<---->
MENU

Sections

More

April 1, 2023

The Talbot Spy

The nonprofit e-newspaper for the Talbot County Community

Commerce

What you Need to Know about Marylands Low-Income Household Water Assistance Program

by Leave a Comment

As prices for everyday necessities continue to rise, families with limited means are having to make tough choices on where to allocate their money. In response to this, the state of Maryland, in locations like Kent, Dorchester and Talbot County, has implemented the Low-Income Household Water Assistance Program to help families with past due water and wastewater bills.

The program, which began in April of 2022, is available to any resident of Talbot County who has an average of $100 or more in their water or wastewater bill. It is a means-tested or income-based program, but many households are considered “categorically eligible” if they receive certain benefits such as Maryland Energy Assistance, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or Supplemental Security Income (SSI).

Applications for the program can be obtained through local municipalities, neighborhood services, or the Department of Social Services. Since its inception, the program has assisted households with over $6,500 in bill payments, and in 2023 alone, over $1,000 has been spent on helping families avoid eviction due to unpaid bills.

The benefit amount ranges from a minimum of $100 up to $2,000 and is paid directly to the utility company. However, it is important to note that this is a one-time benefit and cannot be received multiple times. As the program ends on September 30, households are encouraged to apply as soon as possible to ensure all payments are made by the end of the month.

In these challenging economic times, the Low-Income Household Water Assistance Program is a valuable resource for families struggling to make ends meet. Maryland residents who meet the eligibility criteria are encouraged to apply for the program to receive assistance with past due water and wastewater bills.

The Spy asked Linda Webb, director of the Talbot County Department of Social Services, and Juana Blue, assistant director of the Family Investment Administration, to come by the Spy Studio the other day to understand more.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about the Low-Income Household Water Assistance Program and other energy assistance programs please go here. 

Spy Long-Form: Annapolis Check-in with Senator Johnny Mautz

by 2 Comments

The Spy long-form format is used periodically to allow the time needed for stakeholders and elected public officials to discuss major issues and challenges facing our region.

In today’s interview, we sit down with Senator Johnny Mautz of District 37 to discuss some of the most pressing issues facing lawmakers in the state of Maryland. As a member of the Maryland Senate, Senator Mautz has taken positions on several important bills, including a proposed amendment proposal to the state’s constitution to protect reproductive freedom, new gun control regulations, the legalization of recreational cannabis, and the implementation of the Child Victims Act of 2023.

This video is approximately 22 minutes in length.

Documenting a Monumental Struggle: A Chat with Filmmaker Mike Wicklein

by 1 Comment

It shouldn’t surprise most Spy readers that a full-feature documentary about the Talbot Boys controversy might be in the works. After almost ten years of dramatic public debates, legal maneuvers, and protest marches, and widely covered in local and national media, as well as long-form treatment from the likes of the New Yorker and Atlantic magazines, the Confederate soldiers’ memorial story was ripe for the right kind of filmmaker to come to town and pull this powerful narrative together in film format.

Mike Wicklein fits that definition. With documentaries on his vita like Gods and Generals: Journey to the Past about the battle at Gettysburg and Bloody Shenandoah, on the battles that took place in the “Bread Basket” of the Confederacy in 1864, Wicklein has an extraordinary passion for Civil War history going back to his early years growing up in Western Maryland.

Now Wicklein has taken that passion and experience and directed into telling the story of the Talbot Boys saga with a working title of Monumental Struggle. Working hard over the last month or so to win the trust of both sides of this polarizing and painful chapter of Mid-Shore history, Mike and his wife, Linda, have just completed interviews with twelve key stakeholders in the debate. The results of which have now been turned into a short preview of the film to encourage funders of the project.

Mike came by the Spy studio the other day to discuss the project.

This video is approximately six minutes in length. To contribute to the funding of “Monumental Struggle” please go here.
ten years of conflict over the location of the Talbot Boys statue on Talbot County’s Courthouse lawn, including major long-form coverage with such esteemed publications as the Atlantic and the New Yorker, that
wicklein
To donate supporters need to go to the SEE OPTIONS button.
Here’s the pitch video on YouTube. :

Dorchester Public Schools and Blueprint for Maryland’s Future: A Chat with Superintendent Dave Bromwell

by

It seems like it’s always a positive thing when your public school superintendent has had some former tie with their school district before being in this significant leadership position. But rarely is it the case when that superintendent has not only spent their entire professional career in a county’s schools but attended those same schools starting in the first grade through high school. And it is more frequent than one might guess that those rising to these positions come with a teaching background in the system before being appointed.

