Rethink College Park

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.