Keith Sydnor was elected Mayor of Laurel in November 2023, becoming the first African American to hold the office. This interview took place in the Mayor’s office on Jan. 8, 2024, just over a month after being sworn in.
Has the historic nature of your election hit you yet?
I knew eventually it was going to be an African American male or female, but my main focus was to win the race and just do the work.
But at some point, you’ve got to be, “This is pretty cool. I’m the first one, you know?”
Yeah, it is, it is. But I’m more focused on doing the work. I’m a history guy. So, history is going to write itself. It’s going to determine after my four years what have I done. I want to be remembered more for the work I’ve done than actually being the first one.
Let’s talk about Main Street. Everybody talks a good game about improving Main Street. What specific plans do you have to revitalize Main Street and work with the small businesses down there?
I think that, like you said, we always talk about that. My goal is to give a real incentive to incentivize business to come there. I think we oversaturated a lot of businesses. So, we want to narrow it down. My goal is to put $100,000 in this year’s budget coming up, and that’s $20,000 per new business to come into the city. And so, I think that once we’ve narrowed down what business we’re looking for, then we’re going to recruit those businesses. We’re going to send out some type of flyer, some type of press release saying, “Hey, we need these types of businesses. Come inside our city and we’re going to give you $20,000 to come into the city as a grant. You don’t have to pay it back, but you’ve got to stay here at least four years.”
How are you going to figure out who’s on that list? How are you going to do that?
We’re going to our economic development people. I don’t want to oversaturate the businesses on Main Street because they’d be competing against each other. So, we’re going to send out a press release or whatever the economic development people say, this is how we recruit businesses to come into the city, and we’re going to do it that way. They can give me an incentive to come into the city and increase the foot traffic with some arts and entertainment. Those are some things we want to do, as well, like maybe a Thursday or something like they do here during the summertime. We let our arts come down with a live band or something of that nature. But the foot traffic is the main thing. Once people start walking up and down Main Street and see businesses, so they can come and eat at like another Olive on Main, not something different. Olive on Main, I think, is the friendliest family restaurant we’ve got in the city, I believe. We’ve got a lot of chain restaurants, but—
—not on Main Street though.
Yeah, exactly. But that’s the goal. I want to incentivize business coming to the city with that model right there.
Along the same lines, but not restricted to Main Street, in the candidate forum you mentioned economic development frequently as one of your priorities. I know you’ve got an economic development team here. How do you see them doing that? How are they going to accomplish a positive economic development for the city?
I mean, that’s their main job. They’re subject matter experts, right? They’ve got the planners, and they know the language that I need to know. I trust them. Robert Love’s my director. I met with him already and said, “You got the green light, run it by me. Your job is to bring in economic development to the city along with me, as well.” So, to answer your question, it’s pretty much the businesses. We grow our economics through businesses and residential development. We don’t want to oversaturate. We know people don’t want to say we’ve got too many houses here, but I think we have to be very careful with that because we’re in a prime area of jobs. Maryland is the sixth state in the United States for employment, and we’re right in the center of NSA, Fort Meade, the FBI building is supposed to be coming in on board sometime in Greenbelt. That’s six miles away. The Laurel Medical Center is building up as well. And that’s why we don’t want to miss the boat because we do our ten-year plan. Our ten-year plan is how do we see Laurel now and ten years from now. Every City Council, every Governor everywhere else wants to find ways to generate revenue. I want to help folks. We’ve got a multipurpose center coming up here opening August 24th. It’s going to need funding from the city. It’s going to need funding from the state and funding from the county as well. But the more economics we have, we can put into it. We can help the underserved people. So, that’s the goal of mine: to find ways we can bring in businesses and find ways that we can bring in housing as well. We’re only four and a half miles long. So, we’re not going to get a big industry coming here. We’re going to have to have small businesses.
But related to that: Route 1. I can show you—all the way back to the 1920s—articles that criticized Route 1 through Laurel because it was blight, which is what they called it. Are there any plans to take a look at that? I do understand one side is PG and that, I’m sure, complicates things. But what’s the city going to do?
