The importance of working together for Carroll County schools; General Assembly will not hurt journalism | READER COMMENTARIES

Retaining teachers necessary for best education possible

I am writing to bring attention to a matter of utmost importance to Carroll County, the funding of our local school budget.

Carroll County has been slowly starving its schools of the funding needed to best support students and communities, and implement the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future. However, the blame does NOT lie with our current Board of County Commissioners.

As Superintendent Cynthia McCabe has said at numerous town hall meetings, surrounding counties are better equipped to handle the national educator shortage because they retained the additional staff they needed to stay nimble.

The austerity measures implemented here (specifically, the tax cuts in 2012, 2013 and 2014) have forced Carroll County Public Schools (CCPS) to eliminate positions at a concerning rate. Over a nine-year period, between 2010 and 2019, CCPS cut 306 positions, 200 in our schools.

CCPS and the Carroll County Education Association (CCEA) have come to agreement on a collective bargaining agreement earlier than ever because both parties understood the need to act quickly and to demonstrate to commissioners we are united in a common cause.

For years, commissioners have told us we need to settle before they work on the budget, and we did it. In addition, we are meeting the legal requirement of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, that all certificated staff receive a minimum salary of $60,000 so CCPS can attract the best educators at a time when schools nationwide are scrambling to fill positions.

While recruiting is important, we also need to retain experienced educators and the overall increase in salaries will help CCPS retain educators.

This is an issue that cannot wait. Carroll County’s students and families deserve a quality public education. CCEA acknowledges the difficult decisions current commissioners have to make, and we are grateful they allocated more funds for CCPS. That gives us the means to provide the best education possible for all of Carroll County’s children.

Celeste M. Jordan
President of Carroll County Education Association

Register of wills says House Bill 1258 beneficial to public

As the register of wills for Carroll County, I would like to take this opportunity to address Rebecca Snyder’s recent letter/editorial entitled “Preserving Local Journalism” regarding House Bill 1258.  Snyder, in true Chicken Little fashion alleges if this bill is signed by Gov. Wes Moore, journalism will cease to exist in Carroll County.

The purported reason is that my office will no longer be sending estate notices to be published in the Carroll County Times. Initial estate notices unnecessarily cost families $106 for small estates and $249 for regular estates.

Since Jan. 1, 2024, we have sent 48 estate notices to the Times, 18% of our total notices. I am sure the loss of this income will not break the Times, especially since it will still be publishing all County Commissioner notices, as well as all notices from the clerk of the Circuit Court. Only register of wills notices are affected by this bill.

House Bill 1258 allows us to change the current publishing of notices from the newspapers to the register of wills website. We publish all estate-related notices on the website at no cost to the families.  Additionally, this change will allow greater access to the notices as once the notice is published on the website it will remain on the site in perpetuity.

Currently, a notice is published for a regular estate in the newspaper one day a week for three weeks. A small estate is published in the newspaper one time. These notices disappear once published and could be missed. On our website the notices are never removed, therefore you will be able to find them at any time.

Something Snyder fails to mention is that our legislature unanimously — and with no public opposition — passed House Bill 1258, which replaces the antiquated, centuries-old requirement that estate notices be published in print newspapers with a centralized website managed and maintained by the registers of wills across Maryland.

This is a victory for more than 10,000 Maryland families per year who are forced to spend out of their inheritance on a corporate subsidy that benefits — in 22 of 24 jurisdictions — newspapers owned by out-of-state corporations and multi-billion-dollar conglomerates.

You deserve the facts, so here they are:

• When an estate is opened, the register of wills mails each interested party a notice, with a detailed explanation of their rights, directly to their home.
• These public offices have an affirmative legal obligation to provide these notices. Newspapers don’t.
• We’ve had a free, centralized website up for more than four years to show this system works, with thousands of views per day, which you can see here: https://registers.maryland.gov/LegalNotice/Notices/NoticeSearch.aspx.
• My office recently tried to access online public notices in the Carroll County Times and could not without going page by page.  Information on our website is easily accessed by the decedent’s name.
• Some newspapers require families to prepay for notices before they even have access to estate funds, forcing them to pay of pocket per notice.
• Some newspapers only accept payment by credit card, marginalizing countless Marylanders who live on cash alone.
• In 22 of Maryland’s 24 jurisdictions their “local” paper is owned by an own-of-state corporations, including one worth more than $4 billion.
• Newspaper circulation is dwindling, meaning fewer people are reading print newspapers, and even fewer — if any — reading estate notices.
• Estate notices are not general notices to the public. Their limited audience is parties who didn’t receive notice due to incomplete filings or honest mistakes.
• The majority of parties find out about estates by word of mouth, not the legal section of a print newspaper.  Once they contact the Register of Wills office they are properly notified. If this House Bill 1258 is vetoed, you will not only have to pay the Times to publish a notice, but you may be required to pay for a subscription to the newspaper or to the e-edition to check that is was published correctly, therefore, adding an additional cost.
• No Maryland business will close, and no Marylander will lose their job because of this bill.
• House Bill 1258, if signed by the governor, will save Maryland estates approximately $1.7 million in publication fees.

Paul Zimmermann

Register of Wills for Carroll County

Trump, GOP not the reason for current problems in U.S.

The last two weeks, Tom Zirpoli just seems he cannot get former President Donald Trump and the GOP off his mind. He makes both look like they are the issue for why things are so messed up here in the USA.

So let us start from the beginning. Under Trump there were restrictions on who came across the border and only in certain areas where they could be checked out and so forth. That was in 2016-2019.

Now we get into 2020 and President Joe Biden says no, we cannot do that, the Democrats need future voters. So he opened up the border, which basically meant, “Come on in, you won’t be checked out for anything. Go ahead and sneak your drugs across and help kill US citizens. Come on all you illegals don’t worry about money, we will take taxpayer dollars to cover you, while our own citizens and veterans starve to death on the streets.”

So under Biden’s stupid policy we now have more than 10 million illegals we know nothing about, where they are and so forth. They have allegedly killed citizens. They have stolen things and even, because of dumb laws, squatted in houses and destroyed them after being thrown out by a court order three months later.

Zirpoli paints a picture that this was all started onTrump’s watch, which is a bunch of BS. All this has been done under Biden and it will get worse. Zirpoli probably thinks it is OK for all of this trouble on college campuses about Palestine. He is on the left like all the others. He continues to blame Trump for all of these problems.

Well, Zirpoli, under Trump the figures show everyone was much better off. We didn’t need two or three jobs to make ends meet. Gas prices were at $2.20 per gallon when high. Now it is up to $3.79 in Maryland and going up.

We were energy sufficent under Trump but now, under Biden, he closed the gas pipeline, more than 10,000 people lost their jobs and we got high gas prices. Interest rates have gone up so the housing market has gone down. Biden blames Trump for these things, and so does Zirpoli.

Voters, we need to wake up and change things. I am not saying Trump is perfect, as there are some things he has said that I do not agree with, but the USA was in much better shape and so were the citizens under Trump. Think about that when you go to vote this November. Forget about the scam the Democrats are doing to Trump in New York and how they are letting criminals run wild on the streets.

We need to get this great country back in shape and that can be done by doing away with Biden and his administration of knuckleheads who know nothing.

Think about your future and your kids future and their kids. Now is the time to make changes, get the USA back on track as the great nation we once were and ignore Zirpoli and other left people.

God bless America!

Pat Bussard, Westminster