Annapolis Capital Punishment

SCOOTERS??? ONCE AGAIN FORGETTING FEET AND BICYCLES

Yet another poorly conceived idea is hatched to “solve” our so-called transportation problem, as reported by The Capital--Scooters! Noisy, little, pesky, contraptions that people zoom around in, without helmets, on to sidewalks, where they often leave them parked, yet more insults to walkers and the one place supposedly reserved for those who perambulate without aid of engines. A group of local enthusiasts, bitten by this Euro-bug, said group often including the city’s own transportation director and economic development director and a coterie of West Street intelligentsia love these things.

This is another attempt to bypass walking and bicycling! We have no bike facilities of which to speak but we are willing to put up with motorized scooters? We are a small town…and the list goes on and on. CP supposes scooters have some useful purpose and overall, are preferred to four-wheeled automobiles, but again, we are missing the root cause and root solution of our URBAN transportation crisis--it’s about land use, land patterns, and an unhealthy reliance on fuel-slurping, noise and exhaust producing machinery when the real solutions for many--are ignored. Those real solutions are energy efficient and non-polluting legs and bicycles. Let’s make our town a walking and bicycling haven--then we can push scooters to fit in place as a secondary, rather than the next great thing!

TALE OF TWO CITIES TAKE TWO….

The second in a two-part Sunday feature in The Capital takes a fairly hard look at how our city has come to be divided along racial lines. It’s an important step toward helping those who wish to ignore or brush off what is arguably the most pressing social and political and economic issue confronting our lovely little town by the Bay. CP has maintained that our town, not unlike much of our country--only it’s more pronounced here, has been splitting into two--the haves and the have-nots. This town seems to have a pretty stark division between the have-way-too-muches and the-have-way-too-littles. Racial divides are clear and longstanding, but it’s not just race, it’s also class.

Such a discussion would require pots of coffee or pitchers of beer over which to explicate these concerns, but they have been festering, growing and getting worse for years. A quick look at how downtown has changed will explain a lot. Take a peak at how home prices have soared in Eastport and who is living there now. The rich--and the very rich are treating our town as a cutesy playground, a permanent resort, an enclave of white, yuppiedom and baby boomer prosperity…”Hey, let’s move to Annapolis, take the little cottage and rehab it into a huge luxury home just for the two of us….” Or, in many cases, just for the one of us. Wealthy singles have been buying Eastport homes just for their own four and five bedroom luxuries, or to use as weekend vacation homes. People who actually work for a living cannot afford to live here. The once booming middle class is squeezed and forced out. Young families either don’t buy or they move away. Smasll and local grocery stores get turned into gyms for the perpetually under worked and overpaid to spend money to exercise on machines--all accessible by their luxury cars. Why walk for free and get to know your neighborhood when you can drive and park and sit on contraptions while sipping lattes and watching CNN--all for big bucks!

Okay, Enough already. Wait and see. In a few years, Annapolis will basically be another Nantucket. In fact, a Fourth Street developer giddily said exactly that in The Capital recently! Wow--Nantucket-overflowing with the rich, for the rich, of the rich and by the rich. And that will in all likelihood, also mean, for whites, by whites, of whites. Of course, CP generalizes. It’s not that simple and clear, but overwhelmingly, unless the real estate market crashes, this is the shape of things to come. The movement of thousands of high-paying jobs for the national security state apparatus being assembled in nearby Fort Meade will help push this along. Civilization ho!

GLOBAL WARMING--BLOWING SMOKE???

The Capital reports that Derek Walker is one of several Annapolitans (including Mayor Ellen Moyer, the city's public info officer Ray Weaver, and former delegate Dick D'Amato) who have been trained by Al Gore to present the information he delivered in his Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Also reportedly involved is Shelley Rowe, wife of Econ. Dev. Director Mike Miron and a respected transportation engineer, who by the way, has been known to commute back and forth to Washington every day…in her Black Mercedes designing systems to make so-called “intelligent transportation” (a buzzword to allow us to continue depending on automobiles…but with a bit more fancy efficiency).

CP wonders how many more meetings are being held where the presenters drive in single-occupancy automobiles to lecture to those arriving in same mode of travel to wrn us about impending doom brought on to a huge extent by this mode of travel? Does the Mayor walk or ride a bike? Decidedly not, nor has she done much at all to improve our ailing and woefully mismanaged public transit system. How does Dick D’Amato get in to town from his Bay Ridge haunts? In his private automobile?

Even the most ardent and engaged activists, as well meaning as they may be, are blowing smoke if they choose not to exercise choices, make hard decisions and restructure their own lives to drastically reduce their energy use and emissions. It’s that simple. Don’t believe the plethora of books that admonish us to do fifty or 100 simple things to save the earth. There are two, and two really major things to do and do now. One has to do with where you live and in what kind of house. The other is about your car and your driving. Everything else is window dressing. CP admonishes these friends of the mayor to lead by example. Let’s work for a better bus system, a car-free downtown and let’s get out of our cars!!! That will make a difference.

COUNTY EXEC LEOPOLD’S TERRIFIC IDEA

Please Mr. Leopold--make your vision at the old Navy Dairy Farm a reality. Keep it rural and keep it organic. Who needs a horse park? Who needs a sand and gravel mine? This could be a showcase to the world--especially if it could have an impact on producing prodigious amounts of food locally and sustainable for local consumption. The possibilities are almost endless. Thanks and good luck on this one.