Have a Great Time at National Night Out (NNO): August 7

If your business can support NNO, please contact Cpl. V. Blackwell, 240-695-7505, vablackwell@co.pg.md.us Thanks!

Prince George’s Co. police, residents train together to strengthen relationship

(Click on the image for Dick Uliano's WTOP report)

From Dick's report: Members of the Prince George’s County Police Department and community members have wrapped up a two-day workshop of training and role-playing exercises aimed at improving relations between police and citizens.
“It’s the easiest thing in the world to divide people. What’s difficult is bringing people together,” said Prince George’s County Police Chief Hank Stawinski, one of the 30 participants in the Affinity Project workshop.
The Affinity Project is co-sponsored by the National Law Enforcement Museum and the Illumination Project of Charleston, South Carolina. The goal is to draw together law enforcement and citizens and to help each side understand and overcome inherent biases.
“Implicit bias … is a mental shortcut that our mind makes between two seemingly unrelated ideas,” said Kris Marsh, an associate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, who provides bias training for the Prince George’s County Police Department.
“We don’t always talk to each other. The citizens talk among themselves [and] the officers talk among themselves. We have different perspectives, but it’s really great to get both entities in the room and start having a really thoughtful conversation,” she said.

See also, Prince George's County Police Proud to be First Police Partner of the National Affinity Project to Make Police-Community Relations Even Stronger

FY 2019 - FY 2021 Local Impact Grant Spending Plan (Revised) - July 2018

Yellow highlights are changes from the previous version. The Rose Valley project is now funded out of the Rosecroft impact fund instead of the MGM impact fund. That provided a $250K increase to Community Impact Grants in FY 2019.

Make Highway 210 Safe for Pedestrians – A grieving family’s plea.

(Click on the image for the petition)

Derrick Patterson started this petition to Prince George's County Councilman 8th District Obie Patterson:

Two and a half months ago, my family became devastated after my sister was killed crossing at the intersection of Kerby Hill/Livingston Road and Highway 210. We believe she could possibly still be here had the intersection she crossed at been safer. My family, Councilman Obie Patterson of Prince George‘s County, Maryland, and the Maryland State Highway Administration strongly agree the crosswalks are in very poor condition. There is a lack of lighting and poorly detailed walkways at not only the crosswalk she was struck at, but also at several other parts of Highway 210. We want to point out that 210 runs through a suburban area, and that the people that live in the areas surrounding the highway, such as Accokeek, Oxon Hill, and Fort Washington, have to cross this dangerous highway on a regular basis. Nobody should have to walk across this road in the poor state its crosswalks are. The total deaths on the highway in the last decade exceeds 60 people. That’s too many lives lost, and the first step to preventing another family from suffering the grief and lost of a lost loved one, is to work to make our crosswalks in Prince George’s County, Maryland safer. Please sign our petition in support of making it safer for our communities to cross 210 in well lit crosswalks, clearly marked walk ways and any other advanced safety measures possible. Thank you!

Video of Derrick and mother, Yasmin Duncan, asking the County Council
for help making MD 210 safer:

Compared to New Tires, Worn Tires Take 40% Longer to Stop on Wet Pavement

(Click on the image for the full report)

Video comparison of new vs. worn tires

Why leasing solar panels may not be a good idea if you’re planning a home sale (Washington Post)

(Click on the image for the article)

By Jill Chodorov, November 17, 2015

"As these solar-powered homes come on the market for sale, unexpected issues are bubbling to the surface. What’s more, almost all of the issues are happening to homeowners who lease rather than own the solar panels, which comprise an estimated range of 60 to 90 percent of the market."

Washington Consumers' Checkbook has advice on selecting a solar contractor.

The Real Cost of Leasing vs. Buying Solar Panels

(Click on the image for the Consumers Report article)

Buying solar panels requires an investment and more decision-making than leasing, but over the long term the benefits of owning your system are hard to beat.
[See also, 'The state of residential solar power']

A Little Kindness Can Change Everything!

