The story about the county’s plan to build a new apartment complex for the homeless provided a surprisingly target rich environment for us
this week. Preparing for the show earlier in the day both Paul and lamented
that our selection of local stories for this news cycle were a little weak. As
we talking I received an email from George Berkheimer, a colleague at The
Business Monthly. He pointed out that in order to build this new complex the
county would be replacing an existing 38 unit mobile home community called
Beechcrest. The new development would have 33 individual apartments.
“That’s five in the hole, the way I count it,” he wrote.
Or more. Consider that most of those 38 units house more
than one person. It seems as if the county housing department is just creating more
work for our guest, Bita Dayhoff, the president of the Community ActionCouncil.
Bita is a gem and we are lucky to have her. She’s smart and
incredibly charming. Three years ago I had the opportunity to work with Bita on
renewing the lease for the Food Bank in Columbia . I found her to be a tough negotiator and a constant advocate for the less fortunate in
HoCo. She sits on the front line of HoCo hard times.
We also talked a bit about Courtney Watson's anti bullying initiative.
Courtney had proposed a resolution to “Encourage the General Assembly to
provide the necessary resources to appropriate agencies to implement the use of
multidisciplinary teams to address bullying, harassment, and intimidation among
students.”
She has since tabled the bill. At best it had lukewarm
support. The school board didn't even endorse it and it is questionable whether
she had the votes on the council to get it passed. It was widely criticized as
lacking any substance. As one of her colleagues on the council pointed out to
me, even the people who testified at the public hearing in support testified
more about the problem of bullying than about supporting the actual resolution.
For example, Brian Meshkin spent his most of three minutes giving a campaign
speech telling the council about everything he’s done about bullying. Courtney’s
resolution merely provided him a jumping off point for another self promotion pitch.
You can listen to the 79th episode of “and then
there’s that…” here.
