An Educational News Source for Chestertown Maryland
For those asking what your country has done for you lately, consider some of this month’s accomplishments:
Democrats keep this country strong. Democrats deliver.
Muriel Cole
Chestertown
The Forest Conservation Act (FCA) is a little known but important tool that positively impacts the environment and improves the Chesapeake Bay’s water quality. An amendment to strengthen Kent’s current policy under the county’s Land Use Ordinance (LUO) was introduced to the Comprehensive Rezoning Task Force for consideration on May 25, 2022. By every standard it is a modest proposal.
Kent County is tied for first place among all Maryland counties as the most deforested. According to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, less than 25% of our land area is forested, and more than 60% of our streams are inadequately protected with trees.
Trees are not only a carbon sink, but they are also natural air conditioners, providing habitat and a critical line of defense for erosion and sediment control, filtering the nutrients that impact our streams and eventually the Bay. The Maryland Department of Planning forecasts that Kent County is on track for deforestation of an additional 800 acres in the coming decade. It is urgent that we act now to alter and reverse that forecast.
According to current law, if more than about an acre of land is disturbed in developing a project, a “tree debt” is incurred. That debt can be paid in one of the following ways: planting or preserving forest on the property, within the same watershed, within Kent County, or by making a payment (called payment in lieu).
The introduced FCA amendment proposes to boost by a small percent the calculations of tree debt. The proposal also increases the cost of payment in lieu within the county-designated priority funding area (land identified as desirable for development), from 30.5 cents per square foot to 40 cents. Outside the priority funding area, the proposal would raise the fee from 36.5 cents to 50 cents per square foot. By comparison, in Anne Arundel County the payment in lieu is $1.25/sq foot and In Howard and Montgomery counties it is $1.50 – more than five times what Kent County currently charges on land slated for development.
This proposal has drawn opposition from task force members representing developers who claim any changes to the FCA would deter development. There is no evidence to support this claim. In fact, other counties in Maryland have enacted stricter standards over the last three years and have seen no decline in demand for development.
Coalitions of concerned citizens in Anne Arundel, Cecil, Fredrick, Howard, Montgomery, and Prince George’s counties have demanded that their governing bodies act to protect forests and the environment. Officials in Queen Anne’s County, which is tied with Kent in the deforested land race, are considering shoring up its FCA standards. All these counties have come to the realization that while the cost to developers, relative to the overall cost of a project, is minimal, the benefit to the future of our environment is significant.
It costs real dollars to protect and reverse harms to the land, water, and environment where we live and work. Who should pay – those who would profit by reducing the quality of our environment and who seek to evade the extra costs of high-quality development, or the rest of us as we deal with degraded habitats and eroding lands?
You can have a direct impact on Kent County’s environmental future. A stronger FCA in our LUO will not happen without the involvement of concerned county residents, voicing their support for higher conservation standards. Contact Mr. William Mackey, Director of Planning, Zoning and Housing at wmackey@kentgov.org to express your support.
Janet Christensen-Lewis, Chair
Board of Directors for Kent Conservation and Preservation Alliance
The most important topics to everyday citizens are the economy, including energy and manufacturing independence; the security of our people on the street and at our borders; and more parental control of the education of their children. Today, I want to focus on the first of these.
Our last two presidents glutted the market with too much money to pay for all their favorite programs. More money with proportionally fewer goods makes inflation. It will take time (at least three years) for the money that has been allocated to be used. To avoid a deep recession, the interest rates are going up. We should not give away any more of our tax money until things have settled.
Let’s look at energy. Is there globaL warming? Have humans contributed to it? We stipulate to both of those questions a resounding “Yes”. The “Green New Deal”, however, is an unrealistic fairy tale solution. If we encourage innovation like we did with the space program, renewable energy should be doable. But there is no reason to punish the farmers and working people when carbon fuels are readily available now.
