Dear Neighbors:
Here’s a link to the agenda for the January 29, 2020 City Council Meeting: https://takomaparkmd.gov/meeting_agendas/city-council-meeting-agenda-wednesday-january-29-2020/. There are no votes on the agenda for this week. The key item is continued discussion of the Sustainability and Climate Action Plan (see below for more details). We’ll also discuss Election Code amendments, proposed replacement of Police Department vehicles and the leasing of electric vehicles for the Department, and possible resident committee appointments. In addition, there will be a preliminary report by the Council Compensation Task Force, along with the formal introduction of our new City Attorney. The law firm we’re now working with is Karpinski, Colaresi & Karp, with our primary contact Skip Cornbrooks, who will be present.
UPDATES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
City Manager to Retire in 2021. At last week’s meeting the City Manager announced her intention to retire next year. Her current contract with the City runs through March 31 of this year, and the Council has agreed to extend it for another 15 months through June of next year. The details of the extension are being worked out, and further details will be announced later.
Office Hours. I’ll be holding office hours this Wednesday from 9:00 - 11:00 AM at Takoma Bevco. Residents are welcome to stop by to discuss any issues. No appointments needed.
Report from Last Week’s Council Meeting
Human Rights and Inclusivity Resolution. I’m pleased the Council voted unanimously in support of this resolution repudiating bigotry and intolerance, including specifically anti-semitism. For those who may be interested, you can see my comments about the resolution via this link: https://takomaparkmd.gov/government/city-council/meetings-and-documents/city-council-video/. Click on the January 22 sub-link and scroll ahead to the 47 minute mark.
Bus Shelter Proposal. We also approved the proposal to install bus shelters at Takoma Park bus stops with the highest usage and no current shelters. You can see more details and review an interactive map showing all the City bus stops and their average number of daily boardings through this link: https://documents.takomaparkmd.gov/government/city-council/agendas/2020/council-20200122-2-rev.pdf
Update from Council Priorities-Setting Retreat. Our retreat, which a number of residents also attended, covered a range of issues, including the Housing and Economic Development Strategic Plan, racial equity efforts, major projects, the draft climate change proposal (again, discussed below), and the process and plans for our yearly budget work. There will be plenty of additional discussion about our priorities as we refine our official list for the year and as we move into the work on the budget. The following are some key points that emerged from the retreat.
Many of our small businesses continue to be negatively affected by the Purple Line construction, with some restaurants in particular experiencing as much as a 70 percent drop-off in business. There’s work underway aimed at supporting these businesses and other small businesses throughout the City, not to mention attracting new businesses, all in alignment with the priorities in the Strategic Plan. Meanwhile, I urge residents to make a special point of patronizing and supporting their favorite spots in the Crossroads that are being hurt by the Purple Line construction work.
Several of our staff are participating in a long-term racial equity program through the Government Alliance on Race and Equity. They are working on a project that’s aimed at improving City outreach and public engagement efforts to help ensure -- in part through enhanced use of technology -- that a more diverse cross-section of our community is able to take part in debates on municipal issues.
The staff have also been emphasizing workforce development, tenant outreach (with an expansion of bilingual efforts), and planning for further activity in these areas, both through grant funding that may be available and in the context of the upcoming budget.
I hope to see us continue to place a high priority on all of these activities. However, the budget will come into play for all of them, and we spent a lot time talking about the budget in the retreat. As noted in last week’s blog, my preference is to continue working on the major priorities and projects we’re already involved, and not take on significant new initiatives, with a goal of avoiding a property tax increase. Councilmembers are supportive of the idea of setting overall budget and tax targets in advance of the more detailed work of crafting the budget. I agree with this idea, though I don’t know at this point what would be the best way to set that target.
There’s strong Council backing for using Constant Yield (the tax rate that would allow the City to bring in the same amount of property tax revenue as in the previous year) plus the Economic Cost Index for state and local workers (a Federal inflation measure tied to employee compensation) to determine an appropriate property tax rate. The Constant Yield + ECI concept is certainly a plausible approach, though I’d like to look at other options as well.
