Snowed Under
Dear Winter Weary:
I know, it's supposed to snow again tonight and tomorrow. But I
promise that all the messages about snow in the next issue of themail
will be at the bottom of the issue, not the top. I'm not only tired of
the snow, I'm tired of talking about it. I'm so tired of it that in this
issue I've demoted my own message about snow to the bottom of the snow
messages.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Comments about Snow Removal, NYC and Such
Richard Layman, Northeast DC, rlaymandc@yahoo.com
It isn't true that nothing was done for snow removal as of Tuesday as
some comments indicated, I was riding my bike on H Street, 4th, 6th, and
8th Streets, and to Union Station on Monday. That doesn't mean that I
favor lowered expectations — a 60 hour commitment for plowing every
street at least once is way too long, etc. — but it is over the top to
say that nothing was done.
I do agree that people in the area are wimps, and I say that not just
by being from Michigan — there is no reason for everything to shut
down, for schools to continue to close or open late toward the end of
the week. It does not say much for our ability to persevere in the face
of adversity if snow is so paralyzing.
The WMATA response was a disaster in my opinion. In situations like
this I rely on buses on main roads and I had to wait altogether too
much, on roads that were pretty much cleared (X, 90s, 70s lines). (In
one 30+ minute period eight 90s buses were traveling westbound on U
Street while none traveled eastbound.) Rather than fall apart, a well
working public transit system during snow can be used to market public
transit generally.
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Snow from a Northern Perspective
Connie Ridgway, kaniru@aol.com
I know lots of people have written about snow, but here goes. We were
in Cleveland for the President's Day weekend, and they had about eight
inches. Granted, it is much less than 18", but all streets,
including all side streets, were cleared within twelve hours. One thing
they do differently is send three plows down a street, the one behind
clearing what the other left. But they don't go back to that street,
they just move on, and quickly. And, they leave it up to the businesses
and homeowners to clear sidewalks and driveways and whatever the plows
spray onto cars and sidewalks. And, everyone clears their sidewalks
promptly. It's just something you do when there is snow.
Meanwhile, in DC, I saw people shoveling their snow, from cars or
sidewalks, back into the street. Many sidewalks still haven't been
cleared. People behind the snow plows need instruction from Cleveland,
but so do the residents. Maybe there's a hidden rule somewhere that in
the South (yes, we really are the South) you're scared of and paralyzed
by snow, and you just wish it would go away. Which, of course, it
eventually does.
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I walked around Capitol Hill every day after Monday so I was able to
get a good look at how the city handled the snow fall. 8th Street and
Pennsylvania Avenue were plowed, but none of the residential streets was
touched. At one point I walked south on 8th Street and was amazed to see
truck after truck plow an already cleared street. As soon as I got off
8th Street I had to struggle through snow drifts.
Gary, you are right about lowered expectations. We see it here in
your newsletter all the time. A perfect example is the comment,
“Eighteen inches of snow is more than most any government can cope
with expeditiously and comprehensively.” This is nonsense. I grew up
in Chicago and the suburbs. Snowfalls like this were routine and the
streets were always plowed within two days. Every important city in the
country except Washington can equal or exceed that performance.
Residents of Washington DC suffer daily because the city will not
deliver even minimal service, yet they fiercely defend Williams, Ramsey,
and Peggy Cooper Cafritz, the school board president. This baffles me.
It's like loving the person who beats you up.
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DC residents receive the services their “Lowered Expectations”
deserve. DC residents simply have proven over the long haul not to have
good memories, to demand superior services for their huge tax burdens,
to resist over regulations and overpaid city officials, to protest poor
education of students or lazy and poor police service and responses; and
I could go on for pages. But what purpose would it serve, since DC
residents will not demand the services they pay for?
