Weekly Status Report - 7/16/09

MEMORANDUM

TO:               City Council

FROM:         David J. Deutsch, City Manager

SUBJECT:  Status Report

DATE       July 16, 2009

Status Report

1.  Equipment Acquisition

The Information Technology and Police Departments have identified computer notebooks for installation in the complement of police cruisers to be placed in service in FY 2010. The purchase amount is $14,397 ($4,799 per car); this purchase covers two vehicles for 2010 and one for a current trainee. The FY10 Budget contains $15,000 for this purchase. The equipment is available on a Prince George’s County Contract #PO60289M6027 (123108) and Maryland State Contract #050B8800003. As provided in Section 62 of the City Charter, this will serve as the required seven-day notice of intent to purchase this equipment. If Council has no objection, we will issue a purchase order on August 3, 2009 with delivery due on August 31, 2009.

2.  Community Meeting About City Hall Project

Over 900 invitation letters were sent to residents residing in the vicinity of the new City Hall project. About a dozen residents attended the meeting on July 14, along with Mayor Robinson and Councilmembers Brady, Polangin and Trouth. Representatives of ARCADIS, Grimm+Parker, and Manekin provided information to the public in addition to a staff presentation. There were very few questions from the public as it appeared that the Frequently Asked Questions sheet that was made available anticipated most of the concerns of the residents. As soon as the grading permit is issued by the County, we will be able to schedule the groundbreaking and get the contractor on site.

3.  Joint Public Hearing on Bowie State MARC Station Sector Plan

On Tuesday, July 14th, the Prince George's County Council and Planning Board held a joint public hearing on the Bowie State MARC Station Preliminary Sector Plan and Proposed Sectional Map Amendment (SMA). Seven (7) speakers, including Bowie State University President Dr. Mickey Burnim and City staff, provided comments during the hearing. With the exception of the City's testimony, the overall tone was very positive in favor of the Sector Plan's recommendations. The record will be held open until July 29th for receipt of any additional public input. The schedule calls for Planning Board adoption of the Sector Plan in October and County Council approval in early 2010.

4.  Bowie Town Center Outage

An outage occurred on Tuesday, July 14th, affecting feeders 8463 and 7442 serving customers in and around the Bowie Town Center and the Bowie Health Center campus. The outage affected approximately 1,500 customers. The outage began approximately 9:58 a.m. with what appears to be the failure of a pad-mounted switchgear on the BTC property. This equipment is a switching point for both feeders and allows automatic switching capability should one of the feeders supplying BTC fail. Without the automatic switching capability provided by this equipment, restoring service to the BTC must be done in steps, which contributed to the delay in restoring service. Customers were restored to service at varying times, with all affected customers restored by 1:45 p.m. BGE is conducting a detailed investigation into the incident to determine its cause and will take the necessary steps to prevent its reoccurrence. BGE has proactively reached out to some of the affected customers to inform them of the incident and the subsequent investigation. When the investigation is complete, BGE will communicate more widely with the affected customers and with the City.

5.  COPS Funding

The Department of Justice has told us that decisions on grant applications for police officer positions will be made no later than September 30th. There were 7,272 applications requesting a total of 39,000 officers. The City application for assistance was submitted in April 2009.