City officials fine-tune agenda for Annapolis

Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2006

by Noelle Barton

Rockville’s elected leaders have fine-tuned their legislative agenda at the state level in recent weeks.

The City Council was scheduled to meet in December with District 17 delegation members Sen. Jennie M. Forehand of Rockville and Dels. Kumar P. Barve, Michael R. Gordon and Luiz R.S. Simmons, all Democrats. That meeting was postponed, but the city leaders have identified a few topics to focus on in Annapolis this spring.

Mayor Larry Giammo said last week that Rockville continues to support a veto override by the legislature to enable speed cameras with photo-radar technology to be used by municipalities. Giammo said he was unsure whether the legislature would override that particular veto.

Rockville’s priorities include legislation that would:

*give authority to municipalities like Rockville to assess its own development impact tax;

*give authority to municipalities to provide first-dollar exemptions of property assessments as a form of tax relief for owner-occupied, residential properties; and

*give municipalities more authority to establish additional criteria for setting a local homeowner property tax credit (a circuit-breaker tax credit that piggybacks on a credit at the state level for properties with certain household incomes).

Appointments

The City Council unanimously approved the appointment of the following people on Jan. 9:

*Paul Tetlow joined the Human Rights Commission as a member until Jan. 1, 2010.

*Benjamin Wu, who replaced William Askinazi at the Rockville office of the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, will serve out an unexpired term at Rockville Economic Development Inc., until Sept. 1, 2007.

Tuesday meeting

The City Council’s regular weekly meeting was scheduled for Tuesday evening because of Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and took place after The Gazette’s deadline.

Its agenda included a project update from the second quarter of the current fiscal year and a discussion on revisions to the zoning ordinance.

Any news from that meeting will appear in a future edition.