February News-Briefs

(2/2024) Council Drops Action To Address Councilmen Absences

After last month’s extensive discussion on the need to address the issue of repeated absences of councilmen at town meetings, the Council went silent on the issue when all four of the town’s councilmen showed up for the January council meeting.

In December, on the heels of the inability of the Town Council to form a quorum at their November meeting, Burgess Heath Barnes suggested that the Council look into modifying the Town Code to address council member absenteeism.

Barnes said at the time, "We all were elected to do the town’s business, and while I appreciate that occasionally one of us will miss a meeting or two, but we have one council member who has missed four this year. And if that trend continues, the inability of another member to show up, say because they are sick, will result in the Council not being able to form a quorum, which happened last month, and without a quorum, we can’t conduct important town business."

Commissioner Rittelmeyer agreed with Barnes. "This has been a longstanding, chronic issue for us. When I was Burgess, at one time we went three months without having enough members show up to form a quorum. As a result, a lot of town business had to be put on hold."

Barnes suggested the Council look into changing the Code to address how excused and unexcused absences are handled. "Just like Walkersville and Taneytown, we may need to set a maximum number of allowable unexcused absences. It’s one thing to tell us in advance that you can’t make a meeting, it’s something [else to] simply not show up, or call two minutes before the meeting to say you're not coming."

While the Town Council agreed to consider discussing any possible changes to the Woodsboro Town Code to address absenteeism in detail at the January Town Council meeting, the presence of all four councilmen at this meeting apparently made the issue a moot point – for now at least.

Finishing Touches Being Place On Skatepark

Woodsboro resident Ben Marshall, the brainchild of the town’s new skatepark, provided the Council with an update on the finishing touches being placed on the arena.

The arena, Marshall said, is actively being used every day by the town’s youth, and for the most part, the kids have been very respectful. Only one instance of profane graffiti has been noted and the Town was taking care of that.

A ‘grind rail’ used in tricks by some of the more experienced skateboarders has been installed at no cost to the town, said Marshall. However, the center of the arena still needs to be finished off.

Currently the center is all dirt, the remains of the initial construction effort. Marshall asked the Council if they would be willing to pay for the installation of grass turf, or something more aesthetically appealing, such as the rubber mulch that is in the town’s playground.

Burgess Barnes, while supportive of the desire to finish off the arena, said that rubber mulch was prohibitively expensive and suggested the town look into other options as the town had used up all the grant money provided for the construction of the park.

Marshall also said he was still working on procuring a sign listing all the rules and regulations governing use of the arena and once done, will submit the wording to the town for its final approval.

Marshall thanked the town for getting the arena’s lighting set up. Barnes told the Council that the lights are on from 5 to 10 p.m. in the winter and 7 to 10 p.m. in the summer. When asked why they were on longer then the lights in the adjacent tennis courts, Barnes said "for safety."

"In the tennis courts it’s not a problem if the lights go out in a middle of a set, but if a skate boarder is in mid air when the lights go out, they could get hurt. So the lights stay on for half an hour after the park closes just to be safe." Barnes said.