Meet the candidates running in the College Park special election
By: Rhian Evans
The City of College Park will hold a special election for the vacant District 3 city council seat on March 11.
The three candidates hoping to serve the district that encompasses Fraternity Row, Old Town, Calvert Hills and most of the South Hill residence halls at UMD are Micheal Meadow, Ray Ranker and Gannon Sprinkle.
The election comes after the previous District 3 council member, Stuart Adams, resigned on Jan. 8, citing his want to spend more time with his two young kids.
Meadow has lived in College Park for 44 years and is a mechanical engineer at the Architect of the Capitol. He said in an interview, “I’ve got a lot of vested interest in this town that I want to see it continue to prosper and grow, and I think that it can do so in a better manner. And I think I'd be well suited to help guide it.”
Meadow has a threefold platform he’s running on. First, he wants to see more sustainable planning for the city: “I would like to see it grow in a manner that is a little bit more forward-thinking. I'd like to see the city become more walkable, more bikeable. I'd like to see, you know, more mom-and-pop shops open up here.”
Secondly, he wants to improve safety by having “the university expand its partnership with the city, and hopefully, we can reallocate some resources to get the University of Maryland police to sort of expand patrols more into our neighborhoods, which might help reallocate resources for College Park’s contract police to patrol other areas.”
And lastly, he’d like to see more support for the city’s older residents: “I'd like to see the city expand its various senior programs to try to assist them in living in their homes, because I'm aware of how difficult it can be to try to maintain an independent life, and I want everybody to do that for as long as possible.”
Ray Ranker has lived in College Park for the past 13 years and is a chaplain at UMD. In an interview, Ranker said, “My hope is to really just work with all the members of our community to make sure that College Park can be a place where people thrive, that it works well for everybody.”
While Ranker is running on some specific campaign points such as public safety and keeping taxes low, he is also focusing on speaking to residents and hearing what issues are important to them.
Ranker said residents “want a government that works, that does kind of the little things that can fill in the potholes when those appear, that can plant trees to help provide a sound barrier along Kenilworth Avenue. They want a local government that continues to pick up the trash and plow the roads when there's snow.”
He recognizes that while those might not necessarily be seen as big issues, he wants “to make sure that we have a good and responsive government that can take care of the little things that help people's lives just be easier and, you know, more fruitful in terms of issues in the city.”
The final candidate in the special election is Gannon Sprinkle, a junior government and politics major with a minor in economics and public policy. If elected, he hopes to inspire more young people to get involved with local politics. He also emphasized the importance of having young people in decision-making positions.
The big ticket items that Sprinkle is running on are tenants’ rights, increasing funding for local and displaced businesses and improving safety measures for pedestrians in the city.
Sprinkle said in an interview that he wants to work with the “Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning Commission to increase green space, walkable areas, bike trails, promote multimodal transportation to decrease carbon emissions and create community areas and public recreation spaces.”
Sprinkle also hopes to increase student representation on the city council itself. While UMD’s student government appoints student liaisons to serve on the city council, they are non-voting members.