You just can’t vote a yard sign into law.

Accordingly, this morning The Talbot Integrity Project (“TIP”) sent to all members of the new, incoming County Council a formal request that the Council consider, and adopt, two specific Resolutions that will implement the “Reset Lakeside” initiative advocated by TIP in the recent campaign.

As sponsor of the “reset” movement, it has been TIP’s responsibility to come forward with specific language that will accomplish the goals embodied in that catchphrase, so Talbot County can move from a gross idea to action.  Those goals are two in number, and were presented in an outline linked to an article in the Talbot Spy on September 28th.

First, the new County Council can reverse a position taken last March, and confirm that it is the Planning Commission that has exclusive authority to make decisions about any project’s consistency with our Comprehensive Plan.  That is the law.

Second, since the Planning Commission last year determined that Lakeside is NOT consistent with the Talbot County Comprehensive Plan, Lakeside must be paused in place, inviting the developer to bring it back anew for proper consideration by the Planning Commission and the Council before approval.  And for the first time, they—and the citizens in public hearing—can address a litany of issues such as schools, taxes, traffic, public safety and the impact on the County’s strained healthcare capacity.  

All of these are important issues, and without a “reset,” County taxpayers, and not the developer, will be the ones dealing with and paying for these aspects of uncontrolled growth.  Perhaps some changes are in order.

The legislation proposed by TIP consists of two Resolutions accessible by these links:  the main “Reset Resolution” (Exhibits here), and a second Resolution that simply accommodates certain non-controversial improvements to the Trappe water system that were also contained in the original Resolution 281 before it was rescinded.

Voters elected three candidates to the Council that TIP endorsed: Pete Lesher, Keasha Haythe, and Lynn Mielke.  At the League of Women Voters/CBF Candidate Forum, all these candidates (and other candidates too) said that they would support the Reset Lakeside effort outlined in the Spy that very day.  

TIP hopes that, on thoughtful consideration, all new Council members will act responsibly and adopt this legislation.  And not just because the call to “Reset Lakeside” was so strongly supported by voters in the recent election, but because it’s the right thing to do.

Dan Watson
Talbot Integrity Project – Easton

On November 10, Washington College filed its new application to demolish the Armory–this one 118 pages long.  But nowhere in those 118 pages is a legal opinion from any lawyer blessing the College’s proposal to lease the property to a developer to build and manage a luxury boutique hotel.  This is “the elephant in the room” which the College side-stepped in its first application and side-steps again this time. 

The restrictive covenant in the deed plainly limits the use of the property to “college and/or university uses.”  Do these “uses” include leasing the property to a private developer to build and manage a for profit luxury hotel on the site?  Is this money-making use permitted?  No one knows at this point.

The HDC cannot authorize an illegal use; it needs to know whether the proposed use is legal. If not, the application must be denied.  If so, the HDC could still decline to find sufficient evidence that the Armory’s issues cannot be remediated, a conclusion not yet proven.

There are other legal issues which also must be addressed before the HDC 

can make a decision.  These are: 

1. Can the HDC demand to see the maintenance records for the Armory for the past 10 years? If the College failed to keep the sump pumps and dehumidifiers running, then the mold was inevitable.  As one environmental expert told me, no sump pumps and no dehumidifiers turn the Armory into a greenhouse.
2. Can the HDC demand that the College obtain three remediation estimates based on the Sussex Environmental report?  There has not been any evidence offered as to the cost of remediation, just the cost of tearing down the Armory.
3. Can the HDC demand to see the College financial records to prove that it cannot afford to remediate?
4. If the HDC finds the College guilty of “demolition by neglect” because the College has failed to maintain the Armory during its decade of ownership, what recourses are available to the HDC?  Can the HDC enforce the 2011 promise of then College President Mitchell Reiss to spend $3 million to restore the Armory and to assume liability for any environmental issues on the Armory property?  Can the HDC deny the College’s application to demolish the Armory?  Can the HDC demand the College clean up the Armory and do what it promised in the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding? 
5. Can the HDC enforce the provisions of Town Ordinance 93-13(A) and (B), which mandate that in a case of demolition by neglect, “the Commission shall attempt with the owner of the structure to formulate an economically feasible plan for the preservation of the site or structure.”  Can the HDC pause this process so “The Commission shall have 90 days … to negotiate with the owner and other parties to find a means of preserving the site or structure.” Both of these provisions are mandatory, but may never have been enforced before now.

