Supervisor admonished over perceived cyber-bullying

MoonHowler


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Mrs. Widawski has addressed a problem I have been concerned about for a long time–cyber bullying on blogs.  I am tired of reading the invectives of  people named ‘Anonymous’  who hurl insults, mimic, degrade, belittle, ridicule, and yes, lie about private citizens, elected officials and municipal employees.

If Supervisor Candland is involved in this behavior in any way, he needs to stop.  If he knows who is responsible, he needs to put a stop to it.  He is who profits from the attacks on everyone else while his fan club sings his praises.

This is not the first time Elena and I have spoken about this issue.  It is fine to disagree with policy,  It is fine to take on our elected officials when we disagree.  It is not fine to attack people and their families.  There is no reason to make it personal or to name call.  This standard of behavior is even more important when we speak of county employees.  They are not elected and ultimately aren’t in a political decision-making position.

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Candland and Stewart: two peas in a pod

MoonHowler

Potomaclocal.com:

Gainesville District Supervisor Peter Candland held a town hall Thursday night at Alvey Elementary School in Haymarket to speak to area residents about what he said is the need to “act right away” to provide more funds to the county school board to cut class sizes, which are now at their maximum capacity, he said. The number of students in classrooms is larger than those of schools in neighboring Loudoun and Fairfax counties, according to a Washington Area Board of Education report.

Candland advocates raising the amount of money the School Board automatically gets from the county in an annual budget transfer, which is currently 57.23% of the county budget, to allow the Board to hire additional teachers and to pay them salaries comparable to what educators earn in surrounding counties.

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Revenue Stabilization Fund: What is it?

MoonHowler

The Prince William County Revenue Stabilization Fund is a separate fund modeled in part on the state Revenue Stabilization Fund that was created back in 1990.  The state fund was created as a result of a nearly 2 billion dollar shortfall that occurred because of an economic downfall.  Determined to be more prepared in the future, the State of Virginia created the Revenue Stabilization Fund also known as the Virginia Rainy Day fund.  It may be researched at  this  state website.

The state fund holds an amount equal to about 10% of its annual budget in this fund.

Prince William County is known statewide for its economic responsibility.  It falls into a unique category of jurisdictions in that it has a AAA bond rating, which is very difficult to achieve.  Only 0 .4% of all jurisdictions have earned this distinction. 

What is the RSF?  The RSF is  money intended to stabilize revenue  collections.  It isn’t for funding Blue Bird Bus Tours or to put in libraries, bike paths or ball fields.   It is to cover the unexpected financial contingencies that occur such as housing market fluctuations which greatly impact PWC revenue collection since the great majority of taxes collected are residential based.Read More

Stewart defends PWC Revenue Stabilization Fund

MoonHowler

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Sometimes events happen and the earth screeches to a halt on its axis, then abruptly starts rotating in the opposite direction.  Today was such a day.  Hold on to your seats.  Mistress Moon  and Elena agree with Corey Stewart.

Corey defended the practice of saving money.  Is it possible to over-save?  Is it possible to save too much money for a rainy day?  For an emergency?  For when times aren’t as good?  Corey says no.  It is fiscally responsible to save more than you need.  I only heard one person disagree with him.  That was Pete Candland.  Pete not only disagreed with him but he rolled his eyes, shook his head and made facial gestures.  To me, the behavior  was disrespectful to his colleagues.  Additionally, what Pete proposed or questioned showed his lack of understanding of how large municipalities are run.   He appears to miss the complexities of a budget this size.

Corey was right.  In fact, he sounded downright reasonable and responsible.  He was back to being that old eagle scout.

In order to keep the AAA bond rating, we must have $10 million in the contingency fund.  That is 1% of the annual budget.  Prince William County, because of the unknown variables involved with sequestration and with the state requiring more from localities for VRS,  is erring on the side of caution with what might appear to some to be  more savings than are needed.   We have about $20 million or 2% of total budget in the Revenue Stabilization Fund, twice as much as required to have the AAA bond rating.  Great that we can handle emergencies.  That is the fiscally responsible thing to do.   If we do have contingencies, then we won’t dip below the designated level.

For Pete to criticize the county for saving too much money sounds out of touch and  and frankly, fiscally irresponsible.  Saving more than is needed is what my mother used to call a fine fault.

FACTS about Prince William County Government

MoonHowler

PWCLogo

It’s time.  I was going to wait until July 16 to put up a thread about budget woes of the county because I believe in working with facts rather than with rumor and gossip.  I will continue to wait.  However, a lot of people have something to say about this latest event which as I understand it, is a matter of under-budgeting.  You know, one of those nasty little mathematical human error types of mistakes.  No one has stolen anything or tried to gip the taxpayers out of their hard earned dollars.

