We suggest Chestertown should have a few resolutions for the new year, like all good towns. The Chestertown Spy offers our suggestions below, but we hope readers suggest others as our community makes plans for 2013.
1) The Kent County Public School Board of Education will have the initiative and good luck to recruit a school superintendent with the gift of leadership to bring our schools to a level of performance that matches the community’s aspirations for its children.
2) Chestertown’s Renewal Initiative will unite the town’s governmental, educational, arts, philanthropic and commercial resources to create and complete a vision for Chestertown’s future that secures financial sustainability in a compelling and creative way.
3) The citizens of Chestertown will have a competitive mayoral election in November with the best ideas presented to voters to debate on the town’s future.
4) Town government of Chestertown will continue to increase financial transparency by participating in the Sunshine Review transparency guidelines and checklist program.
5) The University of Maryland Health Foundation will have a regional health strategy that is grounded in the practical health needs of the Upper Shore’s residents.
6) Washington College will have a welcoming egress from the newly installed Chestertown Trail to the Gibson Center for the Arts & Kohl Art Gallery, bringing a pratical and symbolic bridge to the community and the College’s own developing waterfront campus.
7) A new Andy’s will emerge in downtown Chestertown that matches the extraordinary venue Andy Goddard built and maintained for twenty years.
8) Chestertown will attract a new first-quality ethnic restaurant to complement the town’s increasingly diverse community.
9) The final resolution of the Garfield Center LCD sign will result in a national model for communities attempting to use new technology signage in historic districts.
10) Chestertown’s shopping center owners, and their tenants, will bring these important retail centers up to a standard of appearance and quality that reflects the community’s expectations.
mary wood says
As to resolution 5 – I wish that the University of Maryland Hospital Foundation would reinstate obstetrical services and pediatrics to what we always thought of as “our” hospital. As well as providing care for those with mental illness.
Keith Thompson says
These are nice suggestions but the problem as always is how and who pays for it, especially on an already strained state and local budget?
fletcher r hall says
An interesting list to say the least.
It would appear that there are three components of the list which are most significant.
One, the selection of a new school superintendent is critical to the future of Kent County and Chestetown. Perhaps the School Board should be looking to hire a new CEO as occurs in the business world. The acquisition and management of funds to operate the school system is paramount. In todays world it is simply not the thing to make the best school teacher the chief operating officer. The good teachers are badly needed in the class room. Management is the key function of the superintendent.
Prehaps the title superintendent is an outdated title.
Two, the looming town election is definately significant for Chestertown. The future is the key issue and any candidate for elected office in the town should understsnd this fact and give it top priority.
And, third the issue of adaquate health care is also most significant. Geography and demographics are factors in this matter, as well as finances and the services provided to area citizens. Planning and intelligent decisions are most important here. The provisions of health services are much like the merging of banks recently. Within proper gidelines, local decisions are usually the best decions, made in an informed manner, by local leaders.
Lastly, Let us hope that Washington College will unvail more specific plans for their waterfront project which will certainly affect the future of the college and Chestertown. Once, General Motors used the slogan, “Progress is our most important product”. Perhaps this will be true of Chestertown in 2013. We can hope.
Roger Brown says
“Progress is our most important product” was a slogan of General Electric, not General Motors.
craig o'donnell says
Definitely, guidelines and unveil. Spell check, repeat, spell check!
kate o'donnell says
It wasn’t Craig who spell checked. It was grammar queen who didn’t realize that she was on his Safari instead of her Firefox. I hope this is an adequate apology. Kate
Gren Whitman says
Because several of the resolutions above are not exclusively for C’town, I suggest this:
That Commissioners Fithian and Short re-consider their recent vote to spend $25,000 on the ill-conceived “TDML Coalition,” which is less a coalition and more a legalized conspiracy against the best plan so far to clean and protect Chesapeake Bay.
Let me gently add that Mr. Short’s vote to spend $25,000 in Kent taxpayers’ money on this scheme will undercut anything and everything he plans to say about curtailing spending as the commissioners develop Kent County’s fiscal ’14 budget. What goes around comes around…
Keith Thompson says
And if the money spent on the best plan to clean up and protect the Bay goes all for naught the next time the Conowingo Dam opens all their flood gates after the next hurricane, then the $25,000 can be viewed as an investment to ensure that the money being spent on Bay cleanup efforts isn’t being wasted.
Gren Whitman says
@ K. Thompson: It will be interesting, and instructive, when Mr. Fithian and Mr. Short decide to report in detail to their constituents exactly how $25,000 in Kent County taxpayers’ dollars has materially benefitted our county.
