Only through listening to each other and working together can we find the best in ourselves as individuals and as a city. Too often in politics today, we find negativity and divisiveness. We need leaders who recognize that no one has a monopoly on truth, ideas and solutions. No one has all the answers. I believe that by working together we can build a community that looks out for the needs of its members in ways that are smart as well as compassionate. We can have a government that empowers its citizens without overwhelming them and that encourages an active citizenry in its actions as well as its rhetoric. Below are some of my ideas on how we can improve our community. I welcome your thoughts and ideas on these issues or any issues you think are facing our community. Do not hesitate to email me at joshlwright@gmail.com or call 301.312.2717.

 

To preserve the good that we have and to further improve our community, I believe we need to focus on:

• Crime-Free, Safe Neighborhoods - reducing crime and improving roadway safety
• Safe Roadways
• Fair Taxation - resolving the unfair tax duplication issues with the county, enabling us to ensure affordable taxation for all while improving services
• Community-Driven Development - encouraging development that preserves the small-town nature and history of Takoma Park and benefits the community, not just the developers
• Effective and Efficient City Government - conducting a department-by-department review to gain efficiencies, improve responsiveness and streamline service
• Progressive Ideas that Work - continuing to create progressive policies that set an example for other communities to follow in areas such as the
  • Environment
  • Affordable housing (affordability to all)
  • Transportation
  • Immigration
  • Healthcare

Crime Free, Safe - reducing crime and improving roadway safety

Reducing Crime

We can do more to reduce crime in our neighborhoods. I am concerned about all types of serious crime, but I am most concerned about Violent Crime and Street Crime. Property crimes are not unimportant I, myself have had my house broken into since I have lived in Takoma Park, it is no fun and it leaves you feeling violated. Street Crime and Violent has a more significant effect on our quality of life, has more of a negative spillover effect into other issues like economic vitality that are also important, and can leave us feeling trapped in our own homes. A large number of the people I speak with say that they do not feel comfortable taking a stroll around the neighborhood or walking home from the Metro at night. This has a downwardly spiral effect, as less people feel it is safe to be walking around at night there is less foot traffic and eyes on the street, which actually makes it less safe, causing more people to stay inside, thus the downward spiral continue. Street crime makes it harder for us to have an economically thriving downtown. If people do not feel comfortable walking to shops and restaurants then it makes it harder for our local business to thrive.

I am not a tough on crime throw them all in jail person. I believe firmly that we should be trying to address the root causes of crime (concentrated poverty, lack of opportunity, ineffective education systems). That being said most of our major crimes are committed by people who do not live in our city. They live in bordering communities in DC or PG County. Takoma Parks ability to significant  effect the educational systems, job training programs, our housing programs in our larger neighboring counties and municipalities is quite limited, particularly in any short period of time. So I believe that we have to pragmatically use the tools at our disposal to make unattractive to try to commit crimes in Takoma and force those who seek to committee crime to go somewhere other than our community. There are five main tools we can use to address crime. We must use all of the tools to a varying degrees in Takoma Park to be successful.

Tools to Address Crime	Comment	Concrete Idea to consider and debate
Police	At the local level Police are our most important tool to reduce and prevent crime. They are on the frontline.	1.)    Provide the police department with the correct level of resources in terms of officers for patrol 2.)    Provide the police department with the correct level of resources for back office crime analyst and community safety educators 3.)    Use community policing tactics 4.)    Increase visibility and foot patrols 5.)    Use Officers on Segways to Patrol Old Town and near the Metro 6.)    Provide timely and accurate crime reporting to the community
Community Action	The community has a strong role to play in crime prevention. If you read the police blotter many of the property crimes that occur in our city are the result of open windows or unlocked doors. The number of eyes on the street that the community can provide are far greater than the number of police offers on the force. The community must be vigilant and call in anything at all that looks suspicious.	1.)    Hire a community crime watch organizer and educator 2.)    Revamp and reeducate all of the community crime watches in the community 3.)    Greater education about home safety, market and proactively push home security audits provided by the police department 4.)    Greater education for the community about walking the street safely 5.)    Community education on identify suspicious activities 6.)    Encourage community patrols and coordinate those patrols with the on the street patrol officers 7.)    Implement a safety whistle program. This will require significant education with the community
Economic Vitality	The more shops, restaurants, and business that people want to walk to in the community increases the number of people and eyes on the street.  These eyes and human activity make the street safer	1.)     Need economic redevelopment of Old Town Takoma that is appropriate to its historic nature and small town feel 2.)     This redevelopment will require a close partnership with Washington, DC
Design/Environment	The design of the built environment can influence how easier or hard it is to commit a crime. For example the lack of light on the street in the evenings or blind corners, or places for criminals to conceal themselves contributes to crime	1.)     Conduct a lighting survey of the city and map that against crimes committed. 2.)     Implement a give away of outdoor florescent lights so that homeowners can economically and environmentally all keep on their porch lights
Root Cause	Ideally to address crime we would address the root causes of crime: concentrated poverty, lack of opportunity, ineffective education systems. We can and should do that in our own City, and where it is financially feasible and pragmatically possible we should help communities surrounding us with these issues	1.)    Conflict Resolution training for youth 2.)    Fully fund cross jurisdictional efforts like Safe Takoma

