Critical Conversations is a series of discussions spearheaded by the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce focusing on timely topics and issues facing the Frederick County community.
Chamber President and CEO Rick Weldon is joined by Frederick County Executive Jan Gardner for this conversation on Jan’s final term as County Executive and a look back to what has been accomplished under Jan’s leadership the past seven years.
RW: Well, hello Chamber members! Welcome to the third of our series of Critical Conversations with leaders and influencers in the Frederick community. Today, we’re thrilled to be joined by our County Executive Jan Gardner.
Jan and I have a connection that goes back to the elections of 1998 when Jan first ran for county commissioner. As a significant PTA influencer, concerned with issues of development in Frederick County and pressure on school capacity, I’m thrilled that we’ve had a 20 plus year connection and done a lot of incredible things and watched Jan do some amazing things. Particularly now, in her final year of her second term as our county executive. Jan welcome very much to Chamber Critical Conversations.
JG: Well, thank you for having me here today. I’m happy to talk with you. Obviously the county has a good relationship with the Chamber. We want to certainly be supporters of our business community. And I think you’re just one of the agencies and people that we collaborate with on a day-to-day basis.
RW: Yeah, we’re going to talk about that collaboration later. I literally believe that of the 23 counties and city of Baltimore, we do it differently. And a lot of that has to do with your commitment to make sure that we focus our energy on working together and get things done as opposed to pulling on opposite ends of the string.
But to begin with, I really wanted to sort of talk about how when you first embarked on this adventure, because I remember that. And I remember the things you said you really were hoping to focus on. You could not have envisioned having to manage the county’s whole government approach to a global pandemic.
From monitoring public health statistics, to setting up mass vaccination sites, masking mandates, economic, and social disruption. Could you talk to us a little bit about how COVID has impacted your tenure as county executive, how it’s impacted your own leadership style and skills and maybe even, and most importantly, talk about some of the success stories that have emerged from the pandemic, because I’m not sure people are even focused on some of the amazing and good things that have come out of this? So if we talk about that, that would be great.
JG: Well, certainly I never ran for office on trying to manage a pandemic. And certainly COVID has taken a lot of my time and attention as well as the attention of many people in county government over the past two years and it was not uncertain.
You know, when we got into it, we thought we would have, you know, something like six weeks of changed behavior and changed operation, but it has really turned into something much longer. And I think the dynamic has changed over that two year period. So I will say in 2020 in March, when the governor first announced that we were going to close things down, and shut schools, and shut government operations and businesses that it was surprising and shocking, and we didn’t know what we were going to face.
And it was a little scary too. I will say I’ve taken the health of this community very important. After all, all elected officials say that one of their primary jobs is to protect the health welfare of the community that they are responsible for. And I take that responsibility seriously.
So on one of the good sides of it. You know, as one of the big eight county executives, we’ve talked. The county executives talk every single day, for the first 6, 8, 10 weeks of the pandemic. And we talked about how are you shutting your government down? How are you providing services? How are you opening it back up? What are you doing to address the vaccination effort or, what are you doing to try to buy PPE, which we needed or testing? And so it was a lot of challenge, but a lot of coordination happened internally in the county government and across the state. So I really think that the benefit of the community collaboration really helped us to respond to what needed to be done in our community.
And that people within the county government certainly stepped up to do different jobs or somewhat different jobs. I think people would be shocked to know that a full third of county employees actually did something other than their normal job during the pandemic. And so we had to deliver our Meals on Wheels. We delivered groceries to seniors, we had people from our library doing that, we had people from the Scott Key Center doing that. And you know, we had to stand up vaccination clinics. Which I think we did a fabulous job of, and when we first got into that, you know, I called the state and said, what are you going to do? And they really allowed the counties a lot of responsibility for setting up that effort and doing it in a massive way. And week to week, we didn’t know how much vaccine we were going to get. It changed through that process.
You know, we first started to vaccinate first responders and healthcare workers. Well, they knew what was happening. They knew what was coming in. They didn’t need much explanation. They could go through the backstage and activation process quickly, but the 75 year and olders required a much slower process. So sorry, my phone is ringing there, Rick, but it’s the way it is. Life still goes on.