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Shovelantiism
Peter O'Toole, pjotoole at att dot net
“The next time a snow plow came down the street,” a reader
writes, “I literally stood in its way, forcing it to go around me and
not shovel more snow my way.” DC's plows are heavy duty vehicles
tasked with mass snow removal (whenever it may finally happen), not
navigating the chicanes around disgruntled shovelers. Did the blizzard
expose flaws in a constituent service in our city? Yes. But it also
thawed the “gonna git mine” attitude that abounds (and watch out
Tony Williams when it's not gitted).
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Since you want to go back into history here are the facts: 1) In
2000, the District of Columbia DPW's smaller snow equipment was
insufficient for the number of residential streets with little
off-street parking. In January 2000, more than fifty small trucks were
ordered by VDB, along with over fifty large trucks that I assume were
delivered after I left and were available for the following two snow
seasons, when there was very little snow. 2) If you would contact the US
Weather Service, which keeps temperature records, you would note that
during the period of the snow events noted in your article (2000) that
it stayed cold for a period of almost three weeks, unlike the usual cold
and thaw cycle that occurred last week in the District. 3) If you
watched CNN and saw what happened in other cities like Philadelphia,
NYC, and Baltimore, all cities were having difficulty because it is not
easy to get rid of twenty inches of snow with cars all over the place.
4) My 2000 testimony regarding the amount of time that it takes to clean
up from a severe storm depends on available equipment, which in 2000 was
not sufficient but can still be a problem due to amount of snow even
with the millions of dollars and improved conditions (warming weather)
as in 2003. 5) I am long gone with only the legacy of new shining snow
trucks. I am sure that staff of DPW the private company responsible for
highway roads and DDOT have done the best job they could with the
conditions they had, but it is easy to complain when you are not in a
snow truck for sixteen hours straight for three or four days. 6) I have
been to Minnesota and their capabilities are truly great in snow, also
in Cleveland where I have also worked. But you cannot compare
Northeastern cities like DC, Baltimore, and NYC, with their odd set up
of alleys, narrow streets, and little off-street parking to places like
Minnesota where there are a lot of driveways and the worse thing that
happens is that people get mad because they keep on getting plowed in by
plows
I believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion. My expectations
have always been high. There, however, is a difference between
expectations and what is possible. I have often gotten in trouble for
telling the truth. I know that the job that was done was an improvement.
How much I do not know. What I know is that getting snow up is not easy.
Prioritizing delivery service is not easy, and in the District's case,
as in all other cities, is an ongoing process.
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Sixty-Hour Standard
Edward Cowan, Friendship Heights, edcowan1114@yahoo.com
About the sixty-hour goal: I think it's pretty good. Certainly not
bad, especially when the snow falls over a long interval, as on February
15-17. I note that the sixty-hour standard says, according to your
report, “at least once” in the first sixty hours. That implies some
streets might be plowed more than once. It signifies that many, many
streets will be plowed in less time — perhaps a day or two less —
than 60 hours. After all, not all streets will be plowed last. Your
complaint is unreasonable. But then that's the style you adopt for
themail.
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By the Numbers
John Whiteside, johnwhiteside at earthlink dot net
Ed Barron, commenting on New York City's snow removal efforts,
comments on the far higher number of roadway miles in the New York than
DC (without bothering to actually look up the number of roadway miles in
the District). DC has 1,100 miles of roads and 570,000 people. That's
about 1.9 miles per thousand people. Ed tells us that NYC has 6,300
miles and it's got 8 million people. That's about 0.8 miles per thousand
people. If you assume that resources available are related to the
population (tax base) that means that DC still has about twice as much
burden as New York. That's not even considering that we get less snow
here and thus is makes less sense for the city to have as much snow
removal equipment on hand, since it won't be used as often. I guess it's
easier to complain about living in a “rinky dink city than actually
look at numbers, though.
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I'll admit that the DC government's snow plowing performance has
improved, at least in that the administration hasn't used the
traditional excuses (“We don't have enough manpower or enough
equipment”), followed by the traditional appeal (“Therefore we need
more money”). DC indisputably has enough manpower and enough
equipment. But is its actual snow plowing performance satisfactory? The
Department of Public Works estimates that DC has 1100 miles of streets.
