From Friends of Harford:
You can have a say in the Harford County Budget. The County Executive will host a “virtual” Town Hall Meeting on Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 6:00pm
Why not give him a call or email and tell Mr. Glassman what you would like your tax money spent on this year.
– Someone should have a pay raise?
– New school somewhere?
– School repairs needed?
– Need a Community Center or repairs?
– More parks?
– Road repairs?
You decide what you want and call or write it in.
Email: iGovHarford@ harfordcountymd.gov
Facebook: Harford County’s Virtual Town Hall
Twitter: @iGovHarford
Mailing address:
Harford County Executive Barry Glassman
220 S. Main St., Bel Air, Md., 21014
Dedicated call -in number: 443-412-2700 (activated only during the live event)
Watch it LIVE on Thursday,January 19 at 6pm http://www.harfordcountymd.gov/VirtualTownHall or call your local library to see if they are live streaming.
1. Fix the School system: much better management, restructure salaries(competitive with other districts), reduce waste including positions, eliminate redundant services and restore a sense of pride and fairness in and throughout the school system. We are becoming a joke in the region and has contributed to the erosion of property values in several areas.
2. Reduce waste in county government as a whole and reinvest the savings in to improving services (roads, open space, recreation among others). Provide monetary incentives for efficiency to employees. Retain quality employees that are knowledgeable, helpful and courteous.
3. Don’t borrow millions to build new structures that will continue to eat up tax dollars far in to the future.
Don’t buy land the county has no use for.
Don’t spend any money building new schools. There is enough excess capacity to take up the slack now. Redistrict and close the smaller schools. Same thing with swimming pools, we don’t need the extra expense.
So we take away yet another form of Physical Education in schools that have the luxury of teaching kids how to swim? Possibly losing out on the next Olympic great.
Let’s see, we have already gutted music in schools; parents are already having to pay for public school athletics; the cost of school meals continues to rise…and you want to cut a phys-ed program to save a few dollars?
America’s kids are fatter than ever, slower, and more lazy. What should we replace it with?
So we should continue to erode the quality teacher base, and our home values, so your kid can swim? Seriously?
The cost of a school meal goes up because the cost of food goes up. Or do you expect the tax payer to fund feeding your kids too?
America’s kids are getting fatter and slower and more lazy, and what we should replace it with is good parenting. My vote is close the pools.
Closing schools would further degrade the school system and it’s attractiveness to potential home buyers thinking of buying in our county and in so doing lowers home values. Funding to keep the pools open can be found elsewhere in the budget without eroding the quality or numbers of teachers.
Think again, your statement is false. Home values have no correlation to the number of schools or pools.
“Perspective home buyers”
Like all those thousands of BRAC’d people who work at APG and were going to buy where Beech Tree Golf was.
I’m not even sure If raise my ass off the seat to let out a fart on how great that epic fail is.
Get on Stepney road from Route 7, drive to the North end of the former beech tree golf, turn your head to the right and gawk at the thousands of dollars of concrete casting and pipe for storm drain just rotting away by the road.
Silt fence for construction purposes half fallen down.
Yea but if we build more schools and pools everything will be right as rain and we would have the best houses at tremendous values.
Seriously.
How are home values affected because of swimming pools in the school?
I would like to see a comparison study to see how much it actually costs to keep the pools open versus how much to close, clean the area and the eventual construction cost to upfit the area into an area the school can actually use instead of sitting idle.
Eliminate the football programs at all schools and parks and rec.. This sport has become too brutal. Besides the cost to maintain the artificial turf fields is outrageous!
Oh come on Dad, Just because little Jimmy can’t read past a 4th grade level as a senior letes not dash his hopes of being that 1 in 5 million high school football player that may get drafted and sit on the bench for a year before being cut.
Maybe if the program is cut the county can buy all the payers a lotto ticket, better odds than being a foot ball player.
Football is an important part of High School sports. It shows young men how to work together in a physical environment to achieve a common goal, the touchdown. I would recommend leaving it in the curriculum as it provides an important role in filling in the fall sports calendar and provides other activities such as band, cheerleading and school news programs. Football is GREAT, don’t get rid of it…..
Swimming isn’t.?
Football causes brain injures. Which can lead to permanent disability even death.
Swimming can save lives
I never said swimming isn’t great. I was responding to a comment regarding eliminating football from the curriculum. Football is a team sport requiring 11 individuals to act as one. You don’t get that from swimming, unless you have a synchronized swimming program that uses 11 swimmers at once to complete a task. I doubt that is the case. However, I do respect your opinion regarding this issue. Many sports can cause a brain injury like you allude to. Soccer, Football, Baseball, Lacrosse, Field Hockey, Hockey, etc….. all have the potential for injury. Sport is a risk. Apparently your school system is who has decided to eliminate swimming or at least the pools paid for by their budget. Sorry for your loss.
Every sport has it’s dangers, even swimming. You could get a cramp if you don’t wait 45 minutes after eating. You would sprain / break an ankle if you jump into the “not so deep end”.
You could also break your neck, crack your skull, or chip a tooth if you dive into the “not so deep” end.
Then there’s that drowning thing…which can lead to death.
Your mommy didn’t let you play football or you tried out and got cut? Come on which is it?
“Football is an important part of High School sports. It shows young men how to work together in a physical environment to achieve a common goal”
Join the Army it does the same thing and you get 3 meals a day with a paycheck.
That comes after High School, not during…..
The town hall meeting was on the 19th, and this article was posted on the 18th. I didn’t check the Dagger until the 20th…that’s a bummer. Maybe a little more notice next time? I know…I know, it’s my fault. I should be Daggering daily. :/
I would like my tax money spent on investigating the corrupt Glassman administration.
I pretty sure that’s not gonna happen 🙁
The meeting’s over, but my input consists of three words:
Finish
the
bypass
Perhaps, we should go after all of the “developers” hell bent on cramming as much over priced housing, sprawling apartment complexes, crummy chain restaurants and stores as possible into our community; for some compensation?
Make all of those profiting at OUR collective expense (think traffic, overcrowded schools, strained infrastructure, paved over green spaces, etc.) pay meaningful offsets to the community for steadily chipping away at our quality of life. Sure, it will never happen, but one can dream. Otherwise, you’ve just gotta sit back and enjoy the decline. The county government doesn’t seem to care.
It also wouldn’t hurt to have the county council refrain from another round of pay raises. Fiscal responsibility my foot. Bunch of jokers…
Purchase Billy’s family horse farm the casinos just aren’t producing enough revenue to bail out this failing industry that really does not benefit 99% of the population of Harford County,
How about an independentire audit/investigation as to what the county does with the money….all the new construction over past several years…new developments…more taxpayers…County buying land here and there?? Yet every year they “just don’t have quite enough money” to fund salaries for teachers/deputies/county workers….becoming laughing stock of state in relation to competitive salaries….but council can grant thems elves raises??? I can’t see how there’s nothing illegal going on inside council chambers…..karma is a bitch cheaper though!!