Dear city leaders:

This is a good time to talk about introducing Instant Runoff Elections, or IRV, to the Annapolis city democratic process. IRV is elegantly simple and helps foolproof the election, preventing the spolier issue and preempting issues such as the sullied results of the democratic primary. In IRV the electorate ranks their candidates in order of preference. If there is a majority winner at the 1st choice the judges stop counting. If not, they go on to the 2nd choice and so on. Takoma Park has it.

Sadly the failure of the party, media and populace to properly vet the candidates resulted in inconclusive read of the electorate’s choice. To proceed without rerunning the election would further dilute the democrats standing. I hope they, with the moniker of democrats, manage to find it within themselves to uphold the democratic process for our small city. It would support the long-term democratic process and prevent future botches such as this if you and our other leaders would enact IRV for us.

Thank you,

(Name deleted)

Speaking of the Market House, I accept the sincerest form of flattery from the mayor’s office: compare my “vision” video (http://www.gilbertrenaut.org/2009/08/07/video-gilbert-discusses-his-vision-for-the-market-house/s) with the mayor’s latest press release:

Market House is a 220-year-old landmark in the center of historic downtown Annapolis’ business district whose prime mission is to provide a gathering and shopping destination for those visiting the center city. Today, Market House is in the midst of an ongoing transformation to better meet the needs of those who shop, work, and visit Annapolis offering a variety of goods and services from locally-owned businesses. For more information about Market House, please visit www.markethouseannapolis.com.

I am going door to door every day now to meet as many potential voters as possible. I have been extremely well received and found that so many of our residents share my visions for a unified Annapolis . . . even in 93-degree heat.

Quite a few people have asked me whether there are candidates forums — the word does not seem to be getting out as well as we would like. Please spread the word. The next one is:

Next Thursday, August 20, 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the auditorium at Annapolis High School. Mayoral Candidates Forum sponsored by the Annapolis High Parent Teacher Student Association. The focus will be how each candidate’s vision for the city of Annapolis will affect the schools in the Annapolis cluster. Each will be allowed to speak briefly and then it will be Q&A from the audience followed by brief closing remarks. There will be translators or some sort of technology for translating for the Spanish-speaking members of the audience. Please note this is sponsored by the PTSA, not Annapolis High School.

Tuesday, I traded some door-knocking time to attend an important “town meeting” regarding the health of the Chesapeake Bay and the president’s order for EPA to produce new plans by Sept 9 for restoring the Bay. The meeting was run by Brad Heavner of Environment Maryland (http://www.environmentmaryland.org/). About 400 people were in attendance and dozens lined up to speak. Chuck Fox, EPA Senior Advisor on the Chesapeake Bay was on the panel. (profiled at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/30/AR2009033003066.html). This is clearly an issue of serious concern that we must address. A farmer in his eighties stated: “You talk about the canary in the coal mine, but this is more like the buzzard on the back fence.” We must make our elected officials accountable! As mayor of Annapolis, I would be pressing this issue hard.

Capital article on the town meeting at http://www.hometownannapolis.com/news/top/2009/08/12-22/Crowd-speaks-out-on-bay-cleanup.html

In the interest of my promised transparency — a strong theme of mine, and one that I will continue to follow when elected Mayor of Annapolis – I wish to share some information which may explain some of my relative inactivity to date. I was subjected to a minor medical scare, during which I had to face the question whether my health was consistent with running a campaign and holding a full-time office. On March 25^th, I underwent surgery for a large cyst on my thyroid. After removal of my thyroid and treatment to ensure no traces of cancer, I received a full body scan and a completely clean bill of health from my endocrinologist, Dr. Friend.  While the past few months were spent juggling with recovery and the right balance of thyroid medication, my supporters and I have remained at work in pushing the issues which have been so important to me and the City of Annapolis.

With a clean bill of health, a love of Annapolis, and renewed energy to make this town the best that it can be for all its residents and businesses, I am anxious to get out on the street and talk to all of the Annapolitans who care to join in. So look for me out and about the town of Annapolis and your communities and tell me what’s on your mind.

