City of Rockville Mayor Bridget Donnell Newton promised supporters Wednesday that if she’s reelected, the divisiveness that has defined the city’s five-member council over the last two years will end.
Newton, who’s being challenged in the Nov. 3 election by a slate including mayoral opponent Sima Osdoby, then spent much of a 10-minute speech criticizing her political opponents and claiming that “backroom politics” led to the 3-2 council vote in June that did away with a moratorium on development.
“I want to say that there is no difference in dealing with a 2-year-old having a meltdown and sulking than there is a council member having a meltdown and sulking,” Newton said to loud applause at a campaign kickoff event at the VisArts studio in Rockville.
“With one, it’s age-appropriate,” Newton said. “With the other, not so much.”
The comparison was a not-so-veiled jab at City Council member Tom Moore, a member of the 2013 Team Rockville slate who led the charge to loosen the city’s moratorium standards and who isn’t running for re-election.
Team Rockville, however, is back for the 2015 election and includes incumbent council members Virginia Onley and Julie Palakovich Carr, both of whom voted with Moore in favor of loosening the moratorium standards.
Others on the slate include Osdoby, first-time candidate Clark Reed and Mark Pierzchala, a former council member who narrowly lost to Newton for mayor in 2013 as part of the Team Rockville slate.
In her speech, Newton said the campaign manager of Team Rockville “recently characterized me as a homemaker, as if that was an insult and that I should be embarrassed by having spent 22 years raising incredibly wonderful children.”
She also attacked the idea of a slate, pointing out she had invited the other five “independent” council candidates to her event: incumbent Beryl Feinberg, Brigitta Mullican, Rich Gottfried, Patrick Schoof and David Hill.
All but Gottfried were at the event. In Rockville, the mayor serves with four council members on the council. This election will be the first in which the mayor and council members are selected for a four-year term, instead of the traditional two years.
“Each of these individuals have demonstrated that they believe in the people’s choice, that they will work with whoever people choose, not just those who run on the same slate,” Newton said. “I think it’s important that this city understand that when you run as an independent in the City of Rockville, you are running with no owes. You are beholden to no one. You can be your own person.”
Newton and others who spoke on her behalf—including former Mayor Larry Giammo—gave extra credit to Feinberg, the council member who was a member of the Team Rockville slate in 2013 before siding with Newton on hot-button issues such as the development moratorium and backyard chicken coops.
Both Newton and Feinberg voted against allowing homeowners to keep some backyard hens, losing another 3-2 vote to Moore, Palakovich Carr and Onley.
“I was able to make allies out of this slate and council member Feinberg was one of those allies,” Newton said. “Every time we had a conversation, I kid you not, it was a good conversation. It was thoughtful and it was civil and I hope you’re reelected. I’d love to serve with you again.”
Giammo, who in 2005 helped write the development and school overcrowding ordinance that was changed this summer, applauded Feinberg for siding with Newton.
“Hopefully, we’ll have some folks on the council to work with Mayor Newton,” Giammo said. “Maybe we’ll have one more council member who thinks the same way and [can] get us back to where we want to be as a community when it comes to school overcrowding.”
The ordinance was changed to mimic Montgomery County’s 120 percent of school capacity threshold for establishing a development moratorium. Before it was changed, the law for Rockville put a moratorium into place if any school in a project’s area reached 105 percent of its capacity.
Newton complimented the developer behind a new apartment project near Rockville Town Square, pointing out it will mean new businesses such as a World of Beer and Panera Bread on the ground floor. She also said the new Cambria Suites hotel next door near has been an instant success.
But she warned supporters that unless the next council reverts to a stricter school capacity limit on development, county public schools in the city will continue to grow beyond their capacity.
“Wait and see what happens right now,” Newton said, “if we cannot get something back in place to help us.”
