Pittman and Friends Podcast
Welcome to Pittman and Friends, the curiously probing, sometimes awkward, but always revealing conversations between your host, Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman - that’s me - and whatever brave and willing public servant, community leader, or elected official I can find who has something to say that you should hear.
This podcast is provided as a public service of Anne Arundel County Government, so don’t expect me to get all partisan here. This is about the age-old art of government - of, by, and for the people.
Pittman and Friends Podcast
Office Hours with County Executive Steuart Pittman
Ever wanted to ask a question to the County Executive about your local government? For this episode, County Executive Pittman held live “office hours,” pulled from call-ins, emails, and street interviews at River Days, and tackled big topics: how we fund public safety, where affordable homes will come from, why some projects move and others stall, and how you can steer decisions that touch your street.
We start with the nuts and bolts of safety. From contract funding for officers to technology that matters on the ground, we break down how the Real Time Information Center links body cams, drones, and the police helicopter to officers in the field. We share what’s working in violence prevention through Cure Violence Global, how reentry reduces repeat harm, and where capital dollars improve stations, training, and response.
Then we get honest about housing affordability. Hear how inclusionary requirements now guarantee affordable units in new subdivisions, why accessory dwelling units can add discreet supply without subsidy, and how Crownsville’s redevelopment could blend transitional housing, affordable rental, and on-site health services.
Infrastructure and growth take center stage as we map out major capital projects: new schools, parks, trails, bridges, firehouses, libraries, and resilience work across the county. We explain how Plan 2040 and nine regional plans aim to put development where infrastructure already exists, why the Land Use Navigator and public campaign finance raise the bar on transparency, and what “smart growth” means in practice. We also unpack hot topics like red light and speed cameras—how to request them, how sites are chosen by data—and the long-running Chesapeake Terrace rubble landfill fight, with the latest legal status and what could come next.
Climate goals anchor the forward look: 100 percent renewable energy for county operations by 2030, an electric fleet on a clear timeline, and a Resilience Authority building for rising risks. For seniors and caregivers, we highlight the housing resource portal that consolidates programs and options near Annapolis. And if you want a say, we point you to Engage Arundel, budget town halls, and simple steps to mobilize with your HOA or local nonprofit so your voice moves policy, not just comments.
Subscribe, share this episode with a neighbor who cares about roads, housing, or safety, and send us your toughest question for the next office hours.
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Welcome everybody to Pittman and Friends Podcast. You're in for something different this time. We've never done it before, so bear with us, but we're calling this office hours. And the way it's working is that y'all probably got some sort of an email somewhere or some sort of a notice and it said, hey, you got a question that you want to ask the county executive or something you want to tell them for the podcast? Go on and do it. Some people called into a number, and uh for next time that number is 410-222-1800. Some people actually just got somebody walked up to them at at the uh Fort Smallwood River Days and said, Hey, what do you want to ask the county executive? So I got a bunch of questions here. I'm gonna talk kind of fast. I'm gonna go through them as quickly as I can. I've got some friends here to help me out. We've got Renee Shalfonso who's gonna be doing some of the written questions. She's our director of communications. I got James Kitchen here who does who does the tech side of this, but he's also the person who I turn to when I don't know something because his memory is way better than mine, and he's been with us since day one, and he ran commu uh constituent services, so he may be helping me out, but I'm gonna try to do this the best I can by myself and talk fast. Because we got well, like 20-some questions here, don't we?
Speaker 04:Yeah, we've got quite a few. So can I say, welcome, Renesha? Thank you. Happy to be here. I'm usually usually the person behind all of this, but happy to be on the podcast. I know, I got the behind the scenes in front of the scenes.