To be honest with you, Route 1 is a state highway and I really haven’t—we have businesses there that’s inside the city though—but I haven’t really put much thought on Route 1 because it goes all the way up into our Town Centre and the Baltimore-Washington corridor. That’s a nice area. They got the Town Centre, then you got the other side. I don’t know the name, what you call it, but the zip cleaners and you got some businesses there, too. And they fully packed the Hooters there. There’s no vacancies over there. The Hertz rental place. And then you go further up. That’s all the city over that side as you go past the Chick-Fil-A. That’s outside the city past Cherry Lane. Like you said, one side is county side.
You can’t do anything about that.
Exactly. But the goal is—Baltimore, Washington corridor, Main Street area—I call it our generation hub. So, we’re open for business for that as well. Most of them are looking for more small businesses. I can change stuff, but I still support small business. So just continue to incentivize, I think, with the $20,000 if the City Council approves that. That’s five new businesses a year. Those businesses probably hire 8 to 10 people. So those are jobs. Hopefully, those people live inside the city or work inside the city of Laurel. Spend that money right back into the economy. That’s the goal.
Is there anything that you could point to and say, well, this is really why Main Street has become what it has? Is it just parking? Is it the mix of businesses? What do you think it is?
It’s probably a combination of things. I think it’s going to have a real anchor to draw people there. I think once you get a couple of restaurants it might draw people there. But a lot of businesses have been there 40 or 50 years and they’re doing pretty well. Those are like more manufacturer stuff than they had the office hub here. But it’s a problem throughout the United States, but I think that for a small town like us with 30,000 people, we’re only 4.5 miles. And I think folks want to see something different besides—no disrespect for the chain restaurants, I love the chain restaurants myself, though—but I think get a couple of more mom-and-pop restaurants as well, and some boutiques or something. I think once we incentivize those businesses to come inside the city. Then, like the arts thing, too, we have some music. Talk to them first. I got to get with Board of Trade. I want to get with them and say, “Hey, can we block off the street or something when business closes, maybe 6:00 or whatever, and just have a band come out there and play some music?” Like the farmers market, things of that nature that’s going to draw people to that and just give them the signage and the lights and stuff like that to attract people to walk up and down and look further. Because Main Street has a lot of residential there too, though. But I think the $20,000 is going to buy us some businesses that we don’t have already.
You said at the candidates’ forum that you wanted to start a citizens’ forum.
Yeah, we’ve got that planned on January 25th. Our first one. It’s a listening session. So, what’s going to happen is, citizens are going to come in, they’re going to talk about the things that you’re not talking about, how we can improve the city, what they like about us, what they dislike about the city. We’re going to listen. We’re not going to answer their questions on the spot. We’ve got a retreat scheduled on the 27th. So, the Mayor and City Council will take that information we hear from concerned citizens, look at our budget. How can we implement some of this stuff they’re talking about? And like I say, I’m asking the council for $100,000 to put into our grant program. I’m also asking the council for $60,000 for first time homebuyers to get them 3-to-$4000 towards the closing costs for first time home buyers. So out the gate, I’m asking the council for $160,000 to put back into the city to grow business and grow real estate so people can buy homes for the first time inside the city of Laurel. But a citizens’ forum, that’s the listening session. But another forum I got talking about, it’s a community citizen forum where you want to reduce crime.
So, it would be specifically focused on that?
Yes. Well, that’s a different forum. This forum is a citizen forum. But the one I’m going to come up with, a community citizen forum more like a community coalition group made up of business owners, non-profit organizations, faith-based leaders, returning citizens, high school students. And we’re going to talk about ways we can reduce crime and prevent crime to keep our community safe. And I think with jobs—the local here, local 24, I’ve been working with them since 2018 or 19, somewhere around there—and that’s one of the best unions. I say that because it’s a heat insulator unit, so you’ve got to be an insulator. But they’re taking people without a high school diploma or GED. Not saying that they’re minimizing their qualifications. They know that if you have the ability to learn, they feel that they have enough skilled teachers and can teach you to be an insulator and have you in five years a master. So, it started off at $17.86 an hour, work your way up. Right here on Montgomery Street, 901 Montgomery Street, local 24. So that’s a good thing. That right there is going to increase jobs as well.
