Put your money where your mouth is

I want to talk more about the bigger items in the Columbia Association’s proposed budget (pdf)—the closing of Haven and the plan for outdoor pools, namely. But I need some more time on those. 

However, on the pools issues, not only is this a matter of which pools they decide to open, but also how they schedule them. Open swim hours at CA’s pools have been declining in recent years, and I suspect it may be even more constrained this year.

But a closer look at both of those issues will likely have to wait until next week, so I wanted to share some budget bits and pieces for you first. 

Revenue

CA has chosen, I think wisely, to not change the Annual Charge assessment rate or growth cap, and likewise, most of the membership package prices are similar to currently established rates. Whatever the long-term strategy is for CA moving forward, I don’t think it is in position to be able to sell revenue increases to a wary community coping with the pandemic-induced economic upheaval. CA’s revenue is what it is—best to work within it. 

President's Letter

There’s a statement in the President’s “Transmittal Letter” that is carefully worded and, if you can capture the subtext, pretty powerful: “We believe it is safe to say that there will not be a return to “normal”, if “normal” means a pre-COVID CA. Likely, in three to four years, the maturation of a “repositioned CA” will become evident, endowed with an organization-wide commitment—Board and staff—not to wait for a global crisis to peel back and scrutinize the functionality and efficacy of the many layers of CA that have accumulated over 53 years.”

In my notes, I wrote “wow” because I believe this is as strong a statement as I have seen from CA about the reality that is ahead for the organization as well as a critique of how it got here. For much of its history, CA was happy to take on roles and responsibilities that had tenuous or unclear connections to its mission, and over the years, this all started to add up as the baggage that it had to carry (or, in the parlance of the letter, accumulated layers). It cannot rely on the steady revenue growth it had once enjoyed due to the growth of its assessment base, and in the next few years it will be making many difficult decisions.

This profound transformation is partly behind why I decided to write this blog: If we don’t pay attention throughout this process, we may lose parts of Columbia and CA that we all thought were fundamental. 

One other item about the President: Most budgets are pretty dry, but this includes the following bullet in it's "Budget at a Glance" section and I want to highlight as a reminder that this budget--and institutions like CA, more broadly--are made up of people, working together and (usually) trying their best to achieve a common goal. This item pulled back the curtain on the dry formality of the budget to let in a little humanity and I love it. 

Pictures 

 

Communications and Marketing

I’m a little biased about this but I find this re-org of the Communications and Marketing division somewhat confusing. If anything, CA’s marketing of its memberships has been fine—surely you see as many digital ads for the gyms and golf courses as I do—but its communications have been not so good. Indeed, I think the lack of strategic communications expertise (or the undervaluing of it) has led to a bunch of CA “own” goals over the last year.

All that said, I hope that with all these new positions in “Branding and Marketing” CA will finally start to think about the “Columbia” brand in addition to its own (they are more related than CA would like to believe). 

Sports and Fitness

CA’s proposed budget assumes sports and fitness facility usage at the end of this budget (April, 2022) to return to about 85% of pre-COVID levels across its portfolio. This seems like a fair assumption, but there is still so much uncertainty about our “new” normal and the time it will take to get there.

Sports and Fitness is poised to lose money pretty much across the board. The Columbia Gym is budgeted to “earn” about $141,000, but this is largely because of how membership revenue is allocated across the different facilities. None of this is news. 

Community Services

Did you know the Horse Center is housed in the “Community Services” budget? Why not sports and fitness? CA has a new operator but the lease revenue is considerably less than it was last year and the year before ($9,000 vs $16,000 in FY19 and $15,000 in FY20).

CA’s community grants budget is zeroed out. Compare that to almost $1 million in FY19. In less than two years, CA’s grants to community non-profits have dropped by $1 million. This is huge and an under-appreciated aspect of CA pulling back on its community focus.

