County Executive Pittman's Weekly Letter

Funerals impact me. Especially when the friends and family of the deceased truly share with the audience the person they have lost.

I’ve had zero influence on my sister’s thinking about education, but her work has influenced me. Now that you know about that one sister, I might as well come clean. There are others. They’ve all influenced me. You see, I was born into a public policy think tank.

Our future depends on the next generation solving problems, cooperating with one another across the planet, and confronting these threats. Going from a home environment to a school environment is a first step to get there, into something bigger, into community, into diversity, and into opportunity.

I’m not anti-development. In fact I may be more pro-development - pro redevelopment, transit-oriented development, town center development, and housing for our essential workers - than any County Executive before me. But I’ll fight like hell to protect nature from destruction by human beings.

When we sit down as a Board of Directors, we are friends and allies in the urgent work of managing the institutions of local government. Doing that work either as an elected leader or a county agency employee without knowing and learning from peers across the state who are doing the same work, would be irresponsible. So we gather in Ocean City, and we all benefit.

What I’ve found is that sailing on the Bay is a lot like galloping the countryside on a horse. You’re not in complete control, but when you find the perfect balance and tact, you’re in harmony with the world.

I described the entrepreneurial spirit I’d witnessed at the monthly business breakfasts hosted by our Multicultural Affairs Officer, the generosity of Latino business owners during the pandemic, and our efforts to ensure that our Salvadoran families here legally through the Temporary Protected Status program are informed and prepared to renew that status before it expires.

We’ve had another good summer week in our little microcosm of America, even as news from across the globe has ranged from forecasts of sooner-than-expected climate change shocks to US economic forecasters finally acknowledging the effectiveness of federal government post-pandemic action.

Three extraordinary things happened in Anne Arundel County over the weekend, so I’m writing about all three - River Days, the Annapolis Blues, and protecting Meade Village.

At the end of a formal dress parade on the Naval Academy’s Worden Field, I told an older alumnus in the seat next to me how impressed I was with the discipline and coordination, and how I wished more people could experience something like it in their education. “We not me,” was his reply. Exactly.

That overwhelmed feeling in the face of the news, the questioning of purpose and meaning, it’s something we all feel at times and it has a purpose. It’s what inspires us to solve problems, and it’s been part of the human condition for as long as we’ve been on this planet.

From there, we will carefully manage county growth in compliance with Plan2040, and we will work with our Board of Education to implement their Facilities Master Plan, thereby producing for our kids a future that is smarter, greener, more equitable, and better educated.

We do our gun violence prevention work at the local level because our neighbors are dying, but we’re up against an industry that profits from convincing people that they need more guns, and deadlier guns. Their campaigns are working, and more people are dying.

Creating a more fair system of funding elections, one in which candidates have time to focus on solving the social issues of our day rather than winning the financial support of the most wealthy stakeholders, ultimately benefits everyone, including the corporations. Why? Because businesses today desperately need a well-educated, well-housed, healthy workforce to create the future we all seek

The celebration is like a coming of age for humanity. It’s a celebration that we have finally arrived at a place where it’s simply our humanity that we celebrate. That regardless of how we choose to live and love, what we look like, or where we’re from, we are celebratory, loving human beings, and just like all the fairy tales say, love wins.