As are all in our community, I am deeply disturbed by the actions of Minneapolis Police officers in the murder of George Floyd. The actions taken by the involved officers were incredibly disturbing and go against the basic law enforcement principle of the preservation of life. The lack of compassion, abuse of power, and use of excessive force does not just tarnish our profession, they tear at the very fabric of race relations in our country. Every human being must be treated with dignity and respect. George Floyd was afforded neither.

I am glad to see the outrage from law enforcement leaders across the country. We can no longer sit back and allow these incidents to happen. Real change must happen. The changes start with our hiring and training. We must hire people who want to be in law enforcement for the right reasons; those who truly want to help people and understand the importance of developing trust and positive relationships with our community members. It is not us against them, just us. We must also train our officers to deescalate situations with dialog, not force.

A vital key to developing trust and legitimacy with our communities is removing problem officers from our ranks. It is my understanding that the primary officer involved in the death of George Floyd had nearly twenty previous complaints lodged against him. While I do not know the individual facts of each complaint, the fact that an individual officer had nearly twenty complaints and two letters of reprimand filed against him in a 20-year career is, in itself, alarming and should have warranted some intervention by his supervisors.  The fact that three other officers stood by and did not intervene to stop Mr. Floyd’s death is extremely troubling. All officers have a moral and ethical obligation to intervene when they see injustice occurring. All too often we have seen officers stand by and not act when other officers abuse people of color. This must change and all officers who do not act to intervene and stop incidents like the Floyd incident must be held accountable.

Every police officer and leader I know has condemned the actions of the involved officers.  What is not being unilaterally addressed is the role race placed in the incident and others across the country. It is clear there were moral and tactical shortcomings in the George Floyd case. What is also clear is that all too often these cases involve police victimizing unarmed persons of color.

I am not one to say, “it could never happen here in Takoma Park.” I will say this, we are doing everything we can to ensure something like the incident in Minneapolis and others across our country does not occur in Takoma Park.

As your police chief, I am acknowledging the role race plays in our everyday life and how we police our communities. I am committed to hiring individuals who want to be police officers for the right reasons, providing on-going training to officers, and holding officers accountable for actions.

I am proud of the work we have done in Takoma Park to make positive connections with all of our stakeholders, especially those who hold the most mistrust of the police; our minority youth. An example of how these connections have had an impact can be found in the partnership formed between our police department and city youth during the passing of Cyril Briscoe, a local rapper and beloved member of our community. In the aftermath of his death, several members of our community began publicly expressing grief and remembrance of Cyril. Some members of our community complained about the impact the vigils were having on our community. Our officers worked directly with the organizers of the events to allow our community members to grieve while minimizing the impact on the surrounding neighbors. Some departments may have taken an aggressive stance to shut down the vigils and aggressively dispersed the mourners. We chose to work with the group to respect their rights and need to grieve. Many of the mourners expressed how thankful they were for how we handled the vigils. The one-year anniversary of Cyril’s death occurred two days ago. While many areas of the country were experiencing violent protests, youth in Takoma Park held a peaceful vigil with our police present and supportive. I bring this incident up to illustrate how we as police need to work with our communities to build relationships and trust. These relationships can be called upon in good and bad times.

We are a long way away from solving this problem. The first step to fixing a problem is acknowledging that there is a problem. As I stated before, I am very pleased to see so many law enforcement leaders and line officers come out to condemn the murder of George Floyd. We as a community and a nation must come together to address the issues facing the law enforcement profession.  I and all of the members of the Takoma Park Police Department are committed to being part of the solution, not the problem.  We are stronger together!

We are always open to ideas and input on how we can provide equal and equitable service to all of our community members. Have suggestions? Please send them to me at tonyd@takomaparkmd.gov.

Hooray! Sometime soon, the Takoma Park Maryland Library will launch a contactless checkout “Books-To-Go” service. Stay tuned for details.

As part of getting ready for this service, we’d love it if you returned the books you took out in the mad rush before we closed. Please help us get back into the swing of things by returning your books—our book drop is open 24/7 and checked at least once daily.

No overdue fines, of course.

The Youth Council was created two years ago as an advisory committee to the City Council, representing the interests of youth in our city government.

The Council meets every two weeks to discuss issues pertaining to youth in the city, and plan community events providing opportunities for youth to engage with their community.  See the Youth Council page for specifics, the Charter, and all meeting agendas and minutes.

• Are you a rising 7th-12th grade student interested in politics?
• Do you want to be a part of your government?
• Do you want to serve your community?

Apply by June 30, 2020 to be considered for the Takoma Park Youth Council for the 2020-2021 school year.

• Link to application.

Take advantage of this incredible opportunity to be a part of your municipal government.

