Today is our local College Park city council elections. There’s been a lot of good press for UMD for Clean Energy, the student group I’m a part of that’s actively involved in this election. The Diamondback has already given our endorsements and Green March to City Hall attention. On election day, our march is plugged in regards to the logistics for the day, and our endorsements have been stirring up trouble in College Park. Overall, I think the coverage worked out favorably for us. Below are the excerpts from the article that discuss our group’s approach to endorsing candidates, and the disagreement a member of the community has with one of them.
“Although The Diamondback’s editorial board has always disseminated advice on which council candidates best match student interests, it is joined this year by the UMD for Clean Energy environmental group and the Student Government Association’s liaison to the city council.”
“The focus of the endorsements by UMD for Clean Energy took a different approach from either Sachs or The Diamondback, focusing mainly on each candidate’s environmental record and plans rather than their overall platform.
The group’s political liaison, Hilary Staver, arranged interviews with 15 of this election’s 16 candidates — spending well over an hour on each — to write up detailed summaries of each person’s views and ultimately name seven standouts.
UMD for Clean Energy has also lobbied at the state and federal level, but Staver said it’s easier to make a direct impact working at the local level — both by influencing the election and in dealing directly with whoever wins.
“You can work more closely with your [local] elected officials. They have more time to sit down and actually talk about these things,” she said. “Given the small margins that a lot of these races are won by, this could make a big difference.”
The group is also planning a rally on McKeldin Mall at 5 p.m. today to promote its endorsements; Staver hopes 100 students will march the half-mile to City Hall to vote or to catch a van to the city’s second polling station in northern College Park.
The three sets of endorsements included some overlap, most notably that none endorsed more than one District 2 candidate; UMD for Clean Energy didn’t endorse any of the three candidates.
But while these groups are targeting their message at the city’s student population, its permanent residents are also taking note of the endorsements.
Lourene Miovski, an environmental activist in northern College Park, said she heard from a neighbor that UMD for Clean Energy had endorsed Fazlul Kabir in District 1 after Kabir said so on his campaign’s blog.
Miovski recalled a dormant debate she and some neighbors had with Kabir several years ago over the widening of Edgewood Road and cuts to school bus service to the Al-Huda School there — she accuses him of putting convenience over environmentalism by not promoting mass transit. She also said other candidates did more “heavy lifting” than Kabir over the years in lobbying the county to be environmentally sensitive in its long-term plans.
Because Miovski thought the endorsement might have enough political clout to sway voters, she has printed and distributed about 300 flyers expressing her disapproval of Kabir’s past environment-related action and inaction.
Staver said endorsing candidates in District 1 reached beyond students, in what she called an unexpected plus for the group’s advocacy.
“We were mostly focused on students, but it’s become that far reaching. If people are paying attention off campus, that’s great. It’s going even better than we hoped,” she said. “If there’s anybody paying attention off campus, we’ve done our job well.”
Cross-posted from: The Dernogalizer
WHoa! I’m a CP girl(one of those “permanent residents” you refer to), so you know i have a lot of love for college park related things…which don’t come up to often. What is UMD for Clean energy trying to accomplish with this campaign? What’s your vision for an environmentally sustainable college park? Do you think the city council will have a big impact on cp development projects, and if so, what result are you aiming for? Idk, just wondering. give college park a lot of love and little trouble from me!
Hey Laura, in case you’re interested, here are the results from our efforts and the election
http://madrad2002.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/umd-for-clean-energy-proves-the-skeptics-wrong-with-march-to-the-polls/
The goal of our work on the election was a make sure the majority of city council members(including the Mayor) were environmental champions so that we can accomplish things after the election. We also wanted to bring green issues to the forefront of election issues.
You can check out our platform on our website: http://www.umdforcleanenergy.com/platform.html
Our goal is more than to just make College Park a leader in sustainability(which means a more bike friendly community, more access to mass transit, responsible development and land use, and our businesses recycling). We want to position College Park, along with Prince Georges County to lead the way on green economic and sustainable development, since we think the green enterprise sector will be the most profitable over the upcoming decades. This means creating a demand for green goods and services, attracting green businesses with lower taxes and some incentives, and increasing the partnership between College Park and the University of Maryland on these issues. There’s no reason why part of a hands on UMD educational experience for a civil engineering student shouldn’t be working on an energy audit of a house in College Park.