Shaken, Not Stirred

Last night I attended one of my absolutely favorite holiday celebrations, the Davis Agnor Rapaport & Skalny Holiday Soirée. Besides enjoying the opportunity to spend time with so many people I know, they always have a martini bar.

I like mine straight up, dry enough to blow the dust off the top, with three olives.

Among the many folks I caught up with was Mary Kay Sigaty. We spoke briefly about her pending legislation to alter the zoning regulations for beekeepers. Though the HoCo Planning Board unanimously rejected the proposed change, Mary Kay and Greg Fox are pressing ahead. I asked Mary Kay if this was simply another example of the ineptness of the planning board.

“I can’t understand them either,” she told me. “Out of about one hundred people who testified before the board on this issue only two were in opposition." Apparrently one of the board members did her own research on the internet and convinced the others that this wasn’t a good idea. They totally ignored the expert testimony.

This is the same planning board that held the Columbia Town Center redevelopment legislation hostage for nine months.

After talking to Mary Kay I had a brief conversation with Nicole Hickey, the executive director of the Columbia Festival of the Arts. Nicole is none too pleased with the column I wrote about the festival this summer. She makes the point that she could do more if she had more money. I have some additional thoughts on that but I’ll save it for a separate post.

I also spent some time talking to Dennis Schrader about his unsuccessful attempt to unseat Jen Terrasa in Council District 3. Many loco political prognosticators felt he had a good chance of winning back the seat he held in the mid nineties. The fact that Jen won reelection by a wide margin came as a bit of a surprise.

“The reason for that was the support she received from Ken Ulman,” said Chris Oxenham. Chris pointed out that Ken did not provide the same support to Courtney Watson in District 1 and that is why that race was much closer. Chris told me he is now working to help further Allan Kittlemans future political aspirations. I told him that if Alan wants to be county executive in four years he better resign as Senate minority leader.

I got home in time to catch some of the Wilde Lake state championship football game on television, which was very cool. Unfortunately, right at the beginning of the second half I received a phone call from a loco community activist who objected to one of my recent posts about him. I’ll spare the gory details here but suffice it to say I was not pleased with having this conversation while I was trying to watch the game. I suggested that if he didn’t drop this I’d write a detailed post about our phone conversation, fueled by martinis. That seemed to settle it and I returned to watching the Wildecats roll to victory.

In the end, I was shaken, not stirred.