Leonardtown Capital for a Day
July 17, 2008
[ As Prepared ]
Thank you Lt. Governor. Lt. Governor Brown has been such a tremendous partner these past 18 months, and he’s a great public servant. During our last Capital for a Day Announcement he was in Georgia, serving on Reserve Duty – so he’s serving our country and our State simultaneously and we’re very lucky to have him in our Administration.
Mayor Norris, President Russell, Senator Dyson, Delegate Bohanan, speaking on behalf of our entire Cabinet, it’s wonderful to be here today in St. Mary’s County, the place where our State’s history began. Where the Arkand the Dove brought settlers in search of a new life, where colonists celebrated the first Catholic mass in the colonies, Maryland’s “mother county.”
And on this, the Seventeenth day of July, 2008, in this beautiful and historic square, it’s also home today to Maryland’s State Capital.
So thank you Mayor Norris and thank you all to the citizens of Leonardtown and St. Mary’s County for sharing your beautiful home with us. We love Leonardtown. Just how much do we love it here? Well in our first two years, we’ve invested $38 million in capital funding here. In the previous administration they invested $1.4 million in the comparable period of time. So we really, really, love Leonardtown.
We have our entire Cabinet with us today – and we held a Cabinet meeting at the Leonardtown Volunteer Fire Hall this morning. Afterwards we had a chance to take a tour of your beautiful downtown and later today we’ll have the chance to visit the Wharf and make an announcement about some waterway improvements.
Next we’ll visit Bowles Farm – and we’ll close our day with a visit to the Naval Air Base, where we’ll host a roundtable discussion.
Real and Steady Progress for our Shared Priorities
Over these past 18 months, we’ve been working to bring our State together around the issues that unite us. And working together as One Maryland, we’ve been able to make real and steady progress for our shared priorities.
One of these important priorities we all share is public education. Your great Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Michael Martirano has been a major part of our efforts to improve public education throughout our State – and he’s helping us with our strategy for improving STEM education.
STEM stands for Science Technology Education and Math – disciplines in which our country is starting, quite frankly, to lag behind the rest of the world. So we’re working to reverse these trends here in Maryland – and we’re lucky to have Superintendant Martirano.
St. Mary’s County has really been leading the way – St. Mary’s County elementary and middle school students have attained a remarkable increase in their MSA scores – improving from 60% proficiency in mathematics in 2004 to 83% in 2008. We’ve also seen a significant increase in reading scores in this county – from 71% to 86% proficiency.
As a state, we’re doing our best as a state to back you up. Working together, we’re making an historic $5.3 billion investment in public education. And it’s already starting to pay dividends. Together, we’re also making significant investments in school construction. In this county alone, we’ve invested $17 million in our first two years. In the comparable period, the previous administration invested only $9.8 million – so we’ve been able to do better by 73%.
Sustainable Communities Announcement
Because we’re in our State Capital today, we also wanted to make an announcement of a new statewide program we’re launching, called the Sustainable Communities Initiative. Under this initiative, we’ll be providing up to $500,000 in assistance to local communities to help them implement sustainable growth practices into their comprehensive plans.
As part of this initiative, we’ll also be working closely with communities to help them access State resources for planning and technical assistance – and we’ll be streamlining our application process and coordinating support among our State agencies.
We believe that by working together, we can create that more sustainable future for our State that all of us prefer.
Conclusion
So thank you again for welcoming us here today … now we have a proclamation
