COLLEGE GARDENS CIVIC ASSOCIATION
SPRING MEETING MINUTES
October 13, 2021

Download Meeting Minutes http://www.collegegardens.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/CGCA_13OCT2021_Minutes_final.pdf

* Simultaneous in-person/virtual – 12 people in-person; 21 accounts signed-on

7 p.m. – call to order

Proposed Meeting Agenda (John Mosely Hayes): CGCA President John Mosely Hayes (JMH) introduced the other CGCA officers (Vice-President Chaula Butterworth, Treasurer Jennifer Weiland, Ex-officio Officer Tom Miner) , the City Councilperson Mark Pierzchala and Rockville City Police LT Brian Paul and reviewed the proposed meeting agenda:

– Treasurer Report

– Police Report

– City Council Updates

– Elect CGCA Secretary

– CGCA Information Technology Overview and what dues pay for

– Proposed plan for collecting/sharing directory info

– Dues Amount Vote

– ByLaw Amendments Vote on changes discussed at May 12, 2021, CGCA meeting

Treasurer report (Jennifer Weiland): The current account balance is $4008.03.

Police Report (Brian Paul): LT Paul gave publicly appropriate updates about the bank robbery at Essex Bank. He talked about the stolen solar panels from the College Gardens pond, fireworks going off at midnight, surveillance cameras as a helpful deterrent/useful and the lights out at the corner of College Parkway and Nelson.
(Post meeting note: bank robbers were arrested) 

City Council Updates – accessory dwellings; deer management; comprehensive plan; other (Mark Pierzchala): 

– City is about to start its budget process. Get requests in now. 

– Rockville City 2040 Master Plan was approved in May. Mark is not entirely onboard with it. He thinks it’s executable, largely. CGCA got everything that was asked. Town Center is largely unchanged. West End residents don’t want a lot of people coming through there. Mayor and council usually give in to those demands. When zoning ordinances are issued in the future will show how much of plan is actually implemented. 

– City Hall is still largely deserted due to covid. Meeting participants asked about why city hall is still closed. Mark will take our questions and concerns to the city council, and report back. Mark explained that city hall is open for business. Community centers are getting opened; swim center has been open for quite some time. The outside parks are open. So it’s not that the City isn’t open for business. The theater is open at F. Scott Fitzgerald. 

– The potential I-270 expansion process continues, with 8000 pages of updates. The rebuttal has 45 days. City has hired a legal team. Important steps starting in 2022 that will decide the whole thing. 

– Mark says it’s not entirely clear how the pandemic affected the City budget, but overall the City came through in good shape. City will receive ARPA money to put towards water relief efforts. The City needs to make repairs to one of the outdoor pools at the swim center. Replace pipes and infrastructure. Water rates have been raised quite a lot over the last 10 years. 

– Sidewalks and driveways were replaced as routine maintenance. City spends $3 million/year maintaining roads and sidewalks.

– Mark Pierzchala, councilman gave an update about the overpopulation of deer. A pilot archery hunting deer culling program was implemented last year at John Hayes Park. Archers sitting in blinds and trees. Approximately 25-30 does were killed. Mark will no longer support the pilot program. Bows have been tried, no appetite for rifles. Hunters would have to be professionally trained. Is there a jurisdictional issue? MoCo culls deer via rifles in Rock Creek Park. 

(Here is a copy of the detailed email where Mark outlined his reasoning to no longer support the archery based deer culling pilot approach:
“I outline my reasoning below.