On the afternoon of May 19, 2020, the City Manager executed a Notice and Amended Order modifying the time for responding to requests to the City pursuant to Maryland’s Public Information Act.

• Link to Notice and Amended Order

The purpose of the Notice and Amended Order is to address, to the extent possible, concerns raised by residents and elected officials regarding the scope of the prior modification. It is written more narrowly to reflect the City’s original intent and commitment to transparency and open government, and clearly articulates the City’s intention to continue to respond to requests within the required time unless circumstances related to the pandemic prevent it from doing so.

With respect to timing, the unexecuted draft Notice and Amended Order was submitted to the Governor’s Office of Legal Counsel at 12:01 p.m. on Monday, May 18, 2020. Having received no objections from that office within the required time, the City Manager executed the Notice and Amended Order on the afternoon of May 19. It was contemporaneously transmitted to the Mayor and Council, published on the City’s website, and sent to Governor Hogan’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Link to Maryland Public Information Act information on the Attorney General’s website

Link to the Takoma Park web page on responding to requests for records

A few months ago, I was asked what does community mean to me.

The first thing that popped into my mind was to respond with our geographic location – the City of Takoma Park – 2.4 square miles located in the corner of Montgomery County bordered by Washington DC, Prince Georges County, Silver Spring.

But, community is so much more. The word itself is rooted in the Middle French communité. Initially, it meant: “joint ownership.”

Joint ownership. Shared togetherness. That is community.

So what does that mean during a pandemic, and what does community mean for our budget process this year?

We have been working since early April on the FY2021 City Budget. We knew from the first presentation on April 6th that the proposed budget needed to be revised to take into consideration the health crisis, and we have learned much more about the health and economic situation since then.

We are thankful that even in a pandemic, we have had a great deal of feedback and input. The Zoom Council meetings have given people who have never attended or spoken at a Council meeting the opportunity to provide comments. Individual councilmembers have done their own virtual town halls and online surveys. And our terrific City staff led by our City Manager have been working round the clock to provide answers to all of our questions so we can make the best decisions possible in an ever-evolving situation.

Thank you for all the engagement. We have had a very robust discussion this year. And, we needed it. None of us have ever tried to do a budget during a world pandemic with so much changing daily.

We heard a number of differing views on the specifics of the budget, but throughout the discussion, there has been a common commitment to our community and those who call it home.

I have said many times over the last few weeks, as the City, we are the first line of defense for those most impacted during this crisis. And now is the time to act quickly and with sufficient resources, to help more people stay in their homes and keep businesses afloat while we wait and advocate for assistance at the county, state, and federal level. We also know that while this crisis impacts everyone, the magnitude of the impact is not equal, further exposing the racial injustices that we must address as a City.

So with all of this in mind on Monday night the City Council made the following changes to the proposed budget:

• Created a COVID-19 Fund with over $600,000 in resources to enable the City to continue to provide financial support for residents and small businesses ($440,000 for FY2021 and about $194,000 that we are spending this year).
• Cutover a half a million in personnel costs and put a hold on over $300,000 on other personnel costs.
• Kept the same tax rate as last year — 53.97 cents per $100 assessed valuation
• Kept stormwater fee the same.
  Continued funding for public safety initiatives such as traffic calming.
• Suspended funds for large public gatherings.
• Put a hold for at least the first quarter of the year $1.3 million dollars of expenditures that will be re-evaluated throughout the year.

In terms of different reserves or funds we can use in the emergency as we learn more about the needs and impacts we have:

• General Contingency Account: $135,000 (to cover unexpected operating expenses)
• Emergency Reserve: $510,000 (for emergency expenditures for the health, safety or welfare of persons or to perform essential government services)
• Housing Reserve: $1,058,294 (as of June 30, 2020) (requires a housing purpose)
• Unassigned Reserve: $1.8million; plus the $1.3million in on-hold projects for a total of over $3million in unassigned reserves.
• Staff is now preparing the final budget documents which Council will vote on May 13th and 20th.

Thank you very much for all the input and collaboration to get us to this point.

Our FY2021 budget reflects our shared togetherness during the greatest challenge we have ever had to face as a community.

Takoma Park Recreation Department launched it’s Virtual Community Center in mid-April. It has been continually growing since it opened.

Come one come all to our newest state of the art facility offering a mixture of virtual F.U.N. (Fantastic Unbelievable Nontraditional) classes on ZOOM to our very own Takoma Park residents.  In addition to virtual classes it also houses a running list of our R.A.R.’s (Rec Approved Resources) so you can refer back to all the great activity suggestions.

Come on by and check us out!! We have 13 classes weekly and growing and over 40 great websites to check out.

This is the perfect opportunity to break up the monotony of the coronavirus while practicing social distancing.