I promise that Mayor of Annapolis is not a punch on my résumé or a stepping stone to some other office. Instead, with your help I will change the way business is done in Annapolis and just do what’s right. No more spending and taxing initiatives hidden in budgets, no more fake claims to have held the line on property taxes, no more imprudent one-sided contracts on the market house or anything else, and no more non-bid contracts to political supporters and “wheels in motion” (see http://annapoliscapitalpunishment.blogspot.com/2009/06/wheels-in-motion.html and http://www.hometownannapolis.com/news/can/2009/07/05-22/Cohen-tries-to-ward-off-Moyer-comparisons.html?ne=1).

In fact, join me! Become a volunteer and walk your precinct with me to help show people what a difference we can make together. Please call (410-269-1768) or e-mail (Gilbert.Renaut@GMail.com) to join the team.

On a separate page, I make the point in the environmental context that there’s a big difference between conducting a policy and striking a pose. Unfortunately our city government rarely gets beyond striking a pose, if that far.

Let’s take another look at the city manager issue. The mayor and mayoral candidates who oppose the proposal so strongly misunderstand the mayor’s role, and therefore see the city manager as eliminating that role. It might help to stop calling a city manager a “CEO,” which is potentially misleading, and instead thinking, in modern corporate parlance, of a “COO,” or chief operating officer.  Do you remember when it hit the news that President Carter personally scheduled the White House tennis courts, and how silly it made him look?

The president’s job, and the mayor’s, is leadership, not tennis court scheduling or pothole triage. If a mayor sees his or her job as pothole triage, then yes, he or she will fear that the city manager proposal marginalizes the mayor’s job.  But a mayor who understands that leadership is about policy will be pleased to be able to devote full time to that higher calling.

Leadership includes reaching out to our citizens, listening to all of them, not just the ones we agree with, building consensus, developing policy, explaining the policy, and following it fairly and evenly. Leadership includes walking all our streets, including the rough ones, and talking to residents and business people about what we should be doing together to make our city the best it can be. Leadership includes reaching out to our sometimes adversaries, such as the county executive and the superintendent of schools, whomever we need to talk to to get the job done. Leadership includes marketing our policy choices, explaining why we chose them, not burying them in a budget without explanation. Leadership includes candor about our finances: no more will we say “we have held the line on property taxes, ” when the reality is that “we didn’t need to raise the tax rate because assessments have gone up more than 80% in the past eight years.”

It’s simple.  It’s all about transparency, outreach, and policy.

Polaroid transfer print by Libby Cullen

The Moyer machine, now apparently become the Cohen machine, seems altogether too intertwined with that side of the establishment, and the blog also suggests that the effort is to increase the mayor’s pay and stack the City Council with people who will support Cohen as mayor after he is elected. The last thing the good people of this City need is to pay a premium for four more years of the polarizing and divisive Moyer machine.

Now add this to the wheels put together by “Annapolis Capital Punishment:” The Annapolis Democratic Central Committee has eight positions. According to its web site, two of them are vacant, at least two of them are occupied by Moyer loyalists (Wil Scott and Dawn Moyer — Loni Moyer is an alternate), and one of them is occupied by Cohen’s county council legislative assistant (Gail Smith), who seems to speak for Cohen both as a county council member and as a mayoral candidate. http://www.annapolisdems.org/about.htm Additionally, the chair of the county central committee, Kory Blake, works for the union that has endorsed Cohen without even contacting any other candidates. Hard to see how they can be impartial.  

I was approached by Ms. Smith at a local Democratic party cookout who pointed out to me that (1) although she attends events and reads statements by Cohen, she does not speak “for” him, and that (2) according to the city central committee by-laws only the chair is required to be “impartial.” I am happy to post this clarification, but I don’t see that it changes the conclusion: the deck is still a bit stacked.

