The HM seems to be ignoring the City Government lately, with the city budget up for approval etc. don't you think the HM would have more to write about than world politics etc. , they ain't local.

The problem is, the council hasn't said anything stupid lately. As far as more important issues, they've all been tabled for lack of Penny's interest.

If it'll make you feel any better we all read Immer's editorial on doing away with the city govt. and charter and letting the county run everything

I guess everyone is tired of reading those too. not even a passing mention or a councilperson or commissioner rebuttal (yet).

I thought Immer moved out of the city?

He might have but you know the old saying "Its hard to teach an old WATCHDOG new tricks"


I wish they would just make him mayor for a week to see how many of these 'great ideas" of his would actually fly

I can't believe I'm about to defend Penny, but...

She's actually been very aggressive about trying to get a vicious animal ordinance passed. It's been brought up before a regular session once or twice, only to be tabled, and it's nearly been discussed to death at the worksessions. To her credit, she lambastes her fellow council members at every turn when they delay it. Looks like they finally have a version that's ready to pass though. We'll see how it goes!

I'm not impressed.

Isn't Immer on the City Planning Commission?? Isn't it the job of those on the commission to be watchdogs?

A non-city resident on a city planning commission?

The future is here now. All debates will now be settled here: http://www.googlefight.com/

As examples: http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=...y+of+hagerstown

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=...n+in+hagerstown

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=...amp;word2=parks

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=...p;word2=flipper

That is all

If anyone here would know it would be you

He is still a city resident yoss

I'm sure that the M&C knew better than anyone here, when the appointed him to the PC

Oh, ok.. so he moved back then?

as long as we don't have another parson/beangate.

It seems as if you love to gossip over the fence, and show how little you really know about much. By the way when did he move outside the CL??

Yoss, you old gossip monger!!!

I had a professional/business contact with him. It's not gossip. Approx a year (more or less) or so ago. I personally spoke with him.

So, it's better if you just ignore me. And not press the issue. And I in turn, will not press it any further.

Got to love a mod who "puffs out his chest" when confronted.



Do you feel lucky punk, well do ya?

shaddup patton...

Yoss's problem is that he tries to read between the lines in the HM, a dangerous thing

And your problem is when caught in a lie, you don't know how to exit gracefully.

What was that relationship you claimed to have had, and where did you personally speak to him or her? What was the lie you now claim to have caught him/her in? Doing this all without speculating about the real identity of that person.

Also don't you think, Yoss< that a mod hijacking a topic for his own personal puffery is a bit outside the scope of the job description?????????????

You have trouble with reading comprehension don't you?

I'm not going to reveal the relationship, nor the location of the conversation, it's none of your business. As far as the lie, the lie wasn't about him. Speculating? I think not, his identity was revealed on here by himself when he posted here.

I didn't hijack this topic. You mentioned he was on a city commission. I asked if he was living in the city, as I had information as to otherwise. You're hijacking this topic by bringing this up again and again.

And lastly, I'm a forum member and poster first, and a mod second. Get angry all you want. I asked a simple question and you've taken it upon yourself to hijack this topic and blow it all out of proportion.

You want this topic closed too?

Immer must be black. Why else would Yoss pick on him so????

Well the vote is in 3-2 to screw the City of Hagerstown Taxpayers once again. Thank you Kelly and Martin for having a set of balls. Thank you Mayor for turing this into an issue of Public safety (BullSH&T) and kissing Lew's backside. Way to go, you ROCK!!!!!!

Time to pack because my butthole is hurtin!!!!

Lew knew the Mayor was going to veto it so we got to listen to Lew's crapola.

Then we got to listen to Penny's sound reasoning how she doesn't like all these things in the budget but she's going to vote for it because of the firefighters.

Yet during the work sessions I didn't hear her bring up all those things she didn't like.

Ain't this a great city council.

I'm surprised any of you are shocked by this. Any chance they get they turn the screws

I'm selling and moving to Smithsburg. Well, someday soon anyway. YAY ME!

I tried to watch this fiasco last night but had to keep changing the channel. At the end, I thought oh boy the self congratulations continue...

I loved how they 'kept' the property tax rate at 94.8cents/$100 value and assumed the value of the properties will go up to increase the revenue anyway...

They may be in for a shock--the average price of a home in Wash Cty has decreasad alot in the past 6 months..I do periodically watch the real estate channel...and it is full of 'new reduced price'..

Of course they still increased the water & sewer bills--minor increases according to them..but I do not get a 3.5 raise each year, do you?

Didn't they just raise the water/sewer service last September or October? And as a utility aren't they regulated by the Public Service Commission?

