Last year when I started attending Cecil County Council meetings and following the work of the county government more closely, I frequently saw the same faces and heard the same voices decrying what they considered overspending by the county. I didn’t realize it then but these same people are active year round, not just during budget season. Here’s audio from public comment portion of the 12/2/14 county council meeting
Your Silence Gives Your Consent
Imagine you’re a member of the County Council–nearly every week you hear from a handful of people who believe spending should be reduced in all areas of government. Those same people repeatedly claim that “you promised to cut spending when you were campaigning” and that “I helped you get elected and you are letting us down.”
Anyway, every week, at every meeting, you hear those same people talk about the same concerns. If you don’t also hear from those who support spending for schools, parks and recreation, emergency services, or other programs, you could believe that these residents speak for the majority. It’s time for the rest of us to show our support for the programs we feel are necessary to make Cecil County stronger.
County Council Meetings are Held on 1st and 3rd Tuesdays
I know you’re rushing to prepare for the Christmas holiday, but would you add one thing to your to-do list? If you support public education in Cecil County, please reach out to our County Executive and County Council to let them know where you stand.
The Board of Education for Cecil County Public Schools has started developing the budget for fiscal year 2016 and, after several years of reduced funding from the county, the school system is now in a precarious position. The system has been forced to deplete its reserve fund to cover some of those shortfalls yet there are still many needs that lack funding. Click here to read more about the school budget
or “How I used Content Marketing to get a school a track”
3/18/19: And a turf field.
But more importantly, I regularly remind Cecil County government that education funding is their responsibility.
I don’t remember anything else about the movie Better Off Dead but I do remember the paperboy who kept turning up demanding his payment.
I like to think I’m the mom version of that kid.
A few weeks ago, I was asked to speak about some trouble I stirred up in the spring. I won’t lie, I was nervous, but it was an honor and a thrill to speak to a like-minded group of parents, teachers, administrators, and students all supporting the work of Cecil County Public Schools.
My comments from that night:
Before this spring, I considered myself a pretty well informed parent–I was PTA treasurer at PES, I attended parent meetings on various topics, and I voted in every election.
Boy, was I wrong–I had–and still have–a lot to learn about how school systems and government agencies interact. But I’ve seen a community working together to make great things happen. By giving people information about a topic they’re passionate about in a way that’s easy for them to digest and pointing them in the right direction, you can create a force to be reckoned with. It all started with a bare soccer field and a Facebook post. I saw a Facebook post from CCPS asking for people to attend a county council meeting on March 18 in support of the CCPS budget. I decided to attend that evening’s meeting but I had no idea what I would say. To be honest, I was more specifically angling to talk with someone about the sorry state of our soccer field.
I sent a quick email to our principal and athletic director to ask about any Perryville-specific projects that I should advocate for–and they both responded with track, fields, field house. Now, I had no idea what a field house was but I’d heard people complain about the lack of one at Perryville and I didn’t know anything about the state of the track–but I could tell you that our fields were beyond bare.
At that meeting, several parents and CCPS employees spoke about the specific needs of their schools–needs that included increased staffing and services–but most glaringly–the needs for maintenance of the facilities. I am not a public speaker and I was terrified to walk up to that microphone but, after hearing the pleas for funding, and the responses of some of the council members, I needed to do my part.
As I spoke to the council, I realized that, just as I had no idea how the county government worked, they had no idea what the facilities at PHS looked like and what our needs were. And that’s when I decided to bring Perryville High School to them–online. That Sunday afternoon I took photos of athletic facilities at Perryville–then I drove to Rising Sun and North East High Schools, thinking their facilities had to be better than ours–I was wrong again–to my uneducated eye, those schools weren’t faring any better. That evening I posted those first photos on my blog and shared them on my Facebook page. Read more
This evening WMAR posted a story about their investigation into interoperability issues in the radio communications between Harford and Cecil Counties, focusing on an incident on September 15 when an officer with the Susquehanna Hose Company (SHCO) from Havre de Grace (Harford County) was injured fighting a fire in Elkton.
While I’m not a first responder, I am the daughter, granddaughter, and niece of former members of SHCO so this story hits close to my heart. Now a resident of Perryville (Cecil County), I wrote in July about what I perceived to be a breakdown in emergency radio communications. Read it here
I’m hoping this isn’t the last we hear of this story.
Repaving of the Perryville High School parking lot is underway! It’s a shame it had to wait for so long but it’s finally happening due to Cecil County Council bill 2014-10. Paving at Rising Sun High and North East High are also included in the bill so I’m hoping those school lots are getting some much-needed attention.
Several seats on the county council will be up for election on November 4. These positions are critical in determining the amount of funding our local schools get each year so be sure to vote–and know where the candidate you choose stands on funding public education.
When I was a teenager with a new driver’s license growing up in Havre de Grace, I reached every destination via Tydings Park. It didn’t matter if I was heading from home on Weber Street (aka “the project”) to work downtown or to the mall in Bel Air, I was going to drive through the park on my way there. By this time in the late ’80’s, teenagers weren’t permitted to loiter, er, congregate in the yacht basin so I’m not sure what my goal was but I still circled the park daily in my dad’s El Camino or, later, my AMC Concorde.
