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Greetings Friends!
Welcome to the Bowie City Activist
website at www.bowiewatch.org.
Here are the highlights of this webpage edition:
• WHY WATCH BOWIE?
•
THE WAFFLING DENNIS BRADY
• A TALE OF TWO CITY COUNCILMEN - CONROY VERSUS BRADY (Yawn!)
• DAHMS RETURNS TO CITY
HALL
• CITY MANAGER COMMITS CITY WATER GOOF!
• ROBINSON DISASTER AS MAYOR
Busy hands are happy hands.
Let's get busy in Bowie with this edition of The Bowie City Activist!
WHY WATCH BOWIE?
I wish everyone reading
my words could have seen Bowie in 1961. Over the past 46 years, I have watched my hometown grow from a quiet railroad and
horse racing town way out in the sticks, to the major Maryland city and urban area it is today. There was literally nothing
here in 1961 other than old town Bowie, the small Bowie State Teachers College (now Bowie State University), a millionaire's
estate with its historic mansion, and the Bowie thoroughbred horse racing track when mass production housing entrepreneur
Bill Levitt began building his next "Levittown" in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.
Today, the city of Bowie
is a major Maryland city - a suburb city of our national capital city. Bowie is perhaps one of the most unique cities in America!
Here is why:
We live in a location where governments converge! Bowie sits on real estate that is a short drive to the
nation's capital, the state capital and the county seat. Our local news is often national news. With the convergance of national,
state and county governments - it is easy to overlook our Bowie city government. The actions of our local Bowie city government
are often overlooked.
I once told Bowie Blade News writer Terry Schuette that if the City of Bowie sat in the middle
of Indiana, there would be a riot for some of the things that go on in our local city government. She did not disagree with
me.
I became an activist for good city government following an attack on my constitutional rights by the Logue/Robinson
regime when, in the late 1980s, the City sent code enforcement into my home against my verbal and written protests. Believing
in the good of government, I escalated the matter to the Bowie City Council. To my surprise, my elected representatives were
completely unresponsive. I then made a discovery. I found a Bowie City Council that more resembled a private club than a public
body. In the early 1990s, I wrote letters to our only media outlet, the Bowie Blade News, calling our city council a private
club.
Another discovery that I made was that there is a very little accountablity in Bowie City government. We had
an unelected city manager allegedly accountable to the City Council, but often the Council was just a rubber stamp on the
City Manager's actions. In a city manager/city council form of government, the city manager was essentially accountable to
no one.
Therefore, we need to be vigilent, watch, and hold our elected city council representatives accountable and
responsible for actions of the city admiinistration. With Mayor Fred Robinson's assault on the C&C Dance Company, I created
the Bowie City Activist website.
Watch:
• Watch Bowie become one of the highest taxed cities in America, and
twenty year City Council veterans are completely clueless to this fact and incapable of doing anything else but "tax and spend".
• Watch the Bowie High School track become condemned and fall into disrepair while nearby Arundel High School in
Gambrills across the county line has a state of the art track. And, watch clueless Mayor Fred Robinson do nothing while St.
Johns Properties helped fund a new track.
• Watch Bowie High School become over crowded. Robinson sat on the Bowie
City Council since the 1980s. Didn't he know all this growth was coming, and yet he did nothing to ensure Bowie High School
didn't become overcrowded?
• Watch the "Kenilworth Rat House" with uncorrected code violations for more than 15
years and wondering how the city is going to handle its own police force when it has difficulty administering the city code.
• Watch Mayor Gee Fred Robinson and his Blade News crony Judge Devlin alter the city's charter in order to change
our city's elections because the mayor was receiving too much election competition from Burian, McArdle and Ellington. Watch
the Mayor place changing the election cycles to further his incumbency in higher priority than public safety with the police
referendum question.
• Watch Mayor Gee Fred Robinson attack the C&C Dance Company and spend over $72,000 of your
hard earned city tax money on the city's lawsuit, while allowing the University of Maryland Foundation to walk away from the
all important land covenants twenty years ago with no legal action or response.
• Watch collusion between the Blade
News and the City of Bowie to orchestrate events such as "The State of the City" address to occurr right before a city election
so the incumbent Robinson can receive favorable news coverage going into the city election week.
• Watch Robinson
violate the Maryland Public Information Act in the early 1990s (see January 7, 2006 Bowie City Activist page by navigating
in the drop down box on this page).
• Watch Logue/Robinson commit political malfeasance by suppressing political opponents
speech at Bowie City Council meetings (again, see the January 7, 2006 Bowie City Activist page with the Prince Georges County
Journal article).
