Route 1 Reporter (https://route1reporter.com/tag/government/)
A big stretch of Rhode Island Avenue will soon be College Park property, paving the way for an ambitious overhaul of the roadway intended to make it safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
College Park will give a $75,000 grant to help a retailer build a store in its new, soon-to-open mixed-use City Hall.
College Park has hired a new city manager in Kenneth Young, filling a vacancy that had been open since late December 2020. It’s also a job that had almost been filled by another candidate who was fired by city officials before her first day on the job.
Kamali was selected by a unanimous 5-0 vote of Mount Rainier’s City Council during a special session held July 17, 2021. His tenure as city manager will begin Aug. 2, 2021.
Plans for a new city-owned community center in the College Park Woods neighborhood were unanimously approved by the Prince George’s County Planning Board during its Jan. 28, 2021 meeting.
Concerns about polluted creeks, increased car traffic, and loss of wildlife habitat dominated a public hearing on a Treasury Department proposal to build a 1 million square-foot cash factory on the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.
“This project is sited in the wrong place,” said Greenbelt City Councilor Rodney Roberts during the meeting. “It should not be on BARC at all.”
The virtual hearing was hosted Dec. 2, 2020, by representatives from the Department of Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the government office in charge of the production of U.S. coins and cash. The public meeting is part off a mandatory environmental review process for new federal facilities. More specifically, the meeting sough comment on a draft environmental impact report prepared for the project.
The Proposal
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing wants to build a 1 million square foot cash production facility at a 104-acre tract of land along Poultry Road between Odell Road to the north and Powder Mill Road to the south.
Mount Rainier’s budget was boosted by $487,000 found unaccounted for in the city’s bank accounts. For a city with an annual budget of about $7 million, it’s good news in an era when other local governments are bracing for steep declines in tax revenue as a result of the pandemic. Now, city officials are weighing a bill that would use the money for staff pay hikes, facility repairs, and economic development programs.
According to interim city manager Latasha Gatling, the city was unaware it had this money. Gatling provided cursory details of the surprise surplus during a Dec. 1, 2020 City Council discussion of a budget amendment to allocate the windfall.
Mount Rainier is without a finance director as city officials begin to tackle budget planning for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1, 2020, as well as try to get caught up on its past-due audits.
Mount Rainier fired the city’s finance director, DeMornai Blackwell, effective May 7, 2020. In a statement to Route 1 Reporter, Blackwell confirmed he was fired from his post as finance director and alleged his termination was related to an equal-employment opportunity complaint filed with the Prince George’s County Human Rights Commission in early April, 2020. The complaint describes incidents of workplace hostility covering a period from December 2019 to early April 2020. “It is unfortunate that I was dismissed from my position so sudden, after filing an EEO complaint with the Prince George’s Human Rights Commission regarding my concerns about workplace hostility and discrimination from the City’s Leadership Team,” said Blackwell, who had been the city’s financial director since December 2018. “The city is at a critical financial juncture because it is budget season.
Mount Rainier city officials anticipate they will have their audits up-to-date by August 30. Until recently, Mount Rainier had not filed completed audits, as required by state law, since 2017. But in March, city officials received the first of the outstanding audits, which revealed serious oversight issues around the city’s financial management.
Hyattsville City Council continues to look for ways to spend its $1 million local pandemic relief fund. During discussion at its April 22, 2020, meeting City Council members discussed in broad strokes possible ways the money could be spent, including donations to local charities already dealing with the aftermath of coronavirus’ disruptions, and programs for business aid.
Mayor Candace Hollingsworth, lead sponsor of the city relief fund measures so far, pushed City Council members to think realistically about how the fund could best be used to provide direct relief to individuals. Additionally, she said Hyattsville economic development officials were crafting ways they could expand existing city business grant programs with some of the relief funding. Hollingsworth noted a city-funded program to provide about 75 grocery gift cards to Hyattsville residents attracted more than 650 applicants, of which only 88 turned out to be city residents. The deluge of applicants, and the work needed to verify their city residency, proved challenging for city staff to manage.