It does happen all the time. And so, you know, I don’t think people realized how much county employees shifted to other things. We also managed to keep our economic development going through that timeframe we had in December of 2019, put together an online permitting process. And so people could submit their plans through a portal 24/7 a day, get their permits. We did visual inspections. So some of the big companies that came here and in the small businesses that were still trying to struggle and get something done we really didn’t miss a beat with that. And that was a real positive. So I think the county was very flexible. We worked very hard and it did shift me off of the priorities I ran on for at least a year.
We really had to just spend all of our time and attention on meeting those public health needs, helping support our economy, helping people to adjust, managing county government, and continuing to provide the breadth of services that we provide. And so I think we’ve done that. I think it’s been a lot of credit goes to our county employees and our county workforce who’ve been very dedicated, very flexible, very open and willing to do different jobs. And to that community collaboration, you know, all of our human service nonprofit agencies stepped to the plate, our big funders and community organizations, the Community Foundation, the Delaplaine Foundation, Ausherman Family Foundation, all of them came in and tried to help support whatever effort was out there.
And I think we got a lot done and really benefited from that collaborative process that we have all the time. Now, certainly the mood changed over time. I mean I think, you know, the last six months to a year, people were really weary of the pandemic and really weary of masks and other kinds of limitations on their day-to-day behavior. So it became more of a struggle. I also really wanted to make sure we continue to advance our priorities. For a long time, I did one public press briefing every week on the COVID pandemic and whatever was happening in the grants we were putting out or whatever new thing we were doing. And then I had another press briefing on our normal workload, but it did slow down some of my initiatives. You know, I have a key initiative that was Livable Frederick. It slowed down the initiation of our first two plans because it really changed the public process. And really there’s only so much time in the day. So you, something had to give when we picked up so much work with COVID. I am optimistic that here, after this Omnicom surge that we are in a better place, I still want to encourage people to get vaccinated and boosted.
It’s demonstrated that vaccines and boosters are our best tools against COVID and that it really is important for us to have, to live normally and to live with COVID. We need to be vaccinated. We need to be boosted. We may need to get another booster sometime in the future. And from time to time, we’re going to need to wear masks. But we want to keep schools functioning, we want to keep businesses open, we want to keep functioning as best we can and protect people from getting sick, protect the vulnerable in our community and make sure our hospital can function. I certainly have had a much closer working relationship with the hospital over the past two years, then I would have ever imagined, I would say my first term, I seldom had a lot of interaction with the hospital and now, you know, they’re on speed dial. So we talk to them all the time and we have tried to support them as we could and work together to do testing. The hospital’s been great with having the testing line open for, you know, a year and a half. Maybe close to two years now and to take care of people in our community. So lots of collaboration, that’s a good thing that comes out of it.
I do think long-term, we have to think about how it changes, how people will work. Teleworking is certainly here. Flexibility of how we work has changed. I think we’ve learned to do some things differently and some people like those different things. I think for public meetings, for instance, we’ll have people come in in person, but we’re still going to have people dial in and give comments because some people actually prefer that. The libraries will be open and are open right now and people still want the curbside pickup. So you know, I think we’ll see more ways to deliver services than we had before. So stabilizing the workforce is something we’re all gonna have to talk about. We struggle with it. And making sure that we stabilize healthcare over time because the healthcare system is really under stress is going to be something that as a community, we’re going to have to work collaboratively to do.
RW: One of the things I watched was the Board of Education meeting last night because they were taking up the mask policy and it was late in the meeting. And the Board of Ed made it pretty clear, at least to me as an observer. And maybe I’m a jaded observer because I’ve been inside the process a little bit, but it was clear that they were going to be sympathetic toward the idea of making masks optional, but then they opened up for public comments.
So one victim, I fear, of the COVID pandemic has been the level of our public discourse. You know, I think it’s possible to make our points without attacking someone else, you know, making these conversations more personal. I’m certainly hoping that that’s going to evolve as we return to some semblance of normal, but that is a concern of mine. And I think it’s something we’re going to be dealing with as an after effect of this whole process that we’ve been through. And it’s a national issue. It’s not just a local issue.
JG: We have to restore trust in the government and trust in each other that we’re going to maybe disagree. Sometimes there’s always disagreement. And, you know, having that conversation with differing opinions helps us to shape a better future, and to move forward in a productive way.
And so we need to see those differences as a positive, but we need to be sharing the same facts. And we really need to be able to communicate with each other. So I think all of us have a responsibility as leaders in the community to try to stay out of that frame. And sometimes that’s easier said than done, but to really try to model good behavior, I think children are watching us. And I think it’s important if we’re going to continue to have a functioning civil society and democracy that we have to have that ability to have public discourse that is respectful and based on facts.