• Watch Robinson lie to Bowie, and say anything to get elected.
Politically, Bowie is a
litmus-test city for statewide politics. Bowie city elections are observed at the state level. Therefore, watch Bowie!
Richard
A. Dahms
THE WAFFLING DENNIS BRADY
It was a pleasure to see many of you - both on my public and private blind
copy distributions - during the city's Memorial Day political parade. Even the ugly face of Mayor Gee Fred Flintstone could
not spoil a great time.
By the way, I heard a rumor during the parade that District 2 Candidate Diane Polangin's
husband is going to start writing a weekly gardening column for the Bowie Blade News in exchange for Rouse's political endorsements
just like Jack and Connie Jenkins have done for years with Connie's movie review columns.
If you haven't read
the hilarious article in the May 31, 2007 Bowie Blade News announcing the waffling Dennis Brady's filing for re-election,
its well worth a good laugh! "Rouse the louse" really out did himself in the editing of the article.
First, the photo
of Dennis Brady is very misleading. It is a photo that the Blade News has been using from the mid 1990s. Dennis is almost
all gray now, and looks almost nothing like the photo. You have to wonder about someone who feels he must mask his appearance
with an old photo.
Then the headline itself is funny which reads: Mayor Pro Tem Dennis Brady files for re-election.
Folks, the reality is being Mayor Pro Tem means chairing the City Council meeting in absence of the mayor, if he were sick
or something. I know the title "Mayor Pro Tem" sounds nice and official, but that is all it really is - he chairs the Council
meeting if the Mayor is absent.
Brady, who waffled in 2005 when he couldn't decide which Council race to enter, again
waffled in 2007 as he was contemplating a run for mayor. He makes an incredible statement in the Blade News article: "I can
honestly answer that I seriously thought about running for mayor and I believe I would have won even in a three way race between
myself, Mayor Fred Robinson and Councilman Michael Lyles, who both have already filed".
To that statement, the Bowie
City Activist says: BALONEY!!!!
If the waffling Brady truly believed he could have won against Mayor Gee Fred Flintstone,
then why did the waffling Brady not run for Mayor in 2005 and allowed Robinson to run uncontested? Brady, who has been wanting
to be Mayor for years did not have the political fortitude that Councilmen Michael Lyles has, and that Councilman Paul Ellington
had in 2002. Challenging an incumbent Bowie Mayor by a sitting incumbent Councilperson is a relatively new thing in Bowie
politics. It demonstrates the city is growing.
Then the Blade News article makes this statement: "Brady brings to
the council the analytical approach, a result of his over 20 years work experience in engineering". Well, the analytical Dennis
Brady who was party with Mayor Gee Fred Flintstone in the attack on C&C Dance Company wasn't smart enough to know Bowie taxpayers
don't pay taxes to put a reputable dance company that half the town's children have attended at one time or another out of
business. Is this the analytical approach Brady brings? Spending tax money attacking a dance studio?
Dennis Brady reminds
me of an adage MCI Communications CEO Orville Wright use to say when delegating something very important that had to get done
- "Don't give this to any bright boys". We all knew what that meant. Bright boys are people that have all the academic qualifications,
but don't have one important quality - common sense.
Dennis Brady's "analysis paralysis" approach lacks common street
sense.
I might soften my opinion of Dennis Brady, if and when he comes out an admits the city made a mistake in
the Court of Public Opinion when they targeted C&C Dance in the Melford litigation, and comes out in favor of allowing C&C
Dance to stay at the non-tech center. C&C dance is not a gas station or an auto repair shop. It is an educational institution
serving 1,000+ students and qualifies as complying with the existing land covenants under the recreational use clause, the
educational use clause and possibly the religious use clause for those that believe dance is spiritual.
Ironically,
I spoke with Dennis at Bowiefest on June 4 while C&C Dance was performing on stage. Dennis looked like a lost puppy (bark
bark) wandering around Allen's Pond searching for voter support. I pointed out to Dennis the various Melford land covenant
clauses that C&C Dance qualifies as a permitted use. In that conversation, Dennis did not have the common sense to see that
C&C Dance was performing at a recreational event - BOWIEFEST! Therefore, C&C Dance must be recreational, and be a permitted
use under the Melford land covenants recreational use clause.
Dennis Brady failed to see the obvious.
I was
once a Dennis Brady fan as I use to view him as the viable alternative to that liar Mayor Gee Fred Flintstone. Dennis has
some good qualities including intelligence when compared to Fred Flintstone, but in recent years Brady has become very complacent.
