From the Desk of Linda Norris - Candidate for County Council at Large

(2/27) I’m not much of a sailor. And we certainly don’t have any large tidewater swells among the green hills and mountains of Frederick County.

Yet at this historic time in our 266-year-old county, I love the image of charting a course for the direction we steer our community "ship". Because a vessel under full steam moves best with a straight course, and to make real headway the entire community needs to be behind it.

I will be a good representative to guide that course because of a unique combination of skills that I’ve assembled over the years.

1) I know how successful corporations and small businesses are run (Canam Steel Corporation US Communications Director and my consulting firm)

2) I have the research skills and I’m free from ideological viewpoints due to my training as a journalist (UPI, Watertown Daily Times, Frederick News Post, local magazine writing);

3) I have a well-rounded perspective of being a 28-year Frederick County parent, churchgoer, volunteer and neighbor.

I took part in the campaign to bring Charter to our county, so I naturally want to be there to work out the relationships between our strong-executive model and the County Council whose job is to be watchful and provide checks and balances; I also want to be part of local solutions to challenges that now can be handled here at home instead of by General Assembly members from all over Maryland.

Growth: I’d like to facilitate a better balance between growth and no-growth factions of our community, so that every four years we don’t swing from a land-use plan that some say chokes our vitality and progress to development policies that others say benefit a select few and bulldoze the beauty and small-town feeling which we all cherish. There IS a middle-ground and my mission is to find that as a moderate who cares for environmental sustainability but knows that a good business climate underwrites our environmental and community well-being.

Education: I want to make sure that our American value of a strong educational system---in our public schools, in our community college and in our libraries--continues to bring pride to Frederick County, instead of the derision and censorship that some current officials have expressed.

Business and Economic Development: I want to continue the work done in the past four years to improve our business climate with de-regulation in county departments; but work to see that we restore the diminished role of our Office of Economic Development to go back to being a real choice of biotechnology businesses who are flocking to Howard and Montgomery County.

I have lived in Frederick County since 1986; for 25 years in Mountaindale; and the past three years in Middletown near Myersville (just the other side of the mountain!) I have two daughters and a grown stepdaughter and stepson; and my mom always gives me the senior citizen perspective from her home near downtown Frederick! My husband is in law enforcement training and leadership.

Currently I work at the US Composting Council in Bethesda, MD, a national trade group representing compost manufacturers. I continue to do PR & copywriting consulting and am a member of the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce, the Middletown Chamber of Commerce, the League of Women Voters, Holy Family Catholic Community, Wholistic Woman Retreats and the Lewistown Volunteer Fire Department.

www.lindanorrisforcouncil.com