Election Analysis From Greater Greater Washington

Yesterday, >Rockville Central friend David Alpert, who blogs over at Greater Greater Washington, stepped into our little corner of the beltway to offer up some election analysis. Typical topics on Greater Greater Washington include smart growth, transit, public space, and traffic, so he writes about the election having a major repercussion on growth.

In the article Rockville votes for change: no change, he states that Phyllis Marcuccio built her political base on opposing most development in the City. He recounts a history of the Beall’s Grant II proposal and notes that opponents were against increased density in general, even in the center of Rockville.

He stipulates that Marcuccio wasn’t the only anti-change candidate noting wins by Bridget Newton who won the most votes overall, and Mark Pierzchala, who took the last seat on the Council.

Here’s a bit from his piece:

Naturally, the Rockville election hinged on many more issues than just development and the Beall’s Grant II project in particular. Pierzchala rides his bike to Metro year-round and ran primarily on a platform of open government. He also endorsed mixed-use development. Candidates talked about civility on the Council and the city’s budget.

David attended some of our Rockville Pike revisioning sessions and wonders if our new mayor and council support the Rockville Pike Plan. Perhaps some of our readers or newly-elected officials can help him out in the comments on his post.

Sentinel Interview with the Mayor-Elect Marcuccio

This week the >Sentinel published an interview with Phyllis Marcuccio entitled Newly-elected Mayor of Rockville hits the ground running. Written by Glynis Kazanjian, the piece asks a dozen questions.

Here are some brief exerpts from the article to give you an idea of some of the topics covered in the interview. As this is a Sentinel article, I can’t reproduce it in it’s entirety but rather can only pass along some quotes. You can read the complete answers from Mayor-elect Marcuccio on their website.

When asked whether the city was running in a deficit, she answered “It depends on how you look at the term deficit.”

As to whether City Manager Scott Ullery will stay in place and if he does, will his job change, she responded, “I don’t see any reason why he wouldn’t stay in place.” When discussing his responsibilities, she said “He and I talked very frankly about the fact that maybe he was put in the position of making decisions or recommending through his own initiative, or his staff’s, aspects of our policies that perhaps really belong within the Mayor and Council.”, and also, “ I do not feel there is any necessity to do anything independent of the council. That is inappropriate.”

When asked if she thought the criticisms of Councilman Gajewski were fair during the election she responded, “They weren’t strong enough in my estimation.”

When asked about crime, she said “There are some pockets of problems. Twinbrook has a little bit of edge to it right now, especially when it comes to the immigrants.” and “Because King Farm is one of the newest parts of the city, you would expect it to be squeaky clean and not have any issues. But some of the areas, we made – I think – a blunder by putting some of the low-cost housing in a pocket, the MPDU’s [(moderately priced dwelling units)] that were required when KF was developed. They are in an area and as a result, there is maybe a draw to the area from individuals that are kind of unsavory and they have caused trouble.”

Looking ahead she talks about her dream of a Science Center and a long-term goal of bringing the voice back to the citizens in the decision-making.

For the full article, visit the Sentinel.

Slideshow From Phyllis Marcuccio Victory Party

There is a terrific conversation going on >at this post, picking apart some of the implications of yesterday’s Rockville city election. More analysis will be forthcoming from some of our favorite observers.

In the meantime, though, here is a slideshow taken by Rockville Central friend Chas Hausheer at mayor-elect Phyllis Marcuccio’s victory celebration last night. Enjoy!

Marcuccio Defeats Hoffmann For Mayor; Britton, Gajewski, Newton, Pierzchala On Council

The election results are in and there will be a new mayor of Rockville. >Phyllis Marcuccio has defeated incumbent Susan Hoffmann in the race for mayor.

In the campaign for City Council, the winners are: John Britton, Piotr Gajewski, Bridget Newton, and Mark Pierzchala.

We will have more election numbers, analysis, and more in the upcoming days.

For now, a hearty congratulations to the winners from your friends at Rockville Central!

Election Day Details: You Can Still Register to Vote

Perhaps you are reading all of our >election coverage on Rockville Central and you want to vote but you have never registered. Don’t fret! The Rockville Ordinance allows eligible residents to register ON Election Day. So on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 you can go to City Hall, 111 Maryland Avenue and cast your vote.

You must:

• Be a US Citizen
• Be at least 18 years old by November 3rd
• Bring proof of Rockville residency
• Bring photo identification such as a driver’s license or state ID card. If the ID does not have an address, a document from a corporation such as a lease, utility bill, student ID, or current real estate tax bill will be accepted.

So if you have just moved to Rockville or never did get around to registering – just do it!

