Amee Bearne is the right candidate for Ward 5:
- Bearne gets implicitly the problem faced by the overwhelming majority of ward residents, who have never even seen their council representative, don’t know anything about the services Takoma Park offers, and don’t vote or participate in the community.
- Bearne is a renter in an apartment building – giving her personal insight into how most others in the ward live.
- Bearne is not only enthusiastic about directly engaging with residents, but has proven her ability to do so, having organized her building’s tenants and held community events to which all are invited.
- Bearne has the experience our ward and city desperately need, including expertise in urban planning/historic preservation, service with CHEER on housing and community development (among other things), and a stint as an intern with the City of Takoma Park.
- Bearne is whip smart, articulate, and passionate. There is no way she will end up as a passive placeholder when she joins city council.
Bearne is not a perfect candidate. For one thing, her relative naiveté, coupled at times with too-much self-confidence, gets her in trouble. Examples include the political speech she tried to deliver at a neighborhood picnic, without asking anyone first if such speeches would be welcome (she bombed and was eventually cut off). Another instance came up at this past Monday’s candidates forum, when a question about schools came up. Rather than admit she was not informed on the issue, Bearne made the newbie mistake of trying to answer authoritatively, even though she didn’t even know we have a county (not city) school system.
My assessment is that Bearne is smart enough to learn from these kinds of mistakes. We can’t expect she will enter office knowing everything she’ll need to know, but knowledge gaps can always be filled in. Residents and city council colleagues will need to give Bearne some mentoring and remind her to seek out such guidance proactively.
As I have written*, I think relationships across the county, especially on the Maryland Municipal League (MML, which incumbent Jarrett Smith cites repetitively) may be of some value to the city, but have produced nothing for the ward. If Bearne is elected, it will be the city’s job to meet that need. I note, further, how current councilmembers who have inserted themselves into this race (Tim Male and Fred Schultz wrote recommendations for Smith) overstated Smith’s importance and utterly disregarded what is happening on the ground in Ward 5. I will suggest to Mayor Kate Stewart that councilmembers be discouraged in the future from these kinds of endorsements.
This election year (as in most years and places), Ward 5 does not have the luxury of selecting a “perfect” candidate. But we do have a real chance to replace a disengaged councilmember, with someone committed to making a daily difference in the lives of neighbors, not only the homeowners who vote, but all the renters who don’t. With the level of effort we will get from Amee Bearne, maybe more of these folks will vote the next time around.
+++++
*An excerpt from my reply to Bill Brown on the Takoma Park listserv: “If (and there is disagreement among current and former city officials about this) participation in the MML is vital for Takoma Park, it would make sense for that to be covered by the mayor or a city staff position – an individual elected or hired to serve the whole city. Nonetheless, there [is] really [no] issue with any individual councilmember’s taking this on, as long as doing so is not used an excuse for ignoring ward residents. If Smith can chew gum and walk at the same time, that’s a good thing. If not, then the fundamental point I’m making is that his first obligation is to the residents . . . of the ward that put him in office.”
©2018 Keith Berner
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