December 15, 1983
The Takoma Park City Council, to the cheers of about 150 persons in attendance, unanimously adopted an ordinance Monday night making the city a nuclear-free zone, the second Montgomery County town to do so. The 11-part ordinance, sections of which take effect immediately, bans production, transportation, storage, disposal and activation of nuclear weapons in the populous 2.2-square-mile city, which straddles the Montgomery-Prince George's county line.
The city of Takoma Park, Maryland granted a waiver to its strict Nuclear-Free Zone Act this week in order to use Hewlett-Packard computers in its city library. The city of Takoma Park has been nuclear-free since 1983, meaning that the city is prohibited from supporting companies that work with US nuclear weapons production. HP is on this list of prohibited contractors, so when librarians received the shipment of new hardware for the library's computer learning center, they packed them away and awaited the Nuclear-Free Takoma Park Commitee's decision on the matter. The Committee denied the waiver for the equipment, but was overridden for the first time ever in a vote by city officials.