While this budget line is less than 2% of CA’s spending, the impact on the nonprofits losing these grants is much bigger. For some organizations, these grants represented significant (20%+ of their annual revenue) and funded important community programs. As we look ahead to a year when “programming” will return, there are going to be many non-profits struggling to do what they were once able to without this support.

At the same time, however, CA has budgeted its own return to programming in the form of it’s Lakefront Festival (not to be confused with the Columbia Festival of the Arts' "LakeFest"). This is a more complicated matter than I can get into on a “bits” blog post, but briefly: Downtown Columbia is crowded with organizations and programs and the overlap between them has caused unnecessary strife and expense. There have been conversations about a more “collaborative” lakefront programming paradigm—one in which existing non-profits, CA, and the community can all benefit—but there is no indication of any action on that front in this budget.

But, as with everything in the budget, it is all subject to change! CA’s Board will host its first worksession on the budget tonight at 7 pm.

From CA’s Facebook page, here are the details:

Read agenda and packet: https://bit.ly/31Qi3iZ

Participate in Resident Speakout: https://bit.ly/3mtqN6s

Watch/Join meeting live on YouTube: https://youtu.be/W_a5veyf6_8

If you stand for nothing, what'll you fall for?

I spent a few hours yesterday reviewing the Columbia Association's proposed FY22 budget and (surprise) I have some thoughts. I had planned to share some of these thoughts this week, but a Facebook post from 2018 showed up in my “memories” and, well, here we are.

The post from 2018 was prompted by the anniversary of this piece about Columbia's "values" that ran in the Baltimore Sun in 2017. The Facebook post, however, went a slightly different direction: 

And though it certainly has and continues to advocate for Columbia's interests, (CA’s) silence on matters of segregation--school based and otherwise--is noticeable. Segregation is, after all, part of what spurred Columbia's founding. 

There are lots of things to unpack here--representation, mission, inclusion, funding, etc. And I don't mean for this to come off as negative toward CA--it does many tremendous things for Columbia that help improve our quality of life and further the original values. 

But there are some radical changes taking place here and across the world, and maybe the time is right for radical re-assessment of what and how CA can best serve Columbia--now and 50 years from now.

CA’s silence over the last year, as our community and nation have wrestled with matters that are very much rooted in the values of Columbia’s founding, is hard to miss. I have seen it raised in several conversations, some very recently. As I said three years ago, there are lots of reasons for this silence, and on one of the more contentious local issues related to segregation—schools—there are no clear-cut right answers.

That said, CA's persistent struggle to articulate its position on issues related to Columbia’s core value set is only becoming more apparent and glaring. One look at the "Goals" section of its proposed budget puts things starkly. These goals align with priorities approved by CA's board as part of its Strategic Plan and address five specific areas:

1. Identity
2. Resource Stewardship
3. Environmental Sustainability
4. Leadership Development
5. Advocacy

Each priority area has a clearly defined goal and a set of action items to achieve those goals. Most have between three and six specific tasks with clear outcomes and timelines. Except Leadership Development.

As you can see in the screenshot below, the goal included in the strategic priority area of Leadership Development is: "Increase participation among a demographically diverse community to serve in leadership roles on CA advisory committees, community groups, and the CA board."

That sounds pretty good, if vague, but the action item for this priority is where things really fall apart: "a. Outreach to cultural and diverse community."

If it ended there, we could chalk this up to an organization that is clumsily trying to catch up, but the next (and last) strategic priority does little to support such a charitable read: 

Strategic Priority: Advocacy

Goal: "Advocate on issues that are key to Columbia's values and are key to our future as a unique, diverse, master planned community."

It offers three tasks, the first two are mostly benign, but then there’s this:

Monitor issues in the following area for advocacy:

• New Town Zoning
• Environment
• Land Use
• Alternative Housing
• Smart Development

That's it, a list issues that are largely centered around the local policy matters that typically excite people who are predisposed to not wanting additional development in their "back yards". (Yes, I went out of my way to avoid using the acronym that is now its own word.) 