The evolution of the energy industry is going to happen. But we can not regulate the elimination of this important commodity in the next five years. We should let the market make the transition gradually.
Our national security is dependent on an effective energy program. We have been energy independent. We should be independent again. Canada and our other allies should also be able to benefit from the use of the cleanest energy in the world that was given to this country by the Universe and God.
The destruction of our energy industry with the shutting down of pipelines and over regulation of extracting carbon based energy is a travesty. Democrats play word games with the terms “leasing” and “permits” when they also send out clear signals to the markets that drilling and refining oil based products will be limited or eliminated in the near future. No gas company wants to jump into that situation.
The source of oil and natural gas doesn’t matter. Buying from Arabia doesn’t make the gas cleaner. Add the cost of transport makes it more expensive. This is a market issue, not a regulation issue.
Electricity created by burning carbon based products is not cleaner or more efficient. Allowing for brownouts and blackouts to let people freeze or starve will not end well.
The biggest polluters are to be found in Asia, not North America. Until China can be persuaded to clean up its tons of filth, our improvement of ounces will make no real difference globally. We cleaned up our act once Rachel Carson published her work, The Sea Around Us, in 1951. By 1970, we had clean water and clean air acts. Not everyone followed our rules. But as a society, we were well on the way to a clean environment.
Furthermore, pushing wind and solar power is a disaster waiting to happen. The batteries in cars are too limited unless you commute a short distance. The disposal of those batteries will be an environmental nightmare. The same is true of the wind turbines. They have a 10 to 15 year life and then they have to go into a landfill. One day this fantasy might come true. Maybe in 10 or 20 or 100 years. But it will bankrupt us now.
My next letter will deal with the other items mentioned above.
Holly Geddes
Kent County Republican Party
When I was still working there was a large plant in the lobby of my company. It never grew, never died. For a long time I assumed it was artificial. Eventually I confirmed otherwise. After passing through the lobby regularly I started asking co-workers what that plant was. The most common response was “What plant?”
So goes the congressional career of one Andy Harris, MD.
Harris has been in congress for 12 years. He has never accomplished anything while there. He has held no serious positions of leadership in his party. He only surfaces to take credit for legislative actions he voted AGAINST and, like a grumpy old man, yells at his neighbors for enjoying a puff of weed.
Recently we learned that Harris was at a crazy meeting of back-bench Republican congressmen, who met with Trump in December, 2020 to plot a scheme to keep Trump in the White House despite having lost the 2020 election. Many earlier reports on this meeting didn’t mention that Harris was there. Initial reports only included noted back-benchers such as Louie Gohmert, Jim Jordan, Paul Gossar and Marjorie Taylor Greene, among others. Harris didn’t even make the back-bench team. Until details emerged just recently, nobody even knew he was there.
Voters will decide in November whether or not to send a houseplant back to Congress. One thing we know for certain. Eventually Harris will no longer be in Congress. When he is gone, there will be no evidence that he was ever there.
Jim Bachman
Easton
Constitutional mischief inherent in Dobbs v. Jackson echoes the repercussions of two other Supreme Court disasters, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which helped trigger the Civil War, and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which initiated 70 years of racial segregation.
For example, by reporting that “anti-abortion lawmakers want to block patients from crossing state lines,” a recent Washington Post headline foreshadows reincarnation of the 1859 Fugitive Slave Act.
And Dobbs will divide those states which pledge to protect women’s autonomy and freedom from those that demand forced births and reconfigure the Mason-Dixon Line (1767).
Thanks to Justice Alito and his five radical associates on the Court, a new Confederacy — that returns women to the back of the bus — now stretches from Texas to North Dakota.
Grenville Whitman
Rock Hall
I’m a person who has a mammogram once a year. As part of routine preventative health care, I also have a colonoscopy procedure in accordance with the national standards for frequency. Although only 8% of newly diagnosed cancers are colon cancers, early detection and treatment dramatically reduces death rates. So colonoscopies are very valuable and I would want to continue to have them as recommended.
