Gajewski Town Hall Recap (2-12-2009)

Last night I had the chance to attend Councilmember Piotr Gajewski’s quarterly town hall meeting at City Hall. I had family obligations, so I was not able to stay for the whole thing.

As always, these are just one person’s impressions of the meeting, based on notes. If others have different thoughts, recollections, or opinions, I hope that they will post them in the comments section.

This was, as such meetings always seem to be, a real treat for me. I enjoy seeing Our Fair City’s leadership in give-and-take with constituents. People came with real questions and Councilmember Gajewski did not hesitate to make plain where he stood on a number of issues.

There were a number of meetings going in City Hall that night, and some participants came in and out, evidently attending multiple meetings, but core turnout was respectable (I counted 15 but that was just at one point; it fluctuated). The measure of such events, of course, is not turnout, I’m just letting people know because sometimes I get questions.

There is a growing sense of rhythm to Councilmember Gajewski’s town meetings. I got the sense that some participants were familiar with them and so some of the initial formalities could be dispensed with. That’s a roundabout way of saying people just jumped right into the issues they wanted to talk about!

As came up at a town hall meeting earlier in the week, a number of participants wanted to talk about what they saw as shortcomings in how the City is being managed. They questioned personnel decisions and especially had criticism for what they said were recent moves to consolidate all of the City’s communications activities in one department. Councilmember Gajewski said that this is in fact good management technique and allows the City to avoid communications mix-ups due to one department saying one thing and others saying something different.

The City’s plans about Redgate Golf Course were also on a number of participants’ minds. Readers of Rockville Central know that this is a controversial issue right now. Participants were concerned that a process had been set in motion without sufficient public input. One participant was especially forceful when it came to the fates of Redgate employees.

There were also questions about the extent to which City staff had pursued this issue outside of the public eye. Councilmember Gajewski reiterated a point he made at Monday’s City Council meeting, which was that prior to the Mayor and Coucnil directing staff to explore a lease, it would not have been appropriate for staff to divulge they were even researching the idea. And, immediately after the direction was received from the Mayor and Council, Gajewski said, staff informed Redgate employees that, should a new lease for the course go through, they would likely be out of a job.

One participant put a finer emphasis on the question of public input, in a way that I had not yet heard as this debate has unfolded. The question was: What input had the City’s Recreation and Parks Commission had in the decision to explore a lease (or even alternatives)? This kicked off a discussion that played out among the participants in the room about what the purpose of boards and commissions are, if not to provide input early in the process when it comes to issues such as this.

This piece of the discussion did not really get resolved, as the conversation moved on of its own volition. (I found it fascinating. My own opinion is that there is room for a discussion in the City about what constitutes “civic engagement.” What does it mean to “involve” citizens in decision making? My observation is that, sometimes, we go about seeking input too late in the process for it to be effective as a decision-making tool. I am not faulting anybody here. My sense is that by creating a different understanding of what “engagement” is, it’s possible to break this logjam and perhaps even bring more people into the Boards and Commissions world.)

One point that was strongly emphasized as a part of this idea was that some participants felt that the Mayor and Council employs too many executive sessions to do business. Councilmember Gajewski said he agreed with this view. He said that, while the Mayor and Council never improperly entered executive session, he felt they did so more often than was strictly necessary. He also raised the idea that, on matters where the Mayor and Council make a decision in executive session that will later be communicated to the public –- he feels that the vote ought to be announced as well. (I am not sure I made that clear. He was saying the vote should be announced not on all executive session decisions . . . only on the decisions that later get communicated to the public.)

The final issue I got to hear about before I had to go was the matter of loitering smokers at Princeton Place, as a result of Montgomery College’s smoke-free policy. On Wednesday night, the Planning Commission voted to allow the College to repair the fence at that point between the College campus and Princeton Place (to remove the ability for smokers to congregate there) but to require as a condition that the College engage with members of the public collaboratively to come up with a good solution. Some participants said that the Commission’s requirement is not specific and does not appear to be binding, and they wanted to know what City officials would do to ensure that the College hold up their end of the deal. Councilmember Gajewski said that there is, in fact, little that the City can do, as the College does not answer to the City. They can continue to apply pressure, but the College will do what it wishes. The appropriate place to apply political pressure, most in the room agreed, was at the state and county level, as that is who the College answers to. Even in that case, Councilmember Gajewski was pessimistic about the ability to spur much change in behavior.

At about this point, I had to go back home and tuck a few folks into bed, so I missed the rest!

Okay, that’s all for now.

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