With the primary upon us, I hope that everyone who
can will be voting on September 12. This election season has brought
more debates, forums, and television advertising than I can remember
ever in local elections. And as a reminder, the election for Federation
officers and board members will be held at our September assembly
meeting on Tuesday, September 26, at 6:30 p.m. at Sumner School.
The Federation is joining as an amicus to
uphold Judge Hamilton’s decision striking down the DC property tax
assessment system in the case brought by longtime activist Peter Craig.
Peter, who was honored at our May awards banquet, is an exceptional
example of commitment to civic affairs. We thank John Goodman of Woodley
Park for writing the amicus brief on behalf of the Federation.
You will also notice a few changes in this month’s
newsletter. We have called on the resources of the entire Executive
Board to try to temporarily fill the shoes of Guy Gwynne and return the
newsletter to its regular publication schedule. While Guy recuperates, a
team led by Elizabeth Elliott, Anne Renshaw, and Carroll Green has taken
on the task of the newsletter with exceptional vigor. You can help by
submitting articles on subjects that we should all know about.
The Federation will continue to participate in the
Zoning Commission battle between the Foggy Bottom Association and George
Washington University, which is described at greater length in this
newsletter. I mention it here only to indicate that the Federation will
join individual associations in dealing with subjects of citywide
interest and implication. Certainly the avowed intention of GW and the
Office of Planning to do away with campus plans, which provide
protections for our neighborhoods, is such a subject.
I hope to see you on September 26.
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The Federation and the Committee of 100 on the
Federal City cosponsored a series of meetings this summer to discuss the
Comprehensive Plan for the City that has now been submitted to the
Council as a Mayor’s Draft on July 14, 2006. Hearings are scheduled to
begin on the Comp Plan on September 26, 2006. In August the Federation
and the Committee hand delivered personal letters to each Councilmember,
and met with many of them, asking that any vote by the Council on the
Comp Plan be postponed until the new Council and mayor take office in
January 2007. Although an overwhelming majority of the Council has
committed to this course, the support of your Association or ANC will
help to firm up that position.
There are many reasons to postpone consideration,
starting with the failure to gather reliable data for population
subsets, transit-oriented development, and existing development trends.
Protective policies for our neighborhoods have been dropped including
those in the Ward plans. The Ward plans themselves have been replaced by
so-called Area Elements, which overlap Ward boundaries.
One of the principal failures is that the plan lacks
specificity, clarity, and certainty. The language in the Mayor’s Draft
is neither proscriptive nor directive for many policies and goals -- it
doesn’t really say what is supposed to happen. There are also many
conflicts among the policies and goals and no indication of how they
would be resolved or which policies would govern. There is no firm
statement that the Land Use element will govern in the event of
conflict, as is done in the current Comp Plan.
Implementation of the plan is less solely and
entirely in the discretion of the executive branch. The vague and
permissive standards used throughout the plan mean that the Office of
Planning has unfettered ability to interpret the vague language as it
sees fit. The Federation has supported the proposal of the Committee of
100 for a Planning Commission that would be accountable for the
implementation and stewardship of the plan and offer a vehicle to
citizens for meeting policies and goals.
But perhaps the biggest failure is that the Mayor’s
Draft is missing several of the basic elements of a plan. There are no
corridor plans, no guidelines for particular areas, and no indication of
the need to retain land for future City uses, no linkage infrastructure
needs, and no guidance about how much land is to be allocated among uses
such as residential, commercial, mixed-use, public facilities, and
institutions.
If you haven’t done so already, think about having
your Association and your ANC support delay in consideration of the Comp
Plan.
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A letter to City Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp from
George Clark, the Federation of Citizens Associations, and Don Alexander
Hawkins, the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, dated August 18, 2006
Re: Delay on Council Action on District Elements of
the comprehensive plan
The Committee of 100 on the Federal City and the
Federation of Citizens Associations have worked over the past year to
affect the draft of the District Elements of the Comprehensive Plan,
through memberships on the task Force and organizational comments.
While we believe progress has been made on several
fronts, the Mayor’s Draft that was submitted to the Council in July
still presents serious problems for the residents of the District. The
fundamental flaw is that it is not a Plan. It is full of wishes,
provides few directives, and leaves virtually unlimited latitude
anything the executive branch or zoning commission desires. There is no
statutorily created entity, such as a Planning Commission, to ride herd
unnecessary capital budgeting, or to assist with implementation.
