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Comments are by Councilmembers Llatetra Brown Esters and Susan Whitney and are not approved or sanctioned by the City of College Park.
ANNOUNCEMENTS/COMMENTS
Councilmember Kabir mentioned the Homeowners Tax Credit Program and informed residents of the pending application deadline of Saturday, October 1. He added that homes in the area are appraising for much higher values and that the tax credit could defray costs.
Councilmember Kennedy invited residents to attend the Branchville Volunteer Fire Department (BVFD) Open House on October 9.
Councilmember Esters mentioned Prince George’s County’s county-wide community beautification effort (Growing Green with Pride) that will take place on October 15 from 8am – noon. She acknowledged it is the same day as College Park Day but encourage those interested to participate in a project and then attend College Park Day, which begins at noon.
Councilmember Rigg spoke of the fundraiser he coordinated to raise funds for school uniforms for Afghan refugees met its fundraising goal within 5 days of launch, and he thanked the College Park community for its generosity and welcoming spirit. Mayor Wojahn thanked Councilmember Rigg for his effort.
Councilmember Mackie requested everyone to add Good Neighbor Day (GND) to their calendars. The event will be held on Saturday, November 12.
Councilmember Mitchell mentioned the that she’s leading a project for Good Neighbor Day to assist Attick Towers. She also thanked Code Enforcement and Contract police for their assistance with an incident that occurred in College Park Woods over the weekend and commended them for their collaborative response.
Mayor Wojahn mentioned the Latinas in Aviation Event to be held at the College Park Aviation Museum all day on October 1. He explained the event is based on a book of the same title written some years ago. The event will include a fly-in. Detailed Information is available on the museum website.
Adrian Andriessens mentioned Mental Health Awareness Week at University of Maryland from October 1- October 8.
CITY MANAGER’S REPORT
Kenny Young announced his first-year anniversary working for the City of College Park and expressed appreciation for his experience, thus far. Mr. Young indicated October is Breast Cancer Awareness mMonth, andpins have been given out for Council, staff, and others. He shared that Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) will be holding meetings to take public comments for their budget for the 2023 fiscal year, the first meeting is scheduled for October 4, and more information can be found at their website at www.pgplanningboard.org. Mr. Young concluded by sharing details about the upcoming City Clean-up Saturdays to be on the 10/8 and 10/22.
Councilmember Mitchell asked Mr. Andriessens to share the information about the UMD’s Mental Health Week.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Mayor Wojahn acknowledged former councilmembers Robert Day and Stephanie Stullich.
PROCLAMATIONS AND AWARDS:
National Code Compliance Month
AMENDMENTS TO AND APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA
There were noamendments to the agenda.
PUBLIC COMMENT ON CONSENT AGENDA AND NON-AGENDA ITEMS
Stephanie Stullich (College Park Resident) – said that it is well known the noise and loud parties that occur throughout the city, including the areas of Old Town and Calvert Hills. According to Ms. Stullich, the City has been dealing with this issue for 70 years, not enough progress has been made, and what has been done is not effective. She said when code enforcement officers drive up and park their cars to measure the noise, they’re spotted and the party quickly quiets down. When there are multiple parties, code enforcement staff are overwhelmed. She believes there are two policy changes that can be made: Noise officers should park around the corner and be non-obtrusive; and their objective should be to take the noise decibel readings at all active parties first, and then go around to shut down the parties.
Mayor Wojahn thanked Ms. Stullich for her suggestions and indicated that he looks forward to working with the community to help mitigate these issues which he understands are especially challenging this year.
PRESENTATION: Report from the Redistricting Commission
Mr. Robert Day, Chair of the Redistricting Commission, introduced the members of the commission and reviewed the presentation.
He explained that the City Charter requires review of the population ever decade once the census has occurred. A determination is then made regarding the need to redistrict. Since the Commission began their current review, there have been a total of nine public meetings including two meetings where the draft reports were presented.
Suellen Ferguson, City attorney, talked about the Commission’s charge. She explained the Council decided to have a commission and came up with the charge in Ordinance 22-2-04 which stipulates two criteria to review, the population and actual voters. Specifically, the sum of the population and actual voters shall be substantially equal in each district. According to Ms. Ferguson, if the Commission has reliable evidence that the Census doesn’t reflect all residents, it can add or subtract additional population based on that evidence. She mentioned concern that race was not considered and added that other criteria can be considered when redistricting, although the two primary criteria of population and actual voters must be at the forefront. The Supreme Court’s guidance looked primarily at population.
