Jimmy's Ward Report - Sunday, March 8, 2009

Special Council Meeting on 2010 Proposed Budget – Monday March 9 at 7 PM – The City Council will be starting its budget discussions with a presentation by the City Manager on a proposed budget for next year. Obviously with the extreme downturn in housing valuations, this will be an extremely challenging year to put together the City’s budget. I will be extremely interested to hear the City Treasurer’s income projections for next year. We expect to finish our budget deliberations and pass a budget by the beginning of May.



Election Board Members Needed for Mount Rainier Election: The next city election is scheduled for May 4, 2009 at City Hall. The polls will be open 7:00 am until 8:00 pm on Election Day. You may be required to work one other day on April 6, 2009 which is the candidate filing deadline date and all candidates running for election or re-election are certified. You will get the necessary training. Election Board members serve a two-year term.

Election judges are paid a stipend of $100 for each day worked (usually 1 or 2 days) and reimbursed for food purchased on Election Day, which is usually a 13-14 hour day. If you are interested please contact the City Manager at City Hall at 301-985-6585 or notify either the Mayor or one of the Council members. Contact information is available on the city’s website at www.mountrainiermd.org.



Legislation on Public Consumption of Alcohol: Delegate Victor Ramirez reported that a bill he introduced dealing with the public consumption of alcoholic beverages recently passed out of the Prince George’s delegation (a necessary step for any local legislation to go through before it is approved by the full legislature). This bill would give allow police to arrest individuals who are caught consuming alcoholic beverages while loitering around liquor stores.



Council Votes to Dissolve Partnership With Landmark Atlantic – The Council passed a resolution to dissolve its partnership with Landmark Atlantic. Landmark does not seem to have the capital to purchase any of the properties on Rhode Island Avenue and the partnership does not make sense for Landmark or the City. I did not ever think the partnership was a good idea. Unfortunately it restricted the City on whom it could have discussions with on the development of the downtown area. The Council did not want to talk to other developers who might have had other good ideas and resources to help the city move forward. Anyway, what is done is done and now it is time to move on.



Ordinance on Upholstered Furniture: The Council decided not to move ahead on this somewhat controversial ordinance but to have further discussion of the issue at the next work session (scheduled for March 17). I have received a number of e-mails on the issue with some good arguments for and against the ordinance. After reading a lot of the comments I’ve decided that the ordinance is probably not really necessary and a little too much over regulation. We did have a tragic fire as a result of a lit cigarette in a couch on an outside porch and there are porches where badly deteriorating couches are an eyesore and also a home of pests and vermin. But I spent last Sunday driving around and saw a lot of porches where residents have placed couches, upholstered chairs, wooden chairs and benches with big cushions. Most of these porches are not an eyesore and are used by our neighbors as a place to sit outside and relax and talk to neighbors. I’m not sure we need a regulation or this issue. (At the last Council meeting I proposed a compromise that might require a resident to have a smoke detector on his/her porch if they were also placing upholstered furniture in that area. We will be discussing this on the 17th.)



Skate Board Park Update – On Thursday March 5th Park and Planning and a representative from American Ramp Company (www.americanrampcompany.com) who have been hired to design and build the park held community meetings to receive input on the design of the park that will sit on the old basketball court in the park at Wells and Otis Avenues. There was one meeting with some of the skateboarders to see what features they would like to have in order to make it a good place to skate and then a meeting with some neighbors to discuss some of their concerns. The meetings were productive and while a lot of neighbors would rather not have a skate board ‘plaza’ built in the park, I believe they felt that the new design of the park - smaller footprint, better landscaping, geared to new and intermediate skateboarders (none of the objects are higher than 3 feet) is a big improvement. The park is now on a fast track. We expect to have final designs for the park in the next month, which will be reviewed by the community and the City Council, and the park should be built by the fall of this year.



City Aggressively Goes After Government Grants – The City Manager reported that the City had received grants and loans for over $1 million and has applied for another $5 million in grants. We want to make sure that we can capture our share of moneys that are coming from the new stimulus package. Some of the ones that have already been approved are $21,500 for a license plate reader, $150,000 for renovation of the library building, $75,000 for market and feasibility studies for the City’s downtown development area, and $100,000 for street repair. We are seeking more grants for street and bridge rehabilitation and others moneys for lighting and weatherization improvements and to help with the property acquisition of vacant and blighted properties on the Route 1 corridor.



Rainier Manor Residents Continue To Have Problems – I went to another meeting of the residents of Rainier Manor and the people who manage their facility, Humphrey Management. The senior citizens who reside there continue to have problems with patio doors that do not close all the way, broken windows, unsanitary conditions, and the lack of communication between the management and the residents. Councilman Will Campos and Delegate Victor Ramirez have been putting pressure on the Humphrey managers to meet the concerns of the residents there. The residents also have a very active Tenants Association, chaired by Ernest Wheeler. It is good to see the residents grill the company representatives who show up at the meetings.



City Proposes To Expand Tax Credit: If you are considering buying new windows or exterior doors in the next few months, you may want to hold off another month or so. The City Council had a first reading of an ordinance last night that Councilman Knedler introduced that would provide a city tax credit for new windows or exterior doors if they are compatible with the architecture/historic nature of your home. You must have PRIOR approval from the City Manager after a review by the city's Design Review Board to get the credit.

Brian explained the new tax credit it in a recent posting on the list-serve:



“The city credit would be equal to 10 percent of the cost of the windows/doors and labor to install. A fifth of that amount would be subtracted from your city property tax each year for 5 years. So, if you spend $500 on a window and installation and you had prior approval, the city credit would be $50. You would have $10 subtracted from your tax bill each year for 5 years.

”If you combined this city credit with the new federal tax credit for energy efficient windows (30 percent of cost up to $1,500), you could add up some real savings.
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_tax_credits

”In addition, the legislation will provide a 10 percent tax credit for historic rehabs that have already been approved by the state through its historic tax credit program (20 percent of total approved costs).
http://www.marylandhistoricaltrust.net/taxcr.html.”