Despite the work involved, I find cutting grass at our church cemetery therapeutic. Cutting the grass on the day before Memorial Day is very therapeutic. The flags remind you of public service. In a few cases, the ultimate public service. This is what Memorial Day is all about. Not bike rides, not picnics, not beach or boat outings. All are important elements of the federal holiday weekend, but not its purpose. What’s most important is public service. For the greater good.
Public service takes many forms. From national defense to road maintenance, from teaching to policing, from recreation and parks to caring for the elderly. The list is practically endless. Did you know that the first week of May is National Public Service Recognition Week and has been celebrated for 25 years? See http://publicservicerecognitionweek.org/. We are unique in St. Mary’s County to have such a strong presence of public service at the federal, state, and local levels of government. Altogether, our public sector represents almost 30% of our local economy’s workforce. Adding in education and health services at another 10%, and professional and business services at 23% – much of which are defense contractors – means well over half of our economy is or directly supports our public economy. That is extremely unique. Much of the remaining half of the economy is here in large part due to the federal presence at NAS Patuxent River. And our location about an hour from the nation’s capital, the epicenter of global policy, means public service is essential to the life, culture, and economy of St. Mary’s County and increasingly, Southern Maryland.
Closer to home, St. Mary’s County Government is a staff of about 700 professionals, county departments plus the Sheriff’s Office, supporting a growing county population of 103,000. There is the Board of Education, and a whole host of independent agencies at the county and state levels like the Health Department and Social Services that provide essential services to our citizenry. The Department of Economic & Community Development (DECD) where I work is a county department that promotes opportunity to the citizens of St. Mary’s County. We are unique among similar agencies from other jurisdictions. DECD has both Economic AND Community Development in our title. This is by design and reflects the unique needs of our county. The Economic component does include the business development services most common to ED functions. The purpose is to help recruit and retain businesses and ensure a vibrant local business environment. Tourism development is also part of this, again fairly common to today’s ED function. Think though about the tourism challenge of a peninsula and the only Maryland County you cannot drive through on your way to somewhere else. But we also have an agriculture & seafood development function supporting our first industries built around our very unique geography and landscape. Very unique to us is the Community component which comprises the Community Development Corporation, a non-profit organization of almost 30 years that provides redevelopment opportunities and job assistance services. The other major Community component is our Housing Authority, established almost 40 years ago to provide public housing assistance to citizens in need.
Of course, it is not possible to describe here all that we do. Working in public service is complex by design. If there was profit in it, the private sector would have addressed these needs, and more efficiently. The reality is that many services are not adequately and equitably addressed by the market. National defense, public safety, primary and secondary e