Be Part of the Conversation
Alderwoman Elly Tierney’s guest column on why she will renege on her pledge to vote for a school overcrowding law paralleling the county law is sadly full of deceit (The Capital, Feb. 16).
Campaigning against incumbent Alderman Joe Budge in 2017, she pledged in writing that if elected, she would support and work to enact an ordinance paralleling the county adequate public facilities ordinance and mandate that when any public schools are at 100 percent of state-rated capacity, no residential developments of four or more units may be approved for six years or until the school overcrowding is remedied. Period. To surpass capacity allowance of 100 percent is not what’s better for our current families. Period.
She was joined in this pledge by Mayor Gavin Buckley and Aldermen Fred Paone, Marc Rodriguez and Rob Savidge, enough to pass a school overcrowding law so that new development of four or more homes would not be permitted to add to the problem.
City of Annapolis subdivisions of four or more homes should not be treated with more leniency than in the county. Some of the largest currently approved developments are on land once in the county but annexed into the city. These include Parkside Preserve with 130 new homes and Rocky Gorge with 46.
Our public schoolchildren deserve better than overcrowded schools! Hillsmere and Tyler Heights elementary schools already have 18 trailers where children are isolated from the rest of the school. In catering to developers, Tierney misleads us by stating the ordinance she is trying to delay, defeat, and now pledges to vote against, would affect infill lots — but in fact, only affects subdivisions of 11 or more units.
She ends by threatening: “We will continue to be a divided city and not One Annapolis.”
It is quite the opposite: by preventing more school overcrowding we stand with current families (some of whom find small private schools unreachable). Annapolis’s public schools lose students to private schools which are not overcrowded.
Ms. Tierney, why not defend schools for the community we already have!? Are there local friends or family of yours deserving to be the 35th child in a class, or in a trailer?
ANGELA CARPITA, ANNAPOLIS