O’Malley’s Letter To Pepco

While this is a statewide angle, the Pepco outage issue affects Rockville quite a bit so we thought we would share this. Thank you to Maryland Politics Watch for the original post.

January 29, 2011

Photo by Herb Winkler

Joseph Rigby, Chairman
Pepco Holdings Inc.
701 Ninth Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20068
Re: Pepco Power Outages Beginning January 26, 2011

Dear Mr. Rigby:

It is with great frustration and enormous concern for the 26,000 Montgomery County residents and the 1,500 Prince George’s County residents that remain without power that I write, yet again, to express my anger that we seem to be back where we started.

Why can’t Pepco perform as its fellow utilities do? To date, BGE has restored service to 227,800 of the 233,500, or 98%, of its customers affected by the storm. Pepco still has 27,500 customers in Maryland without electricity, a restoration rate of a dismal 80%. I am also outraged that your customer communication remains unacceptable; the outage map posted to your website crashed yet again, leaving customers seeking information about their outage in the dark.

Finally, the reports of Pepco’s slow response in requesting assistance from other jurisdictions is outrageous and demands further inquiry.

Despite earnest promises, numerous press releases, and even a six point plan, families in our State woke up, for the third morning in a row, to a cold, dark house, with Pepco advising them that service should be restored by 11 pm tomorrow night. Five days in the dark is simply not acceptable.

I have asked the Public Service Commission to conduct an immediate hearing regarding these many issues arising from this storm. I also expect the General Assembly to pass legislation that Delegate Feldman and I will introduce, requiring the Commission to adopt enhanced reliability standards and allowing the Commission to fine utilities for poor performance and direct those payments back to the affected ratepayers.

I know that the Pepco employees are hard at work, in cold difficult conditions, doing the best work they can. My frustration is directed at you and your leadership team; these elongated outages must end.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Martin O’Malley
Governor

cc: Douglas R. M. Nazarian, Chairman

POTD: Corner

Cool night shot in the snowy aftermath by Rockville Central reader Temperance Blalock.

The Week That Was Jan. 24 – Jan. 30

Photo by Cindy Cotte Griffiths

Here are the top stories from Rockville Central this week. This feature appears every Sunday.

Opinion and Features

• Comic Strip: ROCK’burb 1-29-11: Cindy Cotte Griffiths’ comic take on Rockville’s new “brand.”
• Rockville Real Estate Listing And Foreclosures 1-29-11: This week’s mapped real estate listings.
• Reader Note From Cheryl Moss Herman: Update On The Julius West And New Elementary School Feasibility Studies: Projects are moving forward as part of the plan to manage the overcapacity situation at elementary schools in the Richard Montgomery (RM) Cluster and the future wave of enrollment expected at Julius West Middle School (JWMS).
• Editorial Opinion By Brad Rourke: I Feel Branded: Brad’s take on the terrible process.

News

• Rockville Teen Will Be On Jeopardy. What’s The Best News We’ve Heard All Week?: “I am beyond elated! It’s a dream come true,” said Raynell Cooper, a senior at Richard Montgomery High School who is one of the 15 players selected to compete in this year’s “Jeopardy!” Teen Tournament. The tournament will broadcast nationally beginning Thursday, Feb. 17 through Tuesday, March 2, 2011.
• Pet Care, Shelter, Power Restoration And Plowing: Here’s what you need to know if your power is out or street is not plowed.
• The Tower Building Continues To Earn High Marks: The Tower Companies, Washington DC’s largest builder of USGBC LEED® Certified buildings, announced three of their existing buildings have been certified by EPA as Energy Star buildings. The Tower Building in Rockville led the list.
• Colombo Bank In Deeper Trouble: Last Friday, federal regulators issued a second cease-and-desist order related to the Rockville-based bank’s operation. Already facing a June hearing for its loan practices loan including the underwriting and capital levels required to cover bad loans, Colombo must now deal with another order.
• It’s Curtains For The Death Ray [Updated]: A large white tarp now covers all the south-facing windows on the District Courthouse which is under construction in Rockville. As we know, the sun’s reflection off these windows was creating a “death ray”.
• Get Into It: Mayor And Council Recap (Jan. 24, 2011) — UPDATED: Mayor and Council decide on Rockville’s new brand, then snipe at one another.