For this reason, the asking commit to a delay in
council consideration of the draft until communities have a chance to
fully assess the impacts of the far-reaching proposals on their homes
and businesses. At least 7 ANCs in 3 different Wards have already passed
resolutions in support of a delay, even though most ANC’s received the
draft plan only after they had adjourned for the summer. Others will
take up this matter in September when they resume their normal
schedules.
As you know, our organizations have worked for many
decades in the interests of the citizens of the District. Several of our
members will be calling your office in the coming days for appointments
to share with you the reasons for concerns and the necessity of
addressing fundamental flaws in the plan, a few of which are described
in the attachment.
It has been suggested that the outgoing Mayor
deserves to see enactment of this plan, a major initiative of his
administration. However, this plan will affect every District community
and the city as a whole for decades to come, and we believe those will
be obligated to enforce its provisions and live with the consequences
should be the ones shape its final form.
We look forward to working with you on this most
important initiative.
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The
limits of university growth:
Why everyone in Washington should care
Elizabeth Elliott, Foggy Bottom-West End
On September 14, the Zoning Commission has scheduled
two proceedings, the first one a rulemaking (ZC Case No. 06-19, Text
Amendment, Section 210.3) that has citywide implications and the other a
related adjudication/ contested case (ZC Case Nos. 06-11 & 6-12,
Campus Plan and PUD) for George Washington University. The Office of
Planning, which has been facilitating GWU under the rubric of
"build up, not out," has requested the rulemaking because GWU
has reached its current development density (FAR) limits and cannot add
further density without altering the regulations.
OP should be challenged for its total failure to
protect residential neighborhoods and the Zoning Commission should hear
why the Zoning Regulations should not be changed to let universities get
even denser. Foggy Bottom has become the canary in the coal mine for
other communities hosting growth-addicted institutions like GWU whose
unfettered expansion has resulted in the destruction of our tax base.
The text amendment rulemaking is a citywide issue
that will affect all residential neighborhoods hosting universities and
other institutions should the Commission approve this requested increase
in FAR. Citizen’s groups throughout the District should be alarmed and
should appear at the hearing, as well as write to the Commission, to
express their views about this harmful, precedent-setting proposal
(which will no doubt be leveraged to justify other institutional growth
and development in our neighborhoods). OP is attempting to undermine the
whole reason the Special Exception-Campus Plan regulations were put in
place: to protect the host residential neighborhoods from inappropriate
over-development.
Address your correspondence to:
Carol J. Mitten
Chairperson
D.C. Zoning Commission
441 Fourth Street, N.W.
Suite 210
Washington, DC 20001
Re: Opposition to Text Amendment – Z.C. Case No. 06-19/Request for
Increase in FAR for Colleges and Universities in the R-5-D and R-5-E
Zone Districts
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In April the Federation petitioned Chairman Cropp to
appoint true citizen representatives to a body to oversee the planning
and construction of the new baseball park. There was such a
representative body for the new convention center, which met regularly
and provided valuable neighborhood input for that project.
We have heard nothing back in response to our
request, despite having followed up on it. No board or oversight body
has been appointed by the Mayor or the Council. Instead, the Mayor and
the Council have supported dramatic changes to the Stadium that
contradict the very purposes why the present site was chosen.
The Southeast site was chosen in part because it
would provide wonderful views of the Capitol building, and give the
ballpark a unique identity that would instantly identify its location in
our nation’s capital. We were told that this was one reason to spend
the $611 million in taxpayer funds that have now been committed for the
Park.
Instead the plan is now to give away land to
developers to build parking lots and condos that will tower over the
ballpark and block any view of the Capitol building. Fans will not know
whether they are in Peoria or Washington, DC. Citizen oversight might
not have prevented this travesty, but at least attention would have been
called to it rather than have the deal negotiated in the back rooms of
the Wilson Building.
