Contributor Opinion By Anne Robbins: Employee Compensation Program Unwise And Inappropriate

To All: For many, many months, I have fought this massive employee compensation, and it seemed that nobody, but Phyllis Marcuccio, our Rockville citizens, and members of other governments, have listened to me. Thank you, Randy Alton, for your recognition that residents have heard the call and will respond. Sadly, our friends in other governments, will think twice when Rockville needs a handout, and that day will come. Rockville taxpayers will pay higher fees and the 4th year of a property tax reduction rate has been scuttled, (I had hoped this would be an annual policy), to fund this unwise, untimely, and inappropriate $1.7 million dollar employee compensation plan. (I exempt our employees covered by a union contract, from any reduction, as I honor union contracts.)

Mayor [Susan] Hoffmann has written about ” punishing our hardworking staff” to not give this huge compensation to the Rockville employees; nothing could be further from the truth as I recognize and honor our superior work force, many of whom, I have known for years. I believe that it would give these employees a good feeling to join other governments in making a statement that, “we are all in the same boat”, recognizing that we are all living in the worst recession since after WWII.

Anne Robbins
City Council Member

This contributor opinion is by Council Member Anne Robbins. It is in response to a letter by Randy Alton published in the Gazette.

This is a contributor opinion. Rockville Central encourages readers to submit such opinions for consideration — the more voices the better. We especially welcome people who disagree with us. We ask that all such contributions be civil and we reserve the right to edit (in consultation with the author) or reject. Contributor opinions should not be seen as reflecting opinions held by Rockville Central editors, as they are just as frequently at odds with our own views. That’s the whole point!

Contributor Opinion By Mark Pierzchala: Support Closure Of Princeton Place Fence; Only Open When Smoking Areas Are Provided On Campus

This is a contributor opinion. Rockville Central encourages readers to submit such opinions for consideration — the more voices the better. We especially welcome people who disagree with us. We ask that all such contributions be civil and we reserve the right to edit (in consultation with the author) or reject. Contributor opinions should not be seen as reflecting opinions held by Rockville Central editors, as they are just as frequently at odds with our own views. That’s the whole point!

The following contributor opinion is by Mark Pierzchala.

One more note. Mark has announced that he is running for City Council. We do not know of other declared candidates yet; as we do, we will try to make sure we provide a balanced forum for all voices.

Dear College Garden Neighbors (via the College Gardens Forum ListServe),

Montgomery College has informed the City of Rockville that with respect to the Princeton Place access to Montgomery College, it plans to “modify and close the opening of the fence to provide immediate relief for the residents. College and city staff agree that immediate relief has to be provided to those residents most adversely affected by the College’s Tobacco Free Campus policy. The College expects to close the opening and erect a new fence beginning as soon as February 28, 2009.”


The information above comes from an internal City memorandum dated February 23, 2009. One of the action items on the memorandum is that there will be a stakeholder’s meeting on March 16 where various options will be presented and feedback from the stakeholders gathered.
Since I’m running for City Council some people including some neighbors would like me to reiterate my oft-stated position on this issue. There are two points: First, given the current Montgomery College policy of absolutely no smoking on campus, I support the closure of the fence to provide relief for the campus’s near neighbors on Princeton Place. The impacts on them have been severe and real. Second, I would support the re-opening of the fence but only if this is accompanied by the implementation of a smoking area on campus. I can’t see any other solution that would provide permanent relief to the Princeton Place residents while re-establishing access.

Please keep in mind that it is Montgomery College that has caused the problem. The Princeton Place residents are defending their children and their property; I can’t fault them for that. We should not allow unilateral action by Montgomery College to cause a rift in our neighborhoods.

With the current MC policy, either keeping the gate open or closing it, would have negative impacts on the community. This fact was clearly established in Citizen’s Forum to Mayor and Council and in testimony to the Planning Commission and the MC Board of Trustees the past several weeks. It is my opinion that the only unifying position foHTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:26:34 GMT Server: Apache X-Pingback: http://rockvillecentral.com/xmlrpc.php Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

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