The second public hearing on the proposed change to the city charter requiring residency for the city manager found scant support in the small but vocal group of online and in-person residents who attended the hearing on Saturday morning, April 1.
Residents Elizabeth “Lolly” Gaines, Cathie Meetre, Greenwood Village HOA President Aisha Rice and Bill Orleans spoke in person, and emails from Molly Lester and Lois Rosado were read into the record by City Clerk Bonita Anderson. Only Rice was in favor of removing the residency requirement on a case-by-case consideration.
Gaines called for a referendum for so radical a change. She also felt strongly that the latitude to insist on or ignore the residency requirement at will would enable council to discriminate – changing the rules person by person to let one live elsewhere and another not – and on what basis. Gaines felt that the requirement needed to be changed so that the manager didn’t have to live here or left as is and argued strongly for the latter.
Meetre (speaking as an individual and not in her capacity with the News Review) asked council why the recruitment advertisement had not contained any reference to the hard requirement of residence in the city. Meetre questioned whether the charter change was merely precipitated by the omission of this requirement from the ad. She wondered if council had received and reviewed an advance copy of the advertisement. “Does council believe the best way to fix an error is to change the rules?” she asked. Councilmembers did not respond to the questions, with Mayor Emmett Jordan emphasizing that he didn’t want to have a question-and-answer session but rather a public hearing, in which he didn’t wish for council to influence public comment.
Lester, in her email, felt a city manager should reside in the city to share the experiences of residents and should be paying the same taxes as the residents.
Impact
Meetre noted that the advertising campaign was national in scope and that many qualified applicants would have to relocate in any case. As a result, she argued that the residency requirement would not reduce the pool of applicants as much as had been suggested, affecting only people who already lived close by.
Lester, Rosado and Rice proposed the possibility of a slightly wider, but still local, range of possibilities for residence, with Rosado specifically suggesting residence in Prince George’s County was a must. Indeed, Rosado characterized the city manager not even living in the county as an “insult.”
“I don’t think the city manager has to be a resident here,” said Rice, suggesting there might be suitable candidates in the local areas like Berwyn Heights and College Park. “Let’s not limit ourselves in the city of Greenbelt,” she said, speaking of looking for candidates from a local pool. The search is, however, a national one; under the current charter the applicants need not live in Greenbelt, only be willing to reside in it during the tenure of their appointment.
The meeting recessed for 15 minutes to allow the arrival of anybody else wishing to speak (the hearing was scheduled for two hours).
After the meeting resumed, resident Bill Orleans, who also spoke at the first public hearing, added his comments. He opposed the charter change, saying it’s less about where they’ll reside and more a question of the relationship between the city manager and council and the city manager and the residents of Greenbelt. Orleans also argued all meetings between the city manager and council should be open to the public. “This is all about council’s desire…to appoint a city manager to serve its interests,” said Orleans, who would like to know why Nicole Ard is no longer the city manager. “This year in his presentation to council the [interim] city manager proposed an increase in compensation for council, something that the city manager in his proposed budget should not be doing,” Orleans argued.
Jordan said it was possible that at the next council meeting the amendment could be introduced for a second reading and go forward to a vote but it would be dependent on time available in the agenda. Councilmember Judith Davis expressed thanks for accommodating her via Zoom due to a disability. Councilmembers Silke Pope and Colin Byrd were absent. Councilmember Rodney Roberts was present but objected repeatedly to the timing of the meeting on a day that council did not usually meet.
When no further speakers arrived, the meeting was adjourned at approximately 10:35 a.m.
The next regular council meeting is Tuesday, April 11.