There is a certain contingency in the county who want to fry various county employees and supervisors.  There is another contingency who hate a witch hunt and who want facts.  This is a spot for facts about the county and how you want it governed.

Please, send us you FACTS.
From Channel 4 News 11:00 PM 7/2/13

View more videos at: http://nbcwashington.com.

 

The Delusion of “Logo-gate”

Angelina_Apr
PWC Witch Hunt
PWC Witch Hunt

The destructive nature of these constant attacks on the ever widening circle of county employees must end.  The climate within the McCoart building is one of mistrust and confidence levels have been diminished.  Whether it be for a desk, a toilet, a sink, an Easter egg hunt or the process of finding a new logo, these constant investigations and searching for wrong doing  is no way to run county government.  It’s like big brother is watching every move just to see if they can catch wrong doing.  Who can work effectively in such an environment.

We witnessed a serious smack down during Supervisors time today.  Supervisor Peter Candland, for unknown reasons, decided that it would be a good idea to attack Supervisor Frank Principi over this continued, ad nauseum, discussion over a county logo.

Pete submitted a three page, single spaced, diatribe demanding to know every single detail of who, what, when, why, where of the county directive to obtain a new logo for marketing strategies.  My question is why?  Why has this issue risen to the level of such intense scrutiny?  Like there was some kind of fraud involved.  Was it the best process or best logo choice, probably not, but the insistence on making this logo issue the next Benghazi  conspiracy needs to stop.

There was an  “all call”  fundraising e-mail that was penned by Robyn Candland, excoriating the process and targeting Frank Principi as the “democrat” villain.  Pete chose to turn his need for every nook and cranny to be inspected from a BOCS issue into a FOIA need.  That is not how it should have been handled.  Frank apparently thought the level of questions were over the top and formally objected .  Having read them and included them in this post, I would say that I agree.

 

NOTE:  Video below the fold

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The Tri-County Parkway: McDonnell’s Folly or just pure bullcrap?

MoonHowler

triCounty2

Washingtonpost.com:

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s administration has only itself to blame for arousing a major political and popular backlash against its effort to ram a new north-south highway through Prince William County along the western edge of the Manassas Civil War battlefield.

The Richmond authorities have seriously harmed one of their own pet projects — the Bi-County Parkway, which would link Prince William and Loudoun County southwest of Dulles Airport. They haven’t talked straight to the public about why they think the road is needed and what the full consequences would be.

They’ve gone back and forth on whether the road is necessary mainly to help Dulles Airport increase its cargo capacity. Back and forth on whether parts of it could be tolled. Back and forth on whether the plan is to open the road in seven years or 20.

“The rationale for this road changes week to week depending on who’s telling the story. I think that’s incredibly problematic,” said Del. Tim Hugo (R-Centreville), who’s helping to lead the opposition, which has mushroomed this spring.

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The 4 Horsemen: Everything is Relative Pts I & II

MoonHowler

Horsemen. 4

(A huge thank you to Steve Randolph for digging out the information!)

Part 1: The Players

Once upon a time during the first Dark Ages in Prince William County, in the year 1972, there were 7 magisterial districts and 7 supervisors. There was no at-large chairman. He was elected from the ranks.  There was a school board. Each of the 7 members were appointed by the supervisor for that district.  Well, there should have been a school board.

Five of the supervisors were new and 2 were incumbents.

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PWC to slash jail drug program: more stupid is as stupid does

MoonHowler

drug free

Last week in order to prove their tea party cred, apparently, the PWC BOCS proposed slashing the county DORM  (Drug Offender Rehabilitation Module), program, a drug treatment program for incarcerated criminals.  Jeremy Borden reported the following in washingtonpost.com:

Prince William County officials are considering cutting local funding for the county jail’s substance abuse treatment program, a move that has touched off intense lobbying from defense attorneys and law enforcement officials who say the program helps inmates clean up their lives, keeps the community safer and saves money.

Although county supervisors don’t make any final budget decisions until a scheduled meeting Tuesday, a potential $607,000-per-year cut to the program took many by surprise last week. Supervisors had considered other potentially painful cuts, including doing away with two new libraries and slashing the local subsidy to the county health department.

The board already has decided to spare the libraries and health department, but the proposed cut to the substance abuse program remained as supervisors sought a compromise to whittle residents’ real estate tax bills while maintaining core services. Those negotiations have yielded a plan that would have the average county resident paying $3,392 in real estate taxes, an increase of 2.3 percent.

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Columbus Day in Prince William County–looks like the natives got screwed again

MoonHowler

columbus

From a frustrated friend of mine who prefers anonymity:

The $60,000 a year civil servants are who people turned to this past week in both Boston and in Texas.  Public safety and support was mighty important.  Yet the BOCS in Prince William County want to take a holiday away from this very group of people.  Additionally, in the Texas plant explosion, a science teacher was the lead rescue person in getting the elderly and infirmed out of the convalescent home.