Do you plan to make those forums a regular thing?
Yes, yes, yes.
They’re going to meet regularly?
Yeah. Once we write the resolution up and get it started. I’ll probably start up the task force first. We have a clergy committee already. I don’t think it’s going to take long to do it because we got the clergy committee already. We meet them like every 60 days. I’m going to keep that same schedule. We got the Laurel Board of Trade to meet with them once a month. Those are the business community. I’m ex-law enforcement, so I’m working with Prince George’s County. Mike Williams, he’s the director of the Returning Citizens from Prince George’s County. He’s been my director when I was working as a probation officer. So, I just got to get with him, and we can coordinate these things. We’ve been talking about this stuff for years. And just getting these brainstorming—one resource we got is the local 24. We got folks coming home from prison, some of them are not going to have a GED or a high school diploma, but they have the ability to learn.
Move on to transparency. Do you intend to continue to have virtual meetings?
Yes. We had to change the resolution. I personally would love to have them in person all the time. But sometimes it does make sense when you look at our agenda. Our agenda only might have 1 or 2 things on it, and then you want to look at the work-life balance thing. Sometimes we might suspend a meeting if we don’t have nothing on the agenda. Because really, if the council is not writing legislation or bringing stuff forth, then there’s just administration saying, we need these type of things. But yeah, the work session is the first Wednesday of the month. The first council meeting is the second Monday of the month. And the second council meeting is the fourth Monday of the month, because you have two public hearings before you pass, before you vote on anything, that’s the charter. So, the work session tells you what you want. If it doesn’t make it out of the work session, then you know it’s dead. But you can extend it if you’re not ready to go to the first public hearing. You can table it for another day. You can continue to work on it until everybody is satisfied, they got enough stuff to put forth a vote, or they feel that it’s not worthy of it, they can kill it. But that depends on how the council feels.
There’s been some things going on over the years that are not necessarily secret, but not in the public eye. The biggest example I can think of is the CRA.
Okay.
I’ve talked to a lot of people, and nobody has any idea what it is. And they meet in the afternoon. Who can go to that?
The CRA, that’s the continuous resolution—?.
The Community—
Community.
Redevelopment Authority.
Yeah.
They’re the ones that buy properties.
They buy property. Yeah, yeah. All public meetings, all meetings and committees should be open to the public.
Well, I’m glad to hear you say that.
I mean, I don’t think there is any difference. So, I’ll do my research on them. But all the other committees that we have might not be televised because—
But here’s a body that spends a lot of money on the city’s behalf.
I don’t know how much money they spent. I have to research them more. That’s the committee that I don’t really know too much about, to be honest with you. I know what they stand for, but I’m still learning how they operate. So let me research them.
If you dig down in the city website, they don’t have any minutes published for all of 2023. That doesn’t make sense.
Okay. So let me get back with you on that one. Let me go do some more research on that.
At the candidates’ forum, you said there needs to be transparency by both sides when dealing with the Boys and Girls Club issues.
Yes.
So has there been a lack of transparency in the past with dealing with those guys?
I always reached out to the Boys and Girls Club when I first came on the council. They came to me for some things, and I told them that I didn’t have the authority to—you had to go back before the general body. And so they never got back with me on stuff that they wanted, but I’m willing to work with them. Their organization, they’ve been in the city for a long time. So, I always think that the olive branch is out to them.
I think you confirmed what a lot of people around here think: that dealing with them is not easy. And they’ve had their share of troubles down there, and some of it’s a black eye on the city. Not lately, but—
If they wanted, my door is open for everybody. Everything starts with a conversation. And I said that to them before when I met with them several times. And some things they wanted, I told them I can’t get it myself. And so, they came back and said, that’s okay, we’re going another route.
And that building has been falling down for a long time.
