollution issues.

Also, given that the new year is almost upon us, please send me your priorities you want me to focus on for the next term.

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

This Monday will be our last Council meeting for this term. I want to say how much of an honor and privilege it has been to serve you these past 4 years. I’m even more honored and humbled (and appreciative of my family’s support!)  to be able to continue serving as your Alderman for another 4 years. I hope you have been happy with how I’ve been performing my duty to represent you, and respectfully ask for your vote on November 2^nd.

Stay tuned to your email as I plan on holding a Ward 7 social gathering at the Maritime Museum’s Moyer park campus in early November. Since I haven’t had a town hall in a while, I will also be there to answer any questions folks may have and likely give a number of updates for what we may have in store for next year.

I’ll also include an update on the Parkside Preserve pollution at the end of this email.

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

Given that there isn’t too much on this second-to-last council meeting of this term, the big news I wanted to lead off with is the pollution in Quiet Waters Park. I’ve been sent numerous pictures over the past few weeks of this muddy water illegally entering into the park from the adjacent development project, ironically named Parkside Preserve, which is actually a new ~130 home residential development. I want to assure you that I’ve been working tirelessly to address this situation (my family has seen me for only a few hours this week). I went out to the site (without entering) and observed 12 different violations on the work site (remember, I used to do environmental inspections for the City, prior to getting elected), and promptly sent that to the City Manager. After a slow response from staff, I proceeded to contact the Deputy Secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment.

I’m happy to say that the site is now mostly in compliance, after 7 long days. Keep in mind that the developer is required to keep their site in compliance every single day. So the fact that they were out of compliance for weeks, and the City gave them another entire week is a problem. It’s also a problem that the department in charge of the inspections, Public Works, failed to notice these violations for weeks, despite their thrice-weekly inspections. It’s also a problem that after 12 violations, and 13 out-of-compliance inspection results, the developer is allowed to get away with this with zero dollars in fines for sending this pollution into our park. To top it off, the permit for this work actually expires at the end of today, and once this was brought to the City's attention, they quickly extended the contractor's permit (in violation of our laws); much more quickly than it took them to respond to our citizen complaints. The fact that this violates our laws is something I will need to figure out how to address.

In anycase, this is why our neighbors in Beechwood hill and surrounding communities organized a brand new coalition, called Annapolis Stand Up! They are organizing a march and rally for TOMORROW AT 7AM starting at the entrance of Quiet Waters park and heading over to the project. The early time is due to that being the time that workers get to the site. I will post their flyer down below.

In other news, I’m withdrawing O-12-21, the Police Enhancement And Community Engagement (PEACE) ordinance. I will be bringing this back next term, but it simply proved to be too complex to be passed this session, especially since we made major revisions to it after meeting with the Police Department, law office, and ACLU, which need to be brought back to the public.

Lastly, I respectfully ask for your vote when you receive your ballot. I have thoroughly enjoyed serving you and look forward to continuing to do so for another 4 years.

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

This Monday you will have an opportunity to testify on some important legislation that is before the City Council, including:

1. a proposal to shift away from the Planning Commission model where they approve and review development projects, and shifting to a model with a single hearing officer filling that role, and
2. the proposed changes to our maritime zones from the maritime advisory task force, and
3. legislation I’m proposing to close two loopholes in our forest conservation act.

Furthermore, we will be holding a final vote on the Accessory Dwelling Unit legislation, so if you have any comments on that, please send them my way.

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

Hello again! It has been a while! I took a nice long break during the August recess of the Council, took some much-needed family time, but now it’s time to get back into the Council work. We have 4 meetings left in this term until our “sine die”. I have a number of pieces of legislation on the docket that I’ll be hoping to bring to a positive conclusion:

• Police Enhancement And Community Engagement (PEACE) ordinance, which would transition more towards community policing, enacts common sense reforms, adopts recommendations from the AA County gun violence task force, and much more;
• Forest Conservation tweak – closing two loopholes; and
• Requiring permits when removing trees over 23” anywhere in City.

I’ll include a few election updates below, but I do want to note that you will NOT be receiving a primary election ballot since there are no contested primary races in our Ward. You WILL receive a general election ballot. I also want to say a big THANK YOU, and say that I look forward to representing you for another 4-years. I hope to organize a town hall in October at an outdoor venue.

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob

I’d like to fill you in on an environmental emergency out at ironically named Parkside Preserve (aka Reserve at Quiet Waters), which instead of preserving our newest park instead has polluted it. I’ll provide details below in the updates section. But if it outrages you that developers polluted public lands, sensitive non-tidal wetlands that form the headwaters of Quiet Waters Park, and broke the law to do so, then please read on.

Also, this is our last Council meeting before our August break, and it’s our last meeting for us to introduce Ordinances before the end of our terms (unless we suspend the rules); hence, we have quite a bit of legislation on the agenda.

In case you didn’t notice from the last meeting, we postponed the Short Term Rental legislation vote until this Monday, we voted down the medical cannabis legislation after it was weakened with some poison amendments, and we passed the legislation that allows the proposed Lidl grocery store to connect to our sewer and water.

Also, at the start of our Monday meeting, at 6pm, we will be having a closed door meeting speaking about the Hillman parking garage replacement project. Our regular meeting starts at 7pm.

Lastly, I’m introducing two pieces of legislation to address some loopholes in the City regarding tree/forest protection that we uncovered recently. More information on these below.

Stay healthy and stay safe,

Rob