Events

• Weekend to Weekend Pick: Tales Of A Fourth Grade Nothing: Two Beans Productions Presents Tales Of A Fourth Grade Nothing, A TheatreworksUSA Presentation
• Lunar New Year Family Day At VisArts (Jan. 29): Celebrate the Lunar New Year with a family event and reception at VisArts during a day to celebrate Asian art and culture.

Comic Strip: ROCK’burb 1-29-11

The consultants, ROI/CRC did not work to improve their lackluster, wordy, and unoriginal logo & tagline ideas for the City’s branding effort after the survey results were tabulated. As a matter of fact, as Brad Rourke pointed out in his opinion piece this week, when they first came up the their ideas, they “simply pointed out that there was little consensus among people and that they had seemingly false impressions of where they live.” We paid them $75,000 to ignore us. We don’t know where we live? Anyway, at the Mayor and Council meeting a majority voted for the least favorite choice from the survey results. The rest of the DC area is having a good time ridiculing the options and our choice.

About ROCK’burb: Last year we were tossing around ideas for new features on Rockville Central. We thought Saturday morning comics would be fun. Since I’ve always wanted to draw a comic strip, I decided to give it a try. Sometimes an idea pops up in my head and sometimes my whole family thinks up a panel about our lives here in Rockville.

Do you like to draw? We’re hoping we have other cartoonists who would be interested in submitting comic strips. If you have one about life in Rockville, please send it along! We’d love to see it and may even publish it. Remember, be nice! Email us: [email protected].

Rockville Real Estate Listing And Foreclosures 1-29-11

Here’s our weekly community-produced real estate listing along with a graph showing the Percentage of Homes Owned over the past 30 years.

The Gallery Of New Listings contains pictures and descriptions of the new homes on the market as of last Thursday, click on this link or the photo above for the information. Only a few were added this week. Lisa Abrams passes along this advice, “Our inventory is very low, if anyone wants to sell, this is the time, there are more buyers than sellers in the metro area.”

Neighborhood Facts:

Gallery of New Listings and Neighborhood Facts contributed by Lisa AbramsRE/MAX Realty Services, (O)301-652-0400, (C)301-437-6742, [email protected]

Real Estate Listing Map

View Larger Map

Foreclosure Map

View Larger Map

More information on local real estate is also available from Hillstrom Homes, one of our advertisers. They have a site specifically for Rockville: RockvilleHomes.com.

If you are a local real estate broker and you would like to send along the details and a picture of one of your new listings, please email [email protected] and we’ll feature it. Keep in mind, Rockville Central accepts contributions on all sorts of things. The data included in this post is a compilation of many different databases obtained from various sources, Rockville Central makes no claims as to its accuracy, you should not assume it is error-free.

Rockville Teen Will Be On Jeopardy. What’s The Best News We’ve Heard All Week?

Raynell Cooper With Alex Trebeck. Photo courtesy of Jeopardy Productions, Inc.

“I am beyond elated! It’s a dream come true,” said Raynell Cooper, a senior at Richard Montgomery High School who is one of the 15 players selected to compete in this year’s “Jeopardy!” Teen Tournament. The tournament will broadcast nationally beginning Thursday, Feb. 17 through Tuesday, March 2, 2011.

I first met Raynell when he was involved with the last Rockville City elections and the campaign of Waleed Ovase, a fellow high school student.

I’ve always been impressed with Raynell’s participation in our local civic life. He serves on Rockville’s Department of Recreation and Parks Advisory Board. Kate Savage, Chair of the Board describes his contributions:

Raynell is a great asset to the Recreation and Parks Advisory Board. He participates on every level from budget discussions to helping clean our “adopted” stream. It has been a tradition of our board for years to include a student member. Rec & Parks serves citizens of every age and having the younger perspective on our decisions is a benefit.

Readers may also recognize his name because of his frequent comments on Rockville Central. You won’t find many students as involved in our community as Raynell.

Before flying out to Culver City, California to compete on the show on December 6th & 7th, Raynell went through the application process. Here’s how he described his journey:

There is an online test which I took in March, and then high scorers are selected to go to an audition (my audition was in Philadelphia) and the contestant coordinators select 15 teenagers for the Jeopardy! Teen Tournament. I’ve watched Jeopardy! for years, and I love all forms of trivia competition, so I knew that I had to try out and I was very fortunate to make it on to the show.