DW Rowlands, Redistricting Commission Vice Chair, provided addition perspective. Rowlands shared that there are currently twice as many voters in District 1 than found in the districts with the lowest actual voters. Looking at population, the Commission found that District 1 is 7.2% smaller than it should be versus District 4 being 8.2% bigger. District 3 would need to become smaller, and District 1 would need to become larger. Rowlands informed Council that Map Proposal 1 was based upon the 2020 Census numbers + actual voters in each District and said that given the structure of the city, it is nearly impossible to get the numbers of voters to be similar in all districts. While reviewing specific maps, DW Rowlands provided the following insight:
- Map Proposal 1 – Population error was within 5%
- Map Proposal 3A – maintains Calvert Hills and Old town and splits up the south district student housing
- Map 3B– In order to bring the student housing populations together, Old Town was brought into District 2
- Map 3C – Brings District 2 across Route 1 and includes the Mazza apartment complex.
Jordan Dewar, member of the Redistricting Commission, provided additional insight. He explained that the consultant maps divided neighborhoods more than those done by the commission. The Commission sought to identity some commonality among the districts. The Commission requested more clarity and a possible change to the criteria moving forward. The difference between voter turnouts during midterm versus presidential elections was mentioned during the discussion.
Robert Day thanked the Commission for their work with a special mention of those Commission members who looked at the numbers. He explained that the Commission tried to keep neighborhoods together as much as they could. He said this was not an easy task, unlike the previous times he participated in the process.
Mayor Wojahn thanked the Commission for their work. He asked why they chose not to use the consultant maps. Mr. Day reiterated the consultant maps were not chosen because of the manner in which neighborhoods were broken up. He explained the Commission’s consideration of major roads in the City and attempts to ensure that changes had the least impact.
Mayor Wojahn expressed concern about the east/west break up of North College Park and the manner in which South College Park was broken up into three districts. He acknowledged the concerns about breaking up student populations, but said in order to accomplish our task and evenly divide voters, they will need to be broken up throughout the districts.
Councilmember Mitchell said it would have been helpful to have all maps for review to understand and be able to explain to her residents.
Mr. Day explained that the voters identified as part of the process were actual voters versus eligible voters.
Councilmember Mackie asked how the number of voters were calculated acknowledging that the County voters rolls are not always accurate. DW Rowlands said City Staff cleansed voter data of personal info, then gave it to the commission. The Commission removed duplicates of the same person. If a person was listed at 2 different addresses across 2 elections, the Commission counted them at their address for the most recent election. City staff geocoded the data that was used.
Councilmember Kabir thanked the Commission and asked a procedural question. He said the criterion indicates we need to be substantially equal but does not give us a hard number and sought clarity. Ms. Ferguson explained the deviation of more than 10% for factors not meeting criterion. She added, you cannot have hard numbers because you do not have the exact population. She went on to clarify that the concern about County voter rolls has to do with taking those who are deceased off of the rolls, but there has not been an issue with the numbers of actual voters. If you were only to look at population you can divide it up many ways, but population is generally not the only thing that is considered.
Councilmember Kabir thanked the Commission for the maps they provided and questioned other options to open the discussion to the community, including allowing others to create maps like the City of Takoma Park had done. Mr. Day said Takoma Park had taken six months to develop that process, time College Park’s Commission did not have.
DW Rowlands added that one major challenge was criterion. The City’s Commission did not have the data to draw maps until mid-July, and Rowlands believed that Takoma Park was using purely raw census data and did not have the added complications of considering numbers of actual voters and a rapidly growing population due to new development. Those factors make College Park’s situation more complex.
Councilmember Kabir asked if more public comments can be made so the Commission can make additional tweaks. Mr. Day indicated that decision would need to come from the Council.
Councilmember Kabir said there has been a major change to the district boundaries. He indicated that District 1 includes three neighborhoods and asked for District 1 to keep the three neighborhoods together and suggested ways to do so.
DW Rowlands responded by saying that all of the districts grew.
Councilmember Kennedy explained she did not take into consideration there was a hard number when we considered voters. She asked if we could consider increasing the variation of voters. Ms. Ferguson explained that the Commission could only consider what is. She referenced the case law (Dubois vs. City of College Park) requiring voters be included in College Park’s redistricting process.
Councilmember Kennedy expressed concerns that undercounting was more than likely in student housing. DW Rowlands said the Commission used the bed count for the residence halls to account for any undercount. Student apartments that rent by the bed have separate leases per bed and are generally at full capacity, so they assumed full capacity. For other housing, they had to rely on the data from the census.