And, he failed to step up to the plate and challenge Robinson in 2005, and now in 2007 he wants us to believe he would have
won if he had filed for mayor. Baloney Dennis! If Brady really thinks he could win, then why doesn't he have the political
backbone to challenge Robinson?
Friends, the city election is starting to heat up. Rouse "the louse" is starting to
use the Blade News to promote his agenda and his favored candidates. Given how close the District 4 County Council Democratic
Primary three way race was last September, 2006 with Robinson instigating the incident at Freestate Mall in retaliation for
my support of Ingrid Turner and the change agent work of the Bowie City Activist, this could be the ugliest city election
we have ever had in Bowie!
Thousands of internet visitors have viewed the WebPages of the Bowie City Activist at
www.bowiewatch.org. I am a political change agent for my hometown of 46 years.
If you would like to be added to the
Bowie City Activist blind distribution e-mail list which is a private distribution list going out to hundreds in our city,
feel free to write me at richarddahms@comcast.net. I would be happy to include you in our e-mail updates.
A TALE
OF TWO CITY COUNCILMEN - CONROY VERSUS BRADY (Yawn!)
I thought I would share a bedtime story with my community. It
is a tale of two city councilman.
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed?
We have two At Large Councilmen
(well, technically there are three at large including the Mayor's seat). Our two at large representatives are Kevin Conroy
and Dennis Brady (yawn - if you suffer from insomnia, take a small dose of Dennis Brady and you will sleep well through the
next city council meeting).
Anyway, we have these two at large city councilman. One seems to be busting his keister
fixing and reforming Bowie while the other one just snoozes away collecting the same paycheck as his at large counterpart.
In recent weeks, Kevin Conroy has offered positive reform to fix city campaign finances and has proposed over-hauling the
city's antiquated ethics committee.
Seems Conroy is doing all the work these days to change Bowie for the better.
What's Brady done for us lately - or for that matter, in 14+ years on the city council - other than collecting his taxpayer
financed paycheck?
Conroy has passion - he even cussed recently at a city council meeting. Frankly, we need a shake
up in the City, and a few cuss words puts Conroy - in my mind - in same league as an Earl Weaver in the Orioles glory days,
or President Harry Truman who was known to rip a few choice words with the media present. People who get things done and are
non-complacent sometimes cuss.
Brady, on the other hand, has no passion and is very complacent. Let's face it, Brady's
boring and doesn't have any city legislative accomplishments to point to. And, he is very miss-leading. He took a bow (or,
a bowel movement) at the C&C Dance Recital several years ago when it was announced C&C was saved at the non-tech center and
received an undeserved applause from the audience when, in fact, C&C was not saved. Very misleading.
Brady isn't smart
enough to know Bowie taxpayers don't pay taxes to put a reputable dance company out of business. But, Conroy is smart, and
knows better. Conroy is new on the Council and is already developing a reputation for being constituent oriented, but Brady
has been on the Council 14+ years and doesn't have the same constituent oriented reputation.
Brady relieves on "Rouse
the louse" down at the Dennis Brady Building. And, like Jenkins, is a Rouse suck up - although no one can suck up to Rouse
and brown nose better than little Jackie Jenkins. Conroy, on the other hand, seems independent from the Blade News. In other
words, he is not a Rouse crony like Mayor Gee Fred Flintstone, Brady and Jenkins.
Conroy is fresh and new on the Council,
but Brady is stale and old on the Council. Conroy has ideas and is throwing them out for the public improvement, but Brady's
has no new ideas and nothing really to offer.
Conroy got his political start in the current city political system,
but Brady got his start in the old pre-NAACP legal threat political system prior to the creation of city districts.
It's
a tale of two at large Councilman - one who is proactive trying to change Bowie and is earning his city council paycheck,
and the other one who is snoozing and walks out of a city council meeting, but didn't have the integrity to return his Council
paycheck which he didn't earn that evening - along with Mayor Gee Fred Flintstone and Jenkins.
Well, it is getting
late, and I could go on, but I'm going to call it a night. I am going to turn on my TV taped city council meeting so I can
get a dose of Dennis Brady (yawn), and be a sleep in no time. Good night all.
DAHMS RETURNS TO CITY HALL
EDITOR'S
NOTE: The following e-mail sent to City of Bowie CEO David Deutsch was not sent to the BCA blind copy distribution list. It
was sent at the expiration of the October, 2006 Court Order following the District 4 County Council election incident with
Mayor Gee Fred Flintstone and his political retaliation for the Bowie City Activist support of Ingrid Turner:
Mr.
