2011 City Boards and Commissions Scorecard

Along with the City Council, the City of Rockville has 23 official boards and commissions to study, advise, and decide on a wide range of issues, from city planning to cultural arts, from human services to animal matters.  In addition, there are at least ten other unofficial task forces or committees.  All of these boards and commissions are composed of volunteers, usually residents (some include property or business owners who live elsewhere) and most members are nominated by the Mayor and appointed by City Council (a few have members elected in other ways, such as RSI).

Rockville has always encouraged and supported citizen involvement in its government, and used these board and commissions to keep the residents informed and part of the decision-making process.  But how well informed are its citizens?  All commission meetings are open to the public (I’m going to call them all “commissions” to keep things simple), but only three commissions–Planning Commission, Historic District Commission, and the Board of Appeals–have meetings that are regularly broadcast on Channel 11 and the City website (most likely because the City Council has granted them exclusive decision-making powers).  For the other commissions, to find out what’s happening you have to attend the meeting, talk to one of the commissioners, or review the minutes.  Obviously, the most convenient way is reviewing the minutes or notes of the meeting, so let’s see how we’ve done.

On January 20, 2012, I tallied the number of meetings and minutes posted on the City website for 2011 (cancelled meetings don’t count). By dividing the number of minutes by the number of meetings, I calculated a “public information score.” So if a commission had posted 9 minutes for 12 meetings, that would earn them a Minutes Score of 9/12 or 75%. The higher the score the better, and here’s how they fared:

Tags: Historic district commission, Environment commission, Planning Commission, Boards and Commissions, Board of Appeals, Board of Supervisors of Elections, Cultural Arts Commission, Rockville Economic Development Inc, HUman Services Advisory Commission, Landlord/Tenant Affairs Commission, Personnel Appeals Board, Recreation and Park Advisory Board, Retirement Board, Rockville Housing Enterprises, Senior Citizens Commission

Strategies for Engaging Voters

The City Council and community activists have often called for increased voter participation in Rockville’s elections with little success.  Typical are the results from the November 2011 election, when 6,240 ballots were cast out of 36,840 registered voters in a city with 62,476 residents.  If I pull out my calculator, that’s a voter turnout rate of 17 percent or put another way, ten percent of the residents are making the decisions for Mayor and Council.  We may find that level of involvement low, but it’s much better than neighboring Gaithersburg, where the voter turnout rate is in the single digits.  Nevertheless, every two years there’s a call to increase voter participation but not much happens.

Last night, I joined a committee of the Rockville Community Coalition to explore ways to actually work on this issue.  We didn’t develop any strategies or start any campaigns, but we did identify that voters are motivated by issues, good candidates, and yes, money (the current Republican primaries are a great example).  We’ll explore all three to see how this fledgling group can tackle these topics and we hope to be ready in plenty of time for the next City Council election!

Tags: Rockville Community Coalition

Two Rockville Restaurants Named Best “Cheap Eats”

Tom Sietsema, restaurant critic for the Washington Post, recently named two Rockville restaurants to his list of Best Cheap Eats in the DC region:

• Carbon (100 S. Gibbs Street in the Town Square), a Peruvian restaurant specializing in charcoal-grilled chicken
• Michael’s Noodles (10038 Darnestown Road in the Travilah Square Shopping Center–actually just beyond the city boundaries), a Taiwanese restaurant featuring soups, dim sum, the usual Chinese entrees, and lots of noodle dishes.

And in nearby Gaithersburg, he included Burma Road (617 S. Frederick Avenue, two blocks north of Shady Grove).  That’s really impressive for our area, considering Tom had only 17 restaurants on his list!

Tags: Burma Road, Carbon, Michael's Noodles

A Year Without Rockville Central

Rockville Central, June 2007

I hoped for a Christmas miracle, a new year’s resolution, a resurrection, but I guess it’s not happening–Rockville Central has truly closed its door for good.  Started in June 2007, it was an ongoing grand experiment in creating an online community that developed  a strong local following and attracted national attention.  Yup, 2007–ancient history on the internet (recall that Flickr launched in 2004, YouTube in 2005, and the iPhone, Droid, and Kindle all came out in 2007).  Brad Rourke and Cindy Cotte Griffiths independently thought of using social media to create a virtual community and then came together to produce and manage Rockville Central.  It started with a Picture of the Day (one of Brad’s signature elements) and that first month included stories about:

• Rudy Guliani making a stop in Rockville during his presidential campaign
• Two new planners appointed to the Montgomery County Planning Board
• A new CEO for Goodwill Industries International, based in Rockville
• Free Wi-Fi in Town Center
• Upcoming Events for the Week
• Sidewalk improvements on Beall Avenue
• Sightings of black bears
• The launch of the iPhone
• A woman killed by a MARC train

Over the following years, it had grown, matured, and morphed by producing an internet radio show and YouTube videos, plotting police reports and real estate listings on maps, collaborating with other online communities (such as Lunching in the DMV and Rockville Living), reporting on City Council and other community meetings, creating editorial cartoons (one of Cindy’s signature elements), welcoming guest opinions and contributor reviews, hosting Rockville Roundtables and a City Council debate (one of the best), and moving to Facebook.

It’s amazing what they accomplished in four years but for two volunteers, it was difficult to maintain the pace and they just became too tired to continue.  I know the feeling, which is why I post at a much lower pace.  As they said in their last post of October 14, 2011 at 3:43 am (am!?):

It takes a great deal of energy and time to support the online community in the way we feel it deserves. We do not make money off of Rockville Central, and never intended to. It is a labor of love and devotion to Our Fair City. We don’t feel we can devote the kind of energy it deserves and so, rather than let it whither, we decided to make a clean end.

