Howardcounty

tl;dr: Vote for Tom Coale for Maryland House of Delegates, District 9B. Before I publish my main post for today, a brief public service announcement: If you live in District 9B and haven’t yet voted, please consider giving Tom Coale your vote for Delegate. For the most part this is a nonpartisan blog, and I have a pretty strict policy of not endorsing candidates for office, even for nonpartisan positions like those on the Board of Education. The only exception I’ve ever made (and likely ever will make) is for Tom. I think he would make a great representative for the people of Ellicott City; my only regret is that I live across US 40 from District 9B and can’t vote for him. (Although if Tom wins this election and performs at the level I think he’s capable of, I think in future I and a lot of other people will in fact get our chance to elect him to something else.) ...

Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend the Columbia Association board meeting this evening. Here are the remarks I had planned to make during the speak-out portion of the meeting; if anyone else wants to crib from these for their own remarks please feel free to do so: I have two points I wanted to make tonight: First, I have not seen the language of the Inner Arbor Trust easement, and am not qualified to comment on legal issues relating to the easement. However I have read pretty much every public source of information I could find relating to the various proposals for Symphony Woods, and everything I’ve read indicates that the Columbia Association has been accepting of the actions taken by the Inner Arbor Trust since its creation. That includes in particular the Trust’s decision to leverage the work already done by CA as part of the county planning process, and concentrate first on developing the part of Symphony Woods covered by the current Inner Arbor plan—a plan whose elements are those contained in the original CA-submitted Final Development Plan, including an amphitheater, café, play area, and so on. There is nothing in the public record to indicate that the Inner Arbor Trust was ever acting in violation of the easement as far as CA was concerned. If the current CA board is determined to test the issue in court I believe that the private record of dealings between CA and the Inner Arbor Trust will also show this to be the case. ...

The Chrysalis in Symphony Woods / Merriweather Park in the Inner Arbor plan. (Click for high-resolution version.) Image © 2013 Inner Arbor Trust; used with permission. Marc Fornes, the designer of the Chrysalis, the amphitheater planned for Symphony Woods as part of the Inner Arbor plan, and his firm THEVERYMANY are one of two winners of the 2014 WAN 21 for 21 award sponsored by World Architecture News, “an initiative aiming to highlight 21 architects who could be the leading lights of architecture in the 21st century.” ...

The Maryland 2014 primaries are now over, and it’s time for me to wrap up and name some final winners. I’ve had a busy past few weeks with a dozen posts critiquing more than six dozen signs (plus one car magnet). In case you want to revisit signs in any of the primary races, here’s the complete list of posts (rearranged from the order in which I posted them): Howard County County Executive Council District 1 Sheriff State’s Attorney Judge of the Orphans’ Court Board of Education Maryland State Senate District 9 Districts 12 and 13 Maryland House of Delegates District 9A District 9B District 12 District 13 Note that I’ve updated the Board of Education and House of Delegates District 12 posts to add pictures of signs for Allen Dyer and Eric Ebersole respectively. ...

Today is primary day, and the day I cover the last of the local campaign signs, this time for Howard County Executive candidates Allan Kittleman and Courtney Watson (both of whom happen to be unopposed in the primaries). Here are the signs, in alphabetical order by candidate, along with my comments, according to the criteria I’ve previously discussed. I’ve previously written about the problems inherent in using all four colors of the Maryland flag in a single sign. This sign handles those problems as well as they can be handled, mainly by avoiding the red text on yellow background found in signs from Trent Kittleman, Frank Mirabile, and others. Instead this sign carefully restricts itself to the exact color juxtapositions found the Maryland flag: black with yellow, and red with white. More specifically, it restricts itself to what I think are the best color combinations: black text on a yellow background and white text on a red background. ...

With the primary one day away, I’m close to the end of this campaign sign adventure. Today we look at the signs in the race for Howard County Council in District 1, a seat left open when Courtney Watson decided to run for Howard County Executive. The candidates are Democrats Dave Grabowski, Lisa Markovitz, Wendy Royalty, and Jon Weinstein, and Republicans David Blake Melton and Kevin Forrest Schmidt. Here are the signs, in alphabetical order by candidate, along with my comments, according to the criteria I’ve previously discussed. Note that I could not find any signs for David Blake Melton. ...

Today I take a break from party primaries and look at the signs for the Board of Education race. There are 13 candidates in this race: Bess Altwerger, Corey Andrews, Maureen Evans Arthurs, Tom Baek, Zaneb Beams, Olga Butler, Allen Dyer, Sandra French, Dan Furman, Leslie Kornreich, Christine O’Connor, Mike Smith, and Cindy Vaillancourt. FourEight of them will go on to the general election. Here are the signs, in alphabetical order by candidate, along with my comments, according to the criteria I’ve previously discussed. Thanks to Corey Andrews for sending in a picture of his sign. I couldn’t find any signs for Zaneb Beams and Dan Furman. I did see one sign for Allen Dyer, but couldn’t stop to take a picture; by the time I came back later that day the sign was gone. ...

The Maryland State Senate races in Districts 12 and 13 are relatively quiet in terms of signs, especially since none of the candidates have opposition in the primary: Incumbent Ed Kasemeyer is unopposed in the Democratic primary in District 12, and will run against Republican Jesse Pippy in the general election. In District 13 Democrat Guy Guzzone will face off against Republican Jody Venkatesan to win the seat being vacated by retiring Senator Jim Robey. ...

With this post I turn my attention to signs for candidates for Maryland State Senate, starting with District 9. Gail Bates is giving up her current House of Delegates seat for District 9A in order to run for this Senate seat, which became open when Allan Kittleman decided to run for Howard County Executive. Bates is unopposed in the Republican primary. On the Democratic side Ryan Frederic and Daniel Medinger are vying for the right to run against her. ...

Since election day is not far off it’s time to pick up the pace and look at the signs for the Maryland House of Delegates race in District 13. On the Democratic side there are five candidates for the three positions: the “Team 13” slate of Vanessa Atterbeary, Shane Pendergrass, and Frank Turner (along with Guy Guzzone for State Senate), and then Fred Eiland and Nayab Siddiqui as the “challengers.” On the Republican side there are only three candidates, Danny Eaton, Jimmy Williams, and Chris Yates, all of whom will go on to the general election. ...