Annapolis Capital Punishment

Government by decree. Government by sole-source contract, government by study, and now, government by colorful magazine and brochure. Sound familiar? As part of her legacy-building efforts as her term winds down, nobody is safe from Ellen O's pet projects whether is it turning the originally and sublimely ridiculous West St. Transit Study into her pet goal of designing traffic circles and statues to honor Revolutionary War history or her "taking" of our Waterworks Park to create an energy demonstration center. Now along comes yet more brochures and brochures. Have you seen the new one for the Annapolis Recreation Center? Full of stock photos and with a whole new typographical and design scheme now appearing on signs, even though the new design scheme makes them nearly impossible to read?

Not content to single-handedly redesign our city logo as one of her first acts in office, she now has redesigned the Recreation and Parks logo. Despite warnings that the new center appearing on Hilltop Lane is not operationally-funded, we get new signage.

We have the "Gateway to Discovery" brochure....the "Seeking Liberty: Annapolis An Imagined Community" brochure..."The Talking Walls of West Street" brochure....and now we have the "green annapolis" color magazine... Sixteen pages extolling the mayor and her green legacy. The mayor's press secretary Rhonda Wardlaw said, " It was a pubic/(sic) private partnership to promote the city's green initiatives and to be used as a marketing tool for tourism as well as to submit as an informational piece for future grants. It also promotes the many local/state partnerships that are critical to the success of many of our sustainability programs, benefitting [sic] this generation and all future generations. The cost was $18,000 using private and public dollars." See it for yourself at: greenannapolis2009/

You can find a digital version on the home page of annapolis.gov where you will find the mayor's beloved "Cloud Nine" logo which she states, "My goal is for our Cloud Nine logo to become a national symbol for clean air" . It is one funny logo. How much of our money did she spend on that? As I recall, over $40k was used to write a clean air curriculum. I flip the logo over and try to imagine it as a symbol of the mayor running out of town in December....no doubt on a solar-powered, hybrid electric, low-impact, reduced carbon-footprint Segway....Cloud Nine all right. I just wonder who is on that Cloud Nine?

Whoosh....whisssh....la...la...I am on Cloud Nine.....All part of Ellen O's government by logo, government by graphic, government by brochure...looks like this happy cloud is in a big hurry to get outta town...remember clouds are made up mainly of vapor around some kind of a nucleated material...I am thinking of Cloud Nine as being year number nine, as in anything but the last eight years.....next year we will be on Cloud Nine after eight cloudy years of being held hostage

By the way--have you see our new weekly tv propaganda program? You can find that at our web-site too. www.blip.tv/file/2368489
Oh.....

Then there is the Annapolis Business Association's new "Explore Annapolis: A Guide to Annapolis Shopping, Dining and Area Businesses" which on the face of it may be a great idea, but to this observer, it is just more and more paper, paper and busy work that may...or may not have a positive impact on our city or its many businesses. As is typical, instead of providing the readily available and really helpful maps and information about parking and bus routes, it simply lists contact information and then they make up their own dark and barely readable map. It was funded in part by our city. Why can't the businesses pool their own money to fund it? The first three inside pages of this little brochures, which should be the most important pages of any such publication--are blank! Basically, it is yet another listing of stores, something easily found online or in the famed Yellow Pages. Oddest of all, it reads " Explore Annanpolis"......you'd think they could at least get that right.....

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