John Wolf, a local college student and avid biker, recently got in touch about a biking blog he’s started to promote the sport in the area. He sent us a nice letter promoting the blog, and the blog itself is very nice and a very good idea.

It’s nice to see that with Ross Dangel’s Freedom Trail apparently squashed by the bureacracy, someone else might be taking up the cause of making it reasonable, smart, and safe to bike, or even walk, from Sykesville to Eldersburg. Or at least from Eldersburg to Eldersburg.

So here’s the Freedom Area’s best biking blog, and here’s the letter.

Picture this: You are hanging out at your house near the MacBeth Way/Slacks intersection and figure you need to run to the grocery store and cleaners. You gather your canvas bags for the store, your clothes to be pressed, and head out on your bike. You turn out of your drive and begin riding toward Liberty Road on MacBeth. You keep straight on MacBeth until it dead ends, but you take the multi-use trail that has been made to connect the other side of MacBeth.

You turn right onto Georgetown Town Road and then make a left into the shopping center with the grocery store and cleaners. The parking lot is packed because it is 4:15 pm and everyone is doing the same thing you are, but you are on your bike. You zip through the lot, snag a premium parking spot at the bike racks right near the door of the cleaners. You run in, drop off your clothes and are on your way to the grocery store.

Bread, produce and Clif Bars loaded, you place your canvas sacks into your Pannier bags, secure them, and you are off. Riding back down Georgetown to MacBeth you see a few familiar faces and wave to them as they ride in the opposite direction. One last turn onto the multi-use trail from MacBeth and you are home.

You have just taken an ordinary errand and made it unique. You have been able to significantly reduce your carbon emissions and carbon foot print, you have had a good dose of exercise, you have spent no money on fuel, you have had very little impact on city roads (which comes out of your pocket in taxes), you have increased the life of your automobile, you have reduced traffic congestion, you have reduced your stress levels, your mood is significantly better, you were able to interact with other community members, and you have, most likely, completed that errand faster than if you had done it by car given that it was done during rush hour.

Sound realistic?

Not so much given the lack of safe cycling lanes and multi-use paths in our area. This can become a realization if we get on our bikes and let our local representatives know that this is the way we want to live/get around in the Eldersburg/Sykesville/Freedom Area(s).

My name is John Wolf and I am a resident of the Eldersburg/Sykesville/Freedom Area(s) of over 15 years. I enjoy riding bikes and I believe that bikes can do a lot for our community. Now, I would like to make a few things clear: I am in no way against automobiles and I understand that riding is not for everyone. I am simply writing to advocate for alternative forms of transportation in our area.

For this reason, I created a blog titled Freedom Area Cycling Opportunities (http://fac21784.blogspot.com/). The blog is being used to keep the Freedom Area Community up to date with current cycling topics around the Freedom/Eldersburg/Sykesville area(s), our county, and our state. My hope is that the blog will act as a discussion and information hub for anyone (cyclist or not) interested in this topic.

Please feel free to visit it and contribute constructively. Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,
John Wolf

As I reported in a previous post, Mayor Mike Miller of Sykesville is looking to put together a committee to talk about the homemade skateboard park some kids have fashioned at the edge of town. Here are his answers to my questions on the subject.

Is there any danger of the town shutting down the skateboard park?
That possibility always exists, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Is there any likelihood of the town helping improve it?
Yes the town has plans to improve the South Branch Park area, and that particular area is slated for “recreation.” It depends on available funding and if the skateboard “use” is agreed upon by the Council.

Has anyone volunteered to get on the committee?
I have received email from a few people interested in the committee so I hope to setup a meeting sometime in February.

What are your main concerns about the makeshift skateboard park?
Insurance coverage to protect the Town. Safe equipment, as the equipment over there now is made by skaters. Head gear – most skaters do not wear helmets, even though the town has an ordinance requiring them. If we don’t get skater interest in the park because we enforce the wearing of helmets, it may kill the concept.

Well, the plan to expand the airport runway in Westminster from 5,100 feet to 6,400 to accommodate larger planes is dead.

Carroll County Commissioners Rothschild, Frazier, and Shoemaker voted to kill it.

The expansion would have cost the county around $1.8 million. Some say more. Of course, it might also have brought money into the county. Most of the bill of some $74 million would have been paid by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Maryland Aviation Administration.

Doug Howard thought that was a good thing. Here he is making sense, as quoted in the Baltimore Sun.

