City must step to plate with hub project

A couple of years ago, the City of Hagerstown was so desperate for the Washington County Board of Education to move its administrative offices downtown that it fell over itself assembling potential plans and went so far as to put together a cream-curdling “won’t you be my friend” video urging the school board to move to its neighborhood.

The school board told the city that downtown wouldn’t work for administrative offices, but sit tight, because the school system was already invested in the city with the Barbara Ingram School for the Arts, and more investment was sure to follow.

True to its word, the board is pushing plans for a $15 million academic hub downtown. This hub would supply general classroom space for students who would then fan out to smaller venues or internships downtown for speciality learning in areas such as cybersecurity, hospitality, graphic arts or finance.

So the city council is very excited about the opportunity, right? No, this is Hagerstown. Instead of showing any enthusiasm, council members are acting as if they just opened their mailbox to discover a cobra.

They professed hurt feelings and confusion at being left “out of the loop” (forget that nine months ago they conceptually agreed to the project in open session) and said they can’t commit to anything before hearing from the County Commissioners — and even then there seemed to be no gratitude to the school board for initiating economic development that the city seems to have such a hard time doing on its own.

It’s so disheartening in this county that our local and state governments have this institutional paralysis that prevents them not just from working with each other, but from basic communication.

Here’s Hagerstown, teetering on the brink of becoming a ghost city, and they’re complaining about being left out of the loop? Is that so? Well then get in the stupid loop. You’re sitting on a three-story building packed with administrative staff, certainly you can spare someone to make a 10-minute phone call to the school board once a week.

Or is everyone so busy negotiating with all those private developers who are lining up to renovate downtown buildings that no one can spare the time?

Council members fret that it’s too early to make any kind of commitment to the project. No, too early is not the problem; too late is going to be the problem, and that’s exactly what it’s going to be in about five minutes if reactionary forces on the school board scare up any more momentum, or if the commissioners get the idea the city is lukewarm on the academic hub project.

If the council is paying any attention at all, it knows that the school board is one member away from being controlled by a faction that votes for whatever the teachers union wants and against everything else. It is very possible it will pick up that fourth vote in the next election, and then guess how many times the board will come to the city with construction initiatives?

Second, this logic that the city needs to hear from the County Commissioners first is so insane it practically hallucinates. Again, the city has to understand the circumstances. If it goes to the county and says, “aw gee willikers, we don’t know, what do you think?” this group of commissioners is not going to take it by the hand and lead the way.

Will the county help? Who knows? They might just understand that a $15 million academic hub will save taxpayers $80 million for a new high school. Or they might not. And if they don’t, maybe some other funding mechanism will materialize.

But the point is that it’s not the county’s job to take the initiative any more than it is the city’s to dictate landfill policy.

Here’s the question that matters — one that doesn’t, or shouldn’t, take any time to decide: Is it smart to spend $1.5 million or so to leverage a $15 million public-private partnership that will shore up part of a critical city block and bring a new, young demographic to downtown? Of course it is. You do this before you spend money on trails or spec office space.

It wouldn’t be so maddening, perhaps, had the city not shown glimmers of hope lately, with student-housing projects and a commitment to change the public perception of a city in terminal decline. Mayor David Gysberts is right, we do need to change the image of Hagerstown. But this startling lack of cognition and leadership will only serve to cement existing stereotypes.