NP. There are so many things wrong with your post that I can't even address them. Calvin Ball was on the County Council before he was County Executive, and during that time, he supported the unchecked development in the eastern part of the county without adequate funding and planning for necessary infrastructure, including schools. I voted against him in the primary and will vote against him in the general election. |
Development is good when it’s carefully managed, but do it wrong and you stress your infrastructure. Right now, the vast majority of HoCo schools are above 100% capacity, and there isn’t nearly enough funds to build the schools to handle it. HS13 is about to open. Yet, we’re still behind and developers are still building. Planning is hard, but you can’t call that good planning. |
Here's what you forgot- who was CE when he was on the council? Who else was on the council? That's right- he doesn't play the main lead in your narrative. And he literally always voted for school funding. Check your facts. Pull up voting records and post them before you just spout off grand statements. Vote for whomever you want. But he will still win because this is a largely educated county. |
Look to the years when these were zoned and what was on the table at the time. For instance, the Milk Plant area, ML, etc., were zoned and planned way before his tenure. Developers are hardly planning new lots now compared to 5 years and before. Check your facts, and, again, your FB group isn't a source of credible facts. |
| Larry Hogan said there will be no race in November - Wes Moore will be the next Governor. |
| I'm so happy for MD rn |
Hopefully he is right. |
Larry has a problem when voting, though. He didn't vote for Trump, but he refused to vote to Biden. That set a pretty poor example. Maybe he can fix that in Nov. |
Which is appropriate. The school redistricting is not at all in the hands of the county council or the county executive. Dr. Michael Martirano, the school superintendent is the one who is responsible for and leads the redistricting efforts. Any concerns or disagreement with redistricting should be focused at the school board of education and school superintendent's office. Martirano and his staff and the BoE have worked on trying to adjust the overcrowding issues, but they are frequently fought by homeowners who do not want their children bussed to further schools just to resolve overcrowding issues. Many people buy their homes in neighborhoods zoned for certain schools and want their children to go to those schools. They want the school population decreased, but everyone wants someone else's kids to be taken out of their school and sent to another school. Dr. Martirano also does try to redistrict octagons to rebalance socio-economically. The idea when they redistrict is that they try to bus kids from lower income neighborhoods into higher SE based schools and vice versa, which really inflames a lot of the wealthier families. But the goal is to try to balance the number of FARMS families in each school to allow for more balanced school communities. |
Ball has been a county council chairperson since 2006. The county council has to approve the budget submitted by the county executive, so he’s had to approve anything since 2006. He was also on the zoning board starting in 2009 alternating as chair and vice-chair, so he wasn’t exactly powerless before he became county executive. You don’t usually get to county executive without having a decent amount of influence first. Ball was in a position to curb some of these developments or do better planning for it, like make developers shoulder more of the infrastructure costs. I don’t see any evidence he made it a priority. No, it’s not all his fault, but again, he wasn’t powerless. He could have done something or made a stink about it. I just don’t think he saw it coming, so he didn’t take preventative actions. Now we’re playing catch up in a major way. The school board bears more of the burden for redistricting as they’re the ones to execute it, but the overcrowding makes it harder. I’m sure it would be easier if HoCo had the capital for a couple of extra schools. |
Yes. And this is met, every time, with a huge backlash and ridiculous rhetoric towards people and situations that have nothing to do with it, like Ball. We have serious redlining in HoCo, largely as a result of school assignments. The backlash comes from the western part of the county, and with that quite a bit a racist dialogue. Redistricting has to happen, and some people will just have to deal with it. There can't be complaints about overcrowding and inequity, but also complaints about remedy. |
Yeah, one county council member really isn't going to change things for the whole county, and nor should that happen. And growth is part of the county growth. Not having any development is ridiculous, and the money to fund new schools came. Then it was up to the school board to do it. It's super dumb to use this as a criticism against the CE. Everyone , CE and council members voted similarly for years. Much of the housing growth came under Kittleman and others before him. Now what is different between this CE and the other CEs? And what is the backlash agsinst redistricting about? Race. It's pretty much about race. |
Zero position to "do something about it " as council member. Also he literally purchased the Girl Scout camp so it wouldn't be developed. Where is that acknowledgement? |