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In thirty years as a District of Columbia homeowner,
never have I witnessed such poor level of public safety performance as
currently exhibited by both the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and
DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services (FEMS). Testimony last March
before the Council Committee on the Judiciary indicated that complaints
continue to abound before neighborhood meetings regarding the lack of
timely responses to citizens’ calls for police assistance and the
acute lack of professional emergency medical and ambulance service. Both
departments are under-performing, by any standard, to our collective
peril, and they are very poorly managed.
The police are conspicuous by their absence in our
neighborhoods and in their handling traffic enforcement duties,
especially during rush hours. MPD is also exceptionally lax in timely
responses to citizens’ complaints.
During the past several years, most of our elected
officials have called for "more" police officers instead of
demanding accountability and questioning how and where police are being
deployed.
- Why are the police not out in force during rush hours performing
traffic enforcement to prevent gridlock?
- Why are police officers performing escort duty for representatives
of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, when the
federal government is outsourcing such work to the private sector?
- Why is MPD competing with private firms to perform such work?
While at National Airport recently, I witnessed a MPD
police escort of no fewer than ten motorcycles officers and two cruisers
accompanying a single bus, all at the expense and safety of DC
residents. Of the myriad of uniform police organizations in our nation’s
capital, MPD appears to be the least physically fit. What has happened
to physical fitness standards for this paramilitary department?
A somewhat similar situation exists within our
combined fire and emergency medical services department. There is no
meaningful accountability or demands for answers from our elected
officials for this fifteen-year failed experiment that requires
firefighters to be trained as qualified emergency medical technicians.
As presently organized, this poorly managed
department is a threat to the health, safety, and welfare of all DC
residents and visitors to our city. How many more lives must be
sacrificed before this appalling and unworkable situation is rectified?
Unfortunately, it appears that mediocrity, non-accountability and poor
performance has become the norm in these critical public safety areas of
our municipal government. Under the incoming administration, we, the
citizens of the District of Columbia, must demand a separate emergency
medical service, effective management, accountability and an acceptable
level of performance from these departments.
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Emergency Medical Services by committee:
This time, will it work?
After several highly-publicized missteps by the DC
Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department (DCFEMS)
in early 2006 resulting in an investigation (and condemnation) by DC’s
Inspector General, Councilmember Phil Mendelson, Chair of the City
Council’s Judiciary Committee, recently convened an EMS
Commission. Its singular mandate: Improve the city’s beleaguered
emergency medical services operation. For more than 20 years, several
similar efforts (consultant reports, studies, etc.) have occurred.
However, DC FEMS has never
fully implemented their recommendations. This time, will emergency
medical services by committee work?
Councilmember Mendelson selected eight individuals
(two physicians, three DC FEMS
employees, one university representative, a Memphis Fire/EMS
officer and a representative of Children’s Hospital) to sit on this EMS
Commission. The Citizens Federation, while arguably the best prepared to
represent the EMS consumer,
was only assigned the role of "official observer" by the
councilmember and not allowed to ask questions.
Two Federation officers, George Clark and Anne
Renshaw, are regular attendees, keeping close watch on the proceedings.
Four Commission meetings have taken place with discussions centered much
more on system-wide emergency medical issues (hospital ER
wait times and closures) than how DC EMS
should be organized ("third service," independent department
within DC Fire & EMS, a
private service, etc.) to better serve the public.
Many important issues need to be addressed and
questions asked. What will it take to bring the best emergency
pre-hospital medical practitioner to your doorstep when you need it? Do
you want a big fire engine or an ambulance to respond to your medical
emergency? Do you want a firefighter, who has also been trained in
emergency pre-hospital care or a dedicated, full-time emergency medical
practitioner? Given DC FEMS’
publicized problems including, but not limited to, a profound culture
clash between the two professional groups, what will give you renewed
confidence in the skills and training of the paramedics and EMTs who
respond to your 911 medical emergencies?
Over 75 percent of FEMS’
emergency calls per year are medically related. The Firefighting
Division has now taken over the 350-person EMS
Division. EMS runs are, more
and more, being handled by firefighter/EMTs despite, in many cases,
their lack of desire to perform in this capacity. In summary, DC has
evolved into a "Fire-based EMS"
in order to utilize the fire division’s personnel and help justify
their expansion quest, requiring the demise of professional EMS
careers.
