It feels like the world stopped this week and focused attention on the extraordinary news that President Biden withdrew his candidacy for re-election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. I’ve shared my own thoughts on that topic through non-government channels, so I won’t comment here, other than to say that even in these moments of historical shifts at the global and national levels, nothing slows down locally. Life goes on, and we keep fixing stuff, or at least trying.
I signed the Region 4 Comprehensive Rezoning bill this week, but also issued vetoes related to rezoning of two areas, the first vetoes of my time in office. One restores former zoning of land that was downzoned in 1989, land inherited by four African American families who hope to provide house sites for their descendants. Another protects an area of forest between two streams that flow to Lake Waterford and the Magothy River. I wrote a thorough and passionate justification for these vetoes, hoping to secure the votes on the County Council to uphold them. You can read that statement here.
I did a lengthy meeting with Planning and Zoning staff to review 111 applications by residents who seek to serve on Stakeholder Advisory Committees for Regions 5 (Crofton, Odenton, Piney Orchard, Gambrills, Two Rivers), 6 (parts of Millersville, Crownsville, General’s Highway Corridor), and 8 (Davidsonville, Harwood, Lothian, Friendship, parts of Edgewater). All had been scored, all had key parts of their applications on a spreadsheet, and all were on maps to help us ensure diversity of skill, background, interest, and geography. I keep being floored by the professionalism of the Long Range Planning team at OPZ. And I’m so glad that we divided the county into nine regions for local plans, and didn’t try to do all nine at once!
While I’m recognizing excellence in problem-solving in county departments, I have to mention an email I got as a follow-up to my regular meeting with Police Chief Awad. I had asked how things were going with the new staffing plan that was implemented earlier in the year to reduce the number of patrol shifts that required mandatory overtime. I got back a chart showing a total of zero such instances over a fifteen-day period in July, and an older chart showing 92 from the same period a year ago. I also know that officer feedback has been far more positive than some expected when the program was launched. Well done team.
I write often about Anne Arundel River Days in this letter, but I have to say it again. They are truly causing our residents to fall in love with the 530 miles of coast that embraces us. Saturday it was all smiles and discovery at Annapolis Maritime Museum Park Campus, Chesapeake Region Accessible Boating (CRAB), and Annapolis Sailing School. Hundreds of people got free boat rides from all three sites, live music from Naptown Brass, and a packed house of informational booths under the new Merrill Family Pavilion. Some even had celebrity tour guides, like Blacks of the Chesapeake Founder Vince Leggett and Severn River Association Executive Director Jesse Iliff.
We still have three more River Days coming, so go to aacounty.org/RiverDays and get them on your calendar.
Another event this week that brought a lot of smiles was Economic Development’s Arundel Grown, the annual celebration of food grown on our county’s farms. This year we gathered at Homestead Gardens, and 100% of what we ate and drank (yes, local beer and wine) was from county farms, and the food was prepared by the brilliant team at Bread and Butter Kitchen. As I often do, I found myself at the mic thanking our farmers and all of the organizations that work with them to overcome the obstacles they face getting food to our tables. Those organizations are Anne Arundel Economic Development, Anne Arundel Soil Conservation District, Anne Arundel Farm Bureau, Future Farmers of America’s chapter based at Southern High School, our Agriculture Advisory Commission, and the Ag Preservation staff in our Office of Planning and Zoning. It’s a team effort.
But the highlight of my week was a major step forward in addressing the problems I wrote about last week at Animal Care and Control. On Monday, the top three candidates for the position that will lead the organization through the transition that I described were brought back for second interviews, and the Chair of our Animal Welfare Council and Acting Administrator were brought in to participate. They unanimously and enthusiastically recommended that we hire a woman with a 28-year track record of creating, merging, and managing nonprofit and government organizations that operate shelters in multiple jurisdictions. Her name is Claudia Roll, and she’s a resident of Severna Park.
Claudia’s resume includes working as an animal welfare educator for the Snyder Foundation, chairing the Progress Review Board overseeing Humane Society recommendations to modernize what was Baltimore City Bureau of Animal Control, managing a statewide spay and neuter program in New Mexico, working as a cruelty case administrator and as an evaluator and advisor to local governments and nonprofit shelters in New Mexico, overseeing the City of Albuquerque’s municipal shelter system, and for the last twelve years overseeing operations of Washington, DC’s shelter system, the Humane Rescue Alliance, and it’s 80-plus employees, including the navigation of two organizational mergers along the way.
I got to meet her on Tuesday via Zoom, and by Wednesday she had accepted a job offer. I sent letters informing the staff, Friends of Animal Care and Control, Animal Matters Commission, and the Animal Welfare Council this morning, and a public announcement went out after that. She starts on Monday.
Hearing Claudia’s thoughts about the challenges we face in Anne Arundel County, and the opportunities that will appear if we transition to a non-profit quasi-government agency, gave me confidence that she is the right person to have at the helm of that transition.
The fact that the photo of her first dog on the wall behind her looked exactly like the yellow lab who was my first dog, and is on the wall above my dresser, kind of sealed the deal for me.
So the world may have stopped to take stock of the news, but we’re still fixing stuff, and celebrating what’s good.
Until next week…
Steuart Pittman
Anne Arundel County Executive