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:

1. Animal Matters Board: 1 meeting | 100% Agenda Score | 100% Minutes Score
2. Board of Appeals: 5 meetings | 100% Agenda Score | 0% Minutes Score
3. Board of Supervisors of Elections: 13 meetings | 100% Agenda Score | 54% Minutes Score
4. Charter Review Commission: n/a (0 meetings)
5. Compensation Commission: 1 meeting | 100% Agenda Score | 100% Minutes Score
6. Cultural Arts Commission: 10 meetings | 30% Agenda Score | 100% Minutes Score
7. Environment Commission: 11 meetings | 90% Agenda Score | 100% Minutes Score
8. Rockville Economic Development, Inc. (REDI): unknown (separate non-profit organization but entire board appointed by Council)
9. Historic District Commission: 12 meetings | 100% Agenda Score | 58% Minutes Score
10. Human Rights Commission: 8 meetings | 100% Agenda Score | 75% Minutes Score
11. Human Services Advisory Commission: 10 meetings | 10% Agenda Score | 90% Minutes Score
12. Landlord/Tenant Affairs Commission:  unknown
13. Personnel Appeals Board: unknown
14. Planning Commission: 23 meetings | 100% Agenda Score | 52% Minutes Score NOTE:  Provides Actions for 96% of the meetings
15. Recreation and Park Advisory Board: 9 meetings | 0% Agenda Score | 89% Minutes Score
16. Retirement Board:  4 meetings | 75% Agenda Score | 50% Minutes Score
17. Rockville Housing Enterprises: unknown (independent organization but entire board appointed by Council)
18. Rockville Scholarship Foundation, Inc.: unknown (separate non-profit organization)
19. Rockville Seniors, Inc. (RSI): 11 meetings | 100% Agenda Score | 90% Minutes Score
20. Rockville Sister City, Inc.: unknown (separate non-profit organization)
21. Senior Citizens Commission: 11 meetings | 82% Agenda Score | 82% Minutes Score
22. Sign Review Board: 8 meetings | 100% Agenda Score | 100% Minutes Score
23. Traffic and Transportation Commission: 11 meetings | 100% Agenda Score | 91% Minutes Score

The results are surprisingly mixed.  Some are doing great in getting information out to the public (Agenda Scores should be 100%; anything above 85% or so is great for Minutes Scores because some commissions haven’t met yet to approve the minutes of their last meeting in 2011).  But more than half of the city commissions have me worried (highlighted in red).  No agendas?  No minutes?  What’s going on?  That’s no way to run a commission. The only way to really know what’s going on is to attend the meetings, but with 23 boards and commissions, that’s impossible.  That’s no way to run a city government.

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!

• 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!

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.

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.

• 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!

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. 

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 a stalemate, ongoing bickering, or balanced decision-making (or a mix) during the next two years.
2. Marcuccio retained her seat as Mayor but she’ll have to stay balanced to keep it.  She won four precincts (Swim Center, Lincoln Park, Fitzgerald Theater, and Twinbrook polling places), tied in four (Elwood Smith, Thomas Farm, Senior Center, and King Farm) and lost in two (Montrose and Ritchie Park).  Geographically, she has the support of the center and east side of town but wanes in the rest of the city (particularly in the newer sections).  Indeed, the voting disparaties seem to reveal a split over Rockville’s future:  progressive and urban or conservative and suburban.  Can we reconcile these differences?  Can the Mayor unify the city by addressing the needs and interests of those who don’t support her, or will she continue to ignore them?
3. Marcuccio retained her seat as Mayor but she’ll have to watch her colleagues.  Her 3264 votes were far surpassed by Hall (4044 votes) and Newton (3977 votes).  Recognizing that the Mayor’s position is mostly ceremonial and she’s “first among equals,” she’ll have to contend with two councilmembers who have greater support in the community.  There’s clearly an existing alliance between Marcuccio and Newton, but Hall has been playing in the middle (although he was subtly aligning himself with Marcuccio and Newton during the campaign).  He’s typically played the reconciler on the Council but he’s already made his intentions known that in the next election, he’s aiming for Mayor.  That means he’ll need to be more aggressive and decisive to distinguish himself while still maintaining his appeal.

All in all, it seems that we either have the making of a good city council or a terrible one.  Obviously, for the good of the community, I hope that all the council members will be able to work together to develop their mutual strengths to address several major issues that will face them very soon:  hiring of a city manager, hiring of a city clerk, working through the Rockville Pike Plan, a revision of the APFO, responding to intense development at the north and south ends of the Pike as well as downtown, and managing an increasingly tight city budget.  It won’t be easy because they will all need to step out of their comfort zones to consider other perspectives and involve political opponents.   The alternative is stalemate or unproductive bickering.

The election itself found lots of issues that need to be addressed by the City Election Board (formally known as the Board of Supervisors of Elections), some of which were already noted on Rockville Patch and discussed by City Council.  Surprisingly, the election code has no provision for handling a withdrawal from an election, so Joe Jordan stayed on the ballot and even beat out a legitimate candidate in a couple precincts (although his 382 votes don’t seem to have thrown the election).  So, we’ll probably hear news about other irregularities as the weeks go by and witness a revision to the election code in 2012.

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!