When I asked him if he did anything special to prepare, he explained that in addition to talking to people about buzzer strategy, he studied up on certain subjects:

As for preparation, I felt pretty confident in my knowledge in academic areas, as I have been involved with Richard Montgomery’s It’s Academic team since freshman year, so I decided to study up on video games, popular music, young adult literature, and things I don’t usually pay as much attention to. I also pored over old questions from previous tournaments to get a better idea of the subject matter.

As we all know, he can’t reveal the results of the show until all the episodes of the tournament have aired. The grand prize is $75,000 with a minimum of $50,000 for second place and a minimum of $25,000 for third place. Semifinalists receive $10,000. Even if a contestant is eliminated in the first round, he or she still receives $5,000. Raynell would like to attend George Washington University and study geography, political science or urban planning. These are all fine prizes which will certainly help with his upcoming college expenses.

Since 1984 “Jeopardy!” has won 28 Emmy awards and been inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records for the most awards won by a TV Game Show. Produced by Sony Pictures Television, the series is the #1-rated quiz show in syndication with nearly 9 million daily viewers. This is exciting!

The show broadcasts at 7:30 weeknights on WJLA-TV. Be sure to watch and root for our hometown favorite!

Reader Note From Cheryl Moss Herman: Update On The Julius West And New Elementary School Feasibility Studies

Photo from the MCPS website

Thanks to Cheryl Moss Herman, Richard Montgomery Cluster Co-coordinator to Montgomery County Council of PTAs (MCCPTA), for agreeing to post this important information on Rockville Central.

Projects are moving forward as part of the plan to manage the overcapacity situation at elementary schools in the Richard Montgomery (RM) Cluster and the future wave of enrollment expected at Julius West Middle School (JWMS).

The Feasibility Studies for an addition at Julius West and for new construction (RM Elementary #5) on the site of the former Hungerford Park site have begun. Architect selection and approval for each is complete and dates have been set for the Feasibility Advisory Committee public meetings. (See below for details.) The committees will work with the architects to provide a series of options that will meet the program needs of the schools. The committees will also select a preferred option at the end of the process. These committees will NOT be discussing potential boundary changes for the Richard Montgomery Cluster.

While MCPS’ usual plan is to work with existing PTAs/PTSAs at schools where an addition or construction is contemplated, this is not possible for RM Elementary #5 as it is a new school. Moreover, since the composition of the school population will not be known until a boundary study process is completed in the 2013 timeframe, representatives from all four elementary schools and their communities are being invited to participate. MCPS sends letters only to those homeowners whose properties are adjacent to the school(s). The rest is up to the schools and their PTAs.

Similarly, while MCPS is working primarily through the JWMS PTSA, the reality is that the prospect of an addition at JW will affect most of us. This is because a majority of our current elementary students could be at JW during construction, or for those in the lower grades, would benefit by an addition at the school. The Feasibility Advisory Committee meetings and/or the final Community Presentation are an excellent way to stay informed and participate in the process.

These two new feasibility studies join an already completed Feasibility Study for an addition at Ritchie Park Elementary School and on-going studies for additions at Beall and Twinbrook Elementary Schools. You will recall that this summer MCPS intends to take all of these studies and its new enrollment projections and make a “comprehensive RM Cluster” recommendation for new classroom capacity next fall. Watch your e-mail for more info on participation as this process goes forward.

Also, mark your calendars for testimony to the County Council on the Capital Budget on the evening of February 8, 2011. Strong community support is essential.

RM CLUSTER ELEMENTARY #5 Feasibility Study (all meetings at Children’s Resource Center/Hungerford Park site at 322 W. Edmonston Drive)
Work Session Meeting #1 Monday, February 28, 2011 7:00 pm
Work Session Meeting #2 Monday, March 21, 2011 7:00 pm
Work Session Meeting #3 Thursday, April 7, 2011 4:00 pm
Work Session Meeting #4 Thursday, April 28, 2011 7:00 pm
Community Presentation Meeting Thursday, May 12, 2011 7:00 pm

JULIUS WEST MIDDLE SCHOOL Feasibility Study (all meetings at JWMS)
Work Session Meeting #1 Wednesday, February 2, 2011 3:00 pm
Work Session Meeting #2 Thursday, February 24, 2011 7:00 pm
Work Session Meeting #3 Wednesday, March 9, 2011 3:00 pm
Work Session Meeting #4 Wednesday, March 23, 2011 7:00 pm
Community Presentation Meeting Tuesday, April 12, 2011 7:30 pm

Cheryl Moss Herman

This is a Reader’s Note. We welcome submissions on all sorts of things — shopping, restaurants, performances, art, cultural events, meetings, and more. Get in touch with us using our contact form if you would like to submit something!