Deutsch,
A reminder that the Court Order of October, 2006 resulting from the September, 2006 Democratic Primary election
incident involving Mayor Gee Fred Flintstone and his trashy/filthy campaign signs which I found on September 22, 2006 posted
on the city public right of ways in violation of the Code of Bowie has expired.
I will be returning to City Hall
to conduct public business and to participate in public affairs as a change agent activist for good city government in my
hometown of 46 years.
I was very pleased by the final outcome of last September's District 4 County Council Democratic
Primary. I am glad that Mayor Gee Fred Flintstone received the political activist message left on Audubon Lane, and finally
conceded the County Council election shortly thereafter.
Richard
CITY MANAGER COMMITS CITY WATER GOOF!
I
watch many City Council meetings, and happened to watch the Council's City Budget work session on TV.
During City
Manager David Deutsch's discussion of the Water and Sewer Fund, he stated that there is less usage consumption of city water.
I found it ironic and laughable that while he was making this statement, he was also drinking from a bottled water product
clearly visible on TV.
The answer to the City manager's observation as to why there is less city water usage could
be found in the bottled water in the City manager's own hands. City Hall is on city water, and the City Manager of Bowie doesn't
drink city water!!!
When I was a boy growing up in Bowie, the city water use to be good. I do not know when the change
occurred, but our city water no longer tastes good. In recent years, I have noticed the taste of chlorine. I now drink Cool
Wave Water bottled in Upper Marlboro, and owned and operated by former NBA Basketball star and Bowie City resident Bobby Wilkerson.
Mr. Deutsch did a great job on our city budget, but I had to let him know why city water consumption is down. City
water consumption is down because it tastes bad. I have had a number of city residents inform me that they are drinking bottled
water because of the bad tasting city water.
Frankly, Mr. Deutsch as CEO of the City of Bowie drinking bottled water
while failing to drink the City's Water product is analogous to the CEO of Coca Cola drinking rival Pepsi at a Coca Cola shareholder
meeting.
It truly was a city water goof! If City water is as good as the City says it is, Mr. Deutsch as City CEO
should set the example by drinking it instead of the national bottled water product.
ROBINSON DISASTER AS MAYOR
Editor's
Note: The following is a letter to the editor of the Bowie Blade News that was printed in September, 2005:
There is
a saying, “you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone”. This saying certainly applies to Gary Allen’s years as Mayor (1994
to 1998). It’s now been seven years since Mayor Allen left office.
In an open 1998 race, Fred Robinson was narrowly
elected in the closest Mayoral contest in modern city history (50.4% of vote). In the subsequent years, Robinson was aggressively
challenged by Michael McArdle and Councilman Paul Ellington. Robinson responded by altering our traditional city elections
to further his incumbency by 1 ½ years.
It’s been 3 ½ since we last had a general city election following Robinson’s
self serving scheme. I can’t imagine Mayor Gary Allen, a man of honesty and integrity, doing something so self serving. When
Gary Allen was Mayor, the police question was soundly defeated. It was defeated because Bowie was a much different city before
the developers’ mayor, Mayor Fred Robinson, came into office. The fact that there is serious talk of a city police force is
an indictment on Fred Robinson’s tenure as mayor.
Under Mayor Allen’s leadership, the environment and nature was
respected. Bowie was named “Tree City USA”. Has anybody noticed how many trees in Bowie have vanished since the developers’
mayor Robinson was elected? City tax rates came down, and the Senior Center and City Gymnasium were planned for construction
under Mayor Allen.
For the record, under Mayor Allen’s stewardship, no dance studios were ever attacked, code
enforcement was not sent into anyone’s home against the homeowner’s protests, and no political opponents were discriminately
taken off camera during citizens’ participation at Council meetings.
Has anyone noticed how trashy Bowie has become
since Robinson became mayor? Litter and trash is everywhere on our streets, and urban decline is now a real threat to the
future of Bowie. The litter problem under Robinson has gotten so bad that I even spotted Leo Green Jr., a district court
judge, picking up litter on the streets of Bowie. I do not ever recall Bowie being trashy under Gary Allen.
Predictably,
what a mess Robinson has made of our hometown in just seven years.
If you see former Mayor Allen and his wife
taking a walk along Belair Drive, be sure to wave to them as I always do. The last seven years of Fred Robinson as the developer’s
mayor makes Mayor Gary Allen’s four years shine like the stars in heaven!
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