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.

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.”