College Park rethought

It is with great regret that I report to you that I no longer plan to run for the District 3 city council seat. After much consideration and given my now uncertain future in College Park, it would be unwise for me to continue my candidacy through to the Jan. 16 election. Regardless of whether my name is on the ballot, I've always held that students need to participate in city politics. Despite the higher caliber of students this university accepts every year, there has never been a university student on the city council. This is truly amazing considering the fact that university students make up about 50 percent of College Park's population.

It is a fallacy to assume that any homeowner can fully represent students on the city council. The unfortunate timing of the special election over winter break should be proof enough that a student councilmember and a "student friendly" councilmember are not one and the same. The city council's inaction was directly responsible for the timing of the special election. Their inaction is completely indefensible. I've spoken at length with my former opponent, Stephanie Stullich, and she is also upset by the election timing. I'm confident that the city council, with pressure from student leaders, will take measures to ensure that no future city election will be held without 50 percent of the city's population present.

What goes on in city hall is largely a mystery to those outside a small group of people who attend its weekly meetings. My goal, first as a Diamondback columnist and then as a city council candidate, has always been to engage the larger community and especially the underrepresented student community as to what goes on there. Not only does the city council oversee its own roughly $10 million budget each year, they have a huge influence, among many things, over how the city physically develops and how crime is addressed.

Students and city residents alike have no grasp of the magnitude of development that is now working its way through the development pipeline here. And further, they do not have a venue to express opinions about how that development will occur. These two reasons alone are why I and graduate student Rob Goodspeed created the aptly named website and community group called Rethink College Park. My work on this project has given me a very clear picture of the city's development landscape - one which I try to convey to anyone interested.

As the university continues its transition from a commuter school to a resident school, College Park will improve. It has already begun to do just that with the recent completion of South Campus Commons and the University View. It will continue to do so with projects such as the 17-story North Gate condos, the nine-story City Hall site condos and massive projects like M-Square and the East Campus Redevelopment. Taken all together, these projects will make College Park a vibrant and urban city filled with retail, office and housing options that are consistent with other great college towns. At the same time, decision-makers seem to overlook students at every turn. They prefer instead - as rent stabilization, historic districts and owner occupancy requirements show - to tuck students out of sight and out of mind. They assume East Campus will meet student housing needs - it provides almost no new student housing. They assume the Knox Box redevelopment will meet student housing needs - it will not.

I'm here to say as a four-year city resident, a student and one of the most knowledgeable people about development in College Park, that it is time for a change in city hall. My campaign was never simply a "student campaign". It was a question: Is the city council open to a set of ideas from every facet of the community? That's all it was ever about.

David Daddio is the editor of rethinkcollegepark.net. He can be reached at dwdaddio@gmail.com.