RW: You mentioned Livable Frederick, and it was certainly something I had hoped you and I could talk a little bit about. I think we’ve all felt the effects of the swing in ideology over the course of either four year terms or eight year terms. Going back to, you know, like I said, the mid to late nineties with the boards of county commissioners, one of the reasons the Chamber was as supportive as we were of the move to charter government was the understanding that with an executive who runs the operational components of the government, the separate legislative focus from the council would allow you to build a more sustainable and predictable process. When you introduced Livable Frederick, and you had a great and diverse team of folks working for you to help put that program together initially, I was excited in the more holistic conversation around these land use issues. And now we’ve got two working examples of the small area plans that would be developed under this more considerate approach of how we deal with these things. Would you talk a little bit about the motivation behind Livable Frederick, how it’s evolved and where we are today with both the Sugarloaf plan and the South Frederick area plan?
JG: Well, I wanted to kick off Livable Frederick, which I did in my first term to be a comprehensive land use plan, but to be something more than that, a plan that would really embrace all the other components that are important to how we grow and how we provide services and how we ensure our quality of life. So it really wrapped into that plan, you know, the economic development pieces, the balancing of jobs, the transportation sector. We ran models on different options and how that would impact our traffic infrastructure, something we’d never done before. Health and wellbeing and quality of life are in there, you know, our park and recreation components and even the arts and some other areas that have not traditionally been in our Livable Frederick. So we’ve tried to wrap this into our plan, like into our budgeting process and into our broader internal county government process. And so I think the goals and aspirations and the plan itself really do provide a good roadmap for the future. And I do think it is a piece of my legacy and we all want to be in a livable place in a Livable Frederick. And so I think what’s also important is the two plans we chose to move forward are at both ends of the spectrum.
So one is the Sugarloaf region plan. It’s looking to really protect and preserve a treasured place in our community and to make sure that that area and the environmental features there and the special area that it is remains unchanged and preserved over time. As we know, change will happen. The second area plan, which I actually think will be even harder for people to wrap their heads around and I have read a draft of it, and we hope to introduce it soon is the South Frederick quarter. Which is the 85, 355 quarter and on both sides of 270. And it really focuses on redevelopment, the image, the what. I imagine it is going to be hard for some people to wrap their heads around. It will have to happen over a long period of time to make it happen. Well, you’re going to have to see its own set of roles. So redevelopment is going to have to be accommodated under different planning rules than what we have for other parts of the county. We really want to make sure we create communities. Add residential housing, add schools, add some recreational components, but leverage the infrastructure that’s there. There’s roads, there’s water and sewer, we have a Marc train station, and we have a lot of businesses. It’s our primary business quarter outside of the city of Frederick. And so I think it’s going to be really something. I encourage people to get behind and to allow us to have flexibility. To look to the future, to redevelop that area to have it accommodate some of our residential housing. To stay open-minded because that is what will help us to balance what happens outside of our growth areas, which is the preservation of our agricultural areas.
And what we do outside of our growth areas is just as important as what we do inside our growth areas. So we really need to and we’re really working on advancing the ag preservation and our rural legacy and our other areas to keep agriculture, which is a business industry and important industry to our history and to making our future vibrant. So we don’t just want to preserve the land, we want to protect it. So we have been slowed down on both of these plans. I do hope that the Sugarloaf plan will get done and will get through the County Council before the end of this term. And I hope that the south Frederick quarter plan will kick off soon and that we can get it well on its way.
I’d love to say we’re going to get it done. But with that, I, you know, the public process takes time. We want people to engage in the public process. I want people to be able to wrap their heads around it, and we will look for people to be involved with, look for the business community to be involved. And you know, I really think we can plan something that will then take 20 or 30 years to develop or redevelop, I think that’s the right.
RW: So I had the good fortune to participate for about six months with a steering group of very diverse and interested people. And your team, you know, Steve and Kimberly and John Demitrio, Dennis. Led us through a sort of very high level visioning process to kind of pull together what you’re seeing now in the draft. Then I’m intensely excited to see people understand that when we take our old assumptions off the table, and we look at these problems at a, maybe a little bit higher elevated level, what’s possible is very exciting. You know, what happens on the footprint of the thing we call the FSK mall in 20 or 30 years? There are lots of really exciting opportunities.
