Job Search Workshop and Information Fair

Montgomery County Councilmember >Nancy Floreen invited me to this Job Search Workshop and Information Fair she is co-sponsoring with Congressman Chris Van Hollen.

Date: This Saturday, November 14, 2009
Time: From 10 AM to 1 PM
Location: The Council Office Building, 100 Maryland Avenue.

The event will provide tips for a traditional job search but it will also cover other avenues to obtaining work such as volunteering or starting your own business. You can attend one or all of the seminars, so you don’t need to stay the whole time. Information will be available at the presenters’ booths throughout the Fair.

The day begins at 10 AM with welcome remarks in the 3rd floor hearing room followed by a series of hour-long seminars designed to help you in your job search. The event is free, however pre-registration is requested by calling 240.777.7959.

Here’s the full schedule:

10 AM – Welcome Remarks

10:10 AM – Concurrent Sessions: Making the Most of Non-Work Time or Applying for a federal job

11AM – Concurrent Sessions: Effective Job Search Strategies or Applying for a County Job

12 PM – Concurrent Sessions: Interviewing Skills or Starting Your Own Business

Free parking is available in the visitors’ garage behind the building, or it is a short walk from the Rockville Metro.

Partners: Montgomery County Office of Human Resources, Commission for Women Counseling and Career Center, U.S. Census, U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Montgomery Works, Montgomery County Volunteer Center, Montgomery County Department of Economic Development, Latino Economic Development Corporation, Montgomery County Department of Recreation and Coffey Consulting.

The Fair sounds like a great opportunity to build job seeking skills and explore new avenues to employment.

Lawyered Up

The ongoing >public debate over the location of a possible new District Courthouse appears to be generating much heat, but less light.

This is understandable. The prospect of having such a large building, with no parking, filled with people interacting with the legal system (a time when people are typically not at their most restrained or reasonable), hard by an historic district, church, and school for children as young as three is enough to unnerve anyone. (Note, too, that the three-year-olds are often moved outside from school building to school building.)

I believe the old library site is a poor choice for a new courthouse building. It’s just a silly spot for it, notwithstanding the convenience it would pose for lawyers and judges.

However, along with Mark Pierzchala, I get the sense that the debate so far has not given full due to the political facts of the issue. (He also makes a good point about whether we are giving a fair hearing to the other side too.)

A number of recent comments in this post appear to have embedded in them the notion that the City is facing a decision about where we want a new court house, or whether we should have one.

I may be very wrong, but my understanding is that it’s not in the City’s power to decide whether the state courts need a new building or not. Since the City unfortunately, and inadvertently, let pass (long ago) the deadline to officially object to the plans, there isn’t an official planning process to influence. (The state could, I believe, overrule such a process anyway.) The Montgomery County Council would essentially have to approve any move of the court house to the Giant site by giving up its right to take the old library site back in the event a court house is not built there — something they have all but promised they would do (notwithstanding Exec. Leggett’s agreement to “look into” the matter).

It is not just the local, District 17 state delegation that must be convinced — it is all state legislators from Montgomery County. Even if it were possible to convince all four District 17 legislators of the value of moving the court house site to the old Giant, there are 28 more legislators to go.

Finally, there are funding issues. In order for a move to the Giant site to happen, not only would the City of Rockville need to absorb a significant expenditure hit (possibly up to $5M but at least $1M or $2M to redesign the building) but, in addition, Governor O’Malley would have to expend a significant amount of political capital to ensure the funds for a moved court house remain available over multiple fiscal years (while, presumably, other jurisdictions throughout the state lobby to get a piece of that money for their own projects). That’s a lot to ask of a Governor who has already spent out a lot of chits on a special session and is now trying to get a budget passed.

I’m just little old me, but my read on this is that a move to the Giant, while far preferable to placing the new court house on the old library site, remains a very difficult sell. So much has to fall into place, with so many forces arrayed in opposition, in order for it to happen. Jupiter will have to align with Mars, to quote my favorite Broadway musical.

Given all this, Mayor Susan Hoffmann and the Council are really rolling a rock up a hill and I am proud of their efforts. In the dim, dark, past, I was a lobbyist (only for the forces of good) and know a little about how hard it is to make things happen. I will be stunned — in a good way — if they can pull it off.

Meanwhile, the Montgomery County Bar Association and other attorneys and judges are addressing their arguments where they will do a lot of good: to the full Montgomery County state delegation and to the Montgomery County council — both of which have the power to say “no” to the Giant site and “yes” to a court house. Rockville Central friend Brigitta Mullican has passed along some of their communications along to me (and to others, I am not airing any laundry here). Those interested in having a full understanding of what we are up against ought to read:

• A recent email from the Mary Ellen Flynn, Montgomery County Bar Association’s president, to the Montgomery County Council; and
• Chief Judge Ben Clyburn’s December letter to the Montgomery County delegation to Annapolis, along with a state report on the proposed Giant land swap.

My interpretation of things is that, given the state of play, one option the City faces is to try in various ways to stop any court house from being built by delaying (ironically, through the courts) for so long that the state money essentially disappears, claimed by other projects. Even this tactic is not guaranteed of success and I have doubts about its ethics. There is a lot of momentum behind a court house, and it is hard to argue with a straight face that a new court house is not needed.

I hope this is helpful. I don’t mean to be a downer, but it seemed worthwhile to spell out just what obstacles are standing in the way. I would love to hear comment from people who see other ways through this.

More Deer Hunting Allowed

In June, CindyCG >wrote an article chronicling her brushes with the rising deer population in Our Fair City. It seemed like every time you turned around, a car was colliding with Bambi or a cousin. The problem is that deer don’t have any natural predators around these parts . . . except humans (and, for fawns, coyotes).

As the article points out:

The only proven way to alleviate the problem is by lethal means, and there is a great deal of hunting on the public lands in the County. Archery and sharpshooting are being considered for use in smaller urban parks. You might be interested to know that contraceptives for wild deer are not approved by the FDA, though two studies of captive deer are underway.

Montgomery County Council to the rescue. On Tuesday, it unanimously approved a measure that would expand hunting throughout Montgomery County. According to AP (via WTOP):

Under the new rules, deer hunting will be allowed 50 yards away from a road, on smaller parcels than currently allowed if landowners together create a 50-acre parcel for hunting.

Deer hunting in Montgomery also would be permitted 150 yards away from a building that is occupied by animals but not people. That would allow hunting close to a barn that isn’t next to a house. Signs would have to be posted to tell neighbors about the impending hunt.

The county currently allows managed deer hunts in county parks several times a year, and there is an official deer hunting season in designated areas of the county. A managed hunt is under way at Little Bennett Regional Park off Interstate 270 north of Germantown, according to a county parks official.

All this starts in three months. Get ready!

Bicycle Advocate to Join Walkers

The >Frederick News Post reports that “Bicycle riders will be represented on Montgomery County’s Pedestrian Safety Advisory Committee if the county council approves the idea today of extending the committee until July 2012.”

More:

The committee set a goal of reducing pedestrian-vehicle collisions by 50 percent by 2005, but [County Executive Isaiah] Leggett recently sent a memo to Council President Marilyn Praisner saying, “We are nowhere near achieving that yet. In fact, 2006 saw the highest level of fatalities (18) since 2002.”

The chief sponsor of the move to add a bicycle advocate to the safety board, Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg, said that cycling “will become ever more central to the county’s efforts to meet the challenges of urban growth, public health and global warming.”