The present EMS
Commission will soon release its first policy paper — "Enhanced
Medical Supervision of DC EMS" — which argues for
"physician-driven change in EMS
provider care and oversight." In other words, the report will urge
that the EMS Medical
Director, and not the Fire Chief, manage the operation.
Shortly after the last EMS
Commission meeting on 8/10/06, Fire Chief Adrian Thompson announced the
abrupt "departure" of one of the commission members, Dr. Amit
Wadhwa, DC’s Medical Director. The Citizens Federation had testified
before the Judiciary Committee that Dr. Wadhwa and the other two FEMS
employees on the EMS
Commission should be witnesses; that it was a conflict of interest for
three uniformed DCFEMS
representatives to sit in judgment of their department and recommend
organizational structure and policy changes.
George Clark and Anne Renshaw can attest to the EMS
Commission’s many difficulties in streamlining its own process and
articulating its mandate. Hopefully, the next Mayor will be able to
utilize this Commission’s final report, as well as the previous
reports, to guide a much needed DC EMS
reorganization, which will be in the public’s best interest, during
his/her first thirty days.
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Washington is a large, old, and well-trafficked city,
and an extreme dearth of parking spaces has vexed its auto-driving
citizens for many years. From a parking space standpoint, all Washington
areas are not uniform. Dense areas such as Georgetown, with its many
historic houses and apartments, have few residential garages or off
street parking spaces. The absence of Metro is an unfortunate
deprivation for Georgetown. Additional street parking is essential for
Georgetown’s continued well being. Impacted area residents have to
ride around the block for fifteen or twenty minutes looking for a space,
then racing another for any open parking space, frequently in a
no-parking area.
There are several approaches to mollifying the severe
parking condition. Intimately involved are supply and demand for spaces.
Supplying additional spaces is a far more direct, expeditious and
effective means to remedy the problem rather than attempting to reduce
the demand by limiting parking and inducing merchants to leave. Not only
does the government suffer because of diminished taxes but limiting the
demand deprives the merchants and the residents of long time convenient
shopping, jams our highways with its concomitants- hazardous travel and
additional environmental negatives. Moreover, property owners would have
their property values significantly reduced as desirability recedes.
Benefiting residents by harming them is not a popular concept. Such
action is a poor, insensitive and painful means to mitigate the parking
imprecation.
Avast there. Such a panorama did not quiet the
opponents. They persisted without good reason as to why such flaws
should not be decisive to their opposition. The parking decision
adopting in substance the Kiwanis Initiative was made by the D.C.
Council not on theoretical postulates but on factual analysis and logic
and is certain to promptly increase the supply of parking rather than to
attempt to control by attrition the amorphous and imprecise demand
concept.
The Georgetown Kiwanis Residential Parking Initiative
— joined by the Federation of Citizen’s Association and the Assembly
of ANCs — offers the public a far better solution. The proposal allows
residents to simply park in the unused access space in front of their
own driveways in the street. The street parking spaces used by residents
with driveways would then be available to the public. In Georgetown
there are about 350 houses with driveways that could be additional
spaces available to the public, if all qualified for the driveway
sticker. Driveway stickers, similar to the zone parking stickers, would
identify the car, the address and the resident entitled to use the
parking space and be affixed to the windshields of residents’ cars. At
the request of the resident, violators will have their illegal parked
car in this space towed to a D.C. impound lot and ticketed for towing,
parking in the impoundment lot and violation of the city ordinance.
A parking proposal similar to the Kiwanis Initiative
has been adopted by a number of other cities including, Cape May, New
Jersey; Rehoboth Beach, Delaware; Long Beach, California; Burlington,
Vermont; and available for cities in the whole state of California. The
desirability of such a plan was recognized when the D.C. Council
unanimously enacted the substance of the Kiwanis Residential Parking
Initiative, which was promptly signed by the Mayor on July 21, 2006. It
is now filed in Congress awaiting the expiration of their 30-day review
period.
No one is asserting that the Kiwanis proposal is a
panacea for D.C.’s parking woes. However, for Georgetown, it will
significantly reduce a frustrating everyday condition. To impacted areas
including Georgetown and its vexed, nettled and star-crossed citizens,
parking relief is now on the way. Thanks to the Federation of Citizen’s
Association, the Assembly of ANCs, and Georgetown Kiwanis for your
substantial assistance in the enactment of parking relief in Bill
16-383.
