Report from May 15th Council Meeting - Friday, May 18, 2007

Dear Ward 1 Residents:

I plan to write periodic reports on the activities and issues in front of the Mt. Rainier Council. I may not do this after every meeting but will try and keep people informed as long as I have the time to do so. The purpose of these messages is both to report on official actions and give my views and reactions. I will be sending these reports to you by email and posting them on my website (www.jimmytarlau.org). I look forward to your comments. The following are some of the main discussions from the lengthy May 15 meeting.


Gateway CDC - The Council met with members of the Board of Directors of the Gateway Community Development Council to improve the communications between the Council and Gateway.


Since moving to Mt Rainier I have been very impressed with Gateway's efforts in developing the area, and I joined the Board to become more involved. Projects include helping to bring the artist lofts and Artmosphere to Mt. Rainier, and the Brentwood Arts Center (just East of 38th St. on Rhode Island Ave.), which has just broken ground.


It seems as though the Council has not worked well with Gateway and I had previously suggested to some of the Council members that the Council meet with Gateway and try and improve communications. Although the aims of Gateway generally coincide with aims of the Council, the Council has viewed Gateway as a rival instead of a partner, and the meeting Tuesday was part of an attempt to improve working relations.


As a result of Tuesday’s meeting there will be a follow-up meeting of a committee of the Council and the Gateway Executive Committee to look at projects in which Gateway can help Mt. Rainier and the Council move forward on commercial development.


Collective Bargaining Issues – Coucilman Knedler had put on the agenda for discussion the issue as to whether the Council should consider legislation that would prohibit the police union from collecting union dues from probationary workers.



This is already included in the collective bargaining contract between the city and the police. Issues of dues are normally negotiated in such agreements between management and labor rather than legislated, even when management is a municipality. I believe that we should not legislate everything and should leave it up to the negotiations to settle the details of union dues and other issues.



There is a role for legislation and there is a role for negotiations. The town’s ordinance around collective bargaining should only set a frame work for us to negotiate and work with the town’s employees. Everything else should be left to the union and town’s negotiating committee to work out.



I sincerely hope that we can work out a fair contract with our town’s police. We need public safety officers who feel good about working in Mt. Rainier so we retain our officers and don’t have the 25% vacancy rate that we’ve seen in the last year.



The Council agreed not to move ahead with the ordinance.





Skate Board Park – The Council agreed to send a letter to the County stating that we want to go ahead and develop a skate board park where Otis and Wells Avenues meet. There is $165,000 already appropriated by the County for the park and we want to make sure that we use the money and develop the park, which has seen better times. The next step will be for the County to put together a workshop where residents will discuss various design proposals before a final design is worked out.





Next Year’s Budget - The Council had the first official reading of next year’s budget. The next steps will be a work session on May 22nd where the budget will be discussed line by line and then a public hearing on May 29th where we will be getting public comment on the budget. You should be able to review the budget from the town’s website: (www.mountrainiermd.org/government/budgetreports/index.html). If you have any comments on questions about the budget please let me know.

There were other items on Tuesday’s long agenda, but these were some of the issues on which I wanted to comment.

I hope to see many of you at this Saturday’s Mt. Rainier Day (I am attaching a flyer about the event). Jimmy