There is nothing about social justice, racial equity, economic opportunity, education, transportation, or the myriad other issues that demand our attention if we are to realize the Columbia vision of a racially and economically diverse community living in a "complete" city where opportunities for self-advancement abound.

One wonders what would happen if CA approached its "outreach to cultural and diverse community” as energetically as it did its other advocacy areas, and if so, how would a more diverse leadership structure change the priorities of its advocacy efforts?

Kind of a chicken and an egg.

More about the budget—and even about this particular topic—soon.

Screen shot of the budget page referenced above: 

If you want a garden, you're going to have to sow the seeds

As I explained in starting this blog, my hope was to create a space for a thoughtful examination of the structure, culture, and governance of the Columbia Association. It is, as I have said before, Columbia’s most important civic institution, and despite the popularity of some of its programs and assets, its governance, operations, and finances are given little consideration by residents and businesses of Columbia.

While I still firmly believe we need to more closely and thoroughly examine CA, its history, and its structure to understand how to unleash the full potential of the institution, I also recognize that this does not necessarily make for the most compelling or engaging blog content.

The key insight here, however, is not about the interests and preferences of others, but it’s about my own biases toward institutionalism and credentialism. I’ll work on untangling those, but in the meantime, I want to write about things that are more immediate, tangible, and relevant to the lives of people who live in, work in, or simply care about the future of Columbia.

So, let’s talk about berries. Specifically, this patch of berry bushes in Stevens Forest.

At some point in the last ten years or so, the Columbia Association stopped mowing this field, allowing the natural process of reforestation to begin.

We’re in the meadow phase, and as part of this, berry bushes have proliferated (I think it’s a mix of black raspberries and invasive wineberries but I’m better at identifying trees and hawks than I am bushes and berries). 

Every June, the ripening red and black berries here attract hungry, foraging residents—both human and animal alike. It’s a wonderful scene and something I look forward to every year—these berries have become a fundamental and happy part of my experience of living in Stevens Forest.

One of CA’s biggest opportunities for improvement is to focus on experience of living and working in Columbia. If there were a big bucket wherein I put most or maybe even all of my issues and concerns with CA, you could probably name it “experience”. Columbia’s founding was full of energy, enthusiasm, and optimism because the Rouse Company put the experience of living and working in Columbia front and center in its planning, development, and marketing of Columbia. It celebrated Columbia not for the things it had but for the way those things created a complete and compelling experience.

Open space is a fundamental to the experience of Columbia. It is regularly mentioned as one of the things people love most about Columbia, and it is used by more people than any other of CA’s programs or facilities. I have written about open space before and the potential for its enhancement, which could in turn help enhance the experience of living in Columbia:

But with concerns mounting about social isolation and kids not spending enough time outside, we should consider whether Columbia’s open space can be enhanced in ways previously not considered; if it can provide a better foundation for residents to engage with nature and each other; and if its use can be expanded in ways that are compatible with our larger goals for our environment and community.

And I’d propose that naming some of the most important spaces is a first step toward this new “open space ethic.”

But a new open space ethic should be more than this; it should be about strengthening the ecosystem that encompasses both our natural and our human communities. Maybe this means replacing tot lots with something different — rock-scapes for climbing and free play, treehouses to highlight views, art installations that encourage exploration and discovery, or stormwater management projects that help reduce or clean runoff but while also enhancing the neighborhood aesthetic.

Treating Columbia’s open space network as the managed landscape it is offers a chance to think about how we improve both its ecological integrity and opportunities for people to enjoy.

So, in the realm of concrete, tangible ideas to make Columbia a better place, perhaps we should consider planting more native berry bushes, fruit trees like Maryland’s native Paw Paw, and wildflowers. 

Are there any areas in your neighborhood that are ripe for enhancement? Do you have any ideas for open space that you think could bear fruit in the years to come?