Alert! Alert! Alert! Montgomery County Pesticide Ban Update
Monday, March 10
Montgomery County Update
We have been working during the winter months to learn the timing of the proposed pesticide ban language, which we believe will be introduced by Montgomery County Council Members George Leventhal and Roger Berliner in April or May when you are busiest and won’t have time to deal with it.
We have most of our assets in place for grassroots, including RISE’s continuing retention of a lobbyist, focus-group tested messages, and database. We need your help to build two aspects of our grassroots outreach:
Database: We have about 90 professionals in the grassroots database, but need every green industry professional in the county actively engaged with us. Would you reach out to your colleagues and competitors and send me two contacts by email by March 15. I have included everyone’s email visibly so you can see who is already on the list.
Constituents: We need your customers engaged with us. We are still planning to send letters from 20 constituents – your customers – to council members proactively in support of continued product availability and use. Please send me (or Karen) three customer leads for grassroots engagement by March 15. Later we will be asking customers to write additional letters and show up if there are hearings.
If it comes to it, our coalition will need 100 members to appear in the hearing room to oppose the bill. Our effectiveness will be significantly increased if a percentage of people opposing the measure are your customers and other engaged citizens.
We have a great opportunity to stop introduction of the bill or to quickly decrease its chances of passing, but we need to take the above actions now before the season starts. We learned in focus groups RISE held during February that residents of Montgomery County do not favor any prohibition on their ability to hire professionals to treat their lawn and landscape or to do it themselves.
Thank you for your support and contact Me or Karen Reardon with questions, etc.
Mark I. Schlossberg, President
Pro-Lawn-Plus, Inc. 1406 Shoemaker Rd. Baltimore, MD 21209
O- (410) 825-8873; C- (410) 299-7979
E-mail – mark@prolawnplus.com; Web – www.prolawnplus.com
Facebook – www.facebook.com/prolawnplusinc
via Maryland Turfgrass Council – MTC News.