If you are already registered then be sure go to the proper polling place. Two of the polling locations have changed. Voters in District 2 will now vote at Rockville Swim and Fitness Center, 355 Martins Lane, (previously Beall Elementary School) and voters in District 8 will now vote at Thomas Farm Community Center, 700 Fallsgrove Drive, (previously Lakewood Elementary School).

You can view a map of all the voting districts on the City’s website.

If you physically can’t access the voting room in the polling place, you can vote at the curbside. Simply arrive at the polls in a car and have a companion notify an election judge in the voting room of the need for assistance.

The results of the 2009 election will be available through Rockville Channel 11, the City’s Web site and at City Hall. Results on November 3rd but they’re not official until Tuesday, November 10th.

I hope you are going to join me at the polls!

Guess Who's 18 Years Old Today

As you may have heard, Rockville City Council Candidate, >Waleed Ovase, is a senior at Richard Montgomery High School. Today is his 18th birthday! So although he has been 17 while running for office, he will be old enough to be on the ballot this Tuesday, November 3, 2009.

His age has stirred up some media coverage for Rockville and our City Election.

He was interviewed by WUSA9 on video:

Teenager Hopes for City Council Victory for Birthday

and they have a story too.

He also by interviewed by WAMU Radio:

17 Year Old Hopes Voters Elect Him to Rockville City Council

and by the Kane Show on Hot 99.5 where they say “18 Year Old Running For City Council. This kid better at least get into a sweet college over this”.

Obviously, his campaign has been considered newsworthy beyond our local Rockville scene, so we thought our readers would like to know about the coverage.

And, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish him a “Happy Birthday!”

Rockville Central does not endorse candidates. We are encouraging towards all people who choose to run for office the city and try our best to make ourselves open to all. We actively encourage candidates to submit opinion pieces and other news. We don’t include every last bit, but we try to be fair to all and give useful information about what is happening.

Rockville Candidate Finance Reports Show Hoffmann, Pierzchala With Most Cash On Hand

>The City of Rockville has now posted all candidates’ October 29 finance reports. They show a different story than our last story on this, which was based on the informal reports that candidates sent us on Monday and Tuesday.

In terms of cash on hand, the campaign of Susan Hoffmann has the most in the mayoral race, with $5,717.48 on hand. Among city council candidates, Mark Pierzchala leads cash on hand with $2,329.17.

The way the campaigns filled out the City’s finance forms varied, as did what they sent us earlier this week. In fact, it appeared that some of the forms did not total up correctly, and I started to try to make sense of it. While most campaigns filled the forms out the same way, some appeared to interpret the instructions differently. I finally gave up and decided to provide an overview of the summary sheets and direct links to the forms so you could make your own determination!

So, in the spreadsheet that follows, I just used the numbers written by the campaigns. If you see a discrepancy you can check out the original documents. (The direct links to the pdf reports are at the end of this article.)

(Here is a link to our last complete report on finances, so you can compare the spreadsheets.)

And here are the original reports:

Mayor

• Susan R. Hoffmann
• Phyllis Marcuccio

Council

• John Britton
• Piotr “Peter” Gajewski
• Carl Henn
• Trapper Martin
• Tom Moore
• Bridget Newton
• Virginia Onley
• Waleed Ovase
• Mark Pierzchala
• Max van Balgooy

Candidate Yard Sign Slideshow

Many come to have a love-hate relationship with this time of year. It’s election season! That means that, while we prepare to do our civic duty and make wise choices in the voting booth, candidates are urgently prevailing upon us to choose them.This brings with it a certain flowering of yard signs all throughout town. In case you have not yet seen all the candidates’ signs, we have prepared this little slideshow for you. No they are not in any particular order:>

(Note that candidate Max Van Balgooy has no signs so we sort of made one from a mailer.)

Marcuccio, Newton Appear To Lead In Campaign Finances

(This article contains a bit of my own opinion, but is mostly news so we are running it in the news column.)People who watched the very excellent Twinbrook Citizens Association candidate forum know that one of the questions posed to the candidates was whether they would agree to release details of their campaign finances early, on October 26. The official filing deadline is Thursday at the end of the day, which is after the Gazette’s publish date. This means that voters don’t have a chance to look at the latest campaign finance records over the weekend before election day.In my view, this is a significant problem, as it opens up the possibility of last-minute donations going unremarked until after the elections are over. The question at the Twinbrook forum was intended to make it possible for voters to see this information in the main Rockville news outlet (the >Gazette) before they decide who to vote for, instead of after they have already voted.