Speaker 03:And James Kitchen. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. All right, good. Okay, let's get started. Are we gonna do we're gonna do the ones from River Days first, aren't we? Okay. Listening in to Anoronto County River Days here from Pittman of Friends Podcast. Throw it to me. We're curious to know how the county executive is improving public safety. First of all, budget requests come in. They come in from the police chief. They get them from the command staff and everybody below them, and they say what they need. Part of that comes from the negotiations. Actually, the negotiations take place later, but the negotiations between the fraternal order of police, our officers union, and the county. So we have a contract that we need to fund. That is for how much the officers get paid. We have requests to hire new officers, so we put those in the budget. We have a lot of requests for technology and equipment, and we put those in the budget. We also have a capital budget that includes improvements to the facilities that our officers use. So we're talking about police here, is that part of public safety? And we've also got a new thing called the Real Time Information Center, where we've got a team set up so that they can get the information from body worn cameras, from now drones that we have as well, and from the helicopter, the police helicopter, so that they can, in real time, on a crime scene, talk to the officers that are on the streets and let everybody know what's going on so that they're uh to keep people safe and to make sure that they're that they're effective. I also want to mention Cure Violence. Cure Violence Global is an organization. We've got violence interrupters in the county. We started this, uh we did some in West County with Man Up, then we went into Eastport, and we've got an amazing project going there, and now we're expanding the West County folks with money from the budget, and we may be going up into North County with Glen Burney and Brooklyn Park, hiring folks from the community who are trusted to try to prevent violence, to talk to people who might be victims of violence or have been victims of violence, talk to people who, you know, who might be involved in a gang or a group that has been committing some violence. So that's been really effective, and we've we've seen numbers that that show that. So I'm gonna stop there. There's also the gun violence intervention team's work um with gun locks and things to reduce gun violence and information where people buy their purchase their guns. We've got the work at detention, we've got the re-entry work, and then the state's attorney, of course, has something to do with all this. But I'm gonna stop there and say what I always say, which is that government was probably created to provide public safety for its people, and it's it's very high on our list, top of the list of things to support. All right, what's next?
Speaker 06:Short-term and long-term plans are there for better building practices and specifically for affordability. But in general, getting more, I don't know, apartments built, multi-story buildings, anything. I grew up in downtown Annapolis and it's barely changed, and that's a shame.
Speaker 03:All right. So I'm glad that this question came up and that it came from from a resident who actually is concerned about this. And the polling shows that more and more people say that housing affordability and the need for housing for our essential workers, especially, a term we started using during COVID, is very, very high on people's minds. And it is. The cost of housing has gone up so much that folks can't afford to live here who work here, and our economy can't continue that way. And it it is a leading cause of the spiral where people end up in poverty because they cannot afford their rent or a mortgage or to buy a house or to start a family to do all the things that we live for. So we we've done a lot of legislation to make it easier to do workforce housing, where you can do some higher density if it's affordability at certain levels. We've got a new program that requires developers when they do when they build subdivisions to do 15 percent of those units as affordable if it is rental or 10 percent of those units as affordable if it's homeownership. And that is just take that's just started July 1st. It took us way too long to get that bill passed. It took us a couple of decades, in fact. And that's going to produce a fair number of units. We have quadrupled the number of affordable units in the pipeline of production right now in the county, and we have a lot of, in general, housing units that are that are in the pipeline. And we're also trying to streamline the process so that good development, including affordable housing development, is easier to get done. You know, we have to enforce our laws and stick with our plan 2040, and we'll probably get into that a little bit with some of these other questions, maybe, but it's really important that we make it easier to get good development done, and that that means housing that's affordable. I also want to say that accessory dwelling units are something that we now permit that could provide apartments and more affordable units with no subsidy at all, just a person does a above their garage or a you know a unit in their house or a freestanding building. Not a lot of that has been done since we passed the bill, and we're looking at some of the obstacles. Some of those are state obstacles. So we're talking to the state about septics and some of the some of the rules around that. And then we've got some projects like at Crownsville, where the Meyer building could produce a lot, could have a lot of units of transitional housing and affordable housing and even a health clinic in it. So we've just contracted with our housing commission as well as with our housing agency, which is a rental community development services, to do the feasibility study on that, identify partners, and get started in Crownsville to provide some of that housing as well. So I I will stop there and just really thank you for that question, because no jurisdiction, it's a national problem, but no jurisdiction can thrive economically if it does not provide livable places for for the people who work and live in the county. Next.
Speaker 06:Mr. Pittman, are there any upcoming infrastructure projects?
Speaker 03:Yes, we have lots and lots of capital projects. And it has been a good time for it. We've had the revenue. We created this thing called the Permanent Public Improvements Fund to expand the amount that we could do because we had a lot of schools we needed to build, we had a lot of roads we needed, we had a lot of public safety infrastructure. So you can actually go, you can Google just Capital Projects and Ronal County or go to the Capital Budget if you really want to get into the weeds. But it's a lot. There's actually a map that you can click on projects near you if you want to do it like that. But if you think about it, there's everything that we're doing at Crownsville where there's 60-some buildings and we're going to redevelop all of that over the next 20 years. There's all of the schools and the school system. We're still building new schools, and we've had a lot come online in the last few years that we built. We've got a hundred million dollar parks capital budget that is all over the county, new properties that we've acquired and and made available to the public, as well as improvements to existing parks. We've got trails, we've got bridges, we've got the police infrastructure, we've got firehouses that we're building and improving, we've got libraries, and we've got the resilience authority that does resilience capital projects. So check it out. And you can advocate at the budget town halls too for the capital projects near you. Roads and sidewalks are big as well. Next.