Nope, they won't raise taxes, they'll just raise "fees". And, Penny's so afraid her house will burn down if she doesn't approve hiring more firefighters.

Yoss - I thought Penny was fearful of weeds from the photos she kept showing!

I've got it! Penny is afraid one of the towns homeless people is going to set the weeds in her yard on fire and burn down her house

That's it! Maybe McBean will visit her on her 'walks' because she is finally going to leave her house!

Hag, explain to me how the city taxpayers got screwed. How I turned this into a public safety issue. If you can do that, I will gladly take any abuse you have to offer. But, when you respond, keep in mind that I plan on giving you the correct information as to what transpired last night on the budget vote. I will be patiently waiting.

thanks,

The Rock

I'll miss you coma

Its nice out in the county

5.8% I beleive was what was reported in the Baltimore Sun.
That is exactly why I agreed not to veto the budget IF the amendment was added to put the funding in place for the public safety personnel and not authorize the hiring of any until we as a body can look at the direction of the budget in Dec. and decide what, if any, we can afford this budget year and the affect on future budgets. The hiring of any public safety personnel will have to be done by ordinance according to the amendment and I have the right to veto that ordinance if the vote is a 3-2 vote. I can ofcourse veto a 4-1, but that would be playing politics, and that I will leave up to Kelly.

OUCH! I guess we will have to wait for Mrs. Cromers rebuttal now

We'll see--just like our governments to have a backbone some of the time. At least they did not bring up the VA church thing again!

If that sounded mean, it was not meant to be. I merely want to point out that it is easy to vote against something when there are three votes for it. It is reminiscent of Bill Wivell and John Munson commissioner days.
To vote for an amendment to the budget, which basically puts the expenditure of the majority of funds on hold until future months of discussions, and then vote against the budget makes no sense to me. The amendment protects the taxpayers and allows for time to have serious discussion about the budget that will encompass Marty's suggestions, and hopefully my reductions in the amount of $400,000 this year and more in the next two years.

Since this is the city govt. thread I have a city question unrelated to the budget that hopefully Bob or Kelly might like to address.

The recent shooting at this Zippers club has been the second such incident in the last 8 months. I seem to recall that the bar Barracudas
was closed or lost their license forcing them to close because of the high number of police calls to the establishment.

Shouldnt this zippers place at the very least lose their liquor license or better yet be closed all together due to public safety concerns?
Its just a matter of time before it goes from patrons shooting patrons to some innocent bystander out on the street catching a stray to the head.

Just a thought. thanks for your responses. now back to bickering over the budget

Sat with HPD this morning and talked about this very issue. Once the investigation is concluded, I am sure that this option will be explored. I too am concerned that not only will patrons in the bar be harmed, but if it escalates into the street, no one knows what could be the outcome. I only know that there are grave concerns about the bar and the attempts to police themselves.

Kudos for being on top of it Bob!

x2--we do not need shootings in the street--innocent people get hurt.

Now onto another more important question--where can the dogs walk? Maybe in Penny's weedy lot?

Rock Hard Bob,

I apologize for my tone but I must admit that I was highly disappointed in your decision last night.

Please explain to us taxpayers why this amendment truly makes a difference because it does not. The only thing it did was to prolong the approval of hiring these firefighters and police officers to a later date. I will wager some money that when the vote comes to approve these hires regardless of what the budget looks like (because you just put the position in the budget) they will be voted for hire. I wouldn't even be surprised if the vote is 5-0 because no one is going to want to look like they are against public safety. Everyone last night was defending that already.

You probably can't say but I am just wondering why most of the council feels that the City is a charity case. It is not!!!!! When you do your own finances do you say boy I would like to help this non-profit out and this non-profit out and this non-profit out and I need a new pool and I need a new car and I need this and that? Yes you probably do but the difference is that you then see how much money you have knowing that you are not getting a raise and buy what you NEED and not EVERYTHING you WANT. Of course a few wants are in there but I bet the first thing to be cut is donation to charities (NON PROFITS). I don't want anyone to misunderstand me, I am not against Non-profits. I have worked for them for the past 10 years and overall I feel that they are usually run better than any state agency. They also provide a service that most for profits are not interested in. The problem I have is spending TAX PAYERS MONEY differently than you would spend your own money.

Everything that came out of Lew's mouth was HORSESH*T. He wanted to pass this budget and talked in a circle for 30 minutes and the vote was approved. This budget had much more to do with hiring 9 positions. (Kelly said this very eloquently)

Rock hard Bob you are not to blame this council is, I just thought you would have directed these folks to hash it out before this meeting. I mean the one thing I don't understand is that you have all of these work sessions and the discussion comes down to the night of the vote to bring up what to cut from the budget, that is ridiculous.