But Commissioner Doug Howard, who with Commissioner David Roush was on the losing end of the 3-2 vote, rejected that argument, saying the federal government’s money would come from a pool specifically allocated for airport safety and expansions.

“This money was raised for that purpose,” said Howard, who represents Sykesville and Eldersburg in the 5th District.

“All we’ve decided … is that the federal government (will) invest somewhere else; bring that economic support to someone else, and put Carroll County further behind the case by not acknowledging the fact that it’s a trust fund for a specific purpose,” he said.

During the discussion, Howard had said he considered a “state-of-the-art airport in Carroll County” to be a needed asset for economic growth, and said a vote against the expansion would, “largely signal to the economic development community that we are taking a step back.”

“I do not believe we are putting a burden on the Carroll County taxpayer,” said Howard.

So that’s that. Now it’s on to the incinerator. If Shoemaker, Rothschild, and Frazier apply the same logic they applied to the airport expansion, they’ll certainly shoot the incinerator project down, too.

Or will they? And what was that logic? Well, apparently that tax money is tax money, and it doesn’t matter who collects it or why. Richard Rothschild pointed out that he was “1000 percent certain”, not 100 mind you, but 1000, that if Carroll County had to pay for it all, the commissioner would have rejected it unanimously. No kidding? So would everyone else in the county.

But, as Howard points out, now that money goes somewhere else. And if it was federal money, isn’t that our federal money that is now going elsewhere?

Rothschild’s logic was on further display in the County press release justifying the decision. He says, “taking free money from the federal government may seem rational, but it doesn’t make it right… taking this money leads our country one step closer to national bankruptcy.”

So where does the money go now? And how far does Carroll County go in rejecting federal funds to save the country?

Wow, if my calculations are correct, and if the Carroll County Times is correct, a new chicken operation of some sort moving into Taneytown will send somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 chickens to their death over the next ten years.

And they’re not even for eating.

Rather, they’ll lay eggs, and when their 65 week “life cycle” is over they’ll be “taken to a rendering plant to be made into pet food.” Rendering, of course, meaning killed, chopped up, and packaged to feed our dogs and cats. Not all will be so lucky, though. If they die before their day of rendering, they’ll be incinerated on the premises.

So Carroll County’s getting an incinerator after all.

And of course, if you consider the living conditions of the chickens, 14,000 packed into a room for 65 weeks, maybe an early incineration is the way to go.

SPF Sentinel Hens

Here’s how it works according to the Times.

The company was originally planning to build two hen houses, each 189-by-135-feet, to house 14,000 hens each, with the possibility of expanding by two more buildings of similar size in the future, Studyvin said.

However, costs for the project were higher than expected, he said, and in late December the work was put on hold while the plans could be revised and scaled back. The new plan is to build just one building with three rooms, he said. A flock of 14,000 hens will be on each end of the building, he said, with the center room serving as a nursery to raise chicks from birth to about five weeks, when they would be ready to move into the next room for the rest of their duration at the facility to lay eggs.

Each flock of 14,000 hens has a life cycle of about 65 weeks, he said. At the end of that time, the flock will be taken to a rendering plant to be made into pet food. The nursery within the building would have a younger flock ready to take their place, Studyvin said, so for about a five-week overlap each year, there could be as many as 42,000 birds in the building at one time.

So who’s behind the new Taneytown chicken operation?

VALO BioMedia North America, the company that is planning to build the egg processing facility, is part of a German-owned company that operates four similar facilities in central Iowa.

The eggs produced by the chickens at their farms are U.S. Department of Agriculture classified as “specific pathogen free,”

VALO BioMedia farm in Adel, Iowa

a term that means that these eggs can be used for certain medical and research purposes, such as the development of vaccines.

None of that medical or research work will take place at the Taneytown egg farm, said T.J. Studyvin, operations manager for VALO BioMedia North America. But the farm will have much more strict protocol than a traditional farming operation to protect the biosecurity of their product.

So, if I understand this correctly, no one will be eating the eggs, either. It sounds like they’ll be shipped out for medical work. In fact, here’s what the company says on their website.

With our products Specific Pathogen Free Eggs and Clean Eggs VALO BioMedia contributes substantially to the worldwide production of vaccines for both, human and veterinary purposes. Besides that VALO SPF Eggs are widely used for research and diagnostics.

As the worldmarket leader VALO BioMedia is an important supplier of an important raw material for the pharmaceutical industry and helps to protect human and animal health.