These are serious legal questions which must be addressed before the HDC can act.  And the HDC must have its own, independent legal counsel. The duty of the HDC is to preserve historic buildings; the interest of those who favor tearing them down is not the same as that of the HDC. 

The College wants to tear down the Armory and the Town Council has already approved doing so.  Therefore, the HDC cannot rely on the College lawyer or the Town lawyer.

Under Maryland law, the HDC has the right to hire its own experts, including a lawyer to answer its legal questions, and have the applicant—that’s Washington College—pay for them.

An alternative is for the HDC to request a legal opinion from Maryland’s Attorney General.  This is free but might take longer.

The HDC should immediately hire its own lawyer and hire its own environmental expert. 

The HDC needs its own environmental expert to sort out the inconsistencies in the two environmental reports paid for by the College (one obtained only after the HDC rescinded its approval).  The HDC—and the public it serves—deserve an unbiased assessment. And it is patently unfair to the HDC and the public for the applicant to use expert reports to support its application when there is no expert on the side of the HDC and the public to review and analyze those reports.

To repeat, The HDC should immediately hire its own lawyer and hire its own environmental expert. And send the bills to Washington College.

Barbara Jorgenson
Chestertown

After the Historic District Commission approved Washington College’s request to tear down the Armory, now rescinded, I filed a request under the Maryland Freedom of Information Act with the Town.  I have now received documents from the Town and reviewed them.  

I was particularly interested in the restrictive covenant on the Armory’s use for “college and/or university uses.” To remind the reader, this restrictive covenant was disclosed not by the Town or by Washington College but by concerned citizens doing their homework.  

The Town documents reveal two important facts related to the College’s use of the Armory.

The restrictive covenant was not a surprise to the Town or the College. Town manager Bill Ingersoll, Town Zoning Administrator Kees de Mooy, and Washington College’s John Seidel have known about the restrictive covenant since it was created in 2012. Ingersoll called the covenant “this little hurtle” when he emailed de Mooy about it in early 2021. 

Ingersoll sent the deed to Mayor David Foster in early 2022. Foster replied, “That looks pretty serious to me but maybe the lawyers for the college can still find a way around this.”  Foster then sent the deed to Richard Grieves of Washington College, telling Ingersoll “Hopefully, he (Grieves) has already seen it and taken it into account but if he hasn’t….”  (Ellipse in original)

Later de Mooy discussed the restrictive covenant with Seidel and Grieves in an August 2022 meeting.

So, the covenant was important enough for Ingersoll to raise to Foster,  Foster to Grieves, and de Mooy to Seidel and Grieves, but no one told the Historic District Commission, the Town Council, or the public.  Why? 

Ingersoll also raised the second important fact.  In the same 2022 email exchange with Foster, Ingersoll noted that the College had changed its plans for the Armory after the College received the property. Foster did not ask Ingersoll how the College’s plans had changed—not then and not ever as far as the Town documents show. But the documents do show how the College changed its plans, most notably from its 2013 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Historic District Commission.

Are the deed and the MOU important?  Yes. Are they relevant to the decision about the demolition of the Armory?  Yes.

The language of the restrictive covenant limits what the College can do with the Armory.  It can must be used “solely” for “college and/or university uses.”  The College is proposing to tear down the Armory and lease the land to a developer who will build and operate a luxury boutique hotel.  Is that a permitted use under the covenant?  

The answer is a legal question that can only be answered with a legal opinion.  The Historic District Commission cannot make a rational decision about the Armory without knowing if what the College is asking for is legal.

At the November 7 Town Council meeting, Foster was quizzed about any legal opinion.  He repeatedly stated he had been “told” that lawyers had approved the College’s plans, but he did not identify the lawyers, for whom they worked, or even who told him.  Washington College’s Richard Grieves was in the audience.  He spoke at length but offered no legal opinion obtained by the College.

