As you will quickly gather from watching the above video, Mary Baskin Waters is all about neighborhoods. Her concept of the proper way for the city of Columbia to proceed is something she calls “leading from the core,” or “leading from the base.” It’s a grass-roots, bottom-up approach — small-d democracy writ large.
This sets her somewhat apart from the other candidates for the 4th District city council seat being vacated by Kirkman Finley III — the ones I’ve interviewed, anyway. Leona Plaugh, as a former city manager, sees things from City Hall outward (although she’s running a pavement-pounding, door-to-door campaign). Tony Mizzell, as former chairman of Richland County Council, looks at city-county relations on a large scale. Kevin Fisher‘s frame of reference is that of a former candidate for mayor who remains a big-picture guy. (I still haven’t talked to Walter Powell Jr., which I regret. If I can, I’m going to at least call him on the phone today sometime.)
But Ms. Waters is the president of the Historic Heathwood Neighborhood Association. Don’t assume by that that she is limited by that perspective. On the contrary, she is sufficiently involved with other areas of the community that she is the president-elect of the Columbia Council of Neighborhoods. In other words, she approaches City Hall from neighborhoods, plural, rather than a single one. In fact, her interests and habits extend beyond the neighborhoods of Columbia proper. At her suggestion, our interview was over coffee at Cafe Strudel on State Street in West Columbia. You know that mural of a steamboat painted on a bridge abutment along the West Columbia/Cayce riverwalk? She did the research for that.
Some additional details from her bio:
Dr. Mary Baskin Waters is Founder and CEO of Albion Research Associates, LLC, a grantwriting and grants development firm. She is a certified Grants Reviewer and Consultant through the National Grants Reviewers Association. As a small business owner, Mary understands the determination and spirit required to keep an organization sustainable.
In addition to being a small business owner, Mary is currently affiliate faculty in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the Master of Public Administration Program in the Department of Political Science at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Water is the former Director of the South Carolina Commission on Women and served as a Commissioner until 2007.
Now, back to the neighborhoods, from whom her attention never strays far… Such a frame of reference might suggest that she concerns herself with hyperlocal minutia — this particular pothole, that traffic light that takes too long, a clump of bushes that obstruct drivers’ view at an intersection, a particularly gauche billboard ruining a view.
Actually, she’s quite the reverse. In fact, she speaks in such abstract terms that it’s an effort to get her onto specific issues. I actually had to ask several times what her goals and priorities would be before getting to specifics. Ask what her goals are and she starts talking about processes and “collaborations” as a goal in and of themselves. She talks about the interaction of systems — neighborhoods, city, county, state, national and international. Press her as to what she would want these collaborations to accomplish, she speaks of wanting to see “greater programs put in place.”
But eventually, we got to some of the standard issues, and her philosophical approach remained true. For instance, on the subject of homelessness she spoke philosophically of the need to treat the homeless as our neighbors. As for the Midlands Housing Alliance center that tends to be the focus of current debate, she says she would not have chosen the former Salvation Army site because of the impact on neighborhoods. (This is one of the problems I have always had with the neighborhood association point of view, by the way — if you wait for a plan that will please all neighborhoods, you’ll never place a center, and the city as a whole is never served.) She applauds the efforts of the Alliance, nevertheless — after all, it’s the very embodiment of a collaborative effort, a collaboration that came into being as a result of the utter failure of the citywide government to act effectively.
She has a tendency to speak in terms of things she applauds, from plans for the new Nickelodeon theater downtown to the riverwalk to celebrating the city’s “beautiful history” in all of its neighborhoods — which can be refreshing after a diet of hearing what’s wrong from other candidates.
Finally, a disclosure: As you can see at the right, Ms. Waters is one of my advertisers. That’s not why I agreed to interview her, even though I hadn’t planned to (I had intended to focus only on the three I thought had the best chance — Plaugh, Mizzell and Fisher). But she asked for the interview, and I was happy to oblige. Next thing I knew, she wanted to buy an ad. In any event, I enjoyed our conversation on a beautiful Good Friday.
Related Posts
I like her approach.
Oh, and FWIW, I would be happy of they located the homeless center at the former Woman’s Club across the street from my home. NIMBY doesn’t always apply…