Frankly, I think the so-called TDML Coalition will soon ask for more, since the Funk & Bolton’s meter is running … and running.
Keith Thompson says
Is the $25,000 investment worth it? Much of it will be dependent on whether or not the coalition is successful in getting the Conowingo Dam problem better factored into the TMDL limits for the counties. Given how valuable the Cononwingo Dam is for power generation for the Northeast, how much incentive does the federal government or the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania have in addressing the potential environmental problems with the dam? I think none. Given that until now the potential problems with the dam haven’t been taken seriously until the lawyers got involved, I’m thinking that the $25,000 has already been well spent. Just look at the busking issue in Chestertown…it wasn’t taken very seriously until the ACLU and Rutherford Institute got involved.
I think this is a very important issue and I look forward to keeping up with it. My prediction (based on a recent conversation with someone who used to work at the Conowingo Dam) is that the coalition will be effective in at least getting an out of court settlement where Exelon will take some responsibility for the cleanup efforts. Any little bit helps.
craig o'donnell says
“effective in at least getting an out of court settlement where Exelon will take some responsibility for the cleanup efforts. Any little bit helps.”
There’s no lawsuit. If you take the seven counties at their word, the purpose is (1) establishing an agreed-upon set of facts (or estimates) regarding pollution; (2) lobbying and (3) getting the counties a place in the Exelon dam relicensing, which is an arcane federal administrative process. I’m also willing to bet that, psychologically, the county governments are interested because they usually get stuck by state government with bills the state is tired of paying. So it’s an opportunity to poke back.
Michael Helfrich says
These lawyers are doing little, but coming in after the fact and taking your money. Stewards of the Lower Susquehanna and I, the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper, have been working at no cost to the people of Maryland since we convened a meeting in Port Deposit and brought this issue back to the Army Corps and Susquehanna River Basin Commission in 2006; lobbied Congress from 2007 to 2010 to fund the studies that were originally recommended in 2001; worked with for-profit companies to find economically viable solutions since 2007; worked on the FERC relicensing since 2009 to assure that Exelon takes some responsibility for their part in this; and are working on the Studies and lobbying the states and feds to fund their share of the cost of solutions. Meanwhile, these lawyers, who are misrepresenting the situation just swooped in an took your tax dollars. In 7 years of working on this issue, I have never seen these lawyers. When the people that have been doing the real work are successful, these lawyers will claim that they had a role in it.
Here are the facts, as stipulated in the Chesapeake TMDL, Appendix T: ANY NEW LOADS FROM THE SUSQUEHANNA WILL HAVE TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR IN ADDITIONAL REDUCTIONS, MOSTLY FROM PA. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR WIPs. PA has to do their part, which includes any additional loads from Conowingo, AND each Maryland county has to do their part, or there will be no healthy Bay. Those are facts. And there is one more fact… I’m sorry, but you are being bamboozled.
james r durham says
Sometimes common sense is needed is town governance. I.E. the “Shopping Bag” dilemma. Dollar Gen. has substituted ” throw-away”
plastic bags for “REUSABLE” ones which are 5 times more dense, and which no one seems to re-use(except for myself, who was told by the cashier “Gee, you’re the first person I’ve seen bring one of these back!”.
In actuality, the original 2 mil bag degraded in sunlight(UV) and water in about 6 weeks(I tried it) whereas the “reusable” bags will sit in the environment for years. About 20% of shoppers bring their own bags; perhaps we can get more folks to do that.
And perhaps we can suggest to retailers that they use corn-starch based bags which are environmentally innocuous (There is a start-up company in Indiana which is manufacturing items, including shopping bags, made(basically) from corn starch (The Pres. was a graduate of my college, Wabash, and more power to him if he can sell it). I suppose we need not discuss the problem of( approaching )8 billion humans (consumers) .
Robert Sweetman says
Don’t make resolutions…
Make Goals instead with plans and quantifiable objective outcomes in each stage…
shawn ferguesson says
Just one simple comment in reference to the corn starch product. I have spent a good deal of time researching,and more importantly,pricing the corn starch products. They are currently available in bags,plates,take out containers,utensils and cups. They are a nice product but, at least at this time, way to expensive. If the cost can lowered the products would be very practical.
Jason Price says
A word of note on resolution #10. The tenants of the shopping centers are not responsible for the general upkeep of the buildings, parking lots, lighting, or overall appearance of the shopping centers. Tenants are doing what they can, but businesses, especially the “small” type, have had a lot increases in cost of business expenses over the past few years that have had to be accounted for first.