No legal opinion has ever been provided to the public, the Historic District Commission, or the Town Council.  

When pressed by one Council member, Foster said he would ask the Town attorney for an opinion.  Hopefully, the Town’s legal opinion—and one from the College too–will be provided before the Historic District Commission takes up the Armory issue at its December 7 meeting.

But the inquiry does not end with the covenant.

When the Town transferred the Armory to the College in 2013, it asked for– and got–a specific set of promises in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).  The MOU contains the College’s plan Ingersoll pointed out to Foster in January 2022.  

The MOU is a legally binding document too.  Like the deed, it has not made available to the public, the Historic District Commission, or the Town Council.

The MOU set out the conditions under which the Town was willing to transfer the Armory to the College and the College was willing to accept the transfer.  If the Town’s Historic District Commission would approve the College’s plan to tear down two rear additions to the Armory, to add six or more windows in the rear wall of the Armory, and to construct a deck or substantial addition in the future at the rear of the building, then the College would take the Armory.  That was the agreement.  It is plain to see that what the College now proposes to do is radically different than this agreement.

Significantly, the MOU also stated that neither the College or the HDC could terminate, rescind, or otherwise cancel the MOU for 15 years.  Yet, here we are just 10 years later with the College seeking to change the deal.

Is it legal for the College to try to change the deal now?  That’s another question for the Town lawyer and for the College’s lawyer.

What is truly puzzling is how the College and its developer Hersha Hospitality Trust would proceed with their plans without legal opinions about the deed and the MOU.  It defies belief that either would.  So where are these legal opinions?  Why hasn’t the College offered them?  If they are supportive of the College’s plans, then why not make them public? 

Barbara Jorgenson
Chestertown

Like many area residents, I have been disheartened to learn of Washington College’s plans to demolish the circa 1931 John H. Newnam National Guard Armory in Chestertown. I joined that armory while still a senior in high school in March of 2003, and served there until its closure in the summer of 2005. What’s more, my grandfather served eight years at the armory along with a number of my uncles and cousins. Most importantly, the detachment of medics out of that armory landed on the 2nd wave of Omaha Beach, June 6th 1944 with the 2nd battalion/115th Infantry Regiment (formally 1st Maryland), 29th Infantry Division – the real men portrayed in the opening scenes of ‘Saving Private Ryan.’ I had the honor and privilege decades later of knowing many of these local D-Day veterans – our community and nation owes these brave men an inordinate amount of gratitude for the literal hell they went through.  

Watching the public testimony and discussion at the October 17, 2022 Chestertown Town Council meeting, it was argued by President Sosulski and others that the armory has been in physical decline for more than 40 years, that the State of Maryland failed to remediate the flood damage from Hurricane Isabel in September 2003, and that the armory was essentially uninhabitable at the time of its closure. He is wrong on all counts. In 1993-94, the State of Maryland spent approximately $1.4 million renovating the armory, including substantial asbestos remediation. It is true that there was two to three feet of water in the lower level of the armory during Hurricane Isabel. However, the State of Maryland subsequently hired a third-part contractor at great expense to remediate the mold damage caused by said flooding. I’ve confirmed with the active-duty National Guard personnel serving at the armory during this period that more than a dozen contractors spent approximately 30 continuous days completing said mold remediation at the armory. I was there at the armory when the battalion was disbanded in the summer of 2005 and can confirm that there was nothing wrong with the armory at the time (certainly compared to the mold-infested photos shown in the July 2022 environmental report). What is more, the State of Maryland retained a full-time caretaker for more than 18 months after the armory was closed in 2005 who was responsible for basic maintenance. 

Following the retirement of the caretaker in early 2008, the armory laid vacant for a period of four years prior to its acquisition in May 2012 by Washington College. Allegedly, the State of Maryland during this time turned off electric power to the armory, including to the two sump pumps in the lower level of the armory and the accompanying ventilation system, which together caused a resurgence of mold in the armory. The State of Maryland can and should have done more to have better maintained the armory during this interim period. However, the recent environmental report from Sussex Environmental Consultants (dated July 12, 2022) confirms that Washington College has done nothing to correct this underlying issue. The environmental report noted that:

‘It is the professional opinion of SEC that the building has serious moisture and mold issues that, even if cleaned, will not guarantee issues will not return due to block and concrete construction.’