The next update on ECI will be made public at the end of January, and the State will be informing us of our Constant Yield number in mid-February. Soon after that, the budget process will pick up, with the City Manager presenting her proposed budget to the Council in early April. We generally complete work on the budget in mid-May, which ensures that all the tax details are in place in time for the July 1 beginning of the fiscal year.
THIS WEEK’S MEETING
Council Compensation Preliminary Report: https://documents.takomaparkmd.gov/government/city-council/agendas/2020/council-20200129-1.pdf. Every four years, we appoint a resident task force to review Council compensation and consider changes. I and several of my colleagues have asked this year’s task force to explore whether the current compensation structure and part-time level of pay is a barrier to running for or serving on the Council. I’m concerned in particular about the difficulties that lower income or single parent residents may face under our current structure in potentially considering whether to run for Council. I look forward to hearing the task force’s findings on those points.
Election Code Amendments: https://documents.takomaparkmd.gov/government/city-council/agendas/2020/council-20200129-2.pdf. This year our local elections will be synchronized with County, State and Federal elections as opposed to taking place in odd years, which has been the case in the past. As part of our efforts to plan for that change, the Board of Elections has proposed a series of changes to our Election Code. Some of the changes are specifically connected to the switch from odd to even years, while others address separate points in the code that need to be clarified or updated. We’ve had several Council sessions and exchanges with Board members about the amendments, and we’re approaching the completion of that process. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to resolve the outstanding matters at this week’s meeting and move toward approval of the changes in the near future.
Sustainability and Climate Action Plan: https://documents.takomaparkmd.gov/government/city-council/agendas/2020/council-20200129-3.pdf. I appreciate the many thoughtful comments on and reactions to the draft climate proposal that that have been provided by residents. My hope is that the following explanation of my initial thoughts will be broadly responsive to many of the comments, and I’ll try to respond separately to individual emails that cover issues outside this statement. It’s probably not possible in this format to cover every point that’s been raised or every angle I’d ideally like to address (or for that matter every question I have myself or that I’ve passed along to City staff). So I encourage residents to be in touch with specific questions or comments that aren’t touched on here.
At the outset, I’d like to emphasize that the climate plan is at this point a staff proposal. The Council will be amending it and -- while a tentative voting date of February 12 (now moved to February 19) has been listed -- my view is that vote should be later. In my opinion before we’d be ready to vote on a resolution we need a lot more data, there are many questions and points that need to be answered or clarified (again, I’ve submitted a number of questions to City staff), and I’d want to see additional robust community engagement.
Having said that, I do think we’re in a climate emergency, and I was a strong supporter of the resolution the Council adopted last year calling for staff to develop an aggressive plan to address the climate challenge at our local level. And I don’t object to the staff taking a hard look at a range of ideas that could help address climate change, including some ideas that would involve some sacrifice. That’s what we asked for, and in the long run we’re unlikely to succeed in addressing climate change without making some sacrifices.
Where I have some differences with the draft is first off in the determination of which level of government should take on some of the components of the plan. It’s my sense that a number of these ideas could be better handled by the County or perhaps the State. That’s definitely the case when it comes to Community Choice Energy, which would be significantly more difficult for a city of our size to implement as opposed to a County like Montgomery with over a million residents. And on an issue like working to phase out the use of natural gas, it would scale up better if it were done as part of a larger County, State or national initiative along those lines. It’s also at higher levels of government that there’s a greater potential to secure the funding required to move forward on these proposals, especially in ways that offer needed financial assistance to residents. On the other hand, I don’t think we should “wait around” for other elected officials to act -- if we think a particular idea can best be led by another level of government I’d like to see us build into the resolution a more detailed expectation that Takoma Park would lobby the County, State, etc. for the goals we support.
Also, I would draw a distinction between “net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2035”, which was called for in last year’s resolution, and “100% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2035”, which is in the new proposed draft. With the former, as I understand it, if for example we didn’t completely eliminate the use of natural gas in residences, we could compensate for that by, say, planting more trees or taking other positive environmental actions. Some communities may plan to achieve that type of goal by purchasing carbon offsets, which in my view doesn’t really get us where we want to go. But I’d like us to explore whether there are additional offsetting actions we could take that would help get us to that net goal.