Safe Roadways

Pedestrian Safety continues to be a concern in Takoma Park and in particular in and around our ward.   Our ward has a number of problematic intersections.  There are some relatively straight forward solutions to these problems. It requires a greater number of clearly marked and well painted cross walks.  These cross walks then need to be paired in some cases with push button walk signals and corresponding lights, and in other cases better signage to indicate to drivers that they must stop for pedestrians.   Lastly, there are some locations in our ward that would benefit from additional sidewalks.  The decisions about where and how these sidewalks would be placed would require involvement with the residents of those areas.

Fair Taxation – resolving the unfair tax duplication issues with the county, enabling us to ensure affordable taxation for all while improving services

I am extremely concern about the tax duplication issues with Montgomery County. The situation is unfair. The situation undermines our ability to keep housing costs affordable for home owners. I believe that we have an opportunity over the next 12 to 18 months to get the issue resolved in a more favorable way. To do this I believe we should do the following

1. CountyExecutive Ike Leggett has created a tax duplication task force to look at this issue.  Our City Manager Barbara Matthews sits on this task force.  Our City should work through the task force to advocate for favorable change in the rebate formulas and we should give Barb whatever support she needs to accomplish this goal.
   
   
2. We should apply political pressure on Ike Leggett and the County Council to resolve the issue.  To begin with we should apply this pressure at the City level behind the scenes and in partnership with Gaithersburg and Rockville.  These two cities also have much to gain from having the rebate formulas redone, albeit on a percentage basis it is less than what we would gain because they have large business tax bases.  If the behind the scenes political pressure is not working than we should ask the residents of Takoma Park to apply political pressure in a more public way, letter writing, attending county council meetings, and maybe even public protest.
   
   
3. We should investigate what our legal options are with the county on this issue.  I would not advocate filing a law suit at this point, but I do think the city should hire a law firm that has experience in this specific area to understand what are legal options are and begin to do the evidential research that would be required for a lawsuit.  I believe we have some legal grounds for a suit.  The way the state law is written is that it says the County shall reimburse the city for all services that the city provides at a level that is equal to what it would cost if the county were to provide the services themselves.  Hopefully, we will be able to resolve the issue with the County without a lawsuit, but I think we should have one ready as a plan B and as a strong negotiating tactic.
   
   

Community-Driven Development – encouraging development that preserves the small-town nature and history of Takoma Park and benefits the community, not just the developers.

Tacoma Park and Ward 1 in particular have significant development challenges in and around its boarders.  There are both development plans that are underway, like the redevelopment of the Metro, and Ecco Park, as well as development opportunities that should be undertaken to meet the needs of the residents.  Old Town Takoma has great potential.  We have an opportunity to create a unique historic mandiring retail experience comprised of owner run retail business.  We need to encourage development in certain parts of Ward 1, but we must make sure that it is the right kind of development.  Takoma Park historical has rightful resisted many attempted development efforts by developers, because these development plans have not been appropriate to Takoma Park.  However, Takoma Park has gotten a reputation as being anti-development.  We need to turn that perception around to make it clear that we are ok with development as long as it follow some simple principles.