The report outlined that the mold contamination was due to both grossly elevated interior humidity and moisture levels (55-78% at time of inspection), and the presence of standing water in portions of the building. SEC is a very reputable environmental consulting firm, and I trust their professional judgment that remediation of the armory is near impossible at this point. However, serious questions remain. Essentially, during the ten and half years of ownership by Washington College, the two large sump pumps and interior ventilation system have remained off allowing a mold problem to exponentially grow and fester to the point of making remediation near impossible and overly cost prohibitive. Washington College has completed no corrective remediation nor even bothered to get this underlying humidity and moisture problem under control (as proved by their own report).  In my ten years as a local government planner at both the county and municipal level, I have staffed two historic preservation commissions, and serve as an appointed member of both the Kent County Historic Preservation Commission and the Delaware State Historic Review Board. This is a near textbook example of ‘demolition by neglect.’ Whether intentional or not (and I pray it is not), this represents, at a minimum, gross negligence on the part of the leadership of Washington College. 

What is all the more puzzling (and infuriating) is that the leadership of Washington College made a public commitment prior to the acquisition of the armory to provide a substantial investment to rehabilitate the building and remediate any underlying environmental issues. As per the Town Council meeting minutes of July 18, 2011, President Mitchell Reiss committed the college to investing $3 million towards the restoration of the building, and for the college ‘to assume liability for any environmental issues that may arise on the armory property.’ All the evidence points to Washington College having invested nothing towards the rehabilitation and restoration of the armory as was pledged and promised to the Town Council and community at large. This represents an absolute breach of trust to the community. Furthermore, the Town had commissioned and completed an environmental assessment of the armory and property by Earth Data, Inc. (another very reputable firm) prior to the acquisition of said armory by Washington College. If the armory was in such poor material condition then (as is now claimed by President Sosulski), why did Washington College take ownership in the first place, and why did they make a public commitment to allocate millions towards the rehabilitation and restoration of the armory?  Once the college obtained ownership of the property, they became (rightly or wrongly, but in this case voluntarily) stewards and custodians of this historic public resource.

Washington College purchased the armory and accompanying 3.5 acres of waterfront property (zoned for commercial development) in 2012 for the rock bottom price of only $258,428 (representing the remaining Federal loan balance for the 1993 renovations to the armory). As per the 2021 State assessment, the 3.5-acre parcel is assessed at $787,500 (excluding the value of improvements). Even considering a potential cost of $100,000 to demolish the armory, Washington College stands to profit a $400,000 net capital gain to its portfolio given that they have invested nothing towards the building’s rehabilitation. I have no issue with Washington College profiting from the purchase and subsequent sale of real estate, but I take great offense to the college profiting off the destruction of an historic community resource. For the record, I do believe that a boutique hotel and conference center (a la Tidewater Inn) would be a welcome addition to Chestertown but tearing down this historic armory is not the way to do that. I would expect this sort of behavior from sleazy big-city developers, but I would like to expect more out of my alma mater, Washington College. I’m only grateful that our local D-Day veterans did not live to see this.  

Jeremy J. Rothwell
Massey

Please vote to put Aretha Dorsey on Kent County’s School Board November 8th.

Aretha Dorsey is smart and savvy. She is an excellent communicator, a self-made local business woman of color with strong faith and an amazing work ethic. Aretha Dorsey has identified the need for communication in Kent County Public Schools between students, parents, teachers, administration and community. We cannot blame the students for not meeting standards in reading comprehension, mathematics etcetera. Instead, we must analyze what we are doing as the adults in the
equation.

If you want to see real improvements in the quality of education for the children in Kent County, then vote for Aretha Dorsey who has the good horse sense to know what needs to be done to improve our schools.