Mr. Rogers would agree.

How to Prevent Drowning Tragedies

(Click on the link for the News4 report)

"Drowning is the leading cause of unintentional death among children ages 1 to 4 years old and the second leading cause of unintentional death in children ages 5 to 9, according to the CDC. Here are some ways you can prevent tragedies this summer."
From Time: Here's How to Keep Your Kids Safe Around Pools
Many years ago after my entire neighborhood searched for hours, I found a friend's young child floating face down in a pool. I will live with that image for the rest of my life. Please take care. - Ron

Are You Insured for the Next Flood? Probably Not.

(Click on the image for information about the National Flood Insurance Program)

Washington Consumers’ Checkbook advice on Basement Waterproofers:

"If your basement is wet, please, please, PLEASE read the following before you call in a basement waterproofing contractor:

• Most basements get wet when rainwater runs toward the walls of houses from roofs, yards, and driveways. The first step to eliminating the invasion of water is to force it to run away from your home. Repairing gutters, extending downspouts, and/or grading the soil around your house will clear up most problems at a minimal price.
• If these simple fixes don’t work, get an independent opinion from a drainage specialist or home inspector with expertise in drainage issues. You’ll have to pay for an inspection, but a competent inspector’s advice may save you many times the fee.
• Focus on solving the problem from the outside. Many basement waterproofing contractors want to sell costly interior drainage systems with sump pumps—even if you don’t need it. The best solutions prevent water from reaching the walls of your home; interior systems manage water only after it has entered the building.

Don’t ask a basement waterproofing contractor for help until you are absolutely sure you need one.

If you do need to hire a contractor, meet with and obtain proposals from several companies. Many landscaping companies specialize in drainage work. Among basement waterproofing contractors, big differences exist in the quality of advice provided. Avoid companies that use aggressive sales tactics."

Thank You for Helping Kids Entering Foster Care

Many of the about 400 kids under 18 in county foster care will be a little happier thanks to your donations to a 'Bag of My Own'! 

District VII Police and the Civilian Advisory Council (CAC) appreciate your support.

Very Few 20744 Residents Complain about Aircraft Noise

(Click on the image for more information)

The Complaint Dashboard provides easy access to noise complaint data while allowing the public to independently conduct preliminary research to answer:

• WHEN:    Complaints by Date, Complaints by Hour
• WHERE:   Zip Code Heat Map and Statistics Table
• WHO:       Top 10 Individuals, Households & Individuals by Year
• WHAT:     Complaints by Disturbance Type

Only 44 complaints from Zip Code 20744 out of 153,478 total complaints!

Hands off my data! 15 default privacy settings you should change right now

(Click on the image for Geoffrey Fowler's Washington Post report)

• They tout we’re “in control” of our personal data, but know most of us won’t change the settings that let them grab it like cash in a game show wind machine. Call it the Rule of Defaults: 95 percent of people are too busy, or too confused, to change a darn thing.
• Some of their defaults are just bonkers. Google has been saving a map of everywhere you go, if you turned on its Assistant when you set up an Android phone. Amazon makes your wish list public — and keeps recordings of all your conversations with Alexa. Facebook exposes to the public your friends list and all the pages you follow, and it lets marketers use your name in their Facebook ads. By default, Microsoft’s Cortana in Windows 10 gobbles up … pretty much your entire digital life.
• Changing the defaults I list here mean you’ll get less personalization from some services, and might see some repeated ads. But these changes can curtail some of the creepy advertising fueled by your data, and, in some cases, stop these giant companies from collecting so much data about you in the first place. And that’s a good place to start.

