Carpal Tunnel and Sprained Tongues

There’s some serious thinking going on in the Takoma Park Recreation Department. The Rec. Dept. forwarded a question to the council via City Manager Barbara Matthews. The question was, in effect, “in referring to the soon to be officially christened Takoma Park Community Center Sam Abbott Citizens Center can we truncate the ridiculously clunky name?”

They worded it a lot more politely, of course, but your Gilbert knows what they were thinking, oh yes he does! They are thinking of all the wasted ink, paper, time, wear and tear on their keyboards, wrists, and tongues that the long, redundant name will cause. If we added up all the wasted staff-hours, materials, and the repetitive motion syndrome medical bills over the next 10 years, we could afford to build the gym!

The councils answer to the question whether to truncate or not only underlined the problem. It seems that the Takoma Park Community Center refers to the entire Takoma Park Community Center Sam Abbott Citizens Center building, whereas the Sam Abbot Citizens Center refers only to the public areas of the Takoma Park Community Center Sam Abbott Citizens Center. So, if they were to truncate it when someone calls and asks where the Rec. Dept. is located, they could say they were in the Sam Abbott Citizens Center on Maple Avenue, but that might be confusing when that person arrived at the Takoma Park Community Center Sam Abbott Citizens Center and found no clear delineation of which part of the Takoma Park Community Center Sam Abbott Citizens Center is the Takoma Park Community Center and which part of the Takoma Park Community Center Sam Abbott Citizens Center is the Sam Abbots Citizen Center.

The Mayor noted that to complicate the matter, the old municipal building was named after a previous Mayor Miller.

In lieu of a common sense solution, I suggest everyone follow Gilbert’s policy and refer to it as the Center Center. Much easier.

The council meeting led off with high drama. Longtime resident Frances Phipps addressed the council during the citizen comment segment. “Livid” hardly does justice to her mood. With barely controlled outrage, she related the long history of the Metropolitan Bicycle Trail - or at least the segment that passes through Takoma Park. Ms Phipps was active on the committee which worked out a compromise on the construction and width of the trail. The short version, leaving out the allegations of cost overruns and bad engineering, is that after years the committee agreed that a certain section should be 7 feet wide to protect nearby tree-roots, but last Thursday, as that section of trail was being constructed, Ms Phipps claimed a “rouge staff member,” Brett Linkletter, the city arborist, gave the contractor permission to make that section 8 feet wide.

Mayor Porter , who has acquired considerable skills over the years mollifying mad-as-a-wet-cat citizens, knows how to telegraph calm concern. She said in that I-take-you-completely-seriously-though-I-will-not-join-in-your-shark-frenzy tone that the incident would be looked into.

The drama made a 180 degree turn as another citizen, Jim Evans, who had served on the same committee as Ms Phipps, took the public microphone to counter attack. Ms Phipps, he said, was hardly a disinterested party. When bicycle trail routes were first proposed, the favored one ran past the historic Cady-Lee House, which Ms Phipps had just purchased and was renovating for sale. She joined the committee, he said, to fight that route tooth and nail. The seven-foot width, he said, was an unhappy compromise a browbeaten committee agreed on to avoid a long-drawn out battle. He challenged most of Ms Phipps charges, and urged the council not to reprimand any staff member or waste time and money over a perceived injustice. He said the city now has a great bicycle trail and if anything, the staff should be rewarded for their work.

Ward One Council Member Joy Austin-Lane began to question and reprimand Mr. Evans, pointing out that Ms. Phipps, her constituent, had cast no aspersions against him, yet he had publicly attacked her. She asked him if he had voted for the 7 foot width on that section. He said he had. She remarked that even if he didn’t like the decision, it was arrived at through the proper process and should be held to. She asked him if he had come to the council meeting at anyone’s behest. He said he’d come at no-one’s behest, that he’d suspected Ms Phipps would be there to complain to the council and he wanted to add balance.

Mayor Porter spoke up and thanked Mr. Evans for coming forward. She said she had found his comments helpful. She added that citizens who come forward to speak to the council should not be given the third degree. This was obviously aimed at Joy Austin-Lane, who seemed less than happy with the remark. For the rest of the evening exchanges between the two were sometimes chilly.

The frost in the air became almost a snowball fight between the two during the discussion of the instant runoff voting referendum. That referendum won handily in last fall’s city election, you may recall, so it is just a formality to set up a public hearing prior to writing it into the city charter. Piggybacked on the instant runoff voting, however, are proposals to move the dates of the nominating caucus and the council inauguration.

Porter backed the proposal to move the nominating caucus to an earlier date to avoid Rosh Hashanah, out of respect, she said, to the religious holiday

Austin-Lane spoke up in favor of moving the council inauguration date, pointing out that the most recent inauguration had to be done “piecemeal” instead of all at once, due to council members being out of town. Mayor Porter said the original purpose of rescheduling events was to show respect for a religious holiday, not, she sniffed, to work around people’s vacation plans.

Council member Williams stepped in as the exchange grew terse, saying there was no need to argue, the charter amendment could simply be written to give flexibility to the dates. Disgruntled, but looking for a way out of the conflict, the mayor asked the rest of the council what they thought should be done. Council members Barry and Clay wisely and quickly backed William’s sidestepping suggestion and the council moved on.

There was nothing more on the development issues that were explored last week. I do, however, want to mention one thing that I left out of last weeks account. Before they discussed the New Hampshire Avenue corridor, that long section of old strip malls, parking lots, neglected high-rises, and (in places) hard-bitten street-scape that flanks the wide, ugly expanse of New Hampshire Ave where it borders then cuts through a corner of the city, the council heard a report from staff. The report undercut the conventional wisdom, which is that New Hampshire Ave. is a potential tax-revenue gold mine just waiting for the city to guide a development effort t here. In fact, the study shows, the corridor is already quite full, with few vacant store fronts, or lots to build on. Tax revenues are not likely to increase much there, unless there is aggressive gentrification of the area, which the council is loath to support.

A kind person on a white horse has sent Gilbert a copy of council member Barry’s 10 point plan for development of the New Hampshire Avenue corridor, and will be posted here as soon as I have determined I may do so.

- Gilbert