Candidates balance student-resident tensions in District 3

Municipal politics in College Park is often defined by a single issue: the tug-of-war between longtime homeowners, often raising families, and short-time student renters, for whom the city is sometimes little more than a faceless background to a blurry four years of drinking, partying and studying.

Nowhere is this tension clearer than in District 3, the historic heart of the city, which includes Fraternity Row, the Old Town neighborhood, downtown, South Campus Commons and the Knox Boxes. There, incumbents Stephanie Stullich and Mark Cook are defending their seats against Robert McCeney, a 44-year-old elementary school teacher. Tension over a city rent control law has symbolized the debate.

Stullich, 48, who works for the federal Department of Education, and Cook, 46, a technology and performance management adviser, ran uncontested in the 2007 elections. Both support rent control on single-family homes, which the city narrowly re-approved this summer, as a way to discourage students from living in neighborhoods intended for families.

Both stress that students living on or near the campus is a win-win for  both students and residents.

"If more housing was available closer to campus, I think students would want to live there," Stullich said.  "It's more convenient and, maybe from a student's perspective, safer, too."

But McCeney, a long-time resident and university alumnus, said the city's rent control law was "unenforceable" and that landlords would have to let houses fall into disrepair without the revenue provided by increased rents.

He also said, contrary to the law's presumed effect, parking and noise problems would increase as students are pushed out of the neighborhoods. In their place, he claimed, large families would move in and increase the number of residents who can legally live in the homes. For example, two brothers could live in the house with their wives and with three children each.

"Right now there's a law that says no more than five unrelated people can live in a house," McCeney said.  "But there's no law that would prevent two family members from going in on a house together and buying it, and with this economy that's the trend I'm seeing — even on my street."

Stullich has also angered some students with proposals to strengthen the enforcement of the city's housing and noise codes. Last year, she proposed doubling the length of time households could be fined for repeat noise violations from six months to a year, but students claimed the longer time frame between leases would end up punishing new residents for the transgressions of old ones. Stullich backed down and said she has no plans to introduce a similar ordinance if she were to be re-elected.

What she has no plans to back down on, however, is her fight to increase city code enforcement patrols during the winter and summer. When students flee College Park en masse for their permanent homes, the city generally decreases the number of officers on patrol. Stullich believes the off-season patrols should be increased, both to improve public safety and to keep rowdy students under control.

The candidates' concerns are not exclusively focused on safety and student-resident disputes.

Cook claims responsibility for the city's first balanced budget in 14 years, saying city staff wouldn't have introduced it without his prodding.

"Every budget until this budget this year has been dipping into the reserve funds for operating expenses. That's not how you do budgets," Cook said.  "Reserve funds are there for emergencies — not for everyday expenses."

But the city's budget situation was also undoubtedly helped by a dramatic $653,770 increase in revenue.

Stullich has also emphasized attracting more locally owned and independent businesses to the city, rather than the chain sandwich shops currently populating downtown, and generally creating a more "unique" atmosphere in College Park.

McCeney said one of the primary reasons he decided to run for council was because he thought Cook had worked to shut out competition. Although citizens' associations throughout the city held debates, none in District 3 did.

"Cook was president of the citizens' association and it hasn't met for two-and-a-half years," McCeney said. "I think that's effectively cutting off debate, so one of my priorities if I'm elected is to get regular citizen association meetings going again."

Cook, former president of the Yarrow Citizens Association, which represented a subsection of District 3, balked at the accusation.

"I'm surprised [McCeney] would even bring that up," Cook said, explaining that his involvement with politics, family and medical problems had reprioritized his time. "Why hasn't he gotten involved with his own citizens' association?" Cook went on to say that he placed a high priority on citizen involvement and voter registration, including registering 1,000 voters when he worked as the Prince George's County field coordinator for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

apino@umdbk.com