>consider this: if a majority of folks in the hood were
>pro-Nutter, and these same folks also happened to be
>contributing money to ucd, that would not make it right for
>ucd to publicly endorse Nutter, to encourage voters to vote
>for Nutter. the choice for Nutter or not is a public choice,
>a public process among equal stakeholders.
There's a big difference between the two examples. As we've all discovered
recently, UCD is prohibited from political advocacy because of their 501c
status. Were they "for profit" as is, the University City Review, for example,
they could endorse Mr. Nutter
>so, how would you revise this:
> idea #5: ucd should remain scrupulously neutral in public
> questions/disputes/contests, not taking sides or
> even appearing to take sides.
"scrupulously neutral" is very dangerous and leads to complete inaction. Take
my block for example. We planted 26 trees down the street last summer. Many of
my neighbors came out and helped, we dug, we planted, we watered, UC Green
bought the trees and UCD cleaned up the mess afterwards. You would think that
something like this would be uncontroversial, however, there were neighbors who
were violently opposed to it under the belief that trees along the block would
improve the exterior appearance and cause their property values to go up. (And
I'm told that this probably is the case, but I think we can use the shade.) To
get my trees, UCD and UC Green had to take the "side" of some neighbors over
others.
My revision would be:
UCD should be committed to making the district a
better place to live for the people who live
in the district.
When they helped Dock Street get their zoning variance they were doing what I
wanted and what I would expect a business advocacy group to do. I think that
intersection will be better for the business being there. UCD's funders have
designated a certain amount of UCDs budget to getting businesses to locate
along the Baltimore Avenue corridor.
In the future there will probably be MANY times that two businesses want the
same parcel of land, there will be property owners who don't want trees
planted along their streets, there will be sidewalk-shovelers who don't want
UCD to plow sidewalks. To wait for a universal consensus is to never move
forward, there will always be at least two sides to every decision.
just my two cents.
kc
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