But that is indeed the case with Dorchester County’s Superintendent David Bromwell’s remarkable story. From elementary school until he entered college, David’s journey has allowed him to see not only some of Dorchester County’s best days but also some of its most challenging in a lifetime of being a student and educator.

That long view has clearly helped Bromwell as he now enters his third year as the chief executive of the county’s schools. And it also has given him a particular perspective on where DCPS has been and where it needs to go as the superintendent works with the local school board and his staff to implement the state’s massive education reform act, commonly known as Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.

For David, the challenges facing the DSPS have certainly been fully impacted by the COVID years and the significant toll it took on students across the country. Nonetheless, Bromwell is clear that for him and many teachers who have served with him over decades, the greatest impact that the school district was the loss of significant industries like Airpax Corporation and Western Publishing, which resulted in the county’s loss of almost 15,000 well-paying jobs and the eventual loss of students entering Dorchester schools it caused.

In the Spy’s first interview with Superintendent Bromwell, he talks about some of those changes and his concerns as the school district begins the Blueprint’s new vision and works closely with the County Council and the State to make sure Dorchester County can fund this transformational moment.

This video is approximately 12 minutes in length. For more information about Dorchester County Public Schools please go here.

Rebecca Hoffberger Channels Jim Rouse to Reactivate his Beloved Harborplace

by

“Cities were meant to be gardens in which to grow beautiful people.” — Jim Rouse

While the Eastern Shore has had its fair share of famous luminaries over the centuries, there has always been a special place for developer and city planner Jim Rouse. A native of Easton, where Talbottown, his first project, still successfully stands on Harrison Street, Rouse would become internationally known for his creation of such iconic venues as Faneuil Hall in Boston, South Street Seaport in New York City, and Bayside Marketplace in Miami as well as the award-winning planned community of Columbia, Maryland.

But the project that most Marylanders remember was his development at the Inner Harbor of Baltimore named Harborplace. Opened in 1980, Harborplace became the national model for the revitalization of American cities, which also landed Rouse’s image on the front cover of Time magazine, for a good reason. By the end of its second year, the twin downtown pavilions would attract over 20 million visitors a year.

Fast forward to 2023, and what the rare visitor sees today is a ghost town. Sitting almost abandoned with only one restaurant (Hooters) and one or two tourist t-shirt stores, the once pride of Baltimore (and Maryland) is now a skeleton of its former self.

One witness of this decline has been Rebecca Hoffberger. The legendary founder and first director of the American Visionary Art Museum. With her museum on the other side of the Harbor, Rebecca has watched over the last few decades the slow and painful death of the once immensely popular hub by a parade of commercial developers who disregarded what Rouse’s original vision had been for Baltimore.

But for those who know Rebecca well, it was not a surprise to learn that almost from the day she retired from the AVAM, she recruited the assistance of her friends at TBC Inc., a local advertising and marketing agency, to offer a remarkable vision to reactivate Harborplace. 

By Channelling her old late friend, Jim Rouse, and using the one-hundred-year-old Tivoli Gardens in Denmark as a helpful guide, Hoffberger outlined a comeback plan on the pages of baltimorefishbowl.com. Beyond creating a dozen serious suggestions to bring the Inner Harbor alive again (including a roller coaster) , her goal was to remind potential developers and city and state officials what Rouse had built. 

That secret sauce was not to bring well-known retail stores back but to rebuild the site as an attraction. In Hoffberger’s mind, there is a vast difference between traditional commercial development (stores and restaurants) and what it takes to attract a diverse audience to a special place to simply have fun. 

The Spy touched base with Rebecca a few weeks ago to talk about the Rouse vision, her 2023 interpretation of that perspective, and her hope that as state and local funding become available to once again try and revitalize Harborplace, the channeling of a gifted Eastern Shore visionary can be heard again. 

This video is approximately eight minutes in length. To read Rebecca Hoffberger’s essay in the Baltimore Fishbowl please go here.

 

 

 

A New Era Begins: A Chat with Talbot Schools Superintendent Sharon Pepukayi

by

While the new Talbot County Public Schools superintendent Dr. Sharon Pepukayi is indeed home-grown, with a long family history based in Bellevue, including her parents ownership of Bellevue Seafood, years spent as a counselor Camp Pecometh in Centreville, and a very proud graduate of St. Michaels High School, she does start her new career at TCPS with a learning curve challenge. For her entire professional life, including her recent twelve years with Middletown, Delaware public schools, she has never worked within the Maryland public school system before taking her new job.