Councilmember Kennedy asked if it was 100% certain that it’s too late to change the charter before redistricting.
Janeen Miller, City Clerk, gave an overview of an adjusted timeline if the charter were changed and asked that not be done to staff because it would create a strain since they begin working on election materials in April and need to know the districts.
Councilmember Whitney asked for clarification about the 10% differential the Commission applied to the total criterion (population + actual voters) and asked if it legally applied to anything an entity defined as part of the criterion. Suellen indicated that 10% comes from federal case law as it relates to population, but not other criteria. Councilmember Whitney then asked if that meant that the variation for other criteria could be adjusted without the need to amend the Charter. Ms. Ferguson reiterated that population is the only criteria that must be maintained at the 10% differential.
Councilmember Rigg thanked the Commission for their work and asked about the process order for all criteria. Mr. Day said they first noted their numbers and tried to make adjustments. Councilmember Rigg talked about what he considered the core of District 3 which includes Old Town, Calvert Hills, Yarrow, and College Park Estates. Mr. Day expressed the difficulty he had in keeping his mouth shut about shifts with District 3 but said the numbers were the major driving force. DW Rowlands said there were several ways in which to evaluate what constitutes the core of a district. The Commission considered the most politically relevant definition was the population that has been voting in that district. They analyzed which fraction of voters would remain in that district and asked if they a) took a majority of voters out of it or B) diluted it such that the majority of voters in that district would, after the change, no longer constitute the majority of the voters. Our maps didn’t change that.
Councilmember Rigg asked if the analysis would have been different if it the number of actual voters had been base on the 2020 Presidential Election, saying voting in presidential elections would represent the high water mark. Rowlands said voter participation in City elections seemed more relevant.
Councilmember Rigg asked why the maps keeping District 3 together were not included. Mr. Day reiterated that the consultant’s maps had a greater negative impact on the city.
Councilmember Adams pointed out that in the 2023 maps, District 3 will be much bigger by population. He suggested those maps almost mask the number of voters by adding population, saying he thinks the one person, one vote principal is violated, especially when you throw in those buildings that have just broken ground. He asked
Mayor Wojahn referenced Proposal B (consultant map) as a map that may help in keeping District 3 together without breaking up District 1 as much as the Commission’s proposals do. He asked if those maps could be brought back into the mix. Rowlands said that they are the mix in that the Council is free to decide which maps they wish to consider.
PUBLIC HEARINGS:
Ordinance 22-O-08, An Ordinance Of The Mayor And Council Of The City Of College Park Authorizing The Acquisition Of Certain Property Located At 5100 Roanoke Place, College Park, Maryland, For A Public Purpose.
CONSENT AGENDA
22-G-131 Approval of minutes from the September 6, 2022, Work session, the September 6, 2022, Special Session, the September 13, 2022, Regular Meeting, the September 20, 2022, Work session, and the September 20, 2022, Special Session
The consent agenda was unanimously approved.
ACTION ITEMS
22-G-132 Consideration of County Legislation CB-97-2022 – An Ordinance Concerning Zoning – Zones and Zone Regulations – Base Zones – Expedited Transit – Oriented Development – Terry Schum, Director of Planning
Councilmember Mackie made the motion to approve a letter to County Council Chairman Hawkins in opposition to County Legislation CB-97-2022. She said it’s important to oppose what is happening in County Council. Councilmember Mitchell said speaking out shows that College Park is a leader is taking control over what happens to it. Councilmember Rigg said the new countywide zoning sets a level of quality and uniformity and that he didn’t understand why the impulse to weaken it exists. The Council voted unanimously to send a letter opposing the proposed County ordinance.
22-O-08 An Ordinance Of The Mayor And Council Of The City Of College Park Authorizing The Acquisition Of Certain Property Located At 5100 Roanoke Place, College Park, Maryland, For A Public Purpose
Councilmember Whitney made the motion to approve the acquisition and Councilmember Esters seconded. Councilmember Whitney said the property would be a quality addition to the Berwyn neighborhood and looks forward to what the community decides to do with it. The Ordinance passed unanimously.
GENERAL COMMENTS FROM THE AUDIENCE
No general comments from the audience.
MEETING ADJOURNED
Click here to see the Council meeting agenda for September 27, 2022
Click here to view the Mayor and Council meeting held on September 27, 2002
Click here to access the Mayor and Council work session meeting agenda scheduled for Wednesday October 5, 2022.
The College Park District 2 Digest 