You should watch the replay of the meeting because what was portrayed to the public was this:
1)Council was not prepared to vote 2)Lew-don't care how high taxes become as long as we have the service; which in turn will get him the votes from the unions and employees. 3)We have had two council members over the past few years that have dissected the budget (Martin, Aleshire) to save taxpayers money and the majority of council not interested; just sign the check!!!4)Kelly had many concerns but did not bring them up at work session so they must not have been important; if in fact she did not bring these issues up in work session, then what the hell did you guys discuss during these sessions (let me guess firefighter or no firefighter; firefighters or no firefighters; firefighters or no firefighters). and last but surely not least from Ms. Parsons-McBean, as long as Jonathan street is not cut from the budget that is all I care about, so thats a yes vote for me thank you.

When times are tough the council needs to be tougher. With the price of gas, electric, w&s, and taxes there is no reason to live in the city. I believe Kid is on the border of City line and I would love to know what advantages he has compared to his next door neighbor that lives in the County????

"Rock Hard Bob" Now thats funny!

You gotta admit one thing Kid is a genius! talk about getting out at the right time

If we were really behind this issue, we as a County and City and all towns for that matter would have worked together to support the requested amendments that the liquor board requested to our State Delegation, which in part would have given the Board greater enforcement authority over such very occurences that are not specifically liquor related, but moreso violations of public safety within the establishment. This has been a constant uphill battle for the City over time, which I believe the City has done a good job in gaining ground, but at great public dollar expense. This part of the requested legislation would have only furthered that cause to provide leverage to the Liquor Board to better address these very instances, and reduced the cost to the community in making our neighborhoods more safe by making such establishments more accountable. Unfortunately the other half of the legislation dealing with certification of servers through TAM classes to be on site during operations was opposed by some who expressed such to several members of our Delegation utlimately killing the entire package of amendments as a whole. Like Dukes, Meda's Double T, McBare's and others along the way, it looks like the City will have to press on with what support the Board has at this time to win another step up this hill.

It's not your fault Bob. It's the fact that many of these idiot citizens keep voting Lew and Penny to the freakin' council. I'll still be working downtown and go to the usual places. Besides, the real estate market sucks right now... I'd consider myself extremely lucky if I could sell my house.

Okay, but first, Kristen's house wouldn't burn to the ground waiting on a volunteer fire force. He would be better protected than is neighbor if someone broke into his house and HPD responded in two minutes instead of waiting 20 or more for a Deputy or State Trooper. He won't be paying that 16% rate increase that other county residents are going to pay on joint lines.
Now, since I caved last night and compromised that if an amendment was added to the budget that would require a vote by council to approve an ordinance to hire additional public safety personnel, and did not veto the budget, we still have the ability to work on some cuts and postpone some CIP projects that could save us substantial money in our general fund. Without that amendment, hiring would have happened and we would have found out about it after the firefighters, police were through the academy and on the job. This move at least gives us the opportunity to do the right thing, and if I am not satisified with the savings in this years budget, and future budgets to stave off a tax increase, I can and will veto an ordinance that is supported in a 3-2 vote. It takes a 4-1 to override my veto and I don't believe that Kelly nor Marty will be compliant and just go along to get along. But to not adopt the money in the budget would mean to rush and make rash decisions not based on information but on emotions, so that a balanced budget could be presented and signed by June 1st.
I believe that we must address the overtime money and CIP projects that are general fund funded along with purchases that are GF funded to reach a reasonable balanced budget and decrease any need for a tax increase in the out years. Plus, throw in additional tax setoff money from the county and some Recordation and Title Transfer Tax money, and there you have it.
My big fear is what will happen at the State level this year. The Gov. has already ordered all department heads to find at least $200 Million in cuts, so without a doubt that will affect us negatively in the coming year. We must not depend on the numbers estimated in the budget for increased revenue when it was already eluded to here in this thread that the housing market is falling and along with that will be assessments. Making educated, informed decisions in Dec and Jan when we have a road map of revenue is the right thing to do.
I hope this helps you in understanding the compromise I made last night and reasons why.

Bob

Very nicely put but you have one problem. See regardless of what some on the City Council think not all of us are stupid or don't remember things. I think most of us remember what all happened with the wage study and its passage. Correct me if I am wrong was there not a similar move made and then when everyone wasn't paying attention it got passed? I believe Lew put forth the arguement that it couldn't go through until he contracts got voted on or some such nonsense.

The old saying is once burned, twice shy. I think everyone here figures that it is a done deal but it was easier to pass things this way for the moment then hit us when we aren't looking. Are you willing to promise no new taxes for the next year, even if this all gets passed ?

Tony