After complaints of lack of leadership, incomplete financial records, and poor communication, the Taneytown City Council voted to dissolve the Main Street Taneytown Board of Directors for the second time in three years.
Taneytown has been a Main Street community since 2002 with previous boards honoring the requirements needed to maintain good standing. However, nothing was put in code until 2021. The recently-dissolved board was appointed in December 2022 after the previous one was dissolved. It held one meeting in early 2023 and has no activity since then.
When asked his opinion on the Board’s ability to function, City Manager Jim Wieprecht explained, "When I spoke one-on-one with the Board members, they all get it. However, when everyone is together, they just don't gel."
Mayor Christopher Miller accused committee members of attacking volunteers on Facebook and sending offensive messages to business owners.
Councilman Christopher Tillman, who is also a business owner on Main Street, described the Board as having, "a great deal of dysfunction and ranker among the members of the board and the Main Street Manager Jay Meashey. This is not functioning the way the program envisions it to function. Members have tried."
Tillman said he spoke with Christine McPherson, director of the Main Street Maryland program, and learned the program has many requirements to be considered a member of the Main Street program. These include year-end reports outlining the board’s financial history and the signing of an agreement between the City and the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD).
Tillman said he struggled to acquire Main Street Taneytown’s financial records.
"Certain people seem to want to sweep that information under the rug," he said.
Tillman said McPherson informed him that the program has a specialist available to aid any board that requests help. However, Tillman stated that the Main Street Manager reported no one was available to help the board, yet McPherson told Tillman that a request was never made in the first place.
Another frustration for board members involved a training session that the Main Street Maryland Program requires during the first year of a member’s term of service.
Sharon Tillman, promotions chair of Main Street Taneytown, was adamant that none of the members were ever informed of the meeting requirement. Meashey claimed he talked about the training many times during the recorded meetings.
Tillman was also vocal about the pitfalls of the Board, "I’m angry because my time, other Board members time and volunteer time has been wasted." She reiterated the lack of information provided to the members including the missing financial data and the goals for the group.
Residents pushed for a "win-win situation," hoping council and the board could work out their differences. Paul Kluth, a Main Street business owner and resident, encouraged the Council to look at the big picture.
"Let’s make Main Street something to be proud of. I want to see more visitors coming to this City." He complimented the Parks and Recreation department saying, "they really have their act together," encouraging the Council to follow their lead.
Mark Stephenson, whose wife Stephanie recently resigned from her position as chair of the Clean-Green and Safe Committee, blamed city council and Main Street Taneytown Manager Meashey for their lack of leadership and communication. He also questioned the ethics surrounding the lack of transparency with the financial statements.
When Miller asked Wieprecht if the Main Street Program has found the financials of Taneytown’s Board to be accurate, he replied that the submitted reports were broad but did check out. Sharon Tillman pushed back asking why the reports were not shared with the Board members if they were considered correct by the program directors. Her question went unanswered.
The Main Street chapter in the City’s code was left ‘open ended’ so the board could create their own operating procedures with guidelines from the City according to Wieprecht.
"Maybe that was asking too much," he said. He suggested adding ‘guard rails’ to the board’s guidelines to help them find their way more easily in the future.
Meashey added, "When we wrote the ordinance we were responding to a desire for grassroots as opposed to top-down bureaucracy and we ended up not providing enough direction."
Miller said he felt "there was a lack of vision and direction and suggested repealing the code and the Council would make the bylaws for the Board." Tillman disagreed, he felt that the city should allow the Board the freedom to structure the program as they see fit to produce the results they are after.
"If this is truly a grassroots organization then the direction should come from the businesses and the interested parties, not from the city." he said.
Tillman’s opinion was to dissolve the current Board and address the issues at the city code level before trying to rebuild it.
Another frustration for the Main Street Board is the future of the Taneytown Record, a now defunct newsletter that was run by the city. When the Board was reinstated in 2022, one of its goals set by the city was to re-establish something in its stead. The Council has discussed options in depth including putting out a newsletter themselves, paying an outside entity to do a magazine and even considered working with the Emmittsburg News Journal to create a Taneytown version.
Miller claimed in April that he asked if the Board wanted to ‘piggyback’ on the distribution of the water quality report with something akin to a newsletter, highlighting the activities and businesses in the Main Street district, however, by May the Board "acted like it had never heard of it."
Councilwoman Judith Fuller was adamant that the Taneytown Record replacement and whatever the Main Street Board decided to put out should be two separate things.
"No where does it say that Main Street should be putting out a paper," she said. "This is about what do we as a city want to do to get the information out so Main Street can do something completely separate that serves their purpose."
The Council decided the best option at this time is to create a newsletter with important events and information and consider doing something more substantial down the road.
Throughout the meeting, council members debated whether to repeal the entire ordinance that focuses on the Main Street Board or to simply dissolve the board and start over.
Mayor Pro Tem James McCarron was concerned that by just doing away with the board it, "would be put on a back burner somewhere and be forgotten." However, he felt a 90-day period to create answers may not be enough.
City Manager Jim Wieprecht agreed with McCarron and offered to begin working with the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) to create a plan for a newly assembled Board within the 90-day time limit. He described what some of the other local municipalities have done with their boards ranging from the City Council acting as the Main Street Advisory Board in its entirety to the Council paying the Main Street Manager and that being its only input on the Board. Tillman added, "There are a number of models out there with some that will and some that won't work in our environment so there is a lot to look at."
The Council approved an emergency repeal of the Board at a vote of 4-1 with Tillman the dissenting vote. The Council decided to hold at least one workshop dedicated to this topic with public input in the future.
