Gaithersburg eyes day-laborer panel

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Gaithersburg officials are looking to form a task force to decide how to deal with scrapped plans for opening a day-laborer center in the city.

Mayor Sidney Katz and City Council members will hold a work session next Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. to discuss the task force's duties, composition and application process.

The session will be broadcast on Gaithersburg's public access Channel 13, or Channel 95 in the rest of Montgomery County.

Those chosen for the task force will help determine how to deal with day laborers who loiter outside Grace United Methodist Church.

The task force will likely consist of 12 to 15 members, hold televised meetings and make recommendations to the council, officials said.

City Manager David Humpton stressed that no specific criteria for the task force have been decided.

"We are ready and able to staff [the task force]," he said Monday.

Montgomery County officials this month scrapped plans to open a day-laborer center in Gaithersburg, saying the city appeared hesitant to proceed with it. Nearby residents had complained that they were excluded from the process.

Mr. Katz last week apologized for excluding residents from meetings about the center.

However, he said the meetings were open and were unofficial under Maryland's open-meeting law because they did not have enough elected officials present to qualify as an official meeting.