So I think, if you claim and you should, Livable Frederick and a change in how we approach these long-term land use decisions as a part of your legacy, it’s a pretty darn good part of your legacy.
You did mention ag preservation. You’ve also had a commitment to supporting our farm families with on-farm business options. All of this ties together, as you said, and I see it every day. So my daughter and her family live over off Marker Road, on the foot of South Mountain. And I drive from Brunswick through Brunswick Crossing out to Burkittsville and Broad Run. And I see the results, right? We see these wonderful high producing soils that are going to remain in agriculture forever. We need to do more of that and we appreciate your commitment to make sure that we do.
Recently you rolled out EPIC and I have to tell you I was really excited. It’s something, I guess I wish I had thought of a long, long time ago, but I guess I’m not that bright, so I’m happy to celebrate that you are. So could you talk a little bit about your recent announcement with EPIC and what that’s going to mean for small businesses?
JG: EPIC stands for, and I have to read it, “The Expedited Permit and Inspection Certificate” or EPIC, and it’s really designed to support small commercial and professional services that may want to move into an existing space and basically renovate it to meet their needs. And, you know, we’ve done a lot with turbo fast-track for our big businesses and to try to get people through the process in a timely way. Well, you know, time is money and when people make a decision to do something, build something new, renovate something that exists. They want to get through that process as fast as they can. So we really felt this was a way that we could support our small businesses.
I intentionally announced this story in the week of Valentine’s Day, because I wanted to say this is showing the love to our small businesses. And so while we’re very excited about these new big businesses that have moved here the last few years like Kite Pharma and Kroger Ricotta. And now we have a loom that is, you know, under construction now on actually hiring people now. While we talk about those, because they add hundreds and thousands of jobs we really get a lot of our jobs from our small businesses. So economic development is successful when you focus, not just on attracting, the new businesses, which we do, but also when you have success in supporting your mainstream, And when you have success in supporting and retaining your existing businesses and helping them to expand.
So I think that’s what EPIC is all about. It’s about trying to get people’s permits within the week for renovating space.
RW: It’s a great idea. And I’m the CEO of a chamber that 90.7% of our members employ fewer than 50 people and the largest share of them employ fewer than 10. So a program like EPIC appeals directly to the core of our Chamber membership, but our business community at large. So congratulations for that. And it’s a great segue to the last point I was hoping that you and I could talk a little bit about, and that is what I think will be one of the most enduring elements of your legacy. And that is this concept of let’s find ways to put our energy into strategic collaboration and coordination, as opposed to unnecessary and wasteful competition of resources and talent and even just dialogue.
So you started it with Root. So I’m going to ask you to talk a little bit about kind of where Root came from. And we have a selfish interest in that, but it goes beyond that and it goes in terms of how we attract new partners, how we retain the partners that we have all focused on the vision that you laid out seven years ago, in terms of a better way to go about this sort of the important work that we do. So could you talk about that concept of partnering, collaborating, and breaking down barriers between entities like our municipal main streets? The chamber and the city and others.
JG: Well, Root is a place, but it’s really something more than that. It’s really an ecosystem that’s very cutting edge and innovative where we have a lot of partners in the same place who work together on economic development and supporting business and bringing the workforce component in. So, you know, Root as a place at 118 North Market Street. The building was vacant when I became the county executive. There was interest in the prior administration selling it. I decided, oh, it’s a key location, we could put an incubator on the first floor, which of course the FITC Organization or Frederick Innovative Technology Center, Inc, was very excited about the possibility of having a location downtown, where certainly would attract young people and startup businesses who wanted to be in the core of the city. The Chamber of Commerce, is as you know, is located on the second floor, along with some of our other partners, particularly our higher education partners with Hood College and Mount St. Mary’s. Who really have been good partners in developing training programs for businesses specifically targeted to their educational and training needs, but also to help bring some students in so the students could be involved with somebody in our incubator. And I think a real important piece is the connection with Fort Detrick or the technology transfer to allow that federal investment in research that’s happening on the Fort, be commercialized for you know, public use and to create jobs.