In “normal times,” this gap of experience is relatively easy to overcome, but with the rollout of Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s massive multi-billion dollar public education reform act, as well as surveying the full impact of COVID on her students, Dr. Pepukayi is the first to admit that she’s been on a rapid orientation since she was appointed last summer.

Nonetheless, Pepukayi is well aware that her school district will be not only entering a new era, but it may also be it’s most transformational. With the support and funding of the Blueprint plan, the superintendent sees a remarkable opportunity for both students and teachers to fulfill the County’s consistent desire to provide the best possible education for its young people.

And while the Blueprint offers some remarkable hope, it doesn’t stop the complexities and current challenges of her 4,524-student school system. That includes, but is not limited to, getting students caught up after losing almost two years to COVID, very poor test scores, school safety, and such things as dress codes and the use of cell phones.

Dr. Pepukayi touches on these complex issues in her first interview with the Spy. She also talks about her professional journey, her love of her native Talbot County, and her devotion to public education.

This video is approximately eight minutes in length. To support the work of the Talbot County Public Schools please go here.

 

 

 

A Classic Returns: Hulbert Footner’s 1944 Rivers of the Eastern Shore Gets a 2nd Edition

by

One of the tests for an Eastern Shore connoisseur is their recommendation for the ultimate book that captures the real land of the Chesapeake. The region has had its fair share of remarkable narratives, including Chesapeake by James Michener, The Floating Opera by John Barth, Beautiful Swimmers by William W. Warner, and the talented short stories of Gilbert Byron, Sophie Kerr, and James B. Cain. But the hands-down favorite for many of these Shore lovers is one that many have never heard of Hulbert Footner’s Rivers of the Eastern Shore.

Hard to find and never published on Kindle, his account of the seventeen rivers of the Eastern Shore and the communities founded on their banks, nonetheless, has had legendary status since it was published in 1944. Footner, at the time, had reached literary notability with some 60 detective stories, as did highly popular travel journals by canoe in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. He also had decided that the state of Maryland was to be his home decades before the Eastern Shore project, and he realized, as did his publisher, that America was fascinated by the history and character of this very old part of the New World.

The book was a hit when it was published, but sadly Footner only had six months to experience that success before he passed away at 65 that November. And it has remained a hit as countless Eastern Shore fans have frequented used bookstores and eBay to locate their copy. 

But last year, through the dedication of Footner’s granddaughter, Karen, and Schiffer Publishing, a second edition of Rivers of the Eastern Shore was related. Teaming up with one of the Shore’s current gifted writers of the Chesapeake, Tom Horton, who wrote the new introduction, the 2nd edition is an entirely faithful reproduction of the original, including the gifted and sometimes humorous pen-and-ink sketches of Aaron Sopher.

Karen Footner stepped by the Spy studio a few weeks ago to talk about her grandfather, his remarkable account of a pre-Chesapeake Bay bridge Shore, and his frank account of the white settlers and the scars left behind. 

This video is approximately three minutes in length. The 2nd Edition can be purchased at the Bookplate in Chestertown and
Flying Cloud Booksellers in Easton as well as on Amazon. 

The Lakeside Reset Resolution Failure and the Future of Development: A Chat with Talbot Councilman Pete Lesher

by

It was clear on Tuesday evening that Talbot County Council member Pete Lesher was speaking with a heavy heart when he made it know that he would not be proposing the Talbot Integrity Project’s (TIP) draft resolution to “reset” the new Trappe housing development known as Lakeside.

Noting that the Maryland Department of the Environment’s final approval for Lakeside’s first 400 homes on November 1 was granted just a few days before election day, he regretfully stated that this permit made the “Reset Resolution” obsolete. In short, the train had already left the station for the housing development’s first phase, having had the original approval of the County’s planning commission and the Talbot County Council in the last term setting the stage of MDE’s decision to permit construction.

While disappointing in the decision, Lesher has decided not to propose the TIP-approved motion.

In his Spy interview yesterday, Councilmember Lesher explains in detail the circumstances that led to this decision and his plans for protecting Talbot County from out-of-scale development projects in the future, including presumably Lakeside’s Phase II plans to construct more homes beyond the 400 units covered by their current permit.

This video is approximately ten minutes in length.

The Day Paul Newman Saved Wye River Plantation

by

It goes without saying that the Wye River Plantation in Queen Anne’s County is one of Maryland’s significant historical landmarks. The home of William Paca, signer of the Declaration of Independence and early governor of the state, this remarkable farm, with almost four miles of waterline, remains intact as one of the most valuable conservation sites on the Mid-Shore.