Virginia W. Kerr
Retired Teacher
Kent County

The other day my 8 year-old grandson told us what he learned from the active shooter drill his school held. I said, first, he would kick the shooter in the shins and then kick away the gun. He would follow up by holding him at bay with a chair. When we told him he should hide, he responded by saying that the shooter would just hunt him down and shoot him. Now, I’m sure that wasn’t what he was taught at the drill, but he recognized the futility of his position if a shooter got into the classroom. He created his own defense.

Did the founding fathers ever imagine this when they penned the 2nd amendment? Is this where the freedom, as defined by the armed wing of the maga Republican party, has brought us?

I see a lot of political signs saying “It’s YOUR freedom.” For who? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are supposed to be inalienable rights, for everyone.

Is this really the land of the free and the home of the brave? Can anyone feel free when the brave is an 8 year old boy facing an active shooter?

John Ramsey
Chestertown

One of Chestertown’s nastier architectural scabs is being picked at again.

No, I do not refer to the House of Tarps, which emerged from is blue cocoon as an Andalusian privy, nor do I reference that perpetually boarded up section of the five-star dining district known as Plywood on High.

 I speak now of the decaying ruin out on the Quaker Neck Road known to ancients simply as The Armory, which more recent generations take to be Chestertown’s version of Frightland. The Armory is in the public eye again, and a sty in the eye it truly is, caught up in a vertiginous display of public distress, legal fist clenching and finger pointing.

In short, Washington College, the current owner, has, by what some allege to be sneaky means, secured the town’s blessing to have the old dump demolished. In its stead would rise a privately financed hotel and conference center, enabled by land lease from the college.

Well now, say some. “That’s progress.” The town sheds an eyesore and gains a tax-paying attraction and employer. “Who cares if the forbidding old building’s architect was Edgar Allen Poe and the Addams Family once lived there?”

Not so fast, say others. “That’s a piece of history.” These preservationists claim to have gone to The Armory to vote for Warren Harding, or once danced in the great hall to the tunes of Artie Shaw or were distant kin to the brick mason who created the menacing minarets that glower down from the building’s brow. (And these are probably some of the same people who complained when the college tore down their former high school on Washington Ave. only to be shouted down by “progress.”)

It’s true, though. In all its ugliness The Armory stood as a worthy civic center. The Sho’men and random kids kids played hoops there; the hospital staged its popular Christmas Shop fundraiser there; The Armory hosted an annual antiques show. Do we blithely turn our backs on those times? And wait, did not generations of citizen soldiers drill and muster there? Some of them to help save the world on D Day, which, I believe was an actual event not just another Hollywood concoction.

The preservationists claim there was a promise that surely some the old pile could be saved; that the dismal hulk could be restored and repurposed. Never mind waiting for Elon Musk. Call in those “Like it never happened” guys, hang a few pictures and Shazam! Whadda ya got?

Another gym? A jail? Eighteen indoor Pickleball courts? Another empty school? The potential is unlimited.  Just don’t ask me to heat the place.

Meanwhile, the forces of progress seem to have the upper hand.  And yet there are questions. There’s a certain fishiness to how this went down.

The Armory has stood vacant for nearly two decades, its grounds hosting an odd assortment of old boats on rusting trailers and an ever advancing wave of phragmites. Inside: the celebrated Washington College mold incubator. It could have been mistaken for a Nobel-worthy experiment in “Fermentation and Fungi as They Interact With Concrete” except that in reality it was just demolition by neglect.

And now it’s beyond saving, they say. The owner wants a vacant riverfront lot, not some ghastly Leggo domain, no matter how many fancy historic registers it is listed upon.

 So the town caved. And what might we truly expect? Another traffic light to help college punks cross the road? More buildings like those Albert Speer-inspired dorms? A new and improved Food Lab?

Don’t be conned again Chestertown.

 Surely you can cut a better deal. How about insisting that the demolition permit include a provision that the college-owned pickle factory be turned into a WaWa? Before it needs an upscale hotel, Chestertown needs a decent hoagie.

 Meanwhile, there is some good news for preservationists.  Now comes word from one of the insiders that the demolished building and the guardsmen who served there will be “memorialized in a tasteful way.”