POTD: Slide

Thanks to Rockville Central reader Linda Bozzonetti for this scene depicting some of the aftermath of Snowpocalypse 2011.

Pet Care, Shelter, Power Restoration And Plowing

Photo by Cindy Cotte Griffiths

Here’s what you need to know if your power is out or street is not plowed.

Plowing

Rockville Public Works crews have completed all primary roads except those where there are wires down or trees felled. They will continue to work around the clock until all the roads have been cleared. Now they are focusing their efforts on secondary roads and expect to have them all open by 5 AM on Friday, January 28. Crews are also out working to remove fallen trees.

Outside of Rockville, Montomery County has plowed all primary and secondary roads in the County and now residential street plowing is underway. More than 200 trees are down and 60 road are closed.

Power Restoration

This afternoon, 109,408 County households served by Pepco were still without power. About 200 traffic signals in the County were affected. Police and other public safety personnel are directing traffic at some intersections and temporary stop signs have been placed at others. I know people have been very appreciative of the temporary stop signs particularly at Park Road.

Pepco has announced that they expect the “vast majority” of customers to be restored by 11 PM tomorrow, January 28th. Yes, you heard me right - more than 24 hours without power still to come. Crews which include those assisting from neighboring states, will continue to work nonstop until all customers have their power restored. If your power is not back on by this time, call 1-877-737-2662. Here’s the County Executive’s residential survey and business survey on how you think PEPCO is doing with service. You must respond by January 31st so don’t delay!

Come in for shelter if you need it. Montgomery County has announced that a shelter at Richard Montgomery High School is open. Although it means sleeping on a cot in the gym, it’s warm and they provide food.

Pet Care

If your power is out, put your bird, bunny or other small mammal in the smallest cage you have and cover it on three sides. Put the 4th side to the sunlight during the day so your pet will eat. Animals can generate their own body heat and you can help keep the heat in with a small cage and cover.

Buses and Back to Normal …. ?

Good to know that County Ride On buses are operating on a Saturday schedule today but will resume the regular weekday service tomorrow. Maybe we can get back to normal. No, wait. Here’s the BIG question. With power outages rampant across the County, will there be school tomorrow?

Weekend to Weekend Pick: Tales Of A Fourth Grade Nothing

Two Beans Productions Presents Tales Of A Fourth Grade Nothing
A TheatreworksUSA Presentation

Saturday, January 29, 2011
11 AM
Robert E. Parilla Performing Arts Center, Montgomery College Rockville Campus
Recommended for ages 6 and up - Tickets are $7 Adults, $6 Seniors, Students & Children

“Peter Hatcher’s life would be great if it weren’t for his toddler terror of a brother Fudge. For an end-of-school essay about his fourth grade year, the subject turns out to be Fudge, not Peter. Peter writes about his little brother’s refusal to eat or to open his mouth at the dentist, a catastrophic third birthday party, and getting blamed for Fudge knocking out his two front teeth. In addition to helping out with Fudge, who gets all the attention, Peter gets blamed for everything. It’s enough to make a kid feel like a fourth grade nothing. Don’t miss this hilarious musical about sibling rivalry based on Judy Blume’s classic children’s novel.”

The Tower Building Continues To Earn High Marks

Photo from The Tower Companies website

Today The Tower Companies, Washington DC’s largest builder of USGBC LEED® Certified buildings, announced three of their existing buildings have been certified by EPA as Energy Star buildings. I was please to know The Tower Building in Rockville led the list.

I’ve always admired The Tower Building, whether I was driving past on I-270 or biking along Wootton Parkway. The building’s futuristic design always seemed a step above the other new architecture in our City. When it was completed ten years ago, this 265,000 square foot, multi-tenant commercial office building was the first new construction green building in the DC Metro region.