It also has had a remarkable history well after Governor Paca’s passing.

Purchased in 1939 by Corning Glass heir Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. as a place to raise the endangered Wye Angus cattle and later to house the Wye Institute, the farm would become an essential partner with the University of Maryland for agricultural and conservation research.

Perhaps its most significant era was when Houghton donated the property to the Aspen Institute for its primary East Coast conference center. And for almost 30 years, Aspen became famous for hosting presidents, foreign leaders, international scholars, faculty members from nearby Washington College, and dozens of Fortune 500 CEOs. It also remained the residence for Arthur and his wife Nina, where they entertained the likes of Princess Anne and more recently when Nina made world news by giving sanctuary to six-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez in 1999.

Given this impressive background, it was of no small interest to the Mid-Shore community when it was announced a few years ago that Aspen would be closing down the Wye campus. Almost immediately, there were concerns about who might take over the site, with the worst fear that it might fall into the hands of the wrong developer.

One of the most worried about Wye’s future was Jeff Horstman. With both his step-father and mother now deceased, the founding executive director of ShoreRivers, assumed the role of the family’s lead representative in working with Aspen to ensure the future protection of the farm.

And over the last few years, several non-profit organizations and small LLC firms have expressed interest in the site, but for a variety of reasons, a fix failed to materialize, which left the principals feeling real pressure to find a solution. That’s when Paul Newman saved the day.

While Paul himself has indeed passed away, his brainchild, the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp (think Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), did come knocking serendipitously.

The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Connecticut was Paul Newman’s most beloved of the dozens of organizations he supported through his “Newman’s Own” profits. Born with the specific mandate to provide “a different kind of healing” to children with serious illnesses and their families, it began as a summer camp in 1988 and it now serves over 20,000 children and parents yearly with year-long programming and outreach.

Based on this remarkable success, the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp saw a real opportunity to serve the Mid-Atlantic region in the same successful way they had reached so many New England kids. At the same time, Horstman and the Aspen Institute saw a partner dedicated to doing good things and sharing the ecological values that the Houghton family had embraced.

The Spy recently talked to Jeff and Hole in the Wall Gang Camp CEO Jimmy Canton and it’s Chief Strategy Officer Pádraig Barry about the remarkable new partnership, the legacy of Paul Newman, and the famed actor’s insistence that the Camp be financially self-sufficient by limiting the revenue coming from pasta sauce to only about 1% from the foundation.

This video is approximately seven minutes in length. For more information about The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp please go here.

Helping Public Projects Thrive: A Chat with Rivers and Roads Ross Benincasa & Sam Shoge

by

The old joke about consultants is that they ask for a client’s watch to tell them what time it is. This attempt at humor does accurately describing the reality that many answers companies seek are actually in plain view. But what it fails to note is that many of those clients simply don’t have the expertise or staff to notice them in the first place.

Historically, these clients have been corporations and other large institutions, but increasingly small towns are turning to outside advisors to help them manage such challenges are tourism, economic development, affordable housing and the like. Lacking the internal resources to identify unique opportunities, as well as funding sources to pay for those initiatives, these tiny municipalities are increasingly breaking from their “do-it-yourself” problem-solving approach and are bringing in real pros to analyse those issues and develop thoughtful action plans to address them.

In the case of Mid-Shore towns, it would be hard to find more capable or well-known outsiders than Ross Benincasa & Sam Shoge, the partners of the newly-formed Roads and Rivers Consulting firm based in Easton.

Active Talbot County residents will immediately recognize both men. Before starting on his own, Ross had been the highly-regarded executive director of Discover Easton at a time when Sam was serving as the economic development coordinator for the County. Benincasa led the effort of Talbot County’s first Arts & Entertainment District during his tenure and has remained an active board member of Chesapeake Music and Talbot Interfaith Shelter. The Elizabethtown College graduate also serves as an advisor at the innovative SVN Miller Commercial Real Estate firm, focusing on infill development projects.

And Kent County citizens have known Sam since he grew up in Chestertown and later when he was a member of Washington College’s admissions office just after graduating from Elon College and more recently as the former director of the Kent County Chamber of Commerce and member of the Chestertown Town Council.

The Spy asked Ross and Sam to stop by the Spy studio earlier this month to talk about this new partnership and why small towns and organizations benefit from having a new set of eyes look at their structural challenges.

This video is approximately eight minutes in length. For more information on River and Roads Consulting please go here.