Civics Lessons In Council Chambers

I attended this evening’s meeting of the Mayor and Council mostly to hear citizens’ testimony on the budget — tonight being the last official opportunity for comment. Much of the testimony was by people who lead organizations who deliver the human services that far too many of our Rockville neighbors need to avail themselves of. Each cut of $3,000 to this or that program translates into a serious human impact and, when weighed against a budget in the tens of millions, does not feel like too much to put back in.>

One speaker pointed out that the amount of money the City spends on human services (such as emergency shelter for homeless people, or medical clinic services for uninsured) is far, far less than 1% — she expressed the desire, one day, that the City might reach 1%. “We could do a lot with that,” she said. (I am sorry I did not attribute that quote so I can’t say for sure who it was who said it.) (UPDATE: Piotr passed along that it was Agnez Saenz from Community Ministries of Rockville – Caregivers’ Coalition. Thanks Piotr!)

This came about 30 minutes after the ceremony officially designating April 25 as Arbor Day in Rockville, which is one of four criteria required for Our Fair City to earn recognition as a Tree City by the Arbor Day Foundation. One of the criteria is that the City spend at least $2 per resident on tree planting and maintenance (it is probably more involved than that, but that is the gist). With our approximately 60,000 residents, we need to spend at least $120,000 for the designation — turns out we spend upwards of $1 million. I don’t mean to get anyone upset, but maybe that’s somewhere we could look. I’m just sayin’.

Anyway, speaking of designations, of interest was an item that followed the budget. The City took up the question of whether to designate the old Rockville Library site as being of historic value. Many see this as an important move in the City’s overall effort to get the State decide to build its new court house elsewhere. The substantive argument for the designation is that this is one of the few examples of this kind of modern architecture in the City — and it most certainly is the only one facing imminent destruction.

Problem is, the City’s designation seems to have no formal power in this particular case, because the State is within its authority to ignore municipalities’ local ordinances.

Council member Piotr Gajewski twice voted alone in the minority, first against a procedural move that allowed the matter to come to a vote (instead of waiting for a week) and second against the measure itself.

In his comments, he referred to the result of the City making such a designation, in the face of the State’s authority to simply ignore it, as “sticking a finger in the eye” of the state.

Mayor Susan Hoffmann replied “My vote will not be to stick a finger in the eye of anyone.” She followed with an impassioned reminder that the State, County, and City are all different animals: “We are a separate and independent government, and we have every right” to do this, she said. I thought I was in a Frank Capra movie (and I mean that in a good way)!

But, to my mind, fireworks aside, council member Phyllis Marcuccio reasonably offered what I felt the best substantive argument for voting for the historic designation even in the face of its possible anemic effect. She imagined a scenario in which, somehow, the state chose some other path for its courthouse. So the building goes to the County. Then, in this same scenario, the County chose not to do anything with the land but sold it to a private entity. So now it’s in the hands of a developer. “In that case,” said Phyllis, “I want the City to be protected.”

Which seemed like a very reasonable argument to me.

Just my opinion. What do you think?

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