On Oakland Mills…

A dispatch on the future of my neighborhood

Here’s another thing I put on Facebook that I’m posting here, because Facebook hates opening things up to the public.

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time thinking this last month. I already spend too much time thinking, so this isn’t necessarily a good thing. But considering the alternatives—stewing or fighting—thinking is probably best for everyone.
The topic of my thoughts: Oakland Mills. No surprise there.

I’ve been thinking about the concerns and plights of my neighbors — all of them — and of the problems and opportunities of my neighborhood.

I’ve been trying to separate my emotions from my analysis. My defensiveness is a barrier to understanding. I’ve been called “mean spirited” and “itching for a fight,” which, regardless of if this is true or not, is reason enough for me to pause and reflect and breathe.

But I’m still upset, and I’m upset because I don’t see others forcing themselves to do the same. I see defensiveness and anger that are standing in the way of us moving forward together.

And so it is that an “outsider” helps add clarity. Bill Santos is about as thoughtful as they come. He’s an engineer, which is particularly helpful in this discussion because, really, we’re talking about systems. But he also loves Columbia and people, so he’s got a good balance.

Bill wrote something great about Oakland Mills. Go read it.

I want to focus on a point he made about challenges, opportunities, and how we conduct ourselves.

I have heard so much about Oakland Mills’ problems over the last month that, if I didn’t know better, I would assume this is the worst place to live. In an effort to measure our plight against others, we’ve done a pretty good job of defining our community as one with endemic and systemic problems. And we’ve had enough. FIX THIS!

But how? Instead of talking about opportunities, the conversation hasn’t budged much past the problems. I get it, we have problems, but if we put half the energy into developing sustainable and attainable solutions to our problems that we’ve put into documenting them, we might be somewhere different.

I understand and appreciate that there are a lot of great people doing great work to support Oakland Mills. I would never question that work and its helpfulness to individuals. But our problems are deeper and more systemic, and we need more systemic solutions that don’t rely on volunteers. As much as we need individuals to get involved, we need real, significant, and substantial investments and systems change.

Two examples of missed opportunities from the relatively recent past that could have created systemic and sustainable change.

Depending on whom you ask, Oakland Mills’ schools are either bad or the worst. The problem is, this is true of a lot of schools in the “poorer” parts of Howard County. In fact, you could say that we have what amounts to two school systems. This is a systemic problem, and it is not the result of the people in our neighborhood whose children go to our schools but of the school system which cannot adequately address the needs of the students it serves. I don’t doubt the commitment or the care of those who run thesystem, but their ability to educate and support the children they serve rests, to some degree, in their ability to understand their needs.

But look at the school board, where they live, with whom they associate, how much they make and then ask yourself why it might be that schools in racially diverse and lower income neighborhoods might not have all of the resources or support or systems they need to succeed.

Again, I’m not questioning the Superintendent’s or any board member’s individual commitment to all the students, but I am saying that they don’t, and can’t, have the perspective of someone who lives in Oakland Mills.

So what’s the solution? Bring systemic change to the school board. We tried that two years ago, and it was the biggest failure in Ken Ulman’s administration. Why? Because those who benefit most from the current system fought mightily to protect the status quo, while those who stood to benefit most from this new opportunity barely voiced their support. Huge missed opportunity. Sure the process and resulting recommendations were imperfect and fighting for change would have divided PTAs and parents, but politics ain’t beanbag…

What’s another big problem we face: Neighborhood disinvestment. We’re an older neighborhood and our physical plant is falling apart. We need more investment. We need economic development. We need to get rid of the blight of the decade-vacant gas station lot that welcomes people to our village center.

Let’s go back six years when we last had a truly viable project to replace that void. It was to be a four-story office building with retail on the ground floor. It was having trouble getting the commitments it needed to secure financing, and Ken Ulman proposed to have the county purchase a floor for government office space. The village was mostly supportive, though I wouldn’t say it was loud (I heard some grumbling from OMers who were concerned the county would move the housing department there, because?????).

The backlash against this move was certainly louder than the support for it. The chorus of opposition grew… “The county’s propping up a bad deal… this will never work… there are all sorts of issues, even parking…. Class A office space in Oakland Mills? Yeah, right…”

But what all the doubters missed, knowingly or not, was that this deal was as much about supporting OM as it was filling office space. The biggest fear (which resulted in an albatross of stipulations for the county’s involvement that played a not insignificant role in the deal’s downfall) was that the project wouldn’t get its private sector commitments and the county would end up owning the whole building.

Well, wouldn’t you know it… just a few years later the county purchased an entire office building in east Columbia… off of Dobbin Road. Fears realized; opportunity lost for Oakland Mills.

I don’t bring this up to stir further resentment, though I still have significant lingering resentment about both of these missed opportunities. I bring it up as an example of the point Bill is making—when we focus on problems in an effort to show how bad it is we take our energy away from focusing on viable, attainable solutions. When we fight those who can offer us a lifeline — and OM has fought a lot with the county in the recent past, which is not to say these fights were unwarranted — we miss the opportunities to develop shared solutions that, however imperfect and incremental, help move us forward.

When I voted as a housing commissioner to purchase Verona, Icertainly wasn’t motivated by a desire to make housing or any other problem in Oakland Mills worse. And I’m reasonably confident I can say the same about every other commissioner or staff member at the housing department.

I supported this purchase for two reasons: Because I live in Oakland Mills and want to see it successful and now have more leverage than I’ve ever had to improve, however incrementally and imperfectly, the housing situation in Oakland Mills. And because I didn’t want us to miss out on another opportunity to move forward.

You may think I’m horribly misguided. That’s fine. Maybe I am, maybe I’m blinded by my idealism, my liberalism, my Rouse-colored glasses or whatever else.

But I’ll tell you one thing I’m not blinded by: our problems.

So what are our opportunities: To engage the housing commission in a productive relationship to improve and enhance a significantchunk of housing around the village center. To engage the county’s leadership in a meaningful effort to address the systemic problems we’re facing, either in the schools or the broader neighborhood. In a year, we will a new county executive who is not from Columbia… Let’s get some commitments now (from the existing one and from potential future ones)!

When I worked for the Exec, I fought for some kind of policy package to support reinvestment in older communities and to encourage businesses and people to move in and rebuild our aging structures. This is a good idea for many reasons but policy is not changed by good ideas and wonky memos. It’s changed by people who stand together and say “FIX THIS… AND HERE’SHOW!”

And that’s what’s missing. We know we have problems. We know they need fixing. So let’s fix them with viable, attainable, systemic and context-appropriate solutions. We have the county’s ear—let’s start telling them what we want instead of what we don’t.