Speaker 05:So how can more constituents get involved in local government?
Speaker 03:Ooh, I love that question. And I hope that you will, because in my view, that is the only way to get hard stuff done in government. You know, there's always there's always a reason to not do something. Sometimes there are votes that you need on the county council. There are seven seven members and you need a majority, whether it's for legislation or whether it's to get something in the budget. And what always pushes it across the finish line on what I consider the hard stuff is when residents engage. So we've done town halls when we've done like the the Forest Conservation Bill. We did town halls on that. We did town halls on Plan 2040 on doing a land use plan in the in the county. We do budget town halls in every district for every budget so that people people can engage. And we changed what was the constituent services department in county government to community engagement and constituent services, and they do educational seminars, they do meetings with HOAs and community organizations. We have just expanded that work by a whole lot. James is here nodding his head because he he was um the person who oversaw the transition of that department into community engagement. And and so really, you know, a lot of these questions you go online and you get a lot of answers. So I know, you know, surfing the county website is not the most exciting thing to do, but you can literally just Google any of this stuff and and community engagement work in in the county. There's a lot. And then I would also encourage folks to not just go straight to the government to do that, but to go straight to the nonprofit organizations in your community that also engage with government. Because when the voices have a lot of people behind them, then they're more powerful. And I know James has something to add on this one.
Speaker 01:Yeah, no, the one thing I would add is there's a new web page created under Vincent Molden's leadership in community engagement and constituent services called Engage Arundle. And so if you go to Aacounty.org forward slash engagearundle, we have actually tried to put in one spot like most of the resources that you know the county executive was talking about surfing the county webpage and just finding so much things. We took all of the ones where residents had reached out and were like, hey, we want to know about this, we want to know about that, and try to create one spot for you to access all of them. So if you're you're wanting to get engaged in county government, check out Engage or Ungle.
Speaker 03:All right. All right. Should we do a question that Renesha reads? Because we have some that are written that are not verbal.
Speaker 04:Yeah, absolutely. And these are very community-specific questions, so I know some folks are going to be excited to hear some of these answers. So Joe wrote in, and his question is, what is the possibility of getting a red light camera installed on Route 100 at Magathee Bridge and Magathee Beach Roads? Ha.
Speaker 03:Well, I cannot tell you what your odds are for that location, but I can tell you what the process is and how to find out about the process. So there was actually when I came in, they had started to have a red light camera program and then they stopped it, and we've restarted it recently. So we do have cameras at red lights where and we take residents' suggestions for where those should be, and we look at data of accidents and things for where they should be. We also have a speed camera program. So that is one where we started it at schools and we put speed cameras, they're mobile so we can move them around. But then an important part of that was going where communities said, we have a speeding problem. It's often on, it's usually on a residential street. And so for those things though, you go to the police department website and you know, right in the menu, I think it's just a couple down, you'll see, you'll see the actual application form for doing that. And you go you go to that and you put in the request and you get your neighbors to support you as well, helps as well. And and they'll do the, you know, they'll do the traffic counts and the things. Because they need to do a professional evaluation as well before they ultimately put them out. So yeah, it's a fairly new program, and I'm glad you are interested.
Speaker 04:All right. And that website is aacounty.org forward slash red light cameras or aacounty.org forward slash speed cameras. Our next question is from Meg, and this is a pretty hot topic. So Meg wants to know, is the county doing anything to limit overdevelopment and or make roadways sustainable?
