Annapolis Capital Punishment

Regarding the recent talk by urban futurist Charles Landry, CP received this comment from "Troy" who asked, "How do you think it went? I was there and I liked it, but being an outsider, I'm not yet sure how it was received." This prompted CP to finally sit down and write something about the heavily attended opening event of the multi-part community talks. It's not much, but here goes...

Hmmm...how did it go? Well, it was well attended, but, well, were there any Caucasians there? Unfortunately CP cannot recall having seen a Black or Latino person in the audience. It seems that we are always talking among ourselves, among what I call the "usual suspects." This is unfortunate. CP blames nobody for this. It happens. How do we do better?

Now, to Mr Landry's talk. Well, he made a lot of really good points, but to distill to a few items. One, keeping things the way they are is a very radical AND very difficult thing to do. Two, we can make a vision together for our future and then we figure out how to get there. That way we know we are on the same page and don't get bogged down in this or that.

CP had the pleasure of attending a small workshop the morning after his talk where we started to get down to some "big picture" focal points with which we could continue working. Unfortunately the generally positive tone was marred by Planning Director John Arason taking issue and getting upset with comments from a local resident. Arason stormed up, but came back calm a few minutes later. This really bothered CP. We all need to be civil and respectful, even when we disagree, which we all do in this town. But for a city department head to storm out is unacceptable. CP noted the Mayor had nothing to say about that. Fortunately, Ellen did take a back seat in the workshop, thankfully allowing the participants to speak and talk with each other.

Stay tuned. More talks are coming up. Visit http://www.envisioningannapolis.net/ for details.