And then of course maybe I have to say most important our economic development team is up there on the top floor doing all the great things that they do to serve our community and support our business community. And I think they’re very innovative. I think their new Made in Frederick initiative is really a good example of that. But if you think about it, somebody coming into the county who is considering locating their business here, they come to Root. They can see the activity on the first floor, and it’s a really cool space for the incubator and there’s good meeting space down there. And then they know the Chamber is in the same building and they can talk to them at the same time. They can talk to the workforce development piece and talk to our economic development piece at the same time. And, you know, obviously at one point we thought maybe the city’s economic development folks would come in and locate there, but they’re just two blocks away. So, you know, it’s, it’s all a very collaborative nature. And so just like I talked about our response to COVID and the collaboration there on the human service side. We had that collaboration on the economic development side, and I really think it helps us to support our business community. And we just have such a good story to tell because we have had success with our main streets. I mean, I don’t think Downtown Frederick Partnership and the City of Frederick has a vacancy right now, even after recovering from the pandemic. We’ve seen net job growth and new businesses. The actual number of businesses doing business accounting grew even during the pandemic. And I think it really is reflective of the diversity of our economy, but also that special collaboration we have where people stepped in to help each other, to make things work out. So I think Root has really been a home to a lot of partners. It’s really inundated and it’s created an environment to help support businesses, put roots down and grow here in Frederick County.
RW: It’s great. And it is the envy of every other county Chamber of Commerce exec that I interact with on a daily basis. Like you talked to the big eight, I talked to 39 other county or sub county chamber execs on a weekly basis. Everybody and I’m talking about great cities like Annapolis and Easton, would give what they have to be able to take advantage of what we have. So all of that, I attribute to that original vision that you laid out, what seven years ago when we started this adventure?
So including the almost six years we’ve been part of the Root partnership now. So let me ask you that. TIme’s running out on us, I’m not gonna put you on the spot and ask you what’s the next chapter in the Jan Gardner story. But I know you pretty well, and I suspect that it’s not just going to be, to go be the world’s greatest grand-mom and still do what you can to influence the community. But are there things you’re thinking about, are there interests that you’re going to pursue?
JG: You know, I have really loved being the County Executive. It’s really been my honor and privilege, and I’m really proud to be the first County Executive in Frederick county and to set that course for the future. I will always be involved in this community, maybe a little bit more on a volunteer basis. I certainly love my Rotary club, I want to be more involved in that. I’ll certainly be involved in some boards and commissions. And after I take a bit of a break, you may even see me back out in the workforce again. I have some ideas about what I want to do, but the beauty of it all. If I can pick and choose and do what I want and try to balance that with the needs of my family.
And, you know, I do have grandchildren now. I have three little boys who I love dearly and want to spend some more time with. I’d like to travel with my husband and I’m blessed and fortunate that my parents are living and trying to spend some more time with them too. And you know, I love to go home. My parents still live in the same house I grew up in. They’ve been married 71 years. And so they give me a lot of stability and strength, which has really helped me to do what I’ve been able to do in my adult life. So it’s just another chapter in the book, I’m turning the page, but you know, people are still going to see me or I’m still going to be involved. I’m still going to love this community with all my heart and soul. And I really hope that many of these things that I put in place, you know, are a good public process for charter government. A strong ethics laws, Livable Frederick, accelerated school construction plan, really ensuring that legacy of the agriculture community, I think will be a legacy and the investment in education. I mean, I’ve really tried to make that record investment in education because that is how we have that workforce to support our economy. And you know, we’re building new schools. I think you’ll see through my budget. You know, taking advantage of the extra money from the state for the Built to Learn Act. And so I really think Frederick county has a bright future. I think we’re a special place, a unique community. And I think it’s that ability to get along with each other and to collaborate and partner that makes us stronger and really ensures that bright future for the county.
RW: I agree with you. And much of the credit goes to your priorities and your persistence and your vigilance and pursuing those goals and objectives. I’ll keep a seat vacant on the Chamber Board, if you would ever have any interest in continuing to influence our small business community kind of from within. But the best gift I’ve had over these many, many years is your friendship. It’s a treasure. And I look forward to whatever great things you’re gonna do.
Give my best to John and enjoy those grand boys. I have five and they are my highest priority too. So thanks for all you’ve done for us. I look forward to the rest of this year, your hard work and commitment, and working alongside you as a strategic partner. And just wish you the best.
JG: Well, thank you very much. I look forward to a continued positive relationship and I still have nine or 10 months left to go. So lots of work in front of us to get done.
RW: Sounds great. Thanks Jan.
JG: Thank you. Have a good day.
Frederick Chamber Insights is a news outlet of the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce. For more information about membership, programs and initiatives, please visit our website.