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.

All too typically the City has already decided the capacity of its new air conditioning system without knowing who the new tenants will be, in effect deciding that the tenants will have to fit the system (isn’t that what went wrong last time?). The City’s position is that it’s the biggest system they can fit into the space available, leaving them with maximum flexibility for tenants.  Another thing that concerns me is that settlements or court decisions with the remaining trial plaintiffs might so constrain the future of the Market House that this is all an academic exercise.  UPDATE:  The Arundel Muckraker reports that the City has settled with all tenants as of this morning, June 8th, for about another $285,000.  http://www.arundelmuckraker.com/storyview.asp?STORYID=10061

Additionally, the process started with some City-specified goals. Obviously, starting with goals begs some questions.  On the other hand, I think the facilitator was right, too, that in order to get anywhere in one of these exercises you have to start somewhere.  My own view, without wanting to close off discussion that might produce a better idea, is that the buy-local and eat-your-view movement is the way to go right now, so I was pleasantly surprised that the givens we started with were fairly vague but consistent with that movement. There is a group of citizens, residents and business-owners, working together on a buy-local plan that looks most promising to me.

However, there was a little confusion about what “local” means, whether the focus is on produced locally or owned locally, and I think that produced locally is the way to attract buyers and owned locally is the way to encourage engagement. But I do not want us to be playing games with “local” the way the chains do (at one of the supermarket chains, local means within a certain number of miles of one of their distribution centers, not the market itself).

Farmers were represented there, but I didn’t see or hear any sign of watermen. Since seafood certainly is one of the things that makes Annapolis special, I called the president of the Anne Arundel County Watermen’s Association and asked whether there were any local watermen left who might be interested in selling their daily catch there. His response: “Absolutely. I grew up in Annapolis and that’s where we used to sell it.”

]]> http://www.gilbertrenaut.org/2009/06/02/142/feed/ 0 http://www.gilbertrenaut.org/2009/05/17/73/ http://www.gilbertrenaut.org/2009/05/17/73/#comments Sun, 17 May 2009 11:25:50 +0000 Gilbert Renaut http://www.gilbertrenaut.org/?p=73

Photo by Jon Renaut

Well here we go again. Apparently without any open bid process, the City has selected a “professional facilitator” for the mayor’s market house “charette.” Apparently it will be the firm that specializes in “nurturing restaurant franchisors” that was hired as an expert witness for the litigation. See http://franpointpartners.com/ If so, maybe they’ll be great at it, but how would anyone know?

Although their report is being described by the City as “lessons learned,” that’s very misleading. Expert witnesses in trial have exactly one function — to show that everything bad that happened was somebody else’s fault (the mayor’s position on, well, just about everything). Until the litigation is over I can guarantee that they will voice no lessons for the City itself, which would come back to haunt them at trial.

UPDATE: According to Annapolis Capital Punishment, the City has now hired someone else to facilitate the charette: http://annapoliscapitalpunishment.blogspot.com/2009/05/phillip-favero-hired-to-facilitate.html

I urge residents to watch this process closely and get involved. We are all stakeholders.

The charette is scheduled for May 30th from 10 until 2 in Council Chambers at City Hall. If you want to participate, you must be there at 9:30 to sign up. N.B. The Capital says 9 am, but the City’s web site says 9:30. See http://www.ci.annapolis.md.us/display_ann.asp?ID=14035

There are too many variables and moving targets to say exactly what should happen next. The litigation with tenants is still scheduled for trial, and its outcome may have an impact on the Market House’s future. Additionally, there are people working on plans who should be allowed a full and fair hearing. For that reason I don’t want to be overly specific about what I want to happen. I recognize that there may well be better ideas out there than mine, and I do not want to discourage anyone from teaching me something. In general, I think the following is safe to say, however.

A new business plan for the market house will be prepared and published in the fall by the new city management team. The business plan should prepare for full occupancy of the market house and new tenants for successful and strong relationships with the city and finally acknowledge the learning curve necessary for building new businesses “from scratch.” It should include a strategic plan of 5, 10 and 20 year intervals.

A new solicitation will be issued to open up competition for new (and old) vendor owners. The new process will outline in great detail fair and open competition with explicit written criteria and time lines for occupancy, Above all, new merchants must be able to demonstrate their experience and commitment to excellent customer service and quality products.

Some years ago, the City attempted to turn McNasby’s into a watermen’s co-op. Regrettably it failed. But the landscape has changed since then. The buy-local and eat-local (“eat your view”) movements have achieved a much more widespread following. See http://www.buylocalannapolis.com/ To the extent possible, moderated by season and availability, all products sold in the market house should be sourced locally and identified as such for both local and tourist customers. They should represent the best products and quality available from our hard-working local farmers, watermen, and ranchers, and from our local farmland, rivers, and Bay.

A marketing plan should be drawn up and approved at multiple levels to include government and market house vendors on a regular basis.

To the extent possible, given the proprietary nature of the solicitation process, the business plan at every stage of development and implementation will be given its due treatment of transparency to the citizens of Annapolis through the internet, newspapers and other print media.