(10/2018) Six weeks! By the time you are reading this there will be just 6 weeks (or less) until the November election. Some people call this time period "silly season" due to all the rhetoric and flurry of debate.

Elections do matter. At the end of the day, people are collectively hiring who they want to work for them at the local and state level. Last week, I thought about what would have been if the 2014 county election had turned out differently.

• We would not have a new teacher pay scale and our starting teacher salary would still be dead last in the state of Maryland.
• We would not have saved Citizens and Montevue, keeping our promise to our seniors.
• We would not likely have a AAA bond rating from all three rating agencies because the prior administration raided reserves during their last year in office. I have replaced and added to our reserves putting our fiscal house in order.
• We would not likely have added 87 new firefighters, 41 through a federal SAFER grant.
• We would not have the Walkersville branch library, the Middletown Fire Station, or have broken ground on the Othello Regional Park near Brunswick or Phase II of the Utica District Park.
• And, we accomplished all of this with absolutely no increase in taxes.

Growth is the hot topic of the day and certainly the landscape would be very different.

• We would likely see houses at the Monrovia Town Center. Instead, the zoning has been vacated in large part because the county is now on the side of the citizens.
• We would likely have continued to see massive rezoning for more and more housing. Instead, my administration has approved no new development with the exception of a senior housing project in Urbana. All the other housing you see being built was approved by the prior administration and secured by legally binding developer contracts. I ended the use of developer rights and responsibility agreements because they have mostly been bad deals for county taxpayers.
• We would not have increased our investment in agricultural preservation by 25% preserving over 10,000 acres of farmland in just 4 years. Permanent preservation of our farmland is the ultimate way to halt development from our rural areas and maintain our rural way of life.
• We would not have ended the "school buy-out" option that allowed developers to continue to build houses even when schools are overcrowded. And, we likely would not have built two elementary schools at the same time.
• We would not have Livable Frederick as the path forward putting citizens in charge of shaping our future instead of special interests.

I am proud to have successfully stood up our new form of charter government and to have delivered open, honest government. We can all be proud that Frederick County now has the strongest ethics laws in the state of Maryland.

Together, we have accomplished much and delivered good government. I am proud to fight for good schools, responsible growth, and our high quality of life. I am working hard for more jobs, not more houses. This is the best way to manage the budget and protect taxpayers.

Job one has been protecting taxpayers. I have ended privatization that cost taxpayers more and re-negotiated some of the bad deals of the past saving taxpayers almost $70 million. Never again will the county give away future tax revenue to residential developers. This will not happen on my watch.

As your County Executive, my job is all about making life better for the people who call Frederick County home.

"Silly season" will likely be filled with more rhetoric than reality. I trust that residents can sort out the fact from the fiction.

If you have questions or want information on any subject, you are welcome to contact me at jgardner@fredericcountymd.gov or at 301-600-3190.