Speaker 03:Yeah, it's definitely a hot topic. It is what elections are winning lost over, is how we're managing the growth of the county. And so when I came in, I knew this was going to be everybody thought I was going to stop all development, because like I'm a farm boy from South County and a tree hugger. In fact, they even did a cartoon in the Capitol with me hugging a tree and a guy on the other side with an axe with the, you know, said developer cutting down the tree. It's not really that clear-cut. I'm actually a huge advocate for smart growth, and I think most of our re residents are too. So we we created a process to engage n we created nine regions of the county, and we have region plans, and we're almost done with all nine of them, but they also feed into Plan 2040, which is our 20-year general development plan. And and one thing that people agree on is that we should not be developing where we don't have the infrastructure. And I'm talking about traffic flow, I'm talking about roads, I'm talking about, in some cases, sidewalks in public transit as well, and schools for the kids to go to if they're if it's housing where there are going to be families, and public safety infrastructure, and libraries and parks, and all of the infrastructure. And so that's been the challenge. The things that the government can do, one is to actually enforce the laws that are on the books. So in the past, I believe that, you know, a lot of county staff would tell you that the county executive would make a call to the agency and say, look, just figure out a way to get this across the finish line, you know, just give them a modification or some sort of a way. Just try to try to figure out it, you know. And often there was a campaign contribution connected to that, and and that is not the way to do development planning. That is how government loses trust among the people. So we have done a lot to standardize the way the decisions get made, to get things online. We have the land use navigator that applications go into and the public can see them, and everybody can hold each other accountable, so there's less of that. We also changed the campaign finance law. So we have a new public finance system where candidates can run on small dollar contributions rather than big, you know, developer or big big bundled can't contributions that that people get, that I think dirties the system and makes it so that it's it's inconsistent. So I feel like this is one area where I'm really proud of the work that's been done. I've noticed that the applications for development, they no longer are trying to do things that are are just, I mean, generally, uh a lot less sprawl development, where you take down forests and you you know you destroy open space and you just build these suburban sprawl neighborhoods, and a lot more smart growth where you've got places where people can live and work and do recreation all in the same area and shop. And that reduces traffic and then the development is in places we need it. So it's about managing growth, and I think uh a lot going on. Next?
Speaker 04:All right. So this next one has a pretty long history. Mike wrote in and he wants to know what's the status of the rubble dump because he lives in two rivers, and I believe he's referring to the Chesapeake Terrace.
Speaker 03:Yeah. Okay. Yes. The landfill. Anyone who lives anywhere near two rivers, Crofton, Route Three, uh, folks know about this if if they've been following for the last 30 or so years, I think it's been incredibly long amount of time. And basically this piece of land that used to be, you know, mining of of gravel and and things was uh purchased by a developer and and there was housing development near it, Two Rivers, that was built fairly recently that has a problem in that it has one road in and one road out, very poorly planned in that way in terms of traffic. But he wanted to put in a rubble landfill, and people have been opposed to it. The county administrations have been opposed to it, they've been denied and denied and denied. So, you know, since I've been here, we built a school in the one place where they had a special exception to be able to enter to even do this if they could get an MDE permit, purchase the land at that site, and built the elementary school that that is now there that was really needed. So now they they they think that there's a way that they can get a permit still at another entrance, but they don't have a special exception. They have no authority to be able to build anything there without, or to build that rubble landfill without the entrance. And so they've they've applied, they've been rejected over and over again, they've appealed, they they were rejected in November of 2024 by MDE. They were then, they went to the circuit court and they were denied there in June of this year, and of course they've appealed that. And our Office of Law is pretty confident about our legal standing on this. My hope is that, you know, the Halley family corporation that has been trying to do this finally realizes that they're not going to be able to make the millions and millions and millions of dollars that they hoped off of that land, and the best bet would be to put it in preservation and make it part of the Patuxent Greenway. But time will tell. They they have to, they will continue to continue fighting to make a lot of money on that land, doing something that the county doesn't need or want. All right, do we have any more of those ones from Riverdase?
Speaker 02:Question for the county executive is what do most people, most community members, not know about the county executive office or it's government?
Speaker 03:Well, there's a lot people don't know. There's a lot I didn't know when I got elected and came in. First of all, my my first surprise was just how dedicated and talented a lot of the staff are. I sort of thought of government as, you know, people who who uh you know they got a cushy job and they're taking it easy. But that has been the opposite of what I found out that real talent and real dedication to the the people in every department that are served. There's a lot of information that people don't know about, and I, you know, I mentioned about the website, and people can go to that to get a lot of this stuff. I put out a weekly letter, we do this podcast, and ultimately, you know, when I sit around with my staff, whether it's the cabinet who's the department heads or or the staff of the, you know, the fourth floor of the county executive's office, I seem to constantly be thanking people for and reminding people that by doing a good job, we're not only getting services and public safety and all of the things that we that were responsible for to the people that we serve to make their lives better, but we're also restoring trust in government institutions. And there are, you know, a lot of politicians and a lot of folks who think that, you know, maybe, maybe, you know, you're trying to make money and you want the government out of the way so that you can get the contract instead of having the government do the thing. And and so you you know, you attack government, you get the press attacked attacking government and turn people against government. But when local government does really well, that restores trust in government. And I think that makes uh makes the whole thing work a whole lot better. Next.