Not in Our Backyard

SPF Chicken eggs

Fortunately, this is not in our backyard here in the Freedom area. It’s in Taneytown’s, and as the article points out, not all of the residents, or any actually, are happy about it. The good news is the plant will create 6 to 10 jobs. Yay!

The bad news is that for some residents it’s not actually in the backyard. It’s right across the street.

Melissa and Todd Hahn had no idea that a neighboring landowner had subdivided the farm across the street from their home on Roop Road in Taneytown until they saw the earthmovers roll in and start digging.

And when they started asking questions, they learned that while the land was still zoned as agricultural, two large buildings were going to be built to house 14,000 chickens each. Having heard stories about the smell and potentially dangerous nutrient loads in chicken manure, as well as concerns about the multiple wells being drilled on the property and likely tapping into the same underground aquifer, the Hahns were worried.

The Hahns contacted the company, which currently operates in Iowa, and met face to face with some of the company’s leaders in their own living room. The plan specifics that were discussed with residents in late November and early December have since changed, but the Hahns feel no more at ease. They now have a “for sale by owner” sign in front of their house, and hope that they can move out before the new business moves in.

“It’s a neighborhood to us on this road — why not go out to the rolling hills of Hagerstown where nobody lives?” Hahn said.

This doesn’t sound like a case of the so-called NIMBY syndrome. It’s just a case of some people who don’t want a German chicken plant incinerating birds across the street. Not really out of concern for the chickens, mind you, but concern for their own well-being. And yeah, property values.

Read the rest at the CC Times. I left out the part about the deep wells and formaldehyde.

One last quote.

A small incinerator, which looks similar to a smoker grill, will be kept on the property to dispose of chickens that die naturally before the rest of the flock is taken to a rendering plant, he said.

No chickens dies naturally when packed into a room with 13,999 others.

Ever see “Chicken Run?” Where’s Ginger? Where’s Rocky the flying rooster? It’s time for a breakout. Taneytown needs you.

That’s what a lot of you were probably wondering. There was ice. There was fog. Sidewalks were slippery.

So we asked. Here’s the response from Steve Guthrie, Superintendent of Carroll County Public Schools .

It’s an interesting response, thorough, and somewhat reassuring. I’m wondering, though, does it always make sense to make the decision county wide? Aren’t conditions sometimes more severe locally?

Thanks for expressing your concern. There is no question that it was a difficult decision this morning. Please understand that four Transportation Services Department officials were on the roads this morning from 3:00 a.m. to 5:00 am. to survey the roads. Each section of the county was driven to determine if the roads were properly prepared for the weather. Transportation Services Department staff was in constant contact with weather stations, county and state government staff, police, and transportation officials in other counties, as well as each other, during the road and weather assessment.

While on the road, the following factors were used to develop the recommendation today’s decision to open on time:

• Existing road conditions across the entire county.
• Amount of snow and ice that has accumulated, whether it will continue, and the amount of time required for road crews to clear county roadways.
• Air temperature and road temperature.
• Weather predictions – the school system prefers not making a decision based on weather predictions, which are not always accurate; however, weather predictions are considered in combination with existing conditions.
• School parking lots, school sidewalks and school bus loops.
• Other traffic – other traffic can slide into buses or make waiting at bus stops dangerous.
• Will observed conditions likely improve or deteriorate?

Yesterday, our maintenance crews visited every school in the county to make sure that all parking lots and sideways were properly prepared for schools to open today on time. In addition, we re-salted the schools at 5:00 am. this morning ensure that we would be ready for bus and vehicle traffic.

My crews reported to me that our roads and school parking lots were ready for school to open on time. I understand the Federal Government did delay opening their offices last night in anticipation of inclement weather. However, I cannot make a determination about school in Carroll County for a decision that is made mostly in response to traffic conditions in Washington D.C.

Thanks again for writing to express your concern. I understand that not everyone agrees with the decision to open, close, or delay the opening of school.

Stephen H. Guthrie
Superintendent of Schools
Carroll County Public Schools

I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the local criminal element, but it occurs to me that they’re, perhaps, not all that bright. Now we’ve got a Sykesville resident busted for stealing an adult toy in Ocean City.

I’m not sure what an adult toy is, although I have a feeling they don’t mean an Xbox or an iPad, but I do know that stealing toys, adult or not, like stealing anything else, is illegal. And unwise.

And the choice of weapons?

No, not a baseball bat. This time, it’s a concrete block and a garden hose.