The Tower Companies designs the buildings then continues to work with tenants to improve their overall green rating. In post on the PR Newswire, the certification for the Tower Building was explained:

It received an Energy Star score of 90. According to Tower’s Chief Sustainability Officer, David Borchardt, two factors contributed to the high rating; their 134,000 SF GSA tenant, Health and Human Services already met the new GSA standards for Energy Conservation. Furthermore, Tower replaced all garage lighting, which must be on 24/7, with more efficient lighting, realizing an energy savings of nearly 35%.

How do they encourage energy conservation? Their ideas are good advice for everyone:

• Creating more energy efficient build outs, including lighting and temperature control of spaces.
• Taking advantage of utility rebates and installing more energy efficient motor control devices, allowing heating and cooling systems to run more efficiently.
• Finding opportunities to turn off unused equipment and lights; replacing inefficient lighting when a fixture or bulb needs to be replaced.

Here’s a full description of The Tower Building, and if you are interested in seeing the interior, the Gallery on the Tower website provides a little tour.

The Tower Building, designed by Kishimoto Gordon Dalaya PC, is powered by 100% wind energy and was the first green office building in the Washington metropolitan area when construction started in 1999. In 2003 it was awarded The Apartment and Office Building Association’s prestigious “Green Office Building of the Year” award. In 2009, The Tower Building achieved US Green Building Council LEED Silver certification. Rising 10-stories over a campus of lush woodlands and eco-sensitive planning, The Tower Building is the subject of Case Studies by the Urban Land Institute, US Environmental Protection Agency and US Department of Energy for its advanced sustainable features; years before the US Green Building Council (USGBC) established the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. Amenities include health-food café, a state of the art fitness center, onsite parking, and bicycle storage, lockers, showers, a meditation/yoga room, and an ATM and beautiful art covers the walls; building grounds feature open fields, and tree-filled walking areas and biking trails. Two bus routes pass by, which provide easy access to two metro train stations.

Snowstorm Update On January 27

Montgomery County has declared a Snow Emergency for Montgomery County. County officials are urging residents to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary. Under this declaration:

Vehicles on the road must have all-weather or snow tires or chains, and taxi cabs operating in Montgomery County are allowed to charge $1.00 extra per trip. County snow removal crews are currently concentrating their efforts on the nearly 1,000 lane miles of primary/arterial roadways, with particular emphasis on maintaining access to the County’s five hospitals.

Here’s how the plowing is going from the City of Rockville:

Rockville Public Works crews continue to work diligently to clear roads as quickly as possible. Crews have been working through the night to clear primary roads first, and then move to secondary roads, where they have tried to make at least one initial pass. Crews will most likely have to return to neighborhoods to clear roads after the first pass. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause. We also encourage everyone to stay off the roads, so that road crews can clear roads.

The City clears primary roads first which consists of major arterial roads, emergency routes, central business districts and primary residential roads near schools, then secondary roads which are the remainder of neighborhood streets, alleyways and cul-de-sacs.

Shoveling Your Sidewalks

Snow and ice must be cleared from all paved sidewalks abutting your property within 24-72 hours of the end of the snowfall, depending on the snowfall totals (up to three inches = 24 hours; three to nine inches = 48 hours; 10 inches or more = 72 hours). We probably have 48 hours since we definitely have more than three inches.

Also from the City of Rockville, if today is your recycling and refuse collection day, your service has been suspended. Those with a Thursday collection will have their recycling and refuse collected Saturday, January 29th.

Transportation

Motorists are asked to drive with extreme caution and to treat all intersections where traffic signals are not operating as four-way stops.

Ride On bus service will resume at 10 AM today and operate on a Saturday schedule.

If you want to know the condition of the Montgomery County roads, here’s the new Snow Map which shows which roads have been plowed.

If you had to abandon your car on the road last night, it may have been towed so the road could be plowed. To identify the towing company and retrieive a vehicle, call the Montgomery County Emergency Communications Center at 301-279-8000.

Closings and Delays for January 27th

Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are open under 2 hour delayed arrival and employees have the option for unscheduled leave or unscheduled telework.

Montgomery County Government is opening two hours late for non-essential personnel. Liberal leave will be in effect for Montgomery County Government non-essential employees.