Every building should pass a health and safety inspection. That’s the first thing. Any building that the city is going to give funds to, they have to be in compliance. If a building is not in compliance, that’s in the code to give them a correction order to get stuff in compliance. We’re not in the business of fining people. We want to correct the order. But safety is first. And if you’ve got people inside a building—. So, like I said, I don’t want to make a big deal about it. But I’m willing to—for your purpose of this interview—I’m willing to work with them as long as they’re willing to work with me. But like you said, they have to be honest with me. I’m going to be honest with them.
You said you plan to work with small businesses. We talk to residents all the time and many residents have told us that the city needs to be less punitive and more helpful. Do you agree with that?
I agree with that. As a council member, I don’t know all the fines people received from the city unless I go look it up. But as far as I’m concerned, under my administration, we want to work with the residents. Say when the fire marshal—the citation is usually a corrective order. You got so many days to get it fixed. That’s normal, how everything pretty much works. And if you don’t fix it so many days, then they got to fine you something to give you some motivation to modify that behavior. You know what’s going to cause you to fix it. We know you’ve got a safety problem. We know it’s going to take you a while. I’m just saying that everything started with the corrective order first. That’s 30 days at least. And then you can probably get an extension. So, they call my office and say, “Hey, you know what, Mr. Mayor? I got a corrective order. They gave me X amount of days to get it fixed, but can I have an additional 15 days to get it fixed then?” That’s a case-by-case basis. We do have to hold people accountable. The accountability is important. That’s how we keep everybody doing the right thing. But the first thing is give people an opportunity. And then they can always come to me and say they need additional time because of whatever the case may be, but it’s a case-by-case basis.
People have also said that it’s not just fees or fines. They complain about the red tape to do anything in the city.
I don’t know how true that is. I’ve only been here about 30-some days, and we’re giving grants away. I know under my administration, people are already applying with some grants. And the economic development people work with them as much as possible because they’re here for a reason. We want to help people. We want our city to grow. Everything starts with a conversation. That’s my favorite line. It starts with a conversation, and if I don’t hear it, I don’t know. I’m the source. I’m the chief executive officer of the city. So, come to me. This is an open-door policy. You just got to call in and get on the schedule and I’ll hear you out. If you don’t give me the opportunity to hear me out, I think you’re being disingenuous to me if you don’t give me the opportunity to do it now. And like I said, we’re not magic, right? It’s going to be a lot of times we’re going to say no, but I’m going to tell you the why, though. I think most people, if they understand the why, they might feel a little better. It’s not going to be just no because I said so. Even I want $100,000. I might not get the $100,000 because that’s general funds. That’s not money coming from the state or the county. Whoever nonprofit organization is doing work inside the city, that we have extra money in our coffers left to help them out. That’s the community service we’re talking about, to let them work to help the citizens here. So, I stand by that, as long as I have the funds to do it.
It doesn’t matter how much you do for them. Some people will still complain.
I’m aware of that. [laughs]
I’m sure you are. All I’m trying to say is you’ve got a long road ahead of you to try to change that thinking.
Yeah, but as I say, give me a chance. Right? If you don’t come and talk to me—. You said the old administration did that. The old administration is gone. This is new.
And that’s a good point, because this all is carryover.
Exactly. I’m here now. I’m here until four years. And so give me an opportunity.
Let me move over to the council. How come the city doesn’t provide a legislative orientation to council members?
When I came on the council in 2017, they gave me a briefing. I went around to all the department heads, presented what they want to do. But oftentimes the council work is a lot of work to get done on your own. You’ve got to learn this job yourself. That’s really not a—
I’m strictly talking about the legislative process to introduce bills and get legislation done. Don’t you think it would behoove the city to give them a running start? It doesn’t seem to me to be something that you guys should have to learn on your own.
No, what I’m saying is that there’s three branches, right? And that’s a good question that you brought up. The council isn’t really in charge of the city. They make the policies of the city.
But I don’t think a lot of people get that.
