Commissioner Steve Rideout
swrideout@aol.com
July 27, 2020

Dear Readers:

Attached are my meeting notes from last night’s meeting along with a letter from the Dorchester County NAACP regarding the upcoming election. While I have talked about the upcoming election in earlier reports, understand that everyone wants an open and honest election, and I believe that we will have that and more as a result of the planning for the upcoming election on October 17th. In order to encourage voting by every registered voter, they will be mailed a ballot at his or her address as known by the County Election Board.

We have an excellent and knowledgeable private provider in place. As the Supervisor of Elections will be mailing out ballots to every registered voter in the city; if you have moved since you last registered and have not updated that information, please do so at the county election office. If you choose to vote in person rather than by mail or by absentee ballot, the Supervisor of Elections with the assistance and approval of the Election Judges has chosen the Cambridge Center of Chesapeake College on Race Street for the place to vote. There are entrances to the building from Race Street and from the rear parking lot.

Every Candidate will be allowed to have a poll watcher to observe what is happening at the polls as well as process for the Election Judges opening the mail in ballots. Every effort is being made to ensure that every vote counts.

When you see the results of this years voting for the Mayor and City Council, remember our last election in July 2016. Four of the six races were uncontested. With each Ward having around 1750 registered voters, we had the following voting totals:

Ward 1 – Steve Rideout – 145
Ward 2 – Donald Sydnor – 50
Ward 3 – LaShon Foster – 179 to 166 for Frank Cooke = 345 total
Ward 4 – Dave Cannon 151 to 139 for Dion Banks = 290 total
Ward 5- Robbie Hanson – 60

Mayor – Victoria Jackson Stanley – 653

I hope that every race this year will be contested and that voters will be able to hear from the candidates about their positions on the important issues facing the city.

Thanks for reading.

Steve

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Commissioner Steve Rideout
swrideout@aol.com
July 14, 2020

Dear Readers:

Attached please find my informal report on last night’s meeting of the Cambridge City Council. As with all meetings there were some interesting discussions. Unlike other meetings this one went quite long.

I have tried to condense what happened to provide you with the basics of the issue and outcomes.

Steve

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Commissioner Steve Rideout
swrideout@aol.com
July 5, 2020

Dear Readers:

Attached please find my report on what city council has done (not all of it) over the past 6 months. To remind you of what we did from July 1-December 25 of 2019, I am also attaching my prior report to you.

I hope that they are helpful. They do not cover everything that was done but those things that I think are the most important for the management and future of the city.

Let me know if you have questions. I have taken the information from my prior Cambridge Matters reports.

Steve

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Commissioner Steve Rideout
swrideout@aol.com
July 6, 2020

Dear Readers:

Cat Beise has interviewed me about my earlier article on Juvenile Justice that I sent to you where I talk about how we need to be spending our money more wisely to address challenges that all of our youth are facing. It will be on WHCP radio starting today either on the radio at 101.5 fm locally or streaming at www.whcp.org on the MidShore MidDay program that starts at noon. It is not the complete interview with another portion coming soon.

What City Council will be discussing on Tuesday evening at 5:00 p.m. at a meeting about a possible curfew for juveniles that can be seen at www.townhallstrems.com is an example of how we are not planning to use our money wisely. For years I have advocated here for programs for youth during the summer and for summer jobs for our teens. I have not been successful in achieving my goal but am delighted to see that thanks to the J2W Foundation there will be some summer programs and camps at the Empowerment Center this summer and there have been some reading support programs for some students because of school closing due to the Covid-19 virus.

What is being considered tomorrow evening, if successful, will be spending money both inefficiently and ineffectively after the fact. It will be inefficient because the police, social service workers, and other manpower will be misused to make it work within the proper requirements of the law. Their time will be misspent on a curfew issue and where and how to identify parents willing to take their child home or placing the child at a center that will cost the city money. All of that will pull our limited number of police officers away from what we need them for, protecting the community, and paying for a shelter placement for those children not able to go home.

In addition, my experience in the juvenile justice system as a lawyer representing youth for 20 years and as a juvenile court judge for 15 years is that the system, no matter where it is located, is not efficient due to the reasonable efforts to provide services and keep youth, to the extent possible, out of the system. That means that most of the cases started because of a curfew violation will never come to court; or if they do, they will take months to process and use resources that are needed for other cases involving children with more significant issues and challenges. Ultimately, what might be accomplished could be accomplished by existing programs that are known to work to which a child could be referred or a mentorship program to help students in their school setting.

I hope to explain all of my reasons for opposing any proposed curfew at our meeting on Tuesday evening, but understand that if any curfew ordinance is passed, the city will be spending money unwisely, after the fact, and in an unproductive way that will support the belief that we are picking on one segment of our community that is not the major cause of the problems that we face here.

If we are to spend money, we need to do it to try to prevent these problems from arising in the first place and intervening in the lives of children in ways that will give them hope and a belief that they can be successful and that everyone is not against them.

Steve

https://soundcloud.com/whcp-radio/sets/judge-steve-rideout-reallocation