Weekly Status Report - 1/29/09

MEMORANDUM

TO: City Council

FROM: David J. Deutsch
City Manager

SUBJECT: Status Report DATE: January 29, 2009

Status Report

1. BGE Tree Reimbursement Program

Attached is a letter from BGE pertaining to an extension of the time frame for residents to apply for reimbursement under the BGE Tree Reimbursement Program associated with the Bowie Reliability Improvement Project. This letter had been requested by the City’s Environmental Advisory Committee. The letter references the proposed extension from March 31, 2009 to May 31, 2009. This extension applies to residents who were notified and signed their notification forms in 2008. For residents notified in 2009, they will have until March 31, 2010 to apply for reimbursement. These dates will be included in the next Bowie Spotlight and will be advertised on the City’s website and cable television character generator.

2. BRCPC Electricity Purchasing Savings for FY 2008

As Council has authorized, the City is part of a collective effort organized by the Baltimore COG to purchase electricity. This group comprises 21 entities located primarily in the Baltimore area. For FY 2008, according to information comprised by the consultant that advises this group, the City has saved $104,012 over the BGE Standard Offer price by our participation in this purchasing cooperative. Collectively, the Baltimore Region Cooperative Purchasing Committee (BRCPC) saved $14,917,628 over the BGE Standard Offer price in FY 2008.

3. Slots

County Council Member Eric Olson of College Park has introduced CB-1-2009 (attached), which is a bill “prohibiting video lottery terminals in Prince George’s County”. The referendum language stipulates that local zoning regulations will have a role in locating the slots parlors. We will keep you apprised on this.

4. COG Policy Boards and Committees

The list of boards and committees is attached. Please let the City Clerk know if you wish to remain on or serve on any of the boards or committees.

5. Hall Road Roadway Safety Audit

This morning, staff received an excellent briefing from the Roadway Safety Audit Team of the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) regarding their recently completed investigation of Hall Road. The purpose of the audit was to identify problem areas and solutions for the entire length of Hall Road, in anticipation of the construction of a new County library and Hall Station mixed-use development in the next year. The preliminary recommendations will be organized into short-term actions that can immediately enhance safety (Phase 1) and longer-term improvements that will require additional study or capital expenditures (Phase 2). SHA plans to complete their report, addressing the input received from City staff today, and agreed to present their findings to City Council at a future meeting. The Specific Design Plan for Hall Station is scheduled for review by the County Planning Board next Thursday.

6. MD 197 Meetings

Staff has proposed a tentative schedule for SHA staff to come to Bowie to unveil their proposed revisions to the MD 197 project planning alternatives. The tentative date for a Community Open House meeting is Tuesday, March 24, 2009 and for a City Council public hearing is Monday, April 6, 2009. As Council is aware, the Location/Design public hearing was held last February and City Council subse-quently held a hearing and sent a position letter to SHA requesting changes to the plans. A project update was provided to Council last July; however, in August the SHA Administrator, Mr. Neil Pedersen, directed SHA staff to further investigate the City's recommendations and develop the necessary information to present to the public. While some studies are still being conducted and plan revisions prepared, SHA believes they will be ready to share this information in the next several months before completing the Project Planning phase. The improvements shown at the Location/Design Public Hearing were estimated to cost between $85-$93 million. Any design selected will take 1-2 years in design and engineering before proceeding to construction.

7. Crime Data Available on City Website

The Police Department section of the City’s website contains several different kinds of crime reports to give the public a sense of the types and extent of crimes occurring in the City:

Unusual Occurrence Reports – These reports, which are provided to the Council via email, are also posted to the website as they are received. In general, officers are required to complete an Unusual Occurrence Report when major incidents or crimes of an uncommon nature occur within the City of Bowie.
Bowie Police Department Monthly Reports – These reports detail the number and types of documented cases that the Bowie Police Department responds to during a given month. These reports provide the date, location and type of crime committed. They also indicate whether an arrest was made in each particular case.
Uniformed Crime Reports for Bowie – The State of Maryland requires all Maryland jurisdictions to report data on serious criminal offenses committed within that jurisdiction. Prepared by Bowie Police Department, these monthly reports list only major crimes categorized in police parlance as Part I crimes.
Crimereports.com – This web based tool is available through participating law enforcement agencies. There is a link to the service from the Police Department part of our website.

Participating agencies provide their crime data to this service which makes the data available to the public in an easy-to-use, visual format. Crime data can be viewed or searched by crime category, neighborhood, date, or Zip Code. Data is available for the last 30 days. Users can view a list of the crimes and can also see where the crimes are occurring on a map. The Prince George's County Police Department reports City and County data to this service daily. Therefore the Bowie data includes all documented crimes, no matter which agency responded or took the crime report.

8. Animal Control

A redesign of the City’s website is currently underway. The new site is expected to be unveiled to the public toward the end of February. With it will come an entirely new section on Animal Control. It will include basic information about pet licensing, how to deal with stray animals, nuisance barking, animal bites, and dead animals. There will also be pages on preparing an emergency plan for pets, information on how to adopt pets, information on the County Animal Shelter, and a resource page with links to animal welfare organizations.

The Animal Control section will also contain information about lost pets. The information for this page was culled from many different sources, including the ASPCA, the Humane Society and the CLAW website. In addition, we have incorporated the suggestions of Councilmember Brady and others and created a Pet Pickup Alert category within Alert Bowie, which we will begin to use when the new site is up and running. Alerts will be sent out when Animal Control picks up a pet and can’t locate the owner of the pet. The alerts, sent via cell phone, Blackberry and email will give a brief description of the pet and refer recipients of the message to a page on the site that will provide more information and a picture of the pet. Only those who subscribe to this particular list will receive the alerts. The goal is to notify interested persons about pets that have been picked up in the hopes of reducing the number of animals transported to the County Animal Shelter. Information about how to sign up for the alerts will be provided in a press release, and will be sent to those registering pets at City Hall, and to local veterinarians, pet stores, and animal groups.

9. Tulip Grove Elementary School

At its meeting on January 22nd, the Prince George’s Board of Education voted to submit a supplemental Capital Improvement Request to the Maryland Interagency on School Construction. The additional submission was prompted by the concern expressed by some that the original submission did not address any of the schools categorized as being in “poor” shape according to the Parsons/3DI Facilities Study completed last summer for the school system. The IAC invited the Board to submit an additional request.

There were nine schools classified as in “poor” condition in the study, including Tulip Grove Elementary. Of those nine schools, the Board has voted to close two schools and replace five of them. The remaining two have not yet been addressed. The Board’s action on January 22nd formally asks the State for $12 million to begin the process of replacing Tulip Grove and four other elementary schools.

It is not yet clear where these new projects fall on the County’s priority list, and despite the IAC’s invitation to submit these projects, given the current economic climate in Annapolis, planning and/or funding approval is not a certainty.

10. Land Use Authority Bill

The Bi-County Subcommittee of the Prince George’s House Delegation will be addressing this bill at its meeting next Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. The Mayor and I will attend, along with Mr. Lucchi. A vote is anticipated in the Subcommittee on the following Wednesday (February 11th).

DJD/asf

Attachments