Two Former PTA Leaders Running for Montgomery County Council

Paul Geller, Melissa McKenna trying for at-large seats

Paul Geller, left, and Melissa McKenna, right, are running for at-large seats on the Montgomery County Council in 2018 Screenshot via Homework Hotline Live; Provided photo

The former president and vice president of the Montgomery County Council of Parent Teacher Associations are both planning to run for at-large seats on the County Council.

Melissa McKenna, the former vice president, established a public election financing campaign with the Board of Elections last week and formally filed Friday to run for one of the four at-large council seats in 2018. She’s running as a Democrat.

Her public financing filing lists Paul Geller, the former PTA council president, as a chairperson for her campaign, but she said Wednesday he’ll be removed from the campaign documents because he is also pursuing an at-large council seat.

Geller, 49, said Wednesday he’ll soon file with the state to launch his own campaign. Each is a stay-at-home parent running for political office for the first time.

McKenna, 47, said she’s running for County Council because her work on the PTA exposed her to greater issues that communities face, such as the need for more affordable housing and how to handle population growth in planning decisions. She said she could address those issues with greater impact on the council rather than pursue a seat on the county’s Board of Education, which sets school policy and proposes the school system’s budget.

McKenna, a Gaithersburg resident, said she wants to find a way in the county’s budget to fund school construction projects to keep pace with Montgomery County Public Schools’ enrollment growth.

She wants the county to focus on a program to renovate public schools—similar to the county’s library refresh projects—rather than tearing down old schools and building new ones.

“What we can do is be better stewards of the money we receive and make sure we’re spending it as wisely and prudently as possible,” McKenna said.

Geller, an Olney resident, said he wants the school system to focus on renovation and expansion projects at current buildings “whenever possible.”

He said he would call for coordinated traffic lights throughout the county as a way to reduce traffic. He envisions a system that he said would be similar to Long Island, New York, where lights sequentially turn green for long sequences to allow through traffic to proceed, then turn red to through traffic in a pattern to allow cross-traffic to pass through.

McKenna said the two are not running for council together, although they are “good friends.”

“We have worked well together in the past, but we will be running separate campaigns,” McKenna said.

“She’s her own candidate,” Geller said. He initially thought he could be her campaign chairperson and run for the same office, but was later told by an election official he could not. He said after receiving that information, he stepped down from the chairperson role and notified the state.

Geller plans to use the county’s public election financing system.

Both McKenna and Geller stepped down from their roles at the PTA in April after new leaders were elected. At the time, controversy surfaced over nearly $30,000 missing from the organization’s bank accounts. The council of PTAs has a yearly budget of about $80,000, which comes from the $1 in annual dues paid by members of parent-teacher associations in the county. The organization represents over 50,000 members in 192 local PTAs, according to its website.

Geller filed a police report April 10 with Montgomery County police to look into the missing funds. Police are investigating possible embezzlement, but have not announced any charges in the case.

The organization’s former treasurer resigned in March before the allegations surfaced.

McKenna said she can’t comment on the ongoing investigation, but said the situation was “unfortunate.”

“We did the best we could with the circumstances we faced,” McKenna said. “There was never a question we weren’t going to have it fully investigated. Paul did everything within hours that he was supposed to do in the situation. We were very fiscally responsible while we were in those positions.”

“Someone made a truly, profoundly, epic mistake in trying to defraud an organization that exists solely to help others,” Geller said. He noted that when he discovered the missing funds he immediately notified police.

“Police have asked me not to comment on it beyond that,” he said. “I truly look forward to the day when everything sees the light of day, so everyone can be aware what happened there.”

If elected to the County Council, Geller and McKenna would help review and approve the county’s $5.4 billion annual operating budget and oversee the six-year capital budget.

Geller said voters should not question his ability to manage the budget.

“All too often people would defraud a PTA and it would be swept under the rug,” Geller said. “I wanted the police to know about it right away.”

He said he chose to run for council over the Board of Education because the council makes the budget decisions.

The two candidates join a continuously growing field of at-large County Council candidates. The field includes the following candidates who have filed, as of Wednesday (in alphabetical order). All are Democrats.

Gabe Albornoz, the county’s director of recreation

Marilyn Balcombe, the president of the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce

Brandy Brooks, a Wheaton activist

Ron Colbert, a federal contractor and basketball coach

Bill Conway, a Potomac attorney

Hoan Dang, a Wheaton community organizer and federal contractor

Loretta Jean Garcia, a Bethesda attorney

Evan Glass, a nonprofit director

Richard Gottfried, a union member from Rockville

Neil Greenberger, a county spokesman

Ashwani Jain, a political organizer

Will Jawando, a former Obama administration official

Danielle Meitiv, a Silver Spring science consultant

Hans Riemer, the only at-large council incumbent up for re-election

Darwin Romero, a construction manager

Mohammad Siddique, of Montgomery Village

Chris Wilhelm, a teacher at Northwood High School

Tim Willard, a former archivist from Kensington, is seeking the Green Party nomination.

Other Democratic candidates who have not filed, but have told Bethesda Beat they plan to run for an at-large seat include former Del. Charlie Barkley; Cherri Branson, the county’s director of procurement; and former Takoma Park City Council member Seth Grimes.

No Republican has filed to run in the at-large race, but local blogger Robert Dyer, who has run as a Republican in previous at-large races, has told Bethesda Beat he’s considering entering the race.

The incumbent County Council members—Nancy Floreen, Marc Elrich and George Leventhal—must step down in 2018 due to new voter-approved term limits that limit council members to three four-year terms. Their exit means three of the at-large seats are open, with only Riemer seeking re-election to one of the four seats.

The primary is June 26.