1. There was about a decade worth of meetings before we did the pilot last year. I believe there were at least 7 or 8 substantive meetings on the topic. So we did a lot of research and heard from all viewpoints.
2. In trying to implement the pilot, there were eventually only 2 places in the City where such a pilot could be held: (1) Redgate, and (2) the John Hayes Forest Preserve. These are near each other in the northeast part of the City. Here is problem number one: whatever we did with the pilot was not extendable to the rest of the City due to various constraints on the use of weapons in the City and from the State government. Further, these two sites are far from residential areas, and are out of sight to the general population.
3. We initially agreed to conduct the pilot at Redgate, but this was overturned relatively quickly because it became a destination for quite a few people. This is problem number 2: we have to shut down a park during the culling. Since we could not hold onto our original choice, the number of culling spots in the City went down to 1. While the John Hayes Forest Preserve is not as well known or used as Redgate, nevertheless, we shut down a park to conduct the pilot.
4. The number of deer culled was an extremely small percent of the overall deer population in Rockville, not really making a dent in the problem.
5. I agreed with PETA that culling by bow is cruel to deer. They apparently did not have a problem with culling by firearm, or at least they never mentioned that, but I took their point about the cruelty. Otherwise PETA was useless in helping to address the deer over-population issue.
6. It took enormous effort to pull off the culling. While some of that is a learning curve, it still takes considerable staff time to run it and monitor it for negligible effect.
7. The number of certified deer hunters willing to do this job is very small. It is unlikely that this City would ever attract enough deer hunters willing to go through the certification and other constraints to make a dent. They don’t hunt; they are in deer blinds in trees, spending an enormous amount of time to cull relatively few deer.

I am comfortable that we did the culling once, learned what we could, and now have stopped it. To impact deer population via culling would take many hunters, not confined to deer blinds, in all our woods, using firearms. This is not plausible. Does our neighborhood want hunters in our own Upper Watts Branch Park, also a forest preserve? There is not much room between College Gardens and Woodley Gardens.

Is deer over-population still a problem? Yes, in many ways. But I don’t want to spend any more time on a not viable solution. If we continued it, this would only be for show. I’d rather we stop our effort on culling and search for other methods of deer control. I am not under any illusion that there is a different near-term effective solution. It would be nice if contraception was a realistic solution, but it is not, at least not for now.”

Elect CGCA Secretary: JMH explained that the CGCA needs a Secretary because the previous Secretary had resigned. It would be helpful, but not required, that the next Secretary be tech-savvy to help with the information technology related CGCA processes. We are trying to move the CGCA away from print. There were no nominations for Secretary.

CGCA Information Technology Overview and what dues pay for: JMH explained that the CGCA dues historically have paid for the National Night Out gathering, web page, internet web meetings, and signs. The CGCA now maintains a Google Group (GG). The CGCA GG is a private resource intended to keep neighbors within College Gardens connected. It provides the ability to share announcements, concerns and other community news. Commercial, inflammatory or political posts are not allowed on this listserv. The CGCA has a designated email address to help facilitate CGCA business that can be passed along from one CGCA administration to the other — CollegeGardensCivicAssociation@gmail.com. The CGCA is targeting maintaining the CGCA membership directory in a Google Sheets file. The CGCA has a website that Jerry Callistein helps maintain for free and which cost approximately $240 per year to pay for hosting of the website using the WordPress software. For many years  Jerry Callistein has been paying the website hosting fee, but the CGCA will start paying this fee itself.  

(Post meeting note: CGCA Google Group sign-up instructions will be distributed when the CGCA membership directory information is collected and membership fees collected. There is a Google Group registration option that allows Group members to register with a non-gmail address – e.g. yahoo)

Proposed plan for collecting/sharing directory info: Jennifer Weiland, will spearhead the updating of neighborhood information. She will work with the Executive Committee and block captains to get information from the residents to input into a Google sheet that it is targeted for CGCA members to have access and from which a MS Excel file and pdf file can be created and distributed to members in good standing (i.e. gave membership fee).  In addition, once the electronic directory is completed, persons interested in publishing a paper directory will be contacted to determine next steps.

Dues Amount Vote: A vote was taken, and by near unanimous vote dues will be increased to $10 every other year.

ByLaw Amendments Vote on changes discussed at May 12, 2021, CGCA meeting: (see previous minutes) A couple of issues concerning the by-law changes were brought to the meeting. A few grammatical errors were identified and corrected. All proposed changes were accepted.

Meeting ended: 9:04.