Yep. They’re charging William Charles Pfister, 21, of Sykesville with breaking into an adult store in West Ocean City back on September 17, 2011, and somehow using the block and the hose to get through a glass door.

The toy itself was only worth $99, before tax, I assume, but police actually went to the trouble of using video surveillance and DNA evidence to hunt Pfister down. Pfister confessed to the crime. He was easy to find because he was living in the Carroll County Detention Center due to other unrelated charges.

The criminal mind is perplexing. I can understand using a concrete block to break through a window, but what’s with the hose? And was it premeditated? Did he actually show up with a concrete block, a garden hose, and a plan?

Or was it a spontaneous act, a sudden urge to break into this store in the red light district, and the concrete block and hose were conveniently at hand?

In this surveillance image, he does not seem to be holding his hose, and he doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry, either. It looks almost as if he’s shopping. Did he have a specific toy in mind when he planned the robbery, or did he just know that he would break into the store and find something good?

Since the young man is already in custody, there is no reward this time. He’ll be transferred to Worcester County to face charges of second- and fourth-degree burglary, malicious destruction of property under $500, and theft under $100.

All for a toy he could have bought online without a concrete block, a garden hose, broken laws or broken windows.

Well, if you live in Sykesville, you know that a bunch of kids have created their own skateboard park near the entrance to town at South Branch Park in what is actually Howard County. Town government has decided to do something about it. Or at least talk it over. I’ve heard there are some liability concerns.

Is this the end for the skateboard park or the beginning?

The Mayor and Town Council have decided to form a committee to discuss it, and they’re looking for skateboarders or anyone else interested in joining. The mayor is personally involved and wants you to contact him at 410-795-8959 or mmiller@sykesville.net if you are interested.

It’s nice that these kids have taken an abandoned bit of concrete and turned into a good way to have fun, and I’m hoping the town will support them and actually help improve it. I’ve emailed the mayor on the issue and I’ll let you know what he says.

It’s actually historic Sykesville ground

While I’ve got your attention, let me point out that where the kids are skateboarding is actually important ground in Sykesville history. You can get the details in our big story on James Sykes. But if you’ve ever wondered about that old building, which the town recently renovated a bit, it used to be a house.

James Sykes ran the Howard Cotton Factory here, and he built 12 houses for his workers. Everything on the site that originally belonged to Sykes was either burned or washed away in flood, but this lone worker house, one of the original 12, still survives as a monument to the town’s founder.

Howard County’s architectural historian, Ken Short, recently evaluated the building in great detail and wrote: “The surviving stone building is clearly domestic, and must have been workers’ housing for the Howard Cotton Factory.” He continues that it “is set up to have cooking facilities and cellar storage in the basement, with living and sleeping space on the first story.”

Short says an 1858 ad for the sale of the whole site mentions 12 houses for factory workers, and he’s convinced this is one of them. Some people thought this might have been Sykes’s office, or even his house, but he had a much nicer house and it burned in 1870. Sykes had a lot of bad luck and is actually a tragic figure.

So it’s an old house on old ground. Who knows? Maybe two hundred years from now, some local residents will be talking about the old historic Sykesville Skateboard park built back in 2012 by a bunch of teenagers looking for fun.

Well, it turns out the guy who robbed the PNC bank in Eldersburg was not wearing a glittery purple sweater that he stole from his mom, as we reported yesterday. We just had a really bad picture.

It seems the bandit is more lumberjack than glam. Glitter or not, there’s still a $5000 reward, and I still don’t understand what’s going on with the black ski hat. Where are his eyes?

Remember, If you have any information, call Trooper First Class Corey Green of the Maryland State Police at 410-386-3000. It could be worth $5000.

And if you have any theories about the man’s black ski hat, please let us know.

Are we having a crime spree in the Freedom area?

As you probably know, a guy I’ve dubbed Bat Man, broke into the Sykesville Quick Stop just a few days ago, beat the clerk with a baseball bat, then took off with a few lottery tickets. At least they were able to catch him.

But now we’ve got another. Someone robbed PNC Bank over on Liberty Road in Eldersburg this Tuesday in broad daylight, and this time there’s a $5000 reward.

The bank is offering the reward, and you don’t actually have to catch the robber to collect, just provide information that leads to his apprehension.

State Police described the robber as “a white male, 6’ tall, with a stocky build and wearing a black ski mask, black gloves, a red plaid shirt over a blue shirt, blue jeans and white sneakers.”

