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

Saturday, June 20, 9:00 am: The Annapolis Democratic Central Committee will hold its final Breakfast with Dems for voters to meet with Democratic candidates for mayor and City Council from 9 to 10:30 a.m. at the Eastport Democratic Club, 525 State Street in Eastport. This week’s event will feature mayoral candidate Gilbert Renaut and aldermanic candidates Mathew Silverman from Ward 5, and Ross Arnett for re-election from Ward 8. The candidates will present their views and be available for questions. No reservations are necessary, but breakfast costs $3. For more information contact Chairman Nick Berry at 410-263-1139 or info@annapolisdems.org

Wednesday, June 24, 6:30 p.m. (doors open at 6): All declared Democratic candidates for mayor of Annapolis – Gilbert Renaut, as well as Josh Cohen, Sam Shropshire, Trudy McFall, Wayne Taylor, and Zina Pierre – will take part in a Democratic Mayoral Candidates Forum at the District 30 Democratic Club’s monthly meeting. At Loews Annapolis Hotel, 126 West Street, Annapolis. Submit a question in advance by writing to D30 Dem Club board member Carolyn Rodis at cjrodis@yahoo.com. For more info, contact club president Sarah Flynn at 410-268-2966 or sarahflynn@comcast.net or see www.md30dems.org.

Trailer for FRESH the movie:

In March of 1997, I wrote a column about civic polarization, and I reproduce it here, with minor editing.

The City comprehensive planning committee has about seventy members, and I am one of them. At our meetings, we usually split up into four discussion groups, and the last time I went to one, my group spent most of its time talking about racial and ethnic polarization. There was surprisingly general agreement that we have moved farther from, not nearer to, the “dream of one America.” A moving column by Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post of Monday, February 24th, titled “A Lesson in Excess,” made a similar point in the different context of educating children in Baltimore. When I went to high school in Baltimore, students were not allowed to bring cars. Now, according to Yardley, the private school student parking lots are full of cars — usually complete with cellular telephones — which cost more than the State’s average annual per capita income, while, in contrast, a full third of the city’s children are in poverty.

The city of Baltimore, says Yardley, “like so many others, is more divided than ever before between the fortunate and the deprived, between those with bright hopes beyond anything they have earned and those with no hope at all.” “It is no longer fashionable to worry about such matters. Never mind that we are rearing two classes of teenagers that have nothing in common except the potential for estrangement and conflict that their separate worlds entail. Just put the kid in the Cherokee, ship him off to Harvard, and pat yourself on the back.”

What, you may well wonder, can comprehensive planning have to do with that? Well, we wondered too. At least anecdotally, Annapolis is polarized in other ways, and they may have something to do with planning. Repeatedly we have seen citizens, at least some of whom are plainly sincere and well-intentioned, testify on opposite sides of economic development issues. With regard to the conference center proposed for the Menke site, from one perspective, it is viewed enthusiastically as a likely source of new jobs. Indeed, that argument was made even in support of extending all the bar closings to two a.m. — more work for waiters and bartenders. From our perspective, further damage to the quality of downtown life for the sake of a few extra bar and restaurant jobs seems disproportionate, but to the unemployed we may seem just selfish. Yet we wonder, is the job market here polarized too, between low-paying dead-end jobs and relatively high-paying ones, with very little in between? For intelligent City planning we need to know the answer and, if there is such a gap, economic planning must work on bridging it, with entry-level jobs to be sure, but entry level jobs with some potential for advancement to higher levels.

We often hear that there is a shortage of affordable housing in the City, yet also that the number of owner-occupied single family residences is declining. When I was a student at St. John’s in the Sixties, nearly all the faculty lived within walking distance of the campus, but hardly any can afford to do so now. Is there a housing gap between the well-off and the badly-off, with little in between and no hope of moving up from the latter without leaving the downtown and even the City? City planners need to know the answer to that, too, and target development to bridge the housing gap, if there is one.

In our meetings, our single-mindedness must be baffling to the professional staff and planning consultants who service us, and about all that has come of it is the “vision statement” element called “inclusive diversity.” No doubt that is a worthy vision, but without more knowledge and more focus, it will never be any more than a pose.

I ask you, have things changed in twelve years?

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.”