It says that it has 114 heavy plows, 65 light plows, and 200 contract
plows available. That's a total of 379 plows, some of which are suitable
only for major streets and some of which are suitable only for narrow,
neighborhood streets. DPW also says that in the last major snow storm
its plows worked 24 hours a day.
Okay, let's run those numbers. Let's ignore any plowing by the
federal government. Let's assume that only 250 of the District's 379
plows are actually operational. The speed of snow plows varies widely,
depending on the amount and type of snow and on the terrain, but let's
assume, for easy calculation, that the plows operate at the very slow
speed of eleven miles per hour. At that rate, the entire street system
could be plowed every 24 minutes, 24 hours a day. But let's assume that
conditions are so unfavorable that the plows can only travel at half
that speed, 5.5 miles per hour, and that — after time off for breaks,
refilling with gas, getting minor repairs, and goofing off — plows are
really only on the roads only half the time, just twelve hours per day.
Then every block of the city should be plowed once about every hour and
a half (96 minutes, to be exact), night and day.
I hear the skeptic saying that all the streets can't be plowed
simultaneously, that the major arteries have to be cleared before plows
can get to the neighborhood streets. That's true. So let's arbitrarily
classify about four hundred miles of streets as major arteries. Let's
assume that only one hundred plows out of the city's 379 are actually
working. Let's assume that they run at only two miles an hour, about
half of the average walking speed of a normal human. Then all of the
major arteries should be plowed five times within the first ten hours
after a snow storm, and paths to all the neighborhood streets should be
clear by then. How much more unreasonable do we have to make our
assumptions to make the District's performance seem to be reasonable?
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Assessing BRPAA: A Very Vacant Lot
Mark Eckenwiler, themale@ingot.org
When my new assessment arrived in the mail in February 2002, showing
a 59 percent increase, my first reaction was to be philosophical. My
neighborhood (north Capitol Hill, a.k.a Old City I) was late to
transition from triennial to annual assessment, and it had been three
years since our last round. More to the point, property values had
really jumped from 1999 to 2002. But once I started looking at the
assessments of other houses in the area, it became clear that the
Assessor's Office has mastered the art of cognitive dissonance. Houses
with an extra story (about 1000 more square feet) were assessed for
$100K less than mine; another house up the block that sold for $500,000
within the assessment period was assessed at $201K; and one house
(listed as having “0 rooms”) was assessed at $96K despite an
in-period sale for $353K. As Peter Craig has so ably argued, the city's
practice of applying a blanket increase across an entire neighborhood
(e.g., the 59 percent increase in my area) produces assessments that
bear no rational relation to true market value. The practice ignores
outdated low-ball assessments (like the house around the corner that
went from $54K to 96K) and totally disregards relevant info such as
recent sales data for specific houses. This is madness, and it leads to
absurdities where renovated houses are assessed for tens of thousands of
dollars less than unrenovated properties of similar size.
After an unsatisfying appeal to my assessor, I went before BRPAA on
Dec. 20. I presented a blown-up Sanborn map of two full city squares,
along with a detailed list of twenty comparable-or-better properties
assessed for far less than my house. What relief did I ask for?
Modestly, to have my assessment lowered to the level of the
highest-assessed of the lot, a recently renovated, one-story-bigger
house a few doors down. (This is a variation on the “equalization”
argument Peter Craig has mentioned, one well founded in case law under
the Equal Protection Clause.) Disturbingly, OTR's primary argument in
opposition was that BRPAA has no legal authority to consider
equalization claims at all. (OTR also tried to argue that my assessment
represented fair market value based on the sales prices of the nearby
houses I'd shown were assessed for far less than those sales figures!)