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In addition to George Washington University being at
its development limits in our neighborhood, the Foggy Bottom Association
has credible evidence (George Washington University’s own required
filings) that GWU has been
out of compliance with its current Campus Plan headcount limits and,
therefore, cannot proceed with its massive development agenda
(approximately 3.2 million square feet of additional development) until
it corrects its compliance issues. Starting in October of 2005, the FBA
wrote to Mayor Williams asking him to consider our evidence and to
enforce the hard fought and won Campus Plan. He has never responded.
The Foggy Bottom West End Advisory Neighborhood
Commission joined with the FBA
last November to hold the university accountable and, finally, in April,
DCRA agreed to have the new
Zoning Administrator, Bill Crews, arrange for an "independent"
audit of GWU’s
enrollment-headcount numbers.
In a recent, subsequent FOIA
request, the FBA obtained a
series of materials that demonstrate the ZA’s
re-crafting of the audit’s Scope of Work to suit GWU’s
needs with no comparable community input. Following is the most recent
correspondence via e-mail from Michael Thomas, Foggy Bottom/West End
ANC2A-02 Commissioner, to Crews questioning just how
"independent" this audit is.
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 15:49:27 -0400 (GMT-04:00)
Dear Bill, You are now very substantially overdue
with your promised revised scope of work document for the audit of GW’s
compliance with the various conditions on its current campus plan. The
earlier document was produced by a process which does not meet the sniff
test — you gave GWU’s
general counsel every opportunity to dictate it, and then falsely
claimed that it had been given some sort of approval by the chair of our
ANC, in the face of the
resolutions we had passed and our ongoing efforts to help you define a
fair and independent audit.
You have also not responded to, or even acknowledged
receipt of, my FOIA
requests. At this point, those requested files should have been
produced, not only as a matter of compliance with the law, but also as a
matter of trying to salvage some modicum of credibility for the process
you oversee.
The GW
report of Aug 28 (but as of Aug 25) of their compliance with Conditions
9(c) and 17 claims full time undergrads number only 8,204. GWU’s
own website claims that the university has admitted another 2,350
freshmen this fall, which makes Mr. Barber’s report unlikely. Further,
the university reported to the Princeton Review under that organization’s
Common Data Set Initiative that their "enrollment" was 10,563
a year ago.
Under the reporting rules that number represents
degree-seeking undergraduates. As you know, they report yet other
numbers to DOE and Treasury.
The funny numbers can’t hide the truth — there are far more
students, faculty, and staff than the headcount limits set in the
conditions of the current plan. You really need to get on with a
transparent process of forcing GWU
to disclose all of the people it educates and employs, and call the
result what it is: a series of violations of their undertakings. We are
about to enter the month of September, and your failure to get the job
done compromises very seriously the ability of the Zoning Commission to
afford basic fairness to any of the parties to the proceedings scheduled
to begin on 14 September.
Michael Thomas
Commissioner ANC2A-02
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Patrick Allen, Esq.
Association of Oldest Inhabitants
Allen E. Beach, Treasurer
Chevy Chase Citizens Association
Francis M. Clarke, III
Cleveland Park Citizens Association
George Clark, Esq., President
Forest Hills Citizens Association
Dino J. Drudi
Michigan Park Citizens Association
Kathryn A. Eckles
Residential Action Coalition
Elizabeth Elliott
Foggy Bottom Association
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Carroll Green. Past President
Manor Park Citizens Association
Guy Gwynne
Burleith Citizens Association
James H. Jones, Second Vice President
Crestwood Citizens Association
Ann Loikow, Esq.
Cleveland Park Citizens Association
Sally MacDonald, Secretary
Woodley Park Citizens Association
Ann Renshaw, First Vice President
Chevy Chase Citizens Association
A.L. Wheeler, Esq.
Association of Oldest Inhabitants
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October 24, 2006
November 28, 2006
Holiday Luncheon, Dececember 19, 2006 (tentative)
January 23, 2007
February 27, 2007
March 27, 2007
April 24, 2007
Awards Banquet, May 17, 2007
June 26, 2007
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