Taking a holiday away from municipal employees devalues their worth.  Already Prince William County employees are overworked and treated disrespectfully.  Just read a local blog.   It has been this way since the crash.  Many have no had respectable raises.  Individuals are cannon fodder for local bloggers and those sitting around with an ax to grind.

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PWBOCS: Cheap! Cheap! Cheap!

MoonHowler

Even though Easter has past, I still hear the echoes of Cheap! Cheap! Cheap! resonating across Prince William County.  No, that isn’t the sound of baby chicks.  It’s the sound made by the Board of County Supervisors.

Note a few facts:

Per Classroom indicators show that Prince William County has the highest teacher:student ratio in the DC metro area:

per teacher

Upon further inspection, we see that Prince William county also spends very little per student compared to many of its neighboring jurisdictions.

per pupil2

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Corey, you could have fooled me!

MoonHowler
No Latino voters for Core-man
No Latino voters for Core-man

I got another beg letter from Corey.  He wanted money.  I am not sure why he thinks I am his friend.  Part of his  email contained the following:

The media is at it again. Just two days ago, a columnist from the Richmond Times Dispatch labeled me “an immigrant basher”.

It is no doubt this statement arises from my leadership of the nation’s toughest crackdown on criminal illegal immigration

In Prince William County, if you are arrested for a crime and it is determined that you are here illegally, then our law enforcement officers hand you over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

I need your help in this fight to combat the never ending liberal media attacking our conservative values.  A donation of $25, $50, $100 would go a long way to help me spread my message of conservative governance.

Every person who is being arrested is checked, regardless of age, sex, race, etc. If upholding the Rule of Law makes me “an immigrant basher” than let them name call, I am willing to deal with such petty insults for the safety of Prince William County’s 425,000+ residents. Since we enacted our illegal immigration policy, there has been a 47.8% drop in violent crime and we have handed over more than 6,000 criminal illegal aliens to ICE.

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Why ARE PWC Schools over-crowded?

Elena

captain_obvious2

One of my husband’s favorite sayings is “Captain Obvious” when someone says something so incredibly, well, obvious.   There are parents in the PWC community that have suddenly come to the realization that our class sizes are woefully too full, so full, that quality instruction is being jepoardized.   PWC school has reached the state’s legal limit for class size.

PWCS raised class sizes to the state limits this school year in response to current budget constraints. In the executive summary of the 2014 budget, Walts notes that reductions of teacher staffing ratios (or increases in class sizes) have led to savings of $4.3 million at the middle-school level and $5.3 million at the high school level. Walts also notes that next year’s budget does not restore those cuts.

In response to concerns about class sizes, Walts’s office has said it would cost $15 million annually to reduce average class sizes by one student at all levels. The Code of Virginia sets the following maximum class-size limits: 29 for kindergarten classes; 30 for grades one through three; and 35 for grades four through six. English classes are limited to 24 in grades one through 12, otherwise there are no state maximum class-size limits for grades seven and above, according to Dena Rosenkrantz, an attorney with the Virginia Education Association.

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PWC: Nixon and Andrew Johnson out, Lincoln and Washington in

MoonHowler
One Bad Dude!
One Bad Dude!

Every once in a while, I hear something so absurd that I have to savor it…just for the humor.  Corey continues to entertain.

There has been  talk for some time  in the Stewart budget proposal, about doing away with 2 federal holiday observances for county employees.  The two holidays were Columbus Day and Presidents Day.  From what I was able to gather, this was just the final shot to already bad morale in the county.  The employees didn’t like it.

Corey announced today in the BOCS meeting that he would not be present during Supervisors Time but that he had a proposal.  Naturally he butt in line and outlined his wants, although not at the appropriate time.  He suggested that the supervisors agree to not observe Columbus Day or Presidents’ Day as county holidays.  He then said  that it was great to observe Washington and Lincoln but it also meant that one would have to observe all the presidents like Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon.  He then proposed  giving back the holidays to the employees on Lincoln and Washington’s actual birthdays.

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As the nose grows…..State of the County

MoonHowler

Parsing the state of the county might take a month. What stands out could be Corey welcoming each and every county newcomer. Is this Mr.Corey “Anti-immigration” Stewart? Has Corey had a frontal lobotomy? Is he now welcoming the dreaded illegal alien? My how things have changed.

Our Tax bills are 7% less than they were in 2007? My house is worth 30% less. Shouldn’t those two percents be a little closer?

Corey makes it too easy. I won’t hog all the fun. I will give you guys a turn. Have at it! Find the lies. Make Corey’s nose grow.