Sign up to receive County Executive Pittman's Weekly Letter to be the first to learn about big announcements, and get an inside look at issues crossing the County Executive's desk.
Last night is one I’ll never forget. My staff teamed up with the Caucus of African American Leaders to thank me for the last eight years, and a lot of people showed up.
I guess I’ve finally gotten used to being a center of attention, because it didn’t feel uncomfortable. Hearing from seventeen different speakers about the impact of the work we did together was more about the work and the people who made it happen than about me. And when speakers got personal, instead of feeling embarrassed, I felt known, and accepted for who I am. That’s a good feeling.
So to everyone who spoke, who attended, and those of you who did not but also accept me for who I am, thank you - deeply.
One of the things I’m most proud of having supported is the Anne Arundel County Community Action Agency’s work on re-entry of incarcerated residents through Turnaround Thursday - our own version of a Baltimore movement, and an improvement on it.
It took us a while to find the right partners to make this work, but sitting down this week with Joshua Hatch to reminisce on camera about the why and how was a thrill. Joshua educated himself behind bars, and he wowed me at a one-on-one meeting in my first term at 49 West. He has since delivered most of what he envisioned in Anne Arundel County, and has just finished leading a statewide task force that sets forth a plan for a statewide program. I can’t wait to see what Joshua hatches in the future!
Earlier that day, I joined the extended family of a woman named Geraldine Whittington at the intersection of Sudley Road and Holt Lane, deep in south county. We were there to unveil a sign dedicating Sudley Road to Ms. Whittington, an Executive Secretary to President Lyndon Johnson. She was the first African American to serve in that role, and one of the first African Americans to work in a President’s inner circle, and she lived near where we installed the sign.
I found myself wishing I could ask Ms. Whittington questions about passing the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, creating Medicare and Medicaid, and the War on Poverty. But she died in 1993, so I asked her family.
“She didn’t talk about it much,” they said. “But what she did talk about was education.”
In fact, she paid the tuition to put a number of them through college, and the first was a very familiar face to most of us, our beloved former AACPS Deputy and Acting Schools Superintendent Monique Jackson. Thank you Geraldine Whittington.
The other big day this week was Wednesday. In the morning, we cut the ribbon on Phase 2 of the South Shore Trail, going from Odenton to Millersville, and eventually past Crownsville Hospital Memorial Park and down General’s Highway to Annapolis. It’s a beautiful ten foot wide paved trail that mostly follows the old Elkridge to Annapolis rail line, and it’s a big part of making Odenton a truly multimodal town center. The project was planned twenty years ago, and we got it done.
That afternoon, we were back in Odenton to break ground on another project that was planned twenty years ago, the parking garage at the Odenton MARC station. Odenton residents knew that surface parking at the train station was taking up the land that should be the hub of the town center. By putting the cars in a multi-story garage, there could be both housing and new businesses. When you do that in the context of the new park, the trail, and pedestrian improvements, it becomes a vibrant community.
We figured out a way to pay for the garage in my first term - set aside tax revenue (TIF funds) from new development in the area that had accumulated for local projects. By working with our state partners at MDOT who own the land, and MEDCO who is the developer, we are making transit oriented development happen in a way that includes housing that our workforce can afford.
When Wes Moore was running for his first term, he visited the site and promised to work with us to get the project done. On Wednesday, he showed up again to break the ground. Thank you Governor Moore.
There are a lot of groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings happening, and there will be more after I leave office because we have honored the land use plans that were in place before us, and are implementing the plans that our team has created.
I stopped in on Tuesday night to the annual meeting of the Plan2040 Implementation Action Committee (IAC). It’s a group of residents who monitor implementation of the hundreds of specific recommendations in our nine region plans and our countywide general development plan. They have a special place in my heart, because I ran for this job because I was frustrated that plans sat on shelves and development happened where it shouldn’t. I don’t think we’ll go back to those days, because the IAC is watching.
Until next week. We have four left!