Along with the Gazette, Rockville Central asked the candidates to provide the information. (The Gazette asked last Thursday, we asked on Monday.) All of the candidates responded, in varying ways ranging from copies of reports they had filed early to quick notes and emails.

Today’s article by Nathan Carrick in the Gazette gives a good wrapup of where the candidates stand in terms of fundraising, and shows mayoral candidate Phyllis Marcuccio and city council candidate Bridget Newton apparently ahead of the pack:

Rockville mayoral challenger Councilwoman Phyllis R. Marcuccio continues to lead campaign fundraising efforts, gathering more than $18,000 from more than 160 donors, according to her unofficial campaign finance report sent to The Gazette.

The reports are not due at City Hall until close of business Thursday.

Most of the candidates had agreed at an election forum in the Twinbrook community last week that they would file an early report so that the information could be published in The Gazette. The Gazette also sent requests for early reports via e-mail Thursday evening.

Mayor Susan R. Hoffmann said she was unable to provide an early report by Gazette press time.

“While I am more than willing to comply with your request, my campaign treasurer has been travelling and is unable to prepare the report early,” she wrote in an e-mail Monday. . . .

Marcuccio’s cash on hand on Monday was $3,900. She has raised about $4,897 since Sept. 26. . . .

Bridget Newton raised $3,636 since the first report, spent $1,860 and has a cash-on-hand balance of $5,100.

(As you can see, I say Marcuccio is “apparently” ahead of the pack as mayoral candidate and incumbent Susan Hoffmann did not provide early information.)

[UPDATE: By my calculations, Newton has less cash on hand than the article reports. I have $2965.46. This is still the leading city council cash on hand number. When the official reports come out we will be able to get a definitive answer.]

Follow this link to the full article see how the rest of the candidates are doing in terms of money raised, spent, and cash on hand.

There’s just one addition to the Gazette piece. It lists city council candidate Virginia Onley as not having responded, but late Monday [CORRECTION: Tuesday] she sent us her information. Since Sept. 26 (the last reporting date), she has raised $715, spent nothing, and has $1,927.80 on hand.

As soon as the full, official reports are available from the City, we will post links to them. They are an important part of the campaign process.

[UPDATED, correcting Onley's email date, and adding a note that this article contains opinion.]

[UPDATED, to correct Bridget Newton's cash on hand.]

Video Of Rockville Central Candidate Forum

Readers, thank you very much for waiting so patiently for us to upload video from> Saturday morning’s candidate forum. We’ve gotten a lot of really exciting feedback from the event.

You would not believe how tough it was to get this video file in shape to post. Turns out working with a two-hour video file is qualitatively different than working with 10 minute YouTube posts. We also had some technical issues during the event that cropped up in the sound (low volume level, intermittent buzzing, and I think one of the microphone cables was going bad at the end there) that we did not realize during shooting. So those had to be fixed.

With all that, I did the bare minimum when it comes to subtitles. The first time each person appears, we run their name as a subtitle. (Cindy Cotte Griffiths’ subtitle actually runs on her second appearance, as her first was brief and I misplaced the subtitle during editing. Sorry Cindy!)

We only show names once, so if you forget who someone is in the middle, I recommend you pause and go look at a website for their face!

Because it is such a long video, we were not able to upload full “high quality” so when you watch it may be slightly reminiscent of 2005. And, since we just had the one camera, there are no slick cuts between speakers. Tim Hampton had to pan from person to person and sometimes we talked faster than he could pan.

All this is to say, please forgive us if it is not exactly broadcast quality.

But our chief goal — to post it so people could see — was achieved. And so without further ado, we give you, THE VIDEO:

Rockville Central Candidate Forum, October 24, 2009 from Brad Rourke on Vimeo.

Also, at the forum, I promised I would upload the detailed agenda that Cindy and I worked from. We wanted to make sure there was full transparency and you could see we did not alter question order based on which candidates were up next or anything like that. So, I’ve posted a PDF scan of my agenda notes here.

As near as I can recall, we only made two deviations from what we planned. First, in the “introductions” segment at the beginning, our plan was to ask each candidate a quick question then go on to the next. But when I saw that the microphone handoff was going to be possibly problematic, I decided to ask each candidate all four questions in a row. I think that worked pretty well.

The other change was at the end, where we squished together the final two questions and the candidates made closing statements. I signaled I was doing that in the event, but I wanted to call attention to that change as well. In all other respects, I believe we stuck to the script! (The “Tom” I wrote in the margin of the agenda is Tom Miner, whom I had forgotten to thank personally by that point and so I wrote his name down to remember.)