What I have discovered is while the procedure itself may have minimal complications, the anesthesia used may put patients at unnecessary risk for aspiration pneumonia. While I have since learned of two individuals in Easton who developed aspiration pneumonia after their colonoscopies, my own complication was nodules on my vocal cords and laryngitis because of severe coughing as I came out of the anesthesia. Not being able to speak was finally alleviated after six months of steroid injections in my vocal cords (extremely unpleasant) and voice therapy at Johns Hopkins.
It was only when I investigated what had happened to me that I learned I was lucky. The documented most frequent complication from colonoscopy with deep sedation is not damage from the colonoscopy procedure itself but the aspiration pneumonia resulting from the anesthesia. And not just any anesthesia but deep sedation that is in recent vogue at endoscopy centers since it’s possible to do more procedures in a day than with the previously popular but less risky moderate sedation. (Cooper et al, JAMA Internal Med/vol 173:7. Apr 8, 2013)
What’s the big deal about deep sedation vs. moderate sedation?
Moderate sedation makes you drowsy cognitively but the protective reflexes in your throat which allow you to clear your throat and cough to protect your lungs from inhaling stomach acid etc. continue to function. With deep sedation those reflexes do not function during at least 20 minutes while you are lying flat on your side so that when you wake up you are at risk of coughing severely to clear your throat of what has accumulated there (like me) or much worse than that, your coughing is unsuccessful and you aspirate acid or other stomach contents into your lungs leading to aspiration pneumonia.
What to do? Before your colonoscopy talk to your Gastroenterologist about the anesthesia you require and make sure the endoscopy center is prepared to provide that when you make your appointment.
This is a cautionary tale as someone who didn’t go through a Gastroenterologist and didn’t have the anesthesia options explained as the anesthesia provider was required to do.
Holly Wright
Easton
Please vote for Aretha Dorsey, a home grown Kent County native determined to serve the children of Kent County Public Schools BETTER. Aretha Dorsey is a mother, grandmother, wife, self-employed, hard working Minister who believes all children deserve an excellent education.
Aretha Dorsey understands that for children to be successful in school ALL of the adults in their lives must be effective at communicating. KCPS needs to develop a better communication system that builds cooperation and understanding between students, parents, teachers and administration in each of the county schools in order to help each child develop their individual skills that will enable them to learn, and to continue to learn over a lifetime.
There is a lot of resource in Kent County and I’m not going to sugar coat this: Five Kent County public schools served 1,812 students during the 2022 school year. Kent County Public Schools released a preliminary budget of $30.4 million for fiscal year 2023. Here’s a snapshot of the most recent performance indicators I found on Maryland State Board of Education’s website msde.md.gov for the elementary schools in Kent County, 4.6 points out of 10 for “Progress in Achieving English Language Proficiency” should not receive a check mark as anything less than 50% is what we math teachers call FAILURE.
PLEASE vote for Aretha Dorsey who is willing and able to build better communication between children and adults in this community in order to provide ALL children with the skills vital to develop their self confidence, which leads to personal achievement and a bright future.
Virginia W. Kerr
Retired Teacher
Easton
I have attended more County Commissioners’ meetings than most (I grant this record was not hard to accomplish) and have endured long, folksy rants on topics unrelated to the business at hand. I have listened as the Commissioners made decisions based on what some person said, instructed the County Administrator to write a letter only to hear them later discover that someone else had new facts that warranted a new letter contradicting the first.
The lack of professionalism by the members of the Commission is on display at every meeting. After three years, they still do not have a full grasp of Robert’s Rules of Order. Often, at least one of the Commissioners will claim not to know anything about the topic on the agenda only to be told that information was in their packet. Motions are justified by support from unknown people who are “too afraid to comment in person or in writing.” At one comment session, Mr. Jacob proposed cutting off the call from one of the few informed citizens who took the time to participate.