With such a track record, it doesn’t seem quite so weird that I’ve been cruising through the parking lot at Perryville High School during the last few months. I’ve tried to pass through when the parking lot was empty to keep the rumors to a minimum but I have to admit yesterday morning I was surprised to have been seen by several people as I was making a drive-through on my way to work.
Since they broke ground in May, I’ve been dying to see the new track at the high school. I stopped a few times and all but pressed my nose through the fence to get a better look and checked each entrance to make sure that the track wasn’t accessible to the general public. It was even one of the reasons I attended graduation in June.
New track at Perryville High School unveiled
Tonight I had a few minutes to kill so I took another pass through the parking lot in hopes that the gates would be unlocked–and I was in luck! Four months after I took my first photos of the disintegrating track surface at Perryville High School, I was able to walk on a pristine track! Feast your eyes on these sights!
Our work as a community is far from done but for the moment, let’s enjoy the results of this group effort. As one of our parents told the Cecil County Council, our schools are our homes–and our home just got quite a makeover. Read more about our efforts to get a new track
Emailed on 7/9/14 to Cecil County Executive Tari Moore, Director of Cecil County Department of Emergency Services Richard Brooks, and the Cecil County Council:
I am concerned about the reliability of the emergency communications system in Cecil County. In the recent past I’d heard rumblings about problems with radio communications but several weeks ago I witnessed a failure of the communications system and it seems that communications issues continue this week. Reliable and interoperable radio communications are imperative for public safety and for the safety of our emergency responders. I encourage you to evaluate the current system and address any issues that create opportunities for system failure. Read more
If my requirements for attending a concert included:
Folding chairs–packed so tightly that everyone on the entire row had to stand, fold their chair, and pick up anything they may have set on the floor in order to let anyone into the row which still didn’t allow enough room for someone to pass without completely invading your personal space. And within the row we were damn near shoulder to shoulder so that I could feel the stranger next to me raise her arm to drink. Because there was no pitch to the floor and most people stand during a Rick Springfield concert, the sight lines from the orchestra section were terrible. Wait! Have I been teleported back to the late 80’s where I’m standing in floor seating at a Rush concert in Baltimore? Certainly felt like it. We ended up moving up into the mezzanine section for Pat Benatar’s show so that we could get a better view of the show.
Surly security–Dude, I will go back to my seat (you freaking-buzzkill-at-a-Rick-Springfield-concert) but I have to wait until these people get to their seats first. Yeah, I know you have to “clear the aisle” but you really need to think about a career that’s not in the hospitality industry. Needless to say, I couldn’t wait until Rick went into the crowd for Human Touch and security was crapping Twinkies trying to keep the aisles clear.
Lines for the bathrooms–both mens’ and womens’–every bathroom in the place–with an unusual mix of casino guests and beach goers.
Destination Weirdness–from the parking garage elevators we flowed into a sea of people with small children, strollers, and beach paraphernalia who were going back to the garage with $5 parking. There was a picture window overlooking the beach but little evidence that we had arrived in a flashy new casino. We’ve been to the Borgata nearly every time Rick has played there and this place was tackily decorated and poorly layed out in comparison.
…then Ovation Hall at Revel Casino in Atlantic City would be the place for me.
Credit to the performers–Rick and band were great as expected. I didn’t have an appreciation for the talents of Neil Geraldo until I saw him perform last night and Pat Benatar didn’t disappoint.
Revel Ovation Hall, ORCH2, Row MM, Seat 28, standing with phone over my head
Today (Thursday) is the last day for early voting in the Maryland Primary. Residents of Cecil County can vote at the County Administration Building between 10 AM and 8 PM. There’s a map at the bottom of this page. Read more
On this date in 1999, my husband experienced the real extent of my Rick Springfield obsession. After seeing Rick at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD, four or five years in a row in the 1980’s, I still remember calling home from senior week and my mom telling me that the concert scheduled for the summer of 1988 had been cancelled. In a time before the internet there wasn’t the 24/7 celebrity gossip that there is today and I had no idea why he cancelled–and stopped recording new music.
In April 1999 he released “Karma” and in June he performed at Hersheypark–not in the stadium, in the amphitheater inside the park. We arrived around noon to find people already lined up for the 5 PM show so I sat down on the asphalt with the rest of the groupies, baking in the sun and listening to sound check while the Great Bear roller coaster zipped by overhead. (Wait! Is that the intro to “Souls?” Yes!)
And then the show started–and I burst into tears the minute Rick appeared on stage during the intro to “Affair of the Heart.” Before that moment, I never understood why all those girls got hysterical at the sight of the Beatles. Steve asked me several times if I was OK then he took the camera from my hands and started taking photos because I couldn’t cry, sing, and take photos at the same time.
There were two shows that day and Steve insisted we stay. There were no tears during that concert and I joined a small group of ladies near the stage. It was the first time a bouncer shooed me away and the only time one succeeded.
“We all need the human touch…”
Fast forward 14 years and 364 days–
Two cruises and more shows than I can count later–last night I went to the sound check at Rams’ Head Center Stage. The first of three shows (so far) I’ll be going to this year.
My father said, “If the boy wants to play guitar, I say we let him.”
