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Politics & Government

Junction Task Force Taps Environmental Task Force for Guidance

City should focus on higher priority recommendations.

The Takoma Junction Task Force is turning to another task force for guidance on how best to present their final report to the city council in such a way that they will increase the chances their recommendations will be acted on and not ignored.

Members of Takoma Park’s Task Force on Environmental Action (TFEA) made a presentation at the Junction Task Force’s meeting on Mar. 8 and TFEA member Joe Edgell, a lawyer for the Environmental Protection Agency who worked on the TFEA’s 89 page report, urged the junction task force to do what it can to prevent the council from ignoring their recommendations. “Despite its (Takoma Park’s) progressive talk, it is not always the most progressive organization at getting things done,” he said, adding, “It takes a lot of continuous pushing to get them to adopt what you want them to do.”

The TFEA report has a section called “high-priority recommendations” which task force members believes “the city should probably focus on,” Edgell said. In the order that Edgell listed them, those recommendations are:

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  • Greenhouse gases.
  • Storm water impact.
  • Traffic flow improvement.
  • Tree planning.

Takoma Park officials have not addressed any of the TFEA report’s major recommendations, Edgell said. “The city has, as a token, passed a ban in city operations in using gasoline powered leaf blowers,” he said. “That was one of the lowest priority things we had in the report, and that’s what they tossed it out to say ‘see, we’re doing something,’” he said.

“What I think is fatal (in Takoma Park), is an inability to make tough decisions,” Edgell said. “That’s fatal to the report, unfortunately,” he said, adding, “That may not be what you want to hear, but the way that would change is if there were significant public pressure.” Edgell suggests getting the public involved as “a way of putting public pressure on the elected officials” to get them to act.

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A mistake the TFEA made was not engaging the public, said Terrill North, a former environmental lobbyist who was on the TFEA. “We talked about having some sort of public hearing about this topic, and we didn’t do it,” he said, adding, “People had some interest in the subject, so I think we did a disservice to the cause by not getting a group of people in the auditorium when it was available to get public support for the issues.

As a result of Edgell’s presentation, Junction Task Force member Ellen Zavian said, she wanted to hear what the TFEA would have done different to strategically push the council. “Maybe you shouldn’t have had the leaf blowers so they (the council) had to pick something higher,” she said. “In hindsight, would you have prepared the report differently? Would you have presented it differently? Would you have put things in a different priority order? Would you have eliminated recommendations two and three and only put one?” she said, adding, those are the areas she “would like to hear about, as opposed to you confirming” what the Junction Task Force plans on recommending.

Junction Task Force co-chair Howard Kohn said he favors “the idea of joining forces in whatever way we can in terms of what we communicate.” Kohn suggested that the Junction Task Force and the TFEA need to continue to talk “to come up with a solution” to the “problem” of getting “to move things forward, to make things happen.”

Edgell said he believes there are members of TFEA who “would be happy to help” the Junction Task Force on the “structural issues of how you get consideration” by the City Council. “I don’t want to sound bitter because we worked with a lot of council members to move this (the TFEA report) forward, and we’re still working with them, but if these are all things that are important to you (the Junction Task Force), we would ask you adopt as many of them as you can,” he said. “It’s going to take some pushing to get them in your project.”

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