I’m for that. Except those parameters probably rule out my wish that the new hotel include a bar named “The Arsenal” where the featured vodka cocktail will be the “General Patton.”

J. Taylor Buckley
Broad Neck

At Wednesday’s Historic District Commission meeting, two important things happened.  A new chair, one with the backbone to stand up to Town staff, was elected.  Also, under the deft leadership of the new chair, the Commission voted to rescind its October 5 approval of the demolition of the Armory.  This vote puts the demolition back on the Commission’s agenda for its next meeting on December 7.  

Local resident Steve Mitchell speaking from the public audience asked that all the documents to be submitted by HDC applicants be posted on the Town website.  Our Town secretary objected:  Too much work, she lamented.  Nevertheless, the Commission instructed her that all documents related to the re-hearing of Washington College’s demolition application be posted timely on the Town website for the public to review. At least three sitting commissioners also complained that the information they had received about the Armory had not been provided in sufficient time for thoughtful consideration. 

The timeliness issue was also raised but dodged by Town staff.  The new chair noted that information from news sources (i.e., a letter to the editor of The Chestertown Spy from Washington College employee John Seidel) admitted that a waiver of the 25-day rule had been requested and approved.  The chair asked who asked for the waiver and who approved it.  Town staff was silent, although it is absolutely clear that Kees de Mooy, who was present at Wednesday’s meeting, knew the answer.  Further, it is clear from an email written by Kees that he was strategizing with a single Commissioner (who had expressed interest in becoming chair but was not elected) about how to handle what Kees called “a procedural error in the Armory demolition application whereby the 25-day requirement was not followed….” Kees’s email and Seidel’s admission raise these questions: Who did what and why? The answers may be perfectly innocent, but the refusal to respond does not create confidence in the system or its actors. 

Another issue raised by the public at the Wednesday meeting was the trouble the audience had hearing the Commissioners.  There are no microphones at the Commissioners’ table.  When audience members complained, Town staff dismissed the complaints.  One laughed out loud and said the public can listen to the tape online—clearly missing the point.  The other quipped “Move up closer.” The new chair asked her fellow Commissioners to speak louder.  Regardless, there is no apparent reason the Commissioners’ table cannot have microphones so the audience can hear in real time.

So where are we now?  To be clear, this is a re-do of the first of two meetings required for a demolition.  Washington College has tried to suggest that it is permitted to skip the first meeting because, according to John Seidel, “Washington College has never contested the significance of the building…Because (Washington College) was not contesting significance, there was really nothing to submit prior to this first hearing of the HDC.” Poppycock!

The Historic District Guidelines direct otherwise.  There are 11 mandatory criteria for consideration at this first hearing.  It is the responsibility of the applicant to supply information responsive to these criteria.  (In the interest of brevity, please go to the Town website and look the Historic District Guidelines at “Section VI.2.2 Hearing” for a complete listing of these criteria.)

Instead, Seidel stated “As to the adequacy of the application, there is indeed a long list of requirements for a demolition application.  But as anyone who has served on a commission knows, not all are necessarily relevant or in every case necessary.  Because (the Armory) was listed on the National Register back in the 1980’s, much of the information is already in the hands of the Town and HDC.”

Statement of fact:  None, repeat none, of the current Commission members even lived in Chestertown in the 1980’s—or even when the Armory issue first arose more than a decade ago.  Nor were they offered any of this trove of information prior to the October 5 meeting by Washington College or by the Town staff who have reason to know what is in Town and HDC files. Further, despite Seidel’s statement, it is Washington College’s job to furnish all the information required, not to pick and choose what it deems “relevant” or “necessary.” It is the Commission’s job to decide relevance and necessity—and the job of the Town staff to make sure that each application is complete when it is filed.  

Here’s hoping Washington College and the Town staff do a better job before the December 7 hearing.  My hunch is that the new chair will make sure everyone reads the Guidelines and does what is supposed to be done.

Meanwhile, today is the day the Town is supposed to reply to my Maryland Freedom of Information Act request.  I’ll let you know what I get.

Barbara Jorgenson
Chestertown