But they make the legislation. I don’t have a vote but all I have is veto power. But if the council, if five members or four members of the council say this is what we want, that’s the majority speaking for the people. The people elected us, they entrusted us to speak for them on their issues and stuff. Everything starts in the work session. If you’ve got legislation, if you pass the work session, it goes to the first public hearing. If it doesn’t get out of the work session, then it’s dead right there.
I get that, but I don’t know if a lot of the council does. That’s my point.
Well, I’m telling the council that. This council that just got elected, I told them last week and we’re having a retreat on the 27th, and the things I’m going to talk about are how to run an effective council meeting along with the council president. That’s one of the things on the retreat schedule. So, you’ve got an idea. You’ve got a vision. It starts in work sessions. You get three of your council members to say they agree to it. It has to go to the public hearing by city charter.
But I don’t think most of the council knows that.
But that’s the council member’s fault.
Well, how would they learn that coming into the job? Where do they go to learn that?
I learned it from reading the city charter and reading the orders and all that stuff. Our job is to continue to learn. But the basic thing is the work session. Nothing goes on without coming to the work session. So, if you want some legislation written, you have to put it on the work session. The clerk will help you write it and all that type of stuff. But it’s your idea and they put it into the format they need to go on. But if it don’t pass the work session, if you don’t get a majority of your council to agree at the work session, it can’t go to the first public hearing.
I just don’t understand why the city doesn’t do more to educate its council members. Why waste all that time trying to learn when you can just do a PowerPoint and show how it works?
I say different because we go to the Maryland Municipal League every summer. We send all five councilmen to Ocean City, and they’ve got intro classes for first year council members. They’re teaching you all this type of stuff: how every council has different rules and stuff like that.
At the work session last week, when the resolution about naming the multiservice center—correct me if I’m wrong here—you implied that you wanted to see a vote without discussion?
No, that’s not true.
Okay. Tell me what you meant there.
I told them they were talking about something that wasn’t on the agenda. The agenda is set. When you run an effective council, it’s got everything you want on the agenda. We always have a discussion. You have to have a discussion. But if you’re bringing up stuff that’s not on the agenda, then that’s disrupting the council meeting. That’s not how you run an effective council. So, either you talk about it in the work session and it goes if everybody agrees. People said some stuff that wasn’t pertaining to the issue. And I want us to get away from that because that’s a waste of the people’s time and that’s not really being productive. So, the resolution states anyone, any citizen, can name a building or a street, whatever.
I know all about it because we went through it.
Exactly. So now it comes before the council at the work session. If the council says we don’t want it, it’s dead right there.
By vote?
We don’t really vote. It’s just that—in a way you do. But if you don’t want it to go further. The president will ask if anybody’s got any objection to this going further. If anybody says no, then anybody else got an objection? But if everybody’s cool it goes.
It sounded like you just wanted to cut it off.
No, no, no, not at all. I just stayed on the agenda. Cause we get the agenda seven days in advance. Legally supposed to.
Let’s go to the city code. Have you considered taking a look at that, overhauling it, simplifying it?
It’s a whole lot of stuff.
That is a horrible document. You can’t understand most of it. It’s riddled with typos and errors. That section 6 that caused all that kerfuffle with the elections, it kept referencing a section that’s not even in there anymore.
We’re going to look at the election code again. We’re going to look at the codes. Everything, anything that pertains to trash pickup, election, all has a code. I’m saying this whole book, Laurel city code, that’s a whole book of stuff. There’s no way you can memorize all this stuff. So, you go to the section you want to work, and then you discuss that. So yeah, we have to look at the Board of Elections thing. We’re going to. That’s going to be one of the first things we’re going to clean up. So, we’re aware of that.
But you don’t have any plans to look at the whole code and try to clean that up?
There’s a whole book—. We’ve got to pinpoint what the issue is.
Even if it’s from an editing aspect? Are the references up to date? Are there typos?
I would look at it, yeah. I don’t know when. I can’t give you no time period. I know I’m going to look at the election stuff first. We’re going to clean that one up first. We know that was a big deal. So, we’re going to pick out some things that we think we need to look at.
The controversy about the Board of Elections and how they fined some candidates: did you think that all of their actions were fair and justified?