But if you look at this picture they’ve provided, it looks more like he’s wearing a purple glitter sweater that he stole from his mom. It also looks like his eyes are very oddly aligned, or he hasn’t quite got the hang of his ski mask.

Regardless, the Glitter Bandit in the crooked mask walked into the bank at 1 p.m., demanded money, got it, then fled in an “older model dark green passenger car with a tan top, headed east on Liberty Road.”

Fortunately no one was hurt in the incident and there was no baseball bat involved. In fact, the police report doesn’t mention a weapon at all, just that he demanded money and the clerk complied.

The bandit matches the description of someone who remains at large for similar robberies in Howard and Prince George’s County, and State Police investigators are coordinating their efforts with detectives from these counties.

If you have any information, call Trooper First Class Corey Green of the Maryland State Police at 410-386-3000. It could be worth $5000.

The other day I wrote that the Carroll County Times hit the commissioners on going about things in a secretive manner. Commissioner Richard Rothschild, who obviously holds the paper in very low regard, so low that he doesn’t seem to want to mention it by name, smacked back in a comment that I almost missed somehow.

Here’s what the District 4 Commissioner has to say.

The paper in question seems to have a difficult time writing editorials that fully and accurately depict the complete story to our citizens. This recent piece is a perfect example. This is why our commissioners generally refuse to write any letters to the editor of the paper in question. We do not want to be affiliated with a paper that appears determined to write editorials that chronically commit acts of something I refer to as “deception through omission.”

Let’s look at facts:

1) The open meetings compliance board ruled on a minor technicality that had to do with the amount of written detail our clerk and chief of staff were including on the content of legally closed meetings. It is my understanding that the level of detail recorded was identical to that provided by previous commissioners. However, state expectations apparently intensified unbeknownst to the newly seated commissioners. Any attempt by the paper to impute intent to violate the law is patently false.

2) The Board has never made any decision that violated the law in any “secret” meetings as alleged by the Times. In fact, if two commissioners are in a room, and a third walks in, one of us will excuse ourselves. I will gladly take an oath on a bible to this effect. In fact, we go beyond the requirement of the law, and hold ourselves to a higher standard. The commissioners agreed between themselves at the time of taking office that “vote trading” (which is done routinely in Annapolis and Washington) is off-limits, and will not be tolerated by this Board of Carroll County Commissioners. No commissioner has ever walked into my office and said, “if you vote for X, I’ll vote for Y”. This a wonderful refreshing breath of fresh air in today’s political climate and reflects the highest level of integrity on the part of each and every member of the current Carroll County Board of Commissioners.

3) The Board made a decision to redact email addresses after a member of a political organization obtained innocent citizens’ email addresses through the Public Information Act (PIA) and recklessly published hundreds of them on a public website that has a history of using inappropriate language.

The paper omitted important facts that were discussed on public hearing: First and foremost the Federal Freedom of Information Act provides for the redaction of all personally identifiable information including email addresses.

Second, Maryland already has provisions for redaction of senior citizens’ email addresses;

Third, there has never been a court case on this matter, and the Act was written before email was in widespread use.

Fourth, the Governor’s legal counsel established the precedent that we relied upon, by refusing to release email addresses to one of our citizens under the grounds it was not in the public interest.

Fifth, the Board voted to attempt to obtain an opinion from the Attorney General, but in the interim decided to take a conservative posture and redact.

Sixth, the release and subsequent abuse of email addresses has a chilling affect on the willingness of the public to communicate with their elected officials. And seventh, our information technology expert testified that email addresses serve as a key to many people’s bank accounts and personal information, and their release potentially placed them at greater risk of viruses and identity theft. We believe the decision of the Governor’s legal counsel was correct, and simply mirrored it. If our political opponents disagree with this, there is a possibility they would have to litigate against either the Governor or the Board of Commissioners to overturn this decision. We believe this decision was ethical, appropriate, and protected the public interest by allowing citizens to communicate via email without fear their email addresses would end-up on the internet equivalent of a bathroom-wall as part and parcel of a political retaliation by opponents.

4) Finally, the current Board of Commissioners has a standing policy of allowing and accepting citizen input at every hearing. If the paper in question has evidence to the contrary, I suggest they either (a) present it or; or (b) issue an apology to their readers . Meanwhile, they would do themselves a favor to start reporting the news with greater accuracy. By doing so, their dismal circulation numbers may actually improve. Any citizen that wants more information on these topics may phone me directly at 410-386-2400 and I will be happy to discuss their concerns. Respectfully, Commissioner Richard Rothschild