How to Get a Home's Permit History

(Click on the image to search on an address)

Example of the results:

Remarks at a Memorial Day Ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery

Today is the day we put aside to remember fallen heroes and to pray that no heroes will ever have to die for us again. It's a day of thanks for the valor of others, a day to remember the splendor of America and those of her children who rest in this cemetery and others. It's a day to be with the family and remember.
I was thinking this morning that across the country children and their parents will be going to the town parade and the young ones will sit on the sidewalks and wave their flags as the band goes by. Later, maybe, they'll have a cookout or a day at the beach. And that's good, because today is a day to be with the family and to remember.
Arlington, this place of so many memories, is a fitting place for some remembering. So many wonderful men and women rest here, men and women who led colorful, vivid, and passionate lives. There are the greats of the military: Bull Halsey and the Admirals Leahy, father and son; Black Jack Pershing; and the GI's general, Omar Bradley. Great men all, military men. But there are others here known for other things.
Here in Arlington rests a sharecropper's son who became a hero to a lonely people. Joe Louis came from nowhere, but he knew how to fight. And he galvanized a nation in the days after Pearl Harbor when he put on the uniform of his country and said, "I know we'll win because we're on God's side." Audie Murphy is here, Audie Murphy of the wild, wild courage. For what else would you call it when a man bounds to the top of a disabled tank, stops an enemy advance, saves lives, and rallies his men, and all of it single-handedly. When he radioed for artillery support and was asked how close the enemy was to his position, he said, "Wait a minute and I'll let you speak to them." [Laughter]
Michael Smith is here, and Dick Scobee, both of the space shuttle Challenger. Their courage wasn't wild, but thoughtful, the mature and measured courage of career professionals who took prudent risks for great reward—in their case, to advance the sum total of knowledge in the world. They're only the latest to rest here; they join other great explorers with names like Grissom and Chaffee.
Oliver Wendell Holmes is here, the great jurist and fighter for the right. A poet searching for an image of true majesty could not rest until he seized on "Holmes dissenting in a sordid age." Young Holmes served in the Civil War. He might have been thinking of the crosses and stars of Arlington when he wrote: "At the grave of a hero we end, not with sorrow at the inevitable loss, but with the contagion of his courage; and with a kind of desperate joy we go back to the fight."
All of these men were different, but they shared this in common: They loved America very much. There was nothing they wouldn't do for her. And they loved with the sureness of the young. It's hard not to think of the young in a place like this, for it's the young who do the fighting and dying when a peace fails and a war begins. Not far from here is the statue of the three servicemen—the three fighting boys of Vietnam. It, too, has majesty and more. Perhaps you've seen it—three rough boys walking together, looking ahead with a steady gaze. There's something wounded about them, a kind of resigned toughness. But there's an unexpected tenderness, too. At first you don't really notice, but then you see it. The three are touching each other, as if they're supporting each other, helping each other on.
I know that many veterans of Vietnam will gather today, some of them perhaps by the wall. And they're still helping each other on. They were quite a group, the boys of Vietnam—boys who fought a terrible and vicious war without enough support from home, boys who were dodging bullets while we debated the efficacy of the battle. It was often our poor who fought in that war; it was the unpampered boys of the working class who picked up the rifles and went on the march. They learned not to rely on us; they learned to rely on each other. And they were special in another way: They chose to be faithful. They chose to reject the fashionable skepticism of their time. They chose to believe and answer the call of duty. They had the wild, wild courage of youth. They seized certainty from the heart of an ambivalent age; they stood for something.
And we owe them something, those boys. We owe them first a promise: That just as they did not forget their missing comrades, neither, ever, will we. And there are other promises. We must always remember that peace is a fragile thing that needs constant vigilance. We owe them a promise to look at the world with a steady gaze and, perhaps, a resigned toughness, knowing that we have adversaries in the world and challenges and the only way to meet them and maintain the peace is by staying strong.
That, of course, is the lesson of this century, a lesson learned in the Sudetenland, in Poland, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, in Cambodia. If we really care about peace, we must stay strong. If we really care about peace, we must, through our strength, demonstrate our unwillingness to accept an ending of the peace. We must be strong enough to create peace where it does not exist and strong enough to protect it where it does. That's the lesson of this century and, I think, of this day. And that's all I wanted to say. The rest of my contribution is to leave this great place to its peace, a peace it has earned.
Thank all of you, and God bless you, and have a day full of memories.
- President Ronald Reagan, May 26, 1986