Rockville Central helped identify the important news in the community, facilitated discussions in a civil and respectful manner, made us see our town in new and interesting ways, and introduced us to the many thoughtful and socially-active people who live in Rockville.  I’ll miss Rockville Central this year, but thankfully, Rockville still has Brad and Cindy.

Tags: Brad Rourke, Cindy Cotte Griffiths, Rockville Central

Max For Rockville Now on Twitter

If you use Twitter to keep up with what’s happening, you can follow this blog @MaxforRockville.  Every blog post is automatically shared on Twitter, plus I often use Twitter to report on immediate events in Rockville as I encounter them, such as traffic snarls and city meetings.  If you’ve been following @MaxvanBalgooy, those tweets will now focus on my professional work in historic preservation, community engagement, and urban design.

Tags: Twitter

Peerless Rockville Brunch Starts New Year

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Today’s Peerless Rockville Brunch at Glenview Mansion was packed with lots of members, friends, residents, and community leaders.  Mayor Marcuccio was joined by Rockville City Councilmembers Bridget Newton, Mark Pierzchala, and Tom Moore; Montgomery County Council by Phil Andrews and Hans Riemer; Maryland State Delegate Kumar Barve and Luis Simmons; and Maryland State Senator Jennie Forehand.  Everyone was generous with their potluck dish and I regretfully made it to the dessert table long after Brigitta Mullican’s famous Christmas cookies had been devoured.  During the presentation, Peerless Rockville noted the important achievement of this last year was the designation of Glenview as an city landmark and that this year they’ll be focusing on simplifying the historic designation process in the city.

Tags: Peerless Rockville, Phyllis Marcuccio, Bridget Newton, Mark Pierzchala, Tom Moore, Phil Andrews, Hans Riemer, Kumar Barve, Luis Simmons, Jennie Forehand

2011 Rockville Election Analysis Available

Dr. Roald Schrack recently released his analysis of the city council election based upon a statistical breakdown of each voting precinct in the city.  His observations include:

• About 17 percent of registered voters actually voted, continuing the trend of a low participation rate. [or to put it another way, less than 10 percent of the population (6,240 voters) decided the fate of the entire city (66,000 residents)]  Kudos to District 9 (College Gardens and Woodley Gardens) for a highest participation rate of 23 percent (and what’s happening in District 6 (Montrose, North Farm) with only 8 percent?).
• Hot topics were the Red Gate Golf Course and resistance to urbanization.
• State officials associated with political parties actively joined campaigns for the first time, breaking the non-partisan nature of city elections.
• Endorsements by the Gazette, forums, and mailings were probably the tactics that most influenced voters.
• Absentee ballots were much higher than usual, perhaps due to the televised forums and the introduction of the City’s effort to assist residents in nursing homes with voting.
• Formal slates or informal allies among candidates are a clear advantage.
• Negative campaigning is effective in Rockville.
• Well-informed campaigns are much more effective in Rockville than in the county.

Roald provided a charts to compare the Mayoral races in 2009 and 2011, but didn’t provide any analysis.  Comparing Marcuccio’s performance in both years seems to show that she maintained her appeal in the same precincts except for significant gains in districts 2 (West End) and 5 (Twinbrook) and significant losses in districts 4 (Twinbrook Forest, Silver Rock, Burgundy) and 7 (Potomac Woods, Fallsmead, Rockshire).

You’ll find more details (and lots of charts) in his 2011 Rockville Election Analysis (pdf). Thanks, Roald!

Tags: Roald Schrack

Rockville’s Last Farmers’ Market today

It’s a frosty morning but the farmers’ market in downtown Rockville is busy.  Available are apples, sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, kales, radishes, apple cider, peppers, green beans, potatoes, tomatoes (yup!), broccoli, fennel, leeks, cauliflower, dill, escarole, turnips, and onions.  Breads and pastries, cheese, sausages, chicken, beef as well and a long line at Otterbein Acres. 

The Election is Over but Challenges Lie Ahead

The Rockville City Council elections are over and while the results aren’t official until certified, congratulations to Phyllis Marcuccio who will continue as Mayor, Bridget Newton and Mark Pierzchala who will continue on Council, Tom Moore who will be new on Council, and John Hall who will return to Council after a brief hiatus (and thanks to John Britton and Piotr Gajewski for their recent service on Council).  No doubt everyone has already seen the election returns and noted that the Mayor’s race was not only heated but close–they were separated by 415 votes out of a total of 6113 votes.  If 209 people (that’s 3 percent of those voting for Mayor) had voted differently, we’d have someone else as Mayor.  It’s even closer in the Council race–Moore made it onto Council by just 51 votes.  So if anyone thinks their vote doesn’t count, think again if you’re living in Rockville.

Although we know the election results for the entire city, Roald Schrack has broken it down by precinct which provides a clearer picture of what happened–and what it might mean for the governance of the city during the next two years:

1. Voting followed two different clusters of candidates:  Hall-Gottfried-Newton-Trahan vs Moore-Onley-Pierzchala.  That suggests that the community has formed two different visions for its governance, and since the election resulted in an even split among these two “slates” on Council, we might have

Tags: Bridget Newton, Joe Jordan, John Hall, Mark Pierzchala, Phyllis Marcuccio, Tom Moore

All Signs Point to Election Day

It’s 7 am and the campaign signs are surrounding the polling places.  They’ll guide you and make a last minute persuasion but don’t believe everything you read (although I’m from Twinbrook and I don’t recall the neighborhood supporting Marcuccio).  This sign was authorized by Michael Sweet–does he even live in Twinbrook?).  I’ll be at the Twinbrook Community Center to assist any undecided voters and will tweet the numbers in the morning.  Be sure to vote today!