To Jack Perry, English has long been the de facto official language in College Park and the rest of the United States.

But as the city offers translations of documents and looks for bilingual staff members, the nonconformist District 2 councilman thinks it’s time for English to become the city’s official language. Perry is preparing to introduce legislation asking the city to study the issue, he said.

“I think that if you come to College Park, as far as you’re concerned, the official language is English; if that’s not good enough for you, you need to work out something else,” Perry added. “It’s a shame that we have to do this. I’m sick of kowtowing to minority factions.”

Although Perry acknowledged most of College Park’s translation requests were for “the Hispanic language,” he is concerned about a slippery slope that would make the city responsible for speakers of every language and dialect.

“If I have to sit around and say, ‘Well now, I’m going to have to translate that into Tagalog,’ whatever the hell that is, why does the government have to do it [and] bear the expense?” Perry said.

Perry pointed out College Park’s website is already available in five languages.

But Kimberly Propeack, advocacy director for the Latino rights group CASA de Maryland, said in an e-mail that English-only legislation “tends to be read as cultural declarations about who is welcome in a community.”

“I would ask Councilman Perry if he really wants to send a message to his neighbors that he doesn’t want them living in College Park,” she said.

Perry said, at this point he is only looking to hear the pros and cons of making English the official language of College Park, requesting the city staff investigate what sort of experience other English-only municipalities have had. But his idea might not make it that far.

“I’ll probably be in the minority because of the liberalness of my co-councilpeople, and we have to bend over backwards” to speakers of other languages, he said. “I’m sure that everybody’s going to tell me I’m wrong. I’ve been there before.”

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