Author Archives: CAN Admin1

ANNOUNCEMENT – CAN ELECTION & BUSINESS MEETING: January 12, 2019

Posted on by

The Annual Business Meeting of the Cambridge Association of Neighborhoods (CAN), to include election of CAN’s 2019 Board of Directors, will be held on January 12, 2019, at 10:00 am in the WHCP meeting room, 516 Race Street, Cambridge, MD 21613

Per the Bylaws of the Cambridge Association of Neighborhoods (Article VIII, Section 1, see CAN website at https://cambridgecan.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/CAN-Bylaws-Final.pdf), CAN Vice-President Judd Vickers chaired a Nominating Committee (consisting of Janet Boss, Roman Jesien, and Tom Puglisi) to identify candidates to fill upcoming Board of Director vacancies.  The Committee met on November 1, 2018, and presented a preliminary slate of nominees at the November 10 CAN meeting.

Current Board Members Chuck McFadden (President), Mary Ellen Jesien (Treasurer), Michelle Barnes (Membership Director), Dave Thatcher, and Roman Jesien (whose terms expire in January 2019) agreed to be nominated for another 2-year term.  Frank Cooke decided not to run for re-election, and we’d like to extend our thanks to Frank for his service.

An email was circulated to all CAN members on December 4, 2018, announcing the candidates and calling for additional nominations.  No additional nominations were received.

CAN members will vote on candidates at the January 12 meeting in accordance with the CAN Bylaws.  Per the Bylaws, absentee votes will be accepted if submitted to the CAN Secretary seven (7) days in advance of the meeting (Article VIII, Section 1 and Article IV, Section 3).

Nominees are as follows:

            President, Chuck McFadden

            Treasurer, Mary Ellen Jesien

            Membership Director, Michelle Barnes

            Director, Roman Jesien

            Director, Dave Thatcher

The following Board members will be up for re-election in January 2020:

            Vice President, Judd Vickers, 2018 – 2020

            Secretary, Tom Puglisi, 2018 – 2020

            Director, Greg Boss, 2018 – 2020

            Director, Sharon Smith, 2018 – 2020

 

Cambridge Matters 11/16/2017

Posted on by

City Council met for close to 2 hours on Wednesday the 15th to begin the process of developing the FY 2019 budget that starts July 1, 2018. The work done yesterday is very preliminary, and the first part of the session involved staff leadership speaking with the Mayor and Commissioners about their ideas and concerns, and the Mayor and Commissioners providing their thoughts about the city and what issues might be addressed.

Some of the issues that I came away with from these discussions included the following:

1. Consideration of reorganizing some staff positions to make them more focused and productive and anticipating the potential of transitions of staff leadership that may be taking place over the next several years. As the past two years have shown an increase in development in Cambridge and additional demands on city staff, additional positions may need to be considered.

2. With the changes coming with the Dorchester Hospital and potential Emergency Room and Medical Facility in town, the sailwinds project has the potential of taking much of our attention as does the upgrading some of our infrastructure. We also need to develop a comprehensive plan on how to address the aging infrastructure that exists.

3. Helping our police force to receive more education and training opportunities as well as housing opportunities in the city in order to help keep them here for a more stable and professional police force should be strongly considered. It is not to the benefit of the city for us to train young officers only to have them leave for better paying jobs elsewhere after only a few years here.

4. We need to look at how the Marina can create positive cash flow for the city rather than continue to break even except for the debt that is assigned to it that creates a loss of approximately $250,000 a year for the next 5 years.

After the above discussions, The Mayor, Commissioners, Staff, and Sharon Smith, the one citizen who attended to public work session, then had the opportunity to brainstorm a visioning process led by the City Manager that addressed these questions:

1. If you were in Cambridge on November 15, 2027 (10 years from now), what would you like to see?

2. At a meeting of citizens who lived in your ward (or in the city) what would be the accomplishments that you would like them to know about.

3. When interviewed by the local newspaper, what are the 3 most important accomplishments that you think have taken place in these past 10 years.

From those responses and the discussions that followed, the City Manager and Staff will subject them to some analysis that will be brought back for further discussion as we move forward with the planning for the 2019 FY budget.

I felt that the morning was well spent and that there seemed to be much consensus among both elected leadership and staff on what priorities need to be addressed moving forward.

Thanks to the City Manager, Elected officials, Staff, and Sharon Smith for a well spent couple of hours on behalf of the City of Cambridge.

Steve