In a 3-2 vote on Tuesday, the St. Mary’s Board of County Commissioners voted to allow the “address verification” project to continue, with the stipulation that photographs of properties will not be taken.
Board members were at odds on the issue, with Republican commissioners Kenny Dement (Piney Point) and Larry Jarboe (Golden Beach) arguing to kill the project completely.
A “motion” to kill the plan was made by Jarboe, and “seconded” by Dement, but the three other members voted against it.
Commissioner Dan Raley’s (D. Great Mills) following motion to execute the plan with no pictures taken was approved, with “no” votes coming from Dement and Jarboe.
“I think why we’re here and the problem we created we might have created for ourselves,” said Commissioner Dement, who typically does not offer much insight during board discussions.
“I think it’s important that we move forward with this program,” said Commissioner Tom Mattingly (D-Leonardtown), who is a volunteer firefighter with Leonardtown VFD and has been a strong proponent of the plan. “There’s hardly a week that goes by that we don’t run into an area in this position.”
The main objective of the project, which is funded by a $437,000 grant, is to correct problems emergency responders encounter when physical addresses are different from information programmed into the county’s Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system.
When the county’s publicized the grant award with a press release, it was mentioned the address verification plan would include taking photographs of residences, and the information gathered will be useful for many county departments, including Land Use.
In the days following the announcement, hundreds of residents called, mailed, emailed and showed up on the commissioners’ doorstep in protest. Earlier this month the commissioners meeting room and hallway were jammed with citizens against the plan, many demanding constitutional protection from unlawful search and seizure.
“Just what we saw at the public forum isn’t a general consensus of who is for or against this issue … no one in St. Mary’s County thought this proposal would have caused the tension that it has,” said Dement.
“It’s nothing personal, no one here is against public safety,” Dement said before the voting started. “I’m going to vote my conscience.”
When commissioner Jarboe pleaded for killing the plan all together and shelling out $25,000 that has already been spent, he mentioned that it’s wrong for a faceless state board to collect taxes from nearly every citizen and distribute the money using a competitive grant process.
“I believe that sometimes you have to spend a little money to save a lot down the line,” Jarboe said when defending his position.
The company awarded the contract, Geographic Technologies Group, has already begun working on the project.
Commissioner Raley also spelled out that contractors will not being looking at residences accessible only by private road.
County officials have acknowledged that this address verification system will not solve all the county’s CAD problems, because a majority of address discrepancies are on private roads.