During the County Commissioners’ Forum, Commissioner Jacob spent the time when he was not speaking giving himself a manicure. At one point he brought out the clippers. The mess in his office for Zoom session was embarrassing. However, the least professional element of Mr. Jacob’s performance was the reason he gave as to why he is against moving the eighth graders to the High School – “because you are never going to keep eighth graders away from seniors because if I was a senior, I always knew where the young girls were out in the school. You couldn’t keep me away from them.” And who can forget Mr. Mason’s comment that he “didn’t want his granddaughter leaving school dumber than when she started”?
The Commissioners appointed Mr. Mason as liaison to the Planning Commission and Mr. Jacob liaison to the Economic Development Board. These roles are typically held by citizens. Instead, we have Commissioners embedded in the policy making bodies, commenting during discussions and then being the final arbitrator as County Commissioner. In addition, Mr. Mason has appointed himself to the Comprehensive Rezoning Commission where he frequently has the last word.
I would hope that the voters in Kent County not “be happy with what we have” as the Commissioners advise. We deserve better and we have better choices.
Judy Gifford
Kennedyville
An open letter to the Town of Chestertown Recreation Commission:
I write to ask the Recreation Commission consider honoring long-time Chestertown resident Ms. Sarah Derry by naming the Wilmer Park playground in her honor.
Ms. Derry – or Aunt Sarah as she was known to everyone – purchased 221 South Queen Street at the age of 17 (in 1940). She lived there until illness forced her reluctant move to Chester River Manor where she died in 2016.
Aunt Sarah had no children of her own, but she was a friend to all and mother to many in our
community.
I recently spoke with her son, Marvin Scott (in fact great-nephew) whom she raised from a youngster, about his mother. He helped me understand that Aunt Sarah exemplified all we wish our community to be: She raised others’ children as her own, set a positive example for generations of neighborhood children and spent her life in service to others. Everyone was welcome in her home (especially the front porch where she often visited for hours with friends and neighbors).
Mr. Scott and his daughters Tamika Ellis, Shamika Scott, and Sarah Scott each endorse this proposal and thank you in advance for considering this request. In addition, Mr. Scott is willing to come before your panel and offer reminiscences of his mother upon your request (and with some notice to accommodate his work schedule). Please reach out to me personally for his contact information.
I know you will agree that Aunt Sarah deserves recognition in our community.
I am aware there may be other names or organizations who are worthy of this tribute. My request is only that Aunt Sarah be considered among any others who may vie for this honor.
Tom Herz
Chestertown Town Council, Ward Two
A few days ago, the Chestertown Spy published a letter to the editor regarding a recent League of Women Voters election forum with School Board candidates. And like every letter of this kind the Spy receives, a honor system kicks in where the Spy staff, lacking the resources to investigate the identity of each author, must rely on the good faith of the writer to identify themselves correctly.
For almost fourteen years, that system has worked well. Like the community itself, our writers have been honest and forthright about who they are and where they live in their correspondence. That has provided genuine creditability to the writer’s point of view and fulfills the Chestertown Spy’s mission to provide a safe and honest forum for the exchange of ideas.
Sadly, that trust was violated when the Spy published a letter signed by a “Bob Crandall” of Worton, Maryland.
Yesterday, the Spy suspended the comments section related to this letter to give the author 24 hours to confirm their identity. Having failed to respond to our request, we have no choice but to remove that letter and the 14 reader comments it generated.
We apologize to our readers for publishing this letter. It is profoundly regrettable that someone in this small county would intentionally mislead their community and damage our newspaper’s creditability.
This incident will require the Spy to initiate new policies on vetting letters to the editor and comments. While it can be said that this is a “sign of the times” shift in policy, it reminds this publisher that even in a small community such as ours, we can not escape the harmful dishonesty that is now part of American politics.
Dave Wheelan
Publisher and Executive Editor