Well, it's now a full two months later, and despite numerous calls to
BRPAA I've received no notice of the Board's determination. Today
(2/24), however, I see that OTR's real property database on the web has
been updated to reflect a small reduction in my assessment (leaving me a
good $50K-$100K above the comparables). So I am left to wonder a) what
possible rationale BRPAA applied to reach this result and b) whether
BRPAA's failure to give notice of decisions is a deliberate effort to
make people miss the deadline for appealing to DC Superior Court? I can
hardly wait for my new 2003 assessment to arrive this week.
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A Revenue Increasing Ploy?
Ed T. Barron, edtb@aoldotcom
This past week, when the mail finally started to be delivered again,
I received tow packets of individual estimated income tax vouchers from
the DC Office of Tax and Revenue. One package has the full names of our
taxpaying duo while the other package has our first initials. Both
packages have the correct SS numbers. Is it possible that the office of
tax and revenue expects me to send estimated quarterly tax payments for
both sets of vouchers/ Is this a ploy to increase tax revenues from the
overburdened taxpayers in DC?
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Renewal of Driver’s License
Tom Whitley, tom9754@aol.com
This is in response to Mr. Ziedenberg and Ms Serafin's postings on
this subject. My driver's license was due to expire later this year.
Being seventy plus, there is a special office to go to down on C Street
because you must submit medical and eye doctor forms. I took the
completed forms down to that office and the good man there put in my SSN
and birth date and out popped two reports of ticket problems in other
states. In one case, in Massachusetts, I had a problem about a speeding
ticket ten years ago which I paid. The nice lady in Massachusetts agreed
that I had paid the ticket, but late, so the record stated. They
assessed a late fee of $40 and a penalty of $50 for not paying that,
neither of which I had been informed about even though they had my right
address. (The computer form had the wrong address and the wrong phone
number, changed over two years before.)
In the other case, in Pennsylvania, the nice lady said that I had a
ticket for an undefined violation twenty-two years ago. After two years
they do not enforce such. Please pay $25 to clear the record. They had
an old address which was correct when the alleged violation occurred. I
had never heard of the matter. I paid the $25 and the $90 and stayed in
touch with the persons with whom I spoken because the real need is to
get it off the interstate computer record so that the item would not pop
out when the nice man again put in my vitals. Nothing popped out and he
said “$30 please” for the four-year renewal.
The lesson for all: go ask for a review of your interstate records
and take the time to get those nasty items off your record. It is now
well understood that if you are stopped by an officer of the law you
must not have an expired license. If not expired, you must not have a
record showing unpaid tickets because the state in question and every
other state if they so choose will consider your license in suspension.
In either case, they can take your license away and put you in the
slammer if they so choose.
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[In reply to Dorothy Brizill's posting in the last issue of themail:]
Stan Jackson resides in Ward 8, not Ward 7.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
A story about Life and death on the streets of DC's Shaw neighborhood
will be broadcast this Sunday morning at 9 a.m. on NBC 4 News. For info
contact Dana Mozie, 588-5857 or taleofthetape@tripod.com.
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CLASSIFIEDS — HELP WANTED
Tolu2Books needs a web page designer to update current website.
Contact Tolu2Books@aol.com or
331-4418.
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CLASSIFIEDS — FREE
1) Practical toast velveteen with three large cushions. Good shape.
2) Taupe velveteen with two cushions. Makes into a bed. Good shape.
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CLASSIFIEDS — RECOMMENDATIONS
My wife and I are fairly new to DC, having moved here from New York
sixteen months ago. We are wondering if anybody can recommend any
charitable organizations (beside The Salvation Army) that will come to
pick up used clothes and books?
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Can anyone tell me the local regulations governing protests? Is it
possible to get a permit to protest within days of an event? Is there a
limit of a certain number of people allowed without a permit?
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Auto Clubs
John Whiteside, johnwhiteside at earthlink dot net
Does anyone out there have a recommendation for an auto club? I've
let my AAA membership lapse because I don't want to support their
lobbying against transit and for sprawl development (lobbying which they
work fairly hard to keep hidden from members). But I did like their
towing/jump start/etc. emergency services. So, I'm looking for a
replacement for that.
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