Dissolve the City-University Partnership?
March 9th, 2007 | by David Daddio | Published in General College Park, Politics | 7 Comments
Two city councilmen, John Krouse and David Milligan, have proposed eliminating city funding for the little known and little understood City-University Partnership according to the Diamondback. The councilmen charge that the city seems to have gained little from its yearly (8 years) $50,000 funding of the entity and that the partnership, according to Krouse, is “being manipulated to the advantage of the university and developer interest, while providing little or nothing tangible for residents.”
We’re not sure what the councilman Krouse’s definition of “resident” is, but last we checked about half of the city’s 25,000+ population happen to be students of the University of Maryland. Perhaps Krouse should have specified permanent resident, of which District 1 (his and Milligan’s district) has many. Still, the quote from Krouse implies that the city’s budget is wholly derived from permanent resident’s pocketbooks. A pie chart (below) from the city’s own budget shows that that is hardly the case. The permanent residents, according to Krouse, aren’t getting anything for their contribution to the partnership, but they are also paying less than half of the partnership’s funding since UMD directly pays for half (of the partnership’s $100,000 budget) and university/renter-related items make up a significant share of the city’s $11 million yearly revenues. Residents will benefit just as much from a revived Route 1 Cooridor as the university community, if not more.
We had the opportunity to present this website to the partnership not long ago and were impressed that city officials and high-level university administrators do actually gather together in a room and talk about common concerns and common goals. Indeed, we recently posted the partnership’s guiding principles for the Northgate and “Knox Box” areas. Previously we’ve covered the Northgate Park project, which was spearheaded by the partnership, but appears to have taken quite a bit longer than expected (what doesn’t in College Park?). Clearly the partnership needs to be more of a public entity as some of its members have already expressed to us. Also, we agree that it needs to be more results-oriented. That doesn’t mean it can’t be a major player in College Park development and a great tool to ease town-gown tensions. So let’s get down to work and stop the political posturing.
March 9th, 2007 at 3:42 pm (#)
I think the group should also re-consider their mission. While top-level information sharing is great, for $100,000 of public money I would expect there to be a public component to their work. Where is their website? Public meetings?
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March 9th, 2007 at 6:20 pm (#)
The City-University had a major shake-up in its operation in 2003 and while it continued to meet had no hired employees and no funding. The Partnership was reorganized in 2004 with part ime employees and renewed funding. With the departure of John Porcari and Peter Shapiro (former County Council member, Hyattsville resident and U of MD Burns School fellow) at the end of 2006, it is time to evaluate how the Partnership could be revamped to provide a better service. Since the Partnership only typically meets 4 to 6 times a year I am not sure public meetings are an answer. The last thing the partnership needs is to turn its meetings into a forum for public posturing of one’s position on every difficult issue.
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March 9th, 2007 at 11:09 pm (#)
The failure of this partnership parallels the souring of town gown relations. Certainly a partnership with no evident projects is a questionable investment of public money.
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March 10th, 2007 at 1:12 am (#)
I am not sure you can say the partnership failed. It had a very modest budget and was given multiple tasks. Many such partnerships across the country have multimillion dollar budgets and actually are a financial partner in projects. The University made it clear pretty early in the partnership that this partnership would not be an active player in development but the Partnership staff would work behind the scenes to promote appropriate development in College Park.
The Partnership currently has a significant amount of money in the bank and a very modest level of expenses. An appropriate budget for the Partnership and how it will proceed will be topics for the City and the Partnership in the coming months.
Since there has been no “souring” of town gown relations during the tenure of this partnership your statement makes no sense. Town-gown relations in the early years of the partnership were definitely worse than they are currently.
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March 12th, 2007 at 10:20 am (#)
When I said [the partnership is] “…providing little or nothing tangible for residents.” that’s exactly what I meant.
To construct an argument based upon the presumption that I meant “permanent residents” a bit disingenuous, isn’t it?
Is it posturing to want to save $50,000? Show me what what the Partnership has accomplished, and I will be satisfied.
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March 12th, 2007 at 12:17 pm (#)
I agree that the partnership needs to be more “results-oriented”. Had we taken all the money spent on the partnership in the last 8 years ($700,000?) and put it toward the Northgate Park perhaps we would already have it finished today (the only tangible accomplishment of the partnership thus far from what I can tell). That being said, there is a certain intangible to the partnership and perhaps if it was given a more clear mission, more funding, and acted as other such entities do all over the county, both the permanent residents and the student residents would get some much needed results. Otherwise maybe it should transition into a non-funded and non-staffed entity strictly to maintain a face-to-face relationship.
I probably shouldn’t have tried to squeeze in my city budget analysis in this post, but I felt the implication was clearly there that the city budget is wholly funded by and the city council is wholly representative of homeowners. The former couldn’t be further from the truth. The latter seems to be fairly consistent with reality.
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March 13th, 2007 at 11:03 pm (#)
I see nothing wrong with some good old fashioned accountability. Why not a simple “report out” of topics discussed and future initiatives? Simple posts to a web site, nothing hugely elaborate. I also understand the need to keep the group small, focused, and strategic.
This partnership could really be something positive and truly innovative when it comes to redevelopment issues. A highly effective partnership could take on strategic initiatives like leveraging the University’s Bond rating to obtain cheaper redevelopment financing. Wall Street would salivate at the opportunity to back the redevelopment a town like CP because the risk-reward trade-off is so favorable. (We have alums in key positions with some of Wall Street’s top I-banks for Community Development and Public Finance.)
If you study birth rates you will see that 1991 was the highest peak since the 1957 peak of the baby boom. Now add 18 years to 1991 and you see that those kids enter college in 2009. Um – hello – can we say “SURGE IN ENROLLMENT” and “MAJOR STUDENT HOUSING CRUNCH”?!?!?!?!?!
Shame of it all is – we cant get East Campus and the Knox Boxes redeveloped into hip, cool, urban spaces in 2 years.
Ahhhh sweet home CP and here we sit bumper to bumper staring through the auto emissions to the tatoo parlors, waterbed and dinette shops, “take me down to the paradise city where the grass is green and ……….”
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