Montgomery County Public Schools and all administrative offices are closed today. All school and community activities in school buildings are canceled including day care programs.

Two County office buildings, the Executive Office Building located at 101 Monroe Street and 401 Hungerford, both in Rockville, have no power and will be closed all day. Employees who work in those buildings should not report to work today.

The City of Rockville will also continue to give updates about program and facility operations. A decision about whether Rockville community centers and the swim center will open will be made at 9 AM Thursday.

The Rockville Senior Center will open at 9:30 AM. For information on any other program, call the recreation center or the weather line at 240-314-5023.

POTD: Honk

Yes, that’s the King Farm house in the background.

Power Outages And Snow Related Information For January 26

Looks like 7 1/2 inches of snow in my yard in downtown Rockville. A thick and heavy blanket of wet snow has covered the City but appears to be tapering off as we near 11 PM. The hourly forecast on TBD.com has the snow ending at approximately 2 AM on January 27th with an accumulation of 8 inches north and west of Washington DC.

Over 199,000 PEPCO customers are experiencing power outages throughout the DC region. In Rockville people are reporting the power out in Twinbrook, New Mark Commons, Woodley Gardens, and the Ritchie Park area. Any others areas?

Official power outage counts from the PEPCO StormCenter at 10:30 PM are extensive for our area:
20850 = 3,225
20851 = 3,732
20852 = 5,879
20854 = 4,649

Ride On officials pulled buses off area roadways at about 9 PM due to treacherous road conditions because of the ice and snow. Bus operators were to complete bus routes in progress before returning to bus garages. Ride On officials will be monitoring road conditions to determine when service might resume on Thursday morning. For more information, call 311 from within Montgomery County or 240-777-0311 from outside the County.

Montgomery County Schools has already closed all schools for January 27, 2011. All school and community activities in school buildings are canceled but a decision about the status of administrative offices has not been made yet.

Many motorists were caught in hours of backups and gridlock on the roads. Some people have been trapped in their cars on the roadways for the last few hours. We hope everyone will get home safely. Montgomery County now has an online Snow Map to help everyone decide if they can safely venture out following a snowstorm. The map shows the progress of snow plows throughout the County and indicates when emergency, primary and neighborhood streets have been cleared. A zoom feature allows you to focus on the plow status of their immediate neighborhood and then zoom out to check on a trip route or anywhere in the County. The County Executive currently has a survey for residents concerning their power from PEPCO at this link (if you have an opinion).

Stay safe everyone. The snow is very heavy to shovel. A high temperature of 34 degrees with sunny skies is expected for Thursday which should aid in the clean up.

Colombo Bank In Deeper Trouble

Rockville Central friend Sean Carr alerted us to an article in The Daily Record concerning the continuing problems with Colombo Bank’s operations.

Although Colombo Bank began its history 96 years ago in Baltimore’s Little Italy, its headquarters moved to Rockville in 2002. Currently the bank has four locations: one in Baltimore, two in Montgomery County, and another in Washington, D.C.

Last Friday, federal regulators issued a second cease-and-desist order related to the bank’s operation. Already facing a June hearing for its loan practices loan including the underwriting and capital levels required to cover bad loans, Colombo must now deal with another order.

A cease-and-desist order is one of the strongest enforcement actions the Office of Thrift Supervision can take. The holding company’s board agreed not to make any “golden parachute” payments to officers as well as abide by restrictions on buying or redeeming shares of stock without written permission from the OTS. This is the third cease-and-desist order in the last seven years and it doesn’t bode well for the Bank’s ability to survive.

The Daily Record article provides the financial background:

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., as of Sept. 30, 2010, Colombo Bank had assets of $169.7 million, compared with $169 million the prior year. The bank also reported a $2.39 million loss for the quarter, compared with a $2.01 million loss for the same quarter in 2009.

The article also points out the management difficulties:

Colombo also needs to have an approved management plan in place, according to the orders. Former Colombo CEO Lester Johnson resigned in 2010 and the bank has not named a new chief executive.

Washington developer Morton Bender is the majority shareholder and chairman of the board at Colombo.

Without more capital from the primary shareholder, the bank could be forcibly closed. Considering its balance sheet, it continues to be a bad prospect for a merger.