Contributor Opinion By Susan Hoffmann, John Britton, and Piotr Gajewski: Rockville A Well-Managed City

>(An edited version of this letter appeared in The Gazette.)

To the residents of Rockville:

This is in response to last week’s letter, “Bad timing on pay hike for Rockville city workers.”

In a budget as large as Rockville’s, it is easy to take some items out of context, thus painting an unfair picture of what your Mayor and Council have done. But the fact is that we have been fiscally responsible while providing the services our residents demand and deserve.

Your Mayor and Council reduced the budget by nearly $1 million. We broadened the homeowners tax credit to include income earners up to $85,000 and homes valued at $400,000. We also increased funding to non-profit groups to assist those who are most in need.

At the same time, we took on some important projects:

• The significant and essential task of updating and replacing our entire water system. This is a long-term project that we chose to take on, in order to avert the potential crisis of a significant water main rupture.
• The restoration of the historic Post Office at North Washington Street and West Montgomery Avenue, as the new Rockville Police Department.
• Mattie Stepanek Park, with its Peace Garden, beautiful landscaping, tennis courts, dog park, Bankshot basketball for the disabled, and the wonderful fields that will be the new home for the Rockville Football League [RFL] for the next 50 years.
• The Thomas Farm Community Center with state-of-the-art exercise equipment, programmed recreational activities, stunning public art in the lobby, and an environmentally sensitive geothermal heating and cooling system which is a component of our “Clean and Green Rockville” priority.

The latter two demonstrate this Mayor and Council’s commitment to providing the highest quality of life for all including, in this case, two of our newer residential communities…King Farm and Fallsgrove.

On a regular ongoing basis, we continue to maintain an excellent parks and street tree system. There are more trees than people in Rockville! And it’s a well-known fact that Rockville’s street maintenance is first rate. Our snowy streets are plowed quickly and potholes are virtually unknown.

The list of quality services the City provides goes on and on. There’s just not enough room for us to list all the great things about Rockville, but you know them and have your favorites…that’s why most of you moved here in the first place.

We did all of this while managing to balance our budget and maintain our Triple A bond rating. Rockville is a well-managed City, both fiscally and operationally, and we are proud of it.

And yes, we also chose to honor our union contracts, our police contracts and our personnel obligations to which this Council and the prior Council had legally committed. Through sound fiscal management, even in these tough times, we were fortunate to have the resources to maintain our commitments and provide modest pay adjustments to a staff that continues to work hard for our residents and to 60 Public Safety Officers who put their lives on the line every day to protect us.

As for the argument that the federal, state, and county governments will punish the City for not having a deficit and for funding our obligations, nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, Rockville has been quite successful in obtaining funds from those governments, because we are so adept at managing our budget and not falling into debt as so many others, so close to home, have experienced. Any federal, state, or county funds we receive are given with the confidence that Rockville will spend the money on the project we asked to be financed, that the funds will be tracked and accounted for as required, and that there will be efficient and waste-free expenditures in the implementation of the project.

Rockville is the best of the best. We cannot imagine living anywhere else and we are proud and honored to serve as your Mayor and Councilmembers. We are committed to working to make things even better. We hope we can count on you to join with us in that goal.

Susan R. Hoffmann
Mayor of Rockville

John Britton
Councilmember

Piotr Gajewski
Councilmember

This is a contributor opinion. Rockville Central encourages readers to submit such opinions for consideration — the more voices the better. We especially welcome people who disagree with us. We ask that all such contributions be civil and we reserve the right to edit (in consultation with the author) or reject. Contributor opinions should not be seen as reflecting opinions held by Rockville Central editors, as they are just as frequently at odds with our own views. That’s the whole point!

(As noted above, an edited version of this letter appeared in The Gazette. It was subsequently submitted by the authors to Rockville Central and we are publishing so the full letter is available.)

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