Election 2025
City Council Candidate Bios
The News Review has received this biography from incumbent Rodney M. Roberts. Candidate biographies are prepared by the candidates and published in the order they are received by the paper.
Rodney M. Roberts
Rodney M. Roberts, 67, is a lifelong Greenbelter. A 1975 graduate of the National Technical Institute, Roberts is sole proprietor of a small business that specializes in on-site repairs of various types of equipment and vehicles.
Roberts volunteers his professional skills to groups such as Greenbelt Intergenerational Volunteer Exchange (GIVES) and to individuals in need. Roberts successfully fought efforts to demolish two single-family homes in Greenbelt, using his own funds and labor to do repairs on one.
Roberts proposed and worked through to implementation a community policing program that included the city’s first bicycle patrols.
Roberts was a leader in the citizen movement that resulted in the city’s acquisition of 184 acres of woodland, part of the original Green Belt, leading to passage of a city ordinance creating the Greenbelt Forest Preserve. With Roberts as chair, the Committee to Save the Green Belt defeated city plans to use the Hamilton Gardens for a salt dome and public works yard, to build a 100-unit apartment building in front of the GHI offices and to build a massive ballfield complex off of Northway.
Roberts represented the city on the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Transportation Planning Board for 28 years. Roberts found legal representation to help the city fight the maglev train.
In 2022, Roberts filed a NEPA suit against the U.S. Treasury Department to fight the proposed industrial development of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. Because of his suit, Treasury abandoned plans to dump 120,000 gallons of wastewater daily into Beaverdam Creek.
