On Tuesday, January 23, the Greenbelt City Council interviewed the five candidates seeking to fill the seat left empty by the death of Councilmember Ric Gordon shortly after his re-election to a two-year term. The five candidates are Matthew Inzeo, Amy Knesel, Kevin Lockhart, Leon Schachter and Julie Winters. The only new candidate in the extended application period was Lockhart, a resident of Franklin Park. (The News Review previously asked each candidate why they are running and what they would bring to the position. You can read those statements in the January 4 issue and Lockhart’s on page 7 of this issue). During the interviews on Tuesday, each applicant was given five minutes to introduce themself, then asked a series of questions posed by councilmembers, before making a five-minute closing statement.
There were ten questions posed by the City Council, including: Identify one unique issue that impacts a specific area of Greenbelt, historic, east or west. If you had the opportunity to make one major change in the city what would it be and why? How would you approach building community engagement and participation especially in Greenbelt east and west?
Matthew Inzeo felt that it was important that all residents of Greenbelt attend Greenbelt schools and would support building another elementary school in Greenbelt. Amy Knesel thought that there were communication barriers that needed to be overcome and one major change she would support is more resources devoted to Franklin Park. Kevin Lockhart held that unity across all parts of Greenbelt was important, as well as conducting activities that benefited youth. Leon Schachter stated that the $2.5 million deficit facing the city impacted all parts of Greenbelt and moving toward a ward system would be an important change. Julie Winters felt the poor housing in some sections of Franklin Park needed to be addressed and a major change that should be examined is rank choice voting and a ward system.
The next step in this process is selecting one of the five applicants. A “special meeting/closed session” for deliberation and selection is scheduled for Wednesday, January 24 at 7 p.m. What that meeting will look like or how the process will go remains unclear. Mayor Emmett Jordan and Councilmember Silke Pope supported having a closed session before balloting but others were less inclined. Despite a request from the floor for further information or decisions about the meeting, Jordan expressed the desire to “ruminate” and invited a motion to adjourn, which was made by Pope.
The meeting for deliberation and selection will have taken place by the time this article goes to press.