• Community Involvement in the design and development process
• Appropriate in size and scale to the surrounding community
• Preserve a human scale and pedestrian friendly street-scape
• Take advantage of and support our mass transit infrastructure
• Mixed use where appropriate
• Retail business focused on meeting local residents needs
• Green/sustainable design
• Supports that successful local businesses already in place
• Need to increase number and flexibility of parking spaces to support local business

We must push the state and county for our share development funds to develop Takoma Park the right way.  .We can accomplish this development appropriately and reap a number of benefits

• Lower crime and safer street because of more pedestrian traffic and economic activity
• Support a  more sustainable and environmentally friendly way of life because residents will be able to walk to retail locations to get more of their needs met
• Increased tax and fee revenue for the City

What role can the city specifically play in fostering this redevelopment?

1. Put resources and staff into proactively attracting the right type of developers.  Creating the opportunities to let us control our own destiny, instead of waiting for development to come along and then object to it if we do not like it
2. Currently the city does no marketing of itself to retail business owners.  We need to have marketing material and brochures created and then have staff use those materials to work with landlords to help recruit business to vacant store fronts
3. Start a pragmatic and proactive conversation with DC economic development to create a cross boarder development plan
4. Get state and county money to help with the redevelopment.  The state and county have put more than $100 million into Silver Spring.  We do not want to recreate a Silver Spring in Takoma park, but we do want to leverage money form the state and county to improve our community.

Effective and Efficient City Government – conducting a department-by-department review to gain efficiencies, improve responsiveness and streamline service

Progressive Ideas that Work – continuing to create progressive policies that set an example for other communities to follow in areas such as the

• Environment
• Affordable housing (Preserving affordability for all in )
• Transportation
• Immigration
• Healthcare

Environment

• Energy Use
• Renewable Energy
• Green house gas emissions

Affordable housing (Preserving affordability for all in )

Most of us live in Takoma Park because it is an economically and racial diverse city and we want it to remain that way.  To ensure that it remains diverse, Takoma Park needs to continue to be affordable for homeowners and renters. 

What can we do for homeowners?

      As home values have risen in Takoma Park property tax assessments have gone up.  This has caused the real property taxes to rise for all homeowners.  The homestead credit helps soften the increases, but increases are too great for many residents.  More needs to be done to ensure those on fixed income and lower income levels that cannot afford these increase can continue to live in their houses.  In addition the city owes it to all homeowners and particularly those homeowners in Ward 1 who pay a disproportionate percentage of the city taxes to make sure that we are getting the right trade off of better services for higher taxes.  Most residents in Takoma Park, like most progressives do not mind paying higher taxes, as long as the money is spent wisely and on the right programs.

• Increase funding for tax credit hardships (look up correct name of the program)
• Implement recommendation of TASDI report
• Create affordable homeownership opportunities for new homeowners

What can we do for renters?

      Keeping an affordable stock of rental housing is the most important thing we can do to keep Takoma Park an economically diverse community.  To date Takoma Park has done a great job at this mainly by using rent control.  Let me be very clear to start by saying that I will not back away from Takoma Park’s current rent control policy until we have a more effective and equitable alternative and one that continue insures that our low income residents have decent and affordable housing.  For all of the good that Rent Control has accomplished it can be a rather blunt tool and with some unintended negative consequences. 

1. It does not ensure that those who need affordable housing get it, because there are no income requirements for who receives housing
2. It can create a disincentive for landlords to invest in their properties
3. It can cause rentals to condo conversions, which reduce the stock of affordable housing

   The current city council should be commended for working to improve and reform rent control this year.  The changes they have made improve the system for renters and landlords.  I believe that we can even do better; we can be a progressive community which leads in providing affordable housing for our residents.  I do not have all of the answers, this will need to be a discussion that involves all of the stakeholders and is something that I look forward to working on with my fellow council members.  Here are a few ideas

• Start a low-income housing fund that can be used to develop low income housing and provide housing subsidies.  This would be funded through the ideas below
• Relax rent control on units that are not occupied by low income tenants, allow landlords to raise those rents at a more rapid pace and  charge the landlords a fee on those market rate units.
• Fees charged on new housing developments whether rental or for sale units
• The city needs to undertake a more proactive partnerships with the Housing Opportunities Commission and the Montgomery Housing Partnership to increase the development of affordable units in Takoma Park
• Pursue mixed income housing development where appropriate