Kent County responds to DBED invite for FASTC

By BRUCE HOTCHKISS
Senior Editor

Having lost The Battle of Ruthsburg, but not yet conceding defeat, Maryland officials have launched a statewide search for a site in the state for the U.S. State Department’s anti-terrorist training center for diplomats.
On July 6, Jayson Knott, deputy program director for the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, dispatched an e-mail to economic development officials in 22 of the state’s 23 counties — Queen Anne’s County was left off the list for obvious reasons — seeking their interest in becoming the home of the proposed Foreign Affairs Security Training Center.
Knott said that any possible site nominations would have to be on his desk by the close of business July 7, just 24 hours later.
The specs: A minimum of contiguous 1,250 acres within 150 miles of the nation’s capital, well away from a 100-year flood plain “or other geological or environmental hazards”, reasonable access to power, water, telephone, cable, fiber optics and “convenient to major traffic arteries, food service establishments, retail services and hotels. Some counties scrambled to meet the deadline.
Among them was Kent County, which shares a border with Ruthsburg’s Queen Anne’s County, on the Eastern Shore.
Within the next 24 hours, the county’s Office of Tourism and Economic Development and the county administrator’s office had identified eight sites for consideration, most of them consisting of farmland.,
The sites were identified and mapped in a communication to Knott, signed by Bernadette Van Pelt, tourism and econinmic development director and Susanne Hayman, the county admninistrator.
The next day, letters went out to owners of every property included in the sites, informing them of that activity but noting that it was all very “preliminary,” Van Pelt explained.
“We are not going to force anything on these landowners if they don’t want it,” she said.
Kent County’s interest, at this point, she stressed, was to inform DBED’s Knott and ultimately federal officials “that we would like a seat at the table and to be involved in further discussions.”
The eight sites dispatched for consideration were personally visited and, interestingly, ranked by a Kent County resident who signed his report “Warrior Bob.”
He is Robert Kramer of Worton, who maintains the warfortheshore.com website.
He ranked only two of the properties with an A or A-plus. They are located east and west of Rt. 301 in the areas of Kennedyville–Millington and Chesterville-Galena.
Kramer said those two sites, in his view, “offer DoS a special place, if this facility has to be built anywhere, unlike the Ruthsburg site.”
He added this caution, however: “Getting folks to part with their farms may be a different story.”
Knott’s hurry-up time frame on the presentation of site possibilities stems from the fact that a large hunk of the initial funding for FASTC is to come from the recovery act stimulus funds which must be spent, or presumably committed, by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, as specified in the legislation.
A State Department spokesman said officials there hope to announce a new preferred site within a month.
Gina Gilliam, regional public affairs officer for the General Service Administration, sent this reply to an inquiry about the renewed search: “The U.S. Department of State and the U.S. General Services Administration are actively engaged in a site selection process and look forward to opening this essential national security facility and being good neighbors.”
Dorchester County and other counties in Maryland reportedly filed site proposals as well but officials at DBED were unable to provide them before deadline.