In addition, while this plan doesn’t have to cover every possible step we can take on climate change, I’d like to see more attention paid to some things that aren’t in the current draft. This includes a greater focus on adaptation and resilience. For example, if 2020 is like 2018 in terms of heavy rainfall in the local area, figuring out how to handle increased stormwater flows and their effects may easily overtake other climate issues in terms of impacts on the City and what residents would like to focus on. In addition, though we have less influence at the municipal level over the climate impacts of transportation than buildings, I think it would be beneficial to develop a more detailed approach on transportation than what’s in the current draft (again, even if the focus is on lobbying other levels of government). Also, and this relates directly to buildings, we should look more deeply at green building guidelines to help ensure that major projects already underway in the City or that may be built in line with the Housing and Economic Development Strategic Plan minimize to the extent possible negative climate impacts during and after construction. I also think it’s vital to have strong linkages between this plan and other key City initiatives including not only the Housing Strategic Plan, but also the Public Space Management Plan, our forest policy/tree canopy work, our racial equity initiatives, etc. One key aspect of zeroing in on these linkages is figuring out how the ideas laid out in this plan would affect our businesses and our economic development plans, in particular the proposals that would impact the real estate sector.
Beyond that, it’s vital for us to have some more specifics on anticipated cost impacts on residents at a range of income levels. Do short-term investments in more efficient home energy systems “pay for themselves” over time? Would it make more sense -- from both an economic and environmental perspective -- to call for installation of non-gas boilers when existing gas boilers are ready to be replaced rather than by a pre-determined date as in the plan? I understand this is the approach some cities that have taken in their climate plans, and I think we need to look very seriously at the idea, as what’s currently in the plan on this point likely poses an surmountable financial barrier (at least at our municipal level). I’d also like to know more about the relative contribution to overall natural gas use of cooking versus home heating.
Furthermore, I’d like to see more information on the expectations for continued development in our part of the State of alternative energy sources. Certainly the adoption of Community Choice Energy legislation should facilitate the growth in this sector. But I’d like to have a clearer idea of what sources of energy we anticipate we’ll be relying on over time. Using electricity that’s generated by coal plants is obviously less beneficial than electricity generated by wind or solar. Also, would a reliance on electricity to the exclusion of just about anything else create increased vulnerabilities during severe storms that knock power out?
Finally, it’s crucial that we fully understand our legal authorities in the areas covered in the draft resolution. So I’ll be looking for some information on those points from the City Attorney.
To sum up, we’re facing a climate emergency, and there’s a need for the City to take action. But the action has to be appropriate for our size and financial resources and commensurate with the nature of the problem. In terms of the potential cost impacts, I’d stress that there are larger, ever-increasing costs in our future if we don’t take action. So within that context, we should develop a plan that fits Takoma Park. A fundamental question, as we think about a resolution to move us in that direction, is how binding it should be. One option would be to pass something more like a strategic plan, which could include a set of goals, with implementation details to be worked out later. Another option would be a resolution that excludes more costly fossil fuel phase-out proposals, and retains many of the recommendations that impose less financial burdens on residents, clearly connected to local authority, with additions in areas like adaptation/resilience, plus language focused on pushing for changes at other levels of government.
At this point, I think we need more discussion and more input from the community before we can decide whether one of those two approaches or another makes the most sense. I’ll continue giving this set of issues thought and consideration, as well as doing research, talking to my Council colleagues, and reviewing responses to the questions I’ve sent City staff. And of course I’ll have the benefit of the opinions expressed by residents: please continue that!
Police Department Replacement Vehicles: https://documents.takomaparkmd.gov/government/city-council/agendas/2020/council-20200129-4.pdf
Police Department Electric Vehicles Lease: https://documents.takomaparkmd.gov/government/city-council/agendas/2020/council-20200129-5.pdf
Resident Committee Appointments: https://documents.takomaparkmd.gov/government/city-council/agendas/2020/council-20200129-6.pdf. We may consider appointments to resident committees, though the details were not available at the time this message was prepared.
Peter Kovar
Takoma Park City Council
Ward One
240-319-6281
(He, Him, His)
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