One of the primary reasons I am running is to provide a responsible alternative. The mayor’s current personal salary already exceeds the City’s projected 2009 median household income by more than $10,000. With unemployment nearing 10%, mortgage foreclosures and bankruptcies at record levels, pay cuts, lay-offs, and furloughs in the works widely, and even talk of possible deflation, it is simply unconscionable to have voted the mayor three years of guaranteed increases of more than 10% each year.

The disastrous Market House lease, voted for by both the mayor and then-Alderman Cohen, just cost the taxpayers nearly $3 million in damages (and who knows how much in friction costs such as attorney fees and expert witness fees, let alone apparent loss-indemnification obligations), about twenty years’ salary for a city manager. It is irresponsible to expect taxpayers to fund a mayor’s salary increase when populists and capitalists agree that CEO pay should reflect current economic conditions and enterprise performance. Given that our duty and responsibility is to the taxpayer, especially during these tumultuous economic times, I will not accept any salary increase as mayor. Period. Public sentiment on both sides of the partisan aisle loudly supports this.

I had a letter to the Capital arguing in the opposite direction some time ago, and I repeat its primary points here. The label “administrator,” “manager,” “chief executive officer,” or, following some corporate usage, “chief operating officer,” matters little. The goal is to ensure both competent management and to insulate that management from political interference by any one person.

Mayors are elected for leadership, vision, charisma, things like that, and it’s only blind luck electing one with any management ability. What makes us think we will be so lucky in the next election or any other election? If a mayor proves managerially incompetent, the recall mechanism is burdensome and expensive, including signatures of 30 percent of eligible voters (which may sound easy, but total turnout for the last City election was less than 34 percent) followed by a referendum and selection of a replacement.

Photo by Jon Renaut

Do professional management training, qualifications, and experience guarantee competence? No, nothing guarantees competence; they merely improve the odds. If we get a city manager who turns out not to be managerially competent, he or she can be fired at will — not by one politician in reprisal for something said or done, but by a majority of the whole city council. It might still be “political,” but it’s less likely, and it will not be personal.

I have announced that, without getting into the argument over what a mayor deserves to be paid, in this economy I could not accept the proposed raise and that I would hire a professionally qualified city manager despite the City Council’s negative vote. Rather than an admission of incompetence, it’s a recognition that nothing about the electoral process will inform the voters whether any candidate, including me, is managerially competent or not.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT: Gilbert Renaut

TELEPHONE: (410) 269-1768

GILBERT RENAUT ANNOUNCES MAYORAL CANDIDACY

Annapolis, Maryland

February 23, 2009

Thirty-four-year Annapolis resident and civic activist Gilbert Renaut today announced that he will run for Mayor of Annapolis in the Democratic primary election in September. He is forming a committee in support of his candidacy and will announce his campaign officers in the next few weeks.

“With Alderman Richard Israel’s withdrawal from the mayoral race, I can only see four more years of the same sort of polarizing City politics we have had for the last eight, and I can’t sit still for that”, Renaut said.

Renaut stands for

1. Bringing Annapolis together to achieve active and cooperative participation of all our citizens, ethnic groups, neighborhoods, and interest groups to find and make the most of what we can agree on.
2. Hiring qualified professional management for the City, despite the City Council’s recent vote against it, with particular focus on the Market House, the recreation center, and police headquarters.
3. Fiscal responsibility, with transparent and candid City budgeting, financing, hiring, and an end to the practice of claiming that property taxes have been “lowered” when in fact they have been raised dramatically because of rising assessments.
4. New emphasis on recreational and educational youth opportunity for all our residents.
5. Continuing emphasis on community policing and on-the-street police presence to keep our communities safe for the people who live in them.
6. A transportation system that all our residents can enjoy using.
7. An economic development program that puts local businesses first and stops putting up obstacles to their success.
8. A tourism and events program that encourages visitors who come to Annapolis for what’s special about it.

Renaut also said, “Whatever the Mayor’s job is worth, in the current economic climate I could not in good conscience accept the salary increase recently proposed. I will give any such increase to charity or back to the City.”