Episode 53: View from the City Council Chamber
This week, we welcome Evan Dame, town council member in the city of North Brentwood, Maryland, as he shares the challenges that caught him off guard and the way his church life helps him serve his neighbors well.
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Transcript
Transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Rick: This week, we're welcoming Evan Dame to the podcast. I met Evan when he attended a class we led at a church here in DC. At the time that I met him, he had just recently started serving as a town council member in a small town just outside of DC called North Brentwood. Town council in north Brentwood is a part-time position, so he has another full-time job on top of it, but I wanted to talk to him about what making this transition into serving as an elected official was like for him. He's someone who cares about the place he lives—as you'll hear, he grew up there—and so I thought it would be interesting to hear from a brother in Christ who's just starting to make this transition into loving the city God has carried him into in this new way.
We're going to jump right into my conversation with Evan right after I had asked him whether city council was a job he was always aiming for. Then after the interview, we'll come back for some reflection.
Interview Excerpts
Evan: It's not a job I particularly always wanted. I always knew the mayor of the town, because I was actually raised directly next door to the mayor. To two mayors, actually. They were a brother and sister pair who ran consecutive terms for my entire childhood. Into adulthood, my mother's best friend ran for mayor. And so while I wasn't aware of town council, I always knew a mayor from as far back as I can remember.
I became more aware of town council probably in my late twenties, when I started to attend council meetings. My mom's always been very much civically engaged. I wasn't, but she would ask me, Hey, come to a meeting with me, see what it's all about, how important local government is. Municipal government is who makes the decisions that directly affect you.
That was a persuasive enough argument for me, so I started to attend meetings. That eventually led me to want to become a council person.
Rick: If you remember the first couple of times you went to some of those council meetings, what were your impressions? Why did you come back a second time?
Evan: My first impression was that I didn't realize how long the meetings were! Hours and hours! But my second impression was that I was rather impressed with all that goes into the administration of a town. You see a lot of elected officials in public but you never really know what goes on behind the scenes. What you have to vote on, how you decide spending, what issues you prioritize. It's a lot of decision-making and a lot of planning that is often overlooked.
Rick: What's the difference between what you thought or expected before you started going to these meetings and what you actually saw? Talk a little bit more about where that Gulf between expectation and reality was.
Evan: Initially I thought that, as an elected official, the main thing you do is listen to residents complain. You’re the complaint department. Anytime a citizen has an issue or a problem that needs a resolution, they are to come to you immediately. And that makes up the crux of your day. But, it actually accounts for a small percentage.
Most of it, that I’ve found, is deciding how to spend money, deciding how to improve the town, whether it's roadways, whether it's schools or parks or figuring out how to accommodate people with disabilities or how to resolve tensions between new neighbors and old residents. It's a lot more than just listening to people talk about their individual problems. It's a lot you have to address. Especially in a town where like north Brentwood, where the council people wear multiple hats.
Rick: Tell us a little bit more about the town. You said it's a small town in Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC. When you say, “small,” how big is it, for example?
Evan: I'm going to correct that and say, “tiny.” It's actually the oldest municipality in Maryland. It was founded 97 years ago by former slaves and it's been predominantly black ever since then. We may have a thousand residents. As a council person, you do get to know a lot of your residents personally and so they feel more comfortable approaching you and talking to you. Not many [people in other towns] get that opportunity. You vote for someone, but how often do you get to sit on the porch and just have lunch and talk to them about what's going on? A lot of residents have ideas of how to improve with the town and they come to me and they present these ideas.
And I enjoy that they feel comfortable enough with me to do that. So that's what I mean by “tiny.” It's very tiny, but it's also very family-oriented and very close-knit. It's a true, quintessential community.
Rick: How big is the council if the community is only as a population of about, a thousand?
Evan: It's four of us, including the mayor.
Rick: And what was your relationship with the town council or your predecessor or with the movers and shakers of city government before you decided to run? Did you get to know anyone who was actually on the council before you ran, or were you coming into this blind?
Evan: I did. I knew the mayor as a really good friend of my mother's, but on a personal level, there was one council person that I really developed a close relationship with. He was a young black male who was an elected official, which I hadn't encountered. At least not often. And so that impressed me. It made me recognize that I have an ability or an opportunity to affect change in the town if I wanted to run. The first time I encountered him was at a meeting and he was giving a presentation and I was just really impressed. I said, “Wow, this is a young black guy like myself who's not only civically engaged, but he's actually a leader and a municipal official.” It kinda inspired me to run when when a seat was available.
Rick: And what were your goals? You were inspired by seeing that it's possible, but what were you hoping to be able to do as a member of town council that you weren't able to do not on the council?
Evan: One goal was to be able to have a bigger voice as far as decision-making goes, not only within the town, but even within the county. As a municipal official, you also are tasked with communicating with county officials and state officials. It just doesn't start and stop at the town. I wanted to be given that opportunity to communicate and meet people in higher levels of government that could help us as a town improve things when funds were available or when the opportunity was available. And I think town council has given me that ability.