Good

Evening Commissioners: I have to tell youyou all certainly are movers and shakersand you have shaken this community up so much with your agenda that in a mere matter of weeks, they have mobilized into a group determined to change the direction you are currently headed. The rallies have never been organized by the employees. There was, and is too much fear among them to take a stand against your proposals to privatize their jobs. I can say this as a fact, because along with many individuals, small groups, and organizations I was one of the many organizers. I will share with you that in nearly 20 years of advocacy work on behalf of public education and issues related to balanced growth in our county, I have never seen a movement grow so quickly. Our community was deeply concerned about what many saw as the dismantling of our local government through privatization. Our community was deeply concerned for the well being of our county employees who are our neighbors, our friends, and our families. It was our community that stood up for our employees, and in fact for the future of Frederick. I have a friend of mine who commented recently that the actions this board has taken over the past 7 months is just breathtaking in its scope and speed. To highlight just a few actions of this board: The attempt to weaken the Ethics Commission rulings on conflict of interest, particularly in Commissioner Kirbys circumstances. The privatization of Head Start, and 70 of our youngest children living in poverty were tossed out of their ECE program, and many employees and families were thrown into chaos The establishment of a charter writing committee charged with changing our form of government The proposal to downsize and outsource 25-50% of our third largest employer to the lowest bidder, The termination of many of our most highly qualified mid-level management employees, which has already had a negative effect on our local businesses one owner told me in fact that since those terminations, his business has dropped by 20%. And I could go on, but for the sake of brevity, I will stop there. Our county employees did take a stand however in their testimony to this board over the course of 2 public hearings. They spoke both eloquently and with documented facts about the real state of county government as it is today and the factual errors in Oliver Porters report. During their testimony, it became clear how dedicated and passionate they are about their departments, the work that they do, and their commitment to being good stewards of the public tax payer dollar. Many

spoke of how their divisions have already been downsized, they spoke of creative ways that they have already implemented to do more with less, and they spoke of their commitment to providing high quality services to our citizens. In all, they pro- offerred more than 37 ideas to help save on the operating and capitol budgets. Some even offered to take paycuts and furloughs. These are our hardworking and devoted public servants. And I for one, thank them for their service. There was also testimony from the finance division that Frederick County is not in as dire straights as it is being made out to be, and is actually positioned well for a recovery. There have been a number of citizens who have also analyzed the budget and concur. I am not sure how we can have such a dire fiscal situation when revenues are up, we are beginning to recover economically, we have a surplus of $11million dollars, and thanks to the last board being fiscally responsible our bond rating is doing so well? Which leads me to question your commitment to economic development and being pro-business. At a time when our 5th largest employer Bechtel, is looking to relocate to another jurisdiction, why would we want to create an even higher unemployment rate with reducing out county workforce in our 3rd largest employer by 25- 50%? Why would be put at risk our downtown businesses who depend on our county workforce to shop and dine downtown during their lunch break or after their work day? I think most folks who talk about being pro-business are dedicated to creating jobs, not decimating them. All of this leads me to wonder whether it is the state of the budget that has led us to this precipice, or a commitment to an extreme political ideology of if not eliminating government, severely limiting it. This tactic of using budgets as a justification for seriously limiting the size and scope of government has been taking place across the nation at both the state and local level. I am left to wonder if you are more committed to that ideology over the well being of our county employees, our economic vitality, and the very future of our county! I often hear Commissioner Young talk about his mandate from the voters of this county in the past election. While you did have a majority vote in the 2010 election, I do not believe that the people of this county gave you a mandate to fundamentally change our local government through dismantling it employee by employee. Our county employees ARE our county government. I do not believe the voters gave you a mandate to wreak havoc on the lives of our county employees through the fear and stress of losing their jobs. They may have elected you for perhaps several reasons, but it was not to throw the community into chaos with an iron fist and the use of tactics that invoked fear and stress in the lives of so many. I do not believe the voters gave you a mandate to use the budget as a reason to dramatically change our

county government or to increase the unemployment numbers in our county. The mandate you think you have has now met the pushback of a community that cares. Lastly Commissioner Young, you have said the hard work ahead is in restoring the trust and confidence of our public employees, and I would add the community at large. Trust, once broken is hard to earn back and it takes time. I would respectfully offer the following as a beginning to restablishing the trust and faith of those around you: Apologize to the employees and their families for the stress that has been a daily nightmare for months for so many of them. Do not furlough them, take away their pay by reducing salaries and/or benefits. Instead, seriously consider the many ideas they have offered to you to be good fiscal stewards of not only our tax dollars, but also our community as a whole. Make good on righting the wrongs that have already been committed in the past several months for the sake of reducing government costs and fully reinstitute Head Start, programs for our elderly, the hungry, and homelessand hire back those employees that you let go in the Spring Vote to privatize only when needed by adding temps in when divisions are understaffed and a project needs additional personnel. Treat this job as the full time job it is, commit to mangagement and leadership by walking, and get to know your employees and their ideas for efficiency and what they do in their jobs. Make a commitment to look into consulting firms such as APQC, a firm that works with school districts around the nation to help find efficiencies in multiple arenas that do not include outsourcing employees and services. Like Oliver Porter, there is a $25,000 dollar fee. But unlike Oliver Porter, if APQC can not find $25, 000 in savings to you, they will reimburse you! In the end, each individual commissioner on this board will show our community by its votes and actions whether they are a good public steward of our government and our community. Those votes will determine whether this community works with you or against you, and I would caution that this movement that has arisen over a period of about 7 weeks is small compared to what could be organized over the next 3 and a half years.

Perhaps an editorial written by the Frederick News Post said it best, If we had to do the 2010 election for the Board of County Commissioners over again, we wonder how huge an issue privatizing aspects of county services would have been.

Would it have dwarfed the controversial topic of growth, or the

acid debate over building and running a giant waste-to-energy incinerator next to a national battlefield? We believe it would have rivaled both those issues, and indeed that the hurricane swirling up around public-private partnerships may radically change the face of the elected county board again in 2014. Pay heed to the tea leaves for not just the future of our county is at stake, but indeed your own personal and political futures. Thank you for the time to speak with you tonite.