I’ll say this. Let me be very clear. If I say this right, the Board of Elections is a whole entity, so they have their rules, their regulations. And whatever they follow, they set according to their guidelines. We have to follow that. So, I’ll speak on that. They were created as a whole government body that said we’re going to manage the elections. And so, they’re like the police or the judicial branch. So, we had to follow their rules. So, they told me stop. I was campaigning in May when I thought that’s what we do. They told me to stop, I stopped. So, I follow their orders until they get the order. So, I just follow what they say. I don’t want to say they were right or they were wrong. Whatever guidelines they got according to the Board of Elections. That’s why I say that’s one of the first things we want to do. We want to look at guidelines on how we can do things better, more efficient. I don’t want to penalize people for—. I want to make running for election easy for individuals. But they are the governing body. But the council can’t really control each other on that one.
No, that’s not what I’m suggesting at all.
I know, but I don’t—
But section 6, especially, is ambiguous. It lacks any specificity. And why was every violation $1,000—the maximum?
Yeah.
There didn’t seem to be any common sense being applied here. Thomas Matthews had $1,300 in his campaign fund, and they fined him $1,000. Well, you might as well take him out of the race. So now he’s got 300 bucks.
I don’t know, I didn’t look.
There just didn’t seem to be any fairness or common sense to what they were doing. I just wondered if you had anything to say about that.
My answer to the Board of Elections—they are the supervisor of elections. And so, we’ll look at the legislation and we can make any changes and recommendations. We will look at that. That’s my recommendation.
The sense around town after the election was that there was a lot of optimism about all the new blood in City Hall now, but do you think that would extend to these boards and commissions? I don’t know if you’ve even thought about it yet.
I haven’t really thought about that yet. I have appointed new people to certain committees. I appointed three people so far: one person to the Planning Commission, one person to the Ethics Commission that put in and wanted to be—. And I interviewed them. One person to the Board of Appeals.
At the candidates’ forum you said you plan to evaluate all the city employees.
Department directors.
Okay. The directors. Has that process started?
Yeah, it started. Interviewing them this week.
And you also mentioned putting employees on a six-month probation. Is that everybody that you’re going to be interviewing or how’s that?
That’s the directors. Directors are the department heads that serve at the discretion of the mayor. So that’s your police chief, the DPW director, communications director. I feel that six months—I say probation, I mean six-month evaluation. I’ll probably confirm a couple of them. I’m gonna confirm the city administrator. I appointed the city administrator and the deputy, Christian Pulley and Joanne Barr. They should get, if the council confirms them tonight. Hopefully they do. Those are my first two. And then everybody else I’m interviewing, talking to them, and they should be confirmed. I’ll go before the council on the 22nd of January.
Do you still feel that marijuana use by employees is cause for dismissal?
I do. I think that marijuana is a schedule 1 drug, and I say we have to talk to—. Let me be very careful with that. With a schedule 1 drug, meaning the federal government says it is illegal, I think the federal government needs to take it off of schedule 1. You know what I’m saying? So it’s like recreational use. And the State of Maryland passed it for recreational use.
Right. Or medicinal.
Medical is different. But I do think that if you using it, you know why it’s still federal. It’s complicated. But I do advocate for it to come off of schedule 1 drug. Once they come off a schedule 1 drug, it’s easier because it’s recreational, like alcohol. I’m saying you can go to work, right? And if you’re drunk and I can get you a fit for duty test. But it needs to come off the schedule 1 drug first. Until it comes off the schedule 1 drug testing, I advise employees to refrain from using marijuana.
You also promised to appoint a Latino liaison. How’s that coming along?
We talked about that. That was one thing we talked about. We said that we want to go to a multicultural liaison, that we encompass every other ethnicity inside the city. So, I think that’s a better plan. It’s not going to be a paid job. It’s going to be like one of our committees are. Like we got the education advisory committee, we got disability committee, we got the tree board. So, it’d be a committee like that, a multicultural committee. That way a representative from each ethnicity in the city can talk about their concerns.
[This interview was edited for clarity and space.]
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