One last thing. I promised a full accounting of the costs of the event. The rental of the facility was $140 (plus or minus a few dollars — I will know when we get our security deposit back), and the coffee and donuts were $100.46. About $17 for the digital video tape. Cindy and I split the tab for all that, and, as I said in the event, we regard it as a contribution to the civic life of the community. We paid standard rate for everything — the same you would have paid if you were throwing a birthday party or reception. We considered passing a basket at the event to defray costs but ultimately decided that might be weird.

Gazette's Rockville City Election Coverage In One Place

The Rockville Mayor and Council Election is only a week away. As you research the candidates to make your choices, we here at >Rockville Central want to point you toward all the information available.

Joe Jordan, who is serving as Phyllis Marcuccio’s campaign manager, reminded us about Rockville City Election 2009 on the Gazette.net website.

In a nutshell, you will find links to:

• Short bio videos, about 2 minutes each
• The Gazette articles featuring each candidate
• Gazette news articles about the election going back to January 2009.

If you feel as though you haven’t been following the news closely enough regarding this election, it’s all a click away. Since they often don’t deliver the paper version of The Gazette to my driveway, I did some reading myself.

Anne Robbins To Be Honored Monday Night

Five-term member of the Rockville city council, >Anne Robbins, will be honored for her years of service in a reception and ceremony at the October 26, 2009 meeting of the Mayor and Council. Anne is retiring after this term. She has given many years and much energy to Our Fair City.

Here are the details from the City:

A farewell reception honoring Councilmember Anne Robbins for her decade of service to the City of Rockville will take place Monday, Oct. 26, from 5:30-7 p.m. at Rockville City Hall, 111 Maryland Ave. A special presentation will be held at 7 p.m.

In addition to the reception, a video highlighting Robbins’ years of service on the council will be shown at the end of the Mayor and Council meeting.

Robbins, who was first elected to the council in November 1999, has seen the City grow and change through the years. During her tenure, both the King Farm and Fallsgrove communities were developed; Croydon Creek Nature Center and Thomas Farm Community Center both opened; the Mattie J.T. Stepanek Park opened and includes the City’s first-ever dog park; and Town Center was redeveloped.

Robbins said she is proud of the many things accomplished while she served, and pointed to her work to support services for seniors, her efforts to champion for all voices in Rockville and her work to maintain free parking for the Rockville Library as her proudest moments.

“The most rewarding thing for me and my kids and my husband Dave is to see that I’ve really helped people,” Robbins said. “It has really meant the world to me.”

Robbins will turn her attention to work in health care and time for travel with her husband.

Sentinel Interviews With Mayoral Candidates

Some days ago, we published an article linking to each one of the >Gazette’s interviews with Rockville candidates.

This morning, Joseph Jordan, who is Phyllis Marcuccio’s campaign manager (she’s running for Mayor), sent along a helpful reminder and two links:

While the Gazette is the local newspaper most Rockville residents are familiar with, there are other local news sources. One of these is the Sentinel, and they publish PG and Montgomery County editions. The Sentinel is also a weekly paper but isn’t free . . . it costs $.25 and can be bought at those newspaper “vending” machines throughout the city. Some of the articles are available online, and this week a reporter interviewed both mayoral candidates. The interviews speak for themselves, so I won’t add any editorial or opinion commentary. What is best about the articles is the fact they are the candidates own words, not pieces written using interspersed quotes or sound bites. As part of doing your due diligence in learning as much as you can about the candidates, I urge you to read both interviews.

We thank Joe and here are the links:

• Susan Hoffmann Sentinel interview
• Phyllis Marcuccio Sentinel interview

Twinbrook Candidate Forum Tuesday, October 20

Don’t forget that the last >city-televised candidate forum is scheduled for next week.

The Twinbrook Citizens Association is hosting a candidate forum at the Twinbrook Community Recreation Center, 12920 Twinbrook Parkway, on Tuesday, October 20. The event starts at 7:00 pm and will be covered (no word on whether live or not) by the City’s channel 11.

While this is the last city-televised forum, it’s not the last forum overall! Rockville Central is putting on a candidate forum next Saturday morning. (Help us out with ideas here.)

Woodley Gardens, College Gardens, Plymouth Woods Candidate Forum

>Jim Reschovsky, president of the Woodley Gardens Civic Association, sent us a note to let us know about another candidate forum that has been scheduled.

It’s the joint Woodley Gardens Civic Assoc., College Gardens Civic Assoc., and Plymouth Woods Homeowners Assoc. candidates’ forum.

The forum will be Wed., Oct 21, 7:30 — 10:00 pm in the All Purpose Room at the College Gardens Elementary School.