Prince George's council budget passes $4.1 billion budget

(Click on the image for John McNamara's report)

• Improving public safety was another of Baker’s priorities from the start. The FY 2019 budget also supports five new recruitment classes of 25 police officers (125 total) to offset attrition and increase the number of sworn officers on the force. In Baker’s budget, another 60 officers will be added to the county’s Fire/EMS Department ranks.
• The newly-adopted spending plan also restores previous funding cuts to the Department of Public Works and Transportation budget to support road and sidewalk repair, improvement of county maintenance of medians, and trimming street trees. The department’s budget was increased 4.8 percent this year, to $13.6 million.

Sixth Generation at Miller Farms

Brad Miller tends to some produce at Miller Farms, a 267-acre operation that sits a

short drive from the nation’s capital.  (Photo by Edwin Remsberg)

• Just 12 miles from the heart of Washington in Maryland’s Prince George’s County, Miller Farms adheres to its rural roots, while feeding the city that has sprung up around it.
• Occupying 267 acres, the farm has been family owned and operated since 1879.
• Spanning multiple generations, multiple family members, and multiple businesses on the same tract of land, something is always happening at Miller Farms.
• Buyers for the farm’s produce include not only the home farm market customers and customers from the busy D.C farmers’ market, but also wholesale buyers such as Giant Food, Harris Teeter, Produce Source Distributors, Coastal Sunbelt, and the Capital Area Food Bank.
• At 30, Brad Miller is part of the sixth generation of Millers that has stepped up to take the reins in the family business.
• When asked about his son, Brad’s father, Phil Miller, said “He’s grown up real fast, or at least it seems like that to me.
• Read the full article in The Delmarva Farmer here.

Traffic Safety Slogan Contest

Friendly, Oxon Hill, and Gwyn Park High School students are eligible to participate in our contest to encourage safe driving.
Winning slogans will appear on the MD 210 variable message signs!
The deadline is June 1st so don't delay.
Email entries and questions to 210safetyproject@gmail.com

Don’t wait until ‘Mosquito Week’ to stop those skeeters

(Click on the image for Mike McGrath's WTOP report)

• The first female mosquitoes of the season are biting now and then laying eggs that will hatch in around 10 days. So if you wait until the end of June to take action, you’ll be getting bitten by the great-granddaughters of the first mosquito that got you.
• Clean your gutters! They are the single biggest unseen breeding source for your local mosquito population.
• BTI is a naturally occurring soil organism with a unique property. Applied to standing water in dunk, briquette or granular form, BTI prevents mosquito eggs from developing into biting adults.
• And, unlike chemical larvicides, BTI does not affect any other life form. Birds can drink BTI-treated water. You dog can — and will — drink it. Frogs and toads can live in it. The only thing that BTI does to water is prevent mosquitoes from growing up in it. How cool is that?
• The Mosquito Control Section [of the Maryland Department of Agriculture] provides a direct service to approximately 2,100 communities [including Tantallon] in 16 Maryland counties. The primary goal of this program is to prevent the occurrence of mosquito-borne disease in humans, pets and livestock. Read their brief on mosquito control here.
• From that brief: "Applications ideally are made when wind velocity is 2 to 10 mph, temperature is 60 to 85 degrees, relative humidity is high and a temperature inversion exists. All applications are made at night, when these conditions usually exist and when most mosquito species are active. Night time application also protects pollinators that are active during the day." Tantallon is scheduled to be sprayed on Mondays.

Local Business Support of National Night Out