Speaker 05:Hey, Mr. Pittman, what's the county's climate goals?
Speaker 03:Huh. Not surprised this came from River Days. We have a lot of environmental folks there. So we did, we've done a couple of executive orders that set specific goals. I mean, the the one on renewable energy, transitioning to non-fossil fuels. It was Executive Order 57, it was from March of 22. You can look it look it up if you want all the details. But basically it says that we are going to make every effort possible to transition all of our energy, either produced on-site by the county or purchased by the county, 100 percent renewable by 2030. And it lays out in the executive order some of the things that we're doing, like solar at the Glen Burney landfill, and it also talks about reducing our consumption in our buildings and some of the work that's going on there. So there's an annual report that Central Services does letting me and the council know how we're doing towards those goals. So that's the renewables. We've also got one that we did on electric vehicles. We've got 1,600 vehicles in the fleet and working to get all electric for non-emergency vehicles by 2032, and then by 2037, all the new light and medium-duty emergency vehicles. So those are two of the things that we're doing on climate to impact the climate. We also have the whole Resilience Authority, which is in response to the changes in climate to protect our infrastructure and protect our residents. So a lot to do. And I'll just say that in this political environment, it's been hard to keep the focus on those goals and keep that work going when you've got a federal government that is so opposed to investing in that work. But I think we're committed in this county and we're continuing to move forward.
Speaker 04:All right. This next question is from Francisco. And Francisco wants to know what resources are available for low-income senior housing in or near Annapolis.
Speaker 03:Good question. I mean, not only do we have an affordable housing crisis, but we have a growing population of seniors. And for those seniors, sometimes it's in the public interest for them to be able to downsize when they're ready to and move into a place that they can afford and maybe open up the house that they owned and for another family to move into. So good public policy. There are some developments that are in the pipeline, and there are some that have been built, and there's some coming on, but it's a real not a simple answer. We opened up a portal that people can go to. It's the housing resource portal, and you can just Google that. And in it are all of the a lot of different areas of challenges that you can click on and find, whether it's a program, or whether it's the law, or whether it's an application for something that you can go to. And one of them is specifically for senior housing. So please go to the housing resource portal, aacounty.org slash housing resource portal, right? All right, good.
Speaker 04:All right. One of the things that I really love about this podcast is that it is fun and revealing conversation. So I think we should end on a fun note. What do you think?
Speaker 03:Hey, I'm open to anything.
Speaker 04:All right. James, can you place another one from Riverdase?
Speaker 00:The risk management safety team would like to know. Mr. Pittman, what do you like for lunch?
Speaker 03:Aaron Powell What do I like for lunch? I'm wondering why that's a risk management thing. Are they worried about like the survival of the county executive and what he eats, or or is it just literally they just want to know what I like to eat? Or are they going to bring me lunch maybe? There you go. Trevor Burrus, Jr. I think they're trying to plan a lunch with you. All right. Well, I have an easy answer to this one because we're on the fourth floor of the Arundel Center in Annapolis, and in the basement is this amazing little cafe, I guess you call it. What is it called? It's called Calvert Cafe. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Calvert Cafe. Okay. Okay. So, you know, they're open a little bit for breakfast and a little bit for lunch, and then they close, and it's a contractor that comes in and does it. Everything is cooked to order as you as you order it. And I have never, ever anywhere had a steak and cheese sub anywhere near as good as the ones they make down there. I mean, they've got the fr they've got the mushrooms and the onions and and it's just so good. So I had one today, and that's why I'm in a good mood, and they're really good. That's my favorite. Oh wow, watch out, Philly. This is kind of fun. You know, for next one, let's make sure people ask, like if you anybody who's listening, just go and call now and ask some crazy question, or you know, it can be a tough one too. Or and you know, we literally have not edited out anything here that I know of anyway. Maybe you guys did before I saw them, but the questions can be tough. Like I like tough questions. And just record them on that phone line, which is 410-222-1800. And you can also go to aacounty.org slash Pittman and Friends. Is that right?
Speaker 04:You can email it in to pitmanandfriends at aacounty.org, and we are keeping track of all the questions that we get. Yours might be featured.
Speaker 03:Yeah, if you don't want your voice heard, you can do that. Thanks everybody for joining us, and we'll be back next week with another cool friend. Y'all are friends too. Everybody's a friend, I guess. We're all friends, the listeners, too. All right. Thanks, everybody.
Speaker 04:You're listening to the Pittman and Friends podcast. If you like what you hear, please hit the subscribe button, share with a friend, and join us for the next episode.
