Our last meeting was the most contentious I have seen in almost nine years on the Council. The Mayor had declined to issue a memorial citation for Phil Ateto, a community activist and a personal friend, and the Council was never officially told; I learned of it at Phil's memorial. The Mayor's stated reason was his own interactions with Phil, which he felt crossed into antisemitism. Those of us who knew Phil knew a man who organized against hatred and discrimination, and who spent his life giving voice to people who did not have one. Phil and I talked about his cancer, the same one that took my mother. I went to him for honest feedback on the City's social justice work, and he gave it. Someone who speaks truth to power is, to me, a model citizen. Roughly thirty people came to City Hall to say so, and that mattered. I am glad the Mayor has since changed course: I understand the citation will be issued, and a draft standing procedure for citations is now circulating. My position is simple. A decision like this should not rest with one person, and the Council needs a transparent way to act when it disagrees.

Monday night is the ferry. The Mayor has put the hybrid-electric passenger ferry pilot (ID-196-26) on the agenda as a discussion item, with the City Manager presenting the business case, and he is asking the Council for direction on whether to issue the requests for proposals. Here is my view, and I believe it is the Charter's and the Code's view as well: that decision has already been made. The Council made it when it adopted O-40-21 and accepted the federal grant, and again in its votes on the Comprehensive Plan, the Public Water Access Plan, the Sustainability Plan, the electric mobility plan, and the City Dock plan, and in the budgets and capital program that appropriated the money. Those commitments stand unless the Council reverses them by a democratic vote on a legislative action. Monday is not that; no ordinance or resolution to reverse course is before the Council. What should happen next is simple: the administration releases the requests for proposals so the project can proceed as planned and authorized. So I am not clear why the Mayor, at the Wards 6 and 8 town hall on Thursday, asked residents who oppose the ferry to turn out Monday night. But since he has, I need to ask the same of you.

The case for Ward 7 is practical. The ferry would connect City Dock with Eastport, Hawkins Cove, and a landing at the Annapolis Maritime Museum's Back Creek campus at Moyer Park (the proposed Carr's Beach landing is on the Back Creek side, not the Bay side). The new park at Carr's Beach will bring visitors and the Annapolis Neck keeps growing; a landing there is how the City plans ahead for the parking that comes with both. Eastport neighbors are right that parking is tight, and a ferry means a Ward 7 family gets to Eastport or City Dock without driving there to look for a space. It gives seniors and residents who do not drive a reliable way downtown, it serves neighborhoods that have been underserved, and the City cannot cut emissions or traffic without giving people real alternatives to the car. The federal grant is about $3 million. The local match is already in the budget, tied to the associated bulkhead repair in Eastport and the Hawkins Cove project. I have written up the full case in A Way Downtown Without a Car. If you support the ferry, please come Monday at 7 PM and speak during public comment at the start of the meeting (three minutes), or submit written testimony in advance at annapolis.gov/testimony.

Also Monday: the public hearing on the eviction ordinance I co-sponsored (O-30-26); the introduction of three snow measures, new sidewalk-clearing deadlines with a City clearing fee and an updated snow emergency plan; and final votes on my two Charter amendments, CA-2-26 (expanding the elections board) and CA-3-26 (the Charter preamble), on renting a room in your own home (O-11-26), driveway parking (O-17-26), the Resilience Authority (O-21-26), and the menhaden resolution (R-45-26) with my amendment. Most of these were postponed from October 12 when that meeting ended early, so Monday is a special meeting to finish them.

One piece of good news from the past two weeks: after the Council pushed back on the Mayor's Citywide Collective Agenda, a community visioning process run through a committee the Council never approved, the Mayor stepped back from it and pivoted the consultant's contract to a strategic plan built on the Council's own priorities. That is what I asked for, and I told him so. The boards-and-commissions roundup is up on my blog again this issue: eleven meetings in two weeks, including the Spa Creek Bridge findings, the Blue Route bus pilot, the Robinwood approval, and the Maritime Advisory Board's take on the ferry. Details and the link below.

Stay healthy and safe,

Rob

The second installment. Eleven meetings in two weeks, in brief, with the Ward 7 angle where there is one. Votes are as I heard them on the recordings; the Clerk's minutes control.