Columbia Notes on Columbia Votes

And the results are in!

Results are in for the 2023 Columbia Association board of directors and village elections, Ethan Ehrenhaft, Baltimore Sun/Columbia Flier

I saw a post from the Columbia Association yesterday about the results but now I can’t find it again. Instead of announcing the outcomes overall it required you to seek out the results one village at a time. This might be helpful for some but, personally, I want to see everything in one place.

There are quite a few new names which may or may not be a good thing. The new CA Rep in Long Reach was once the CA Rep in Oakland Mills. The new Oakland Mills rep benefited from unflagging support from her predecessor. It’s complicated.

This week I came across this statement from the Oakland Mills Village account in April of 2014:

This past Saturday 400 Oakland Mills residents voted to elect the OM village board and CA Board rep.  We reached our 10% quorum.  

Many thanks to everyone who voted and supported our annual plant sale.  It was a lively day at The Other Barn.

Here is the big question:

We'd really like to know why 3000 residents didn't vote.  If you were one of them and will share your reasons please do.  You can post here or send an email or let us know in whatever way you are comfortable.  Our goal is to engage our entire community and your comments will help us do just that.

Voting in Oakland Mills was higher than that this year but not significantly so. And so it goes.

Has time rendered this system of “governance” irrelevant to the majority of Columbians? At 50-plus, have we grown too large for the earnest “let’s put on a show in the barn” style of community engagement? Have those who have grown comfortable with being in power made it difficult for newer generations to engage and be heard?

Is anybody there? Does anybody care?

I don’t know. My gut feeling at the moment is that we’re just going to keep celebrating our old futility rites because we don’t know what else to do or how to create something better.

In closing, a word for those who ran but did not win. From a post I wrote after running (and losing) in 2013:

In the aftermath of the Columbia Elections, nothing has meant so much to me as this post, by Bill Santos at Columbia Compass:

"For those not elected, they need you most of all.  In the past few weeks, they have been subjected to accusations that no one would ever think of prior to their declared candidacy.  I have been there.  The feeling of loss is expected, but what is really jarring is trying to integrate back into the community. There is a pariah effect.  Do people in the neighborhood really believe those things that were said?"

The words above were quite meaningful to me as I nursed my wounds, post-defeat. At the time I thought I would never get over it. (There definitely is a pariah effect.) Mr. Santos, alas, is no longer a blogger. You may recognize his name nonetheless. For many years he has hosted a meeting of the minds each Sunday that he calls the “Santos Sunday 60.”

Good morning #ColumbiaMD! The Santos #SundaySixty starts at 10:00am.  We will be @Starbucks in #WildeLake.  So stop by and tell me what is going on in your neighborhood.

He’s now the CA Rep for the Village of Wilde Lake, having just won his second term. If I seem to be lingering on Mr. Santos today I think it is because he knew what it was like to run and lose in Columbia, Maryland and still came back to run again. It takes a special kind of inner strength to do that. 

I’d rather have a root canal than run again.

To an extent, I believe the reason why village elections are so vicious, regardless of our lofty ideals, is because the differences are so small.  As an example, one of the purported campaign issues this year was Symphony Woods Park.  As it turns out, all candidates are in favor of a park in Symphony Woods.  This was not a debate between a park and a cement plant.  For this reason, some folks engaged in highly speculative, negative and imagined positions of one candidate to energize what they perceived were the base of the candidate they supported.  In addition, given the lack of impropriety of the candidates running, an appearance of impropriety was invented.  It is this kind of behavior that brings down Columbia and until candidates openly refute these tactics and disassociate themselves from those that choose to do it, we will continue to inhibit growth and enrichment of Columbia. - - Bill Santos, Columbia Compass, April, 2013

I don’t know much about what the future holds (and we still have to hire a new president, don’t forget) but I do know I’d rather have people on the CA Board who invite everyone for coffee and come ready to listen, as opposed to the ones who have private coffee dates where they plot the next moves in controlling their little fiefdoms.