Category: News Page 1 of 3

At this week’s worksession, the City Council will discuss a proposal for starting a College Park based newspaper.

There had not been a mailed or widely distributed local newspaper serving College Park for more than a decade. The Diamondback predominately serves the UMD community, and it is ending print editions.

In the past few years, the City Council has discussed options to increase the reach and depth of City communications so that all residents are well-informed about local issues and activities. The City explored mailing the Municipal Scene to residents, but the staffing and postage costs were extremely high.

In early 2019, City staff began discussions with representatives from the Hyattsville Community Newspaper, Inc. (HCN, publisher of the Hyattsville Life & Times) regarding the possibility of establishing a new independent College Park community newspaper. HCN was founded by a group of residents in 2004 and celebrated its 15th year of continuous publication this past summer. The Life & Times is currently staffed by a mix of part-time professionals, local volunteers, and student journalists. It has won at least one award at the National Newspaper Association competition for eight years in a row. In late October, the HCN Board unanimously approved a proposal to publish a College Park edition beginning in 2020.

The purpose of this Worksession discussion is to consider this proposal for a College Park newspaper.

HCN would publish a new, monthly, full-color newspaper that would be mailed to residential and business addresses in the City of College Park, as well as distributed free at popular gathering spots in and around College Park. The newspaper would contain entirely local content — news, events, City Council, development, schools, neighborhoods, major crimes, features, personalities, and more. UMD news and issues would be covered when there is relevance to the wider community. The City government would not review the newspaper’s editorial coverage. The newspaper is primarily an organ to build up and bring together the community.

HCN is proposing to provide four pages of space for City content in each issue, created, branded and paid by the City government, so that the City of College Park can better communicate with its constituents at a cost much less than would be possible otherwise.

The HCN board would nearly double in size to include new members from the City of College Park, and the new paper would take advantage of HCN’s existing Md. incorporation, federal 501(c)3 status, and U.S.

Postal Service non-profit postal permit. The College Park and Hyattsville editions would employ separate editorial staffs and publish content specific to each municipality.

The College Park edition would benefit from the accumulated infrastructure and experience of HCN. College Park also offers some advantages over the City of Hyattsville in that it is larger (thereby allowing economies of scale) and has a much bigger commercial sector (promising a larger pool of advertisers). Those potential cost savings and revenue enhancements also can push costs down for our prospective partners, the City of College Park and local advertisers.

The startup budget for the newspaper anticipates approximately $30,000 is total expenses during the first four months. The primary revenue during this period is proposed to be City of College Park monthly payments of $6,500; $6,000; $5,500; and $5,000 (a total of $23,000 for four months with declining payments as business advertising increases). Business advertising is estimated to total $7,000 for the same period but would likely increase in future months. City commitment to the paper would enable the newspaper to invest in staffing and other resources required to start up a newspaper. This model is similar to the model that enabled the Hyattsville Life & Times to be created by residents in 2004.

[City of College Park]

The last edition of the local newspaper – the Gazette

At this week’s meeting, the City Council gave general approval of a proposal to create a College Park only newspaper for city residents.

The Hyattsville Life and Times (HL&T) recently approached the City with this proposal. According to the proposal, the City will be buying ad spaces to promote City specific contents in the new paper. The new paper is expected to be mailed to all College Park residents.

The City currently shares these contents using its Municipal Scenes publication. City residents can get paper copies of the Municipal Scenes mailed to them by special requests.

Before the Gazette stopped its publication, the City used to buy space in the paper. The content included summaries of Council actions, City events, program announcements and hearing notices.

After the Gazette paper stopped its publication, there has been a vacuum in the easy access to local news and information, in particular, in the area of print media,

The Gazette was delivered to all single-family residences in the City (and beyond, to the entire northern P.G. County) and copies were also placed at various locations.

The Gazette stopped its publication on June 12, 2015.

After the Gazette announced its decision to discontinue publication, I asked to have a worksession to discuss exploring other ways to disseminate information to its residents. One idea was to partner with a local newspaper publisher, such as the HL&T.

At last week’s meeting, the City Council agreed to allocate $30,000 in this newspaper project, as part of the upcoming FY2020 budget. City staff is currently working out the details about the proposal. The City Council is expected to review the final proposal for at least one last time before it gives the final approval. I’ll keep you posted as this idea moves forward. Please stay tuned!

[Photo credit: Hyattsville News and Life]

Last week the City recognized three City employees on their retirements: Director of Public Works, Robert “Bob” T. Stumpff (13 years with the City); Code Enforcement Manager, Jeannie Ripley (almost 49 years with the City!); and Engineering Technician, Rizmy Mahmooth (11 years with the City).

During his time at the City as the Director of Public Works, Robert (pictured left) oversaw the entire Department of Public Works including refuse and recycling collection, curbside leaf removal, snow and ice removal and so much more. He also is credited with designing the first automated side-loader trash truck with a tag axle in North America (it allows the large truck a tighter turning radius) during his time with the City. This year, he was also a winner of the 2017-2018 Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.

Jeannie (pictured top right) began working for the City in 1969 and has held numerous titles over the years including Clerk Stenographer, Code Enforcement Supervisor, Acting Director of the Department of Public Services, and finally Code Enforcement Manager. She has commendation letters from other agencies, nominations and awards including from former Mayor, Alvin Kushner for her service as Acting Director from September 1986 to February 1987.

Rizmy (pictured bottom right with City Engineer Steve Halpern) began his career with the City in 2007 as a part-time Engineer Technician after greatly impressing City Engineer Steve Halpern during his interview (even outperforming younger candidates when he had to pound nails into the pavement to secure traffic tubes for a traffic counter). In 2009, Rizmy became full-time and you may have seen him around the City investigating residents’ complaints or performing construction inspections.

All three employees exhibited exemplary service to the City and have been recognized on numerous occasions. We will miss them, but wish them all a very happy retirement and thank them for their hard work, dedication and service to the City of College Park.

[Source: City of College Park]

The Metropolitan Council of Government (MCOG) has recently featured College Park in their 2016 State of the Region: Economic Competitiveness Report. You can see the coverage on page 52.

In 2005, the City of College Park implemented an economic development strategy that successfully transformed it from being an auto-dominated community to one with thriving walkable retail nodes. Now ranked among the Top 50 Small College Towns in the United States, College Park has attracted a series of economic development projects that are collectively forecasted to generate over 500 new hotel rooms, approximately 93,000 square feet of new retail space, and over 1,000 new multifamily housing units.

With over 37,000 students and 4,400 faculty, the University of Maryland at College Park is a major economic engine both for Prince George’s County and the region.80 The University contributes more than $3.4 billion into the economy, supporting 23,000 jobs and generating an 8:1 economic return.81 University and community leaders are working to take this impact to the next level with a focus on cultivating innovation while also redeveloping land along the City’s Baltimore Avenue commercial corridor and the proposed Purple Line light rail station into a mixture of apartments, university housing, retail, offices, and laboratory buildings. This initiative has already helped to attract a new wave of technology companies to College Park–including such groundbreaking
startups as Immuta and FlexEl.

Small businesses continue to play a major role in College Park’s economy. The City of College Park has created several grant programs to assist local businesses with sustaining their economic growth. This year the City awarded approximately $50,000 in business expansion grant funds to local small businesses. These funds were matched by approximately $170,000 in private capital investment.