Character
Dear Characters:
If you wanted information to help you understand Mayor Anthony A.
Williams's character, you had two choices last week. You could have read
Harry Jaffe's airbrushed puff piece in February's Washingtonian,
from which all hints of criticism and all attempts at objective
reporting have been carefully eliminated. Or you could have read two
pieces of real journalism, Marc Fisher's devastating columns in the Washington
Post (Tuesday's “After the Killing: A Mother Waits in Silent
Anguish,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50944-2004Jan26.html,
and Thursday's “Sullying the Grave of a Slain Child,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57991-2004Jan28.html).
If you haven't read Fisher's columns yet, you need to now. Here's my
inadequate summary. In Tuesday's column, Fisher outlined the case of
Jahkema Princess Hansen, a 14-year-old girl who lived in the drug
infested Sursum Corda housing complex. Hansen may or may not have
witnessed a drug murder, but the police certainly gave her neighbors the
impression that they believed she did. As a result, she was killed, and
Fisher reprimanded Mayor Williams, MPD Chief Ramsey, and others in city
government for not expressing any sympathy for her and for not visiting
her bereaved mother. The day after Fisher's first column was published,
the mayor visited Hansen's mother in Sursum Corda. But it was already
too late for him to do the right thing because, as Fisher wrote in his
Thursday column, by then the mayor and Tony Bullock, his press
secretary, had been busy smearing and slandering Princess Hansen and her
family. Bullock, who does nothing without the approval of the mayor,
called reporters to spread the true story that two of Hansen's brothers
were in jail on drug charges and the lie that she herself had a
year-and-a-half-old child. (She had no children.) Williams told a
meeting of businessmen, without proof, that Princess Hansen was trying
to cut a deal with neighborhood drug dealers.
The mayor's apologists defend his and Bullock's actions. They argue
that the Hansens, after all, are not our kind of people; they don't
deserve our sympathy. And they argue that Bullock and the mayor spoke
off the record, that they were trying to keep secret their roles in the
campaign to smear and malign Princess Hansen and the Hansen family. The
mayor's apologists argue that the real disgrace is Fisher's, and that he
should not have exposed them as the fountainhead of the effort to, as
Fisher wrote, “sully the grave of a slain child.” I don't share the
apologists' sympathy for the mayor and Bullock. Their instinctive
reaction to the murder of a fourteen-year-old girl was to vilify her and
to defame her name. That is the measure of their character, and
scandalmongers, especially those who would use their positions of power
and privilege to crush the powerless at the time of their deepest
tragedy, do not deserve our sympathy. It is they who are not our kind of
people.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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The Washington Post’s Shaky School
Policy
Ed Dixon, Georgetown Reservoir, jedxn@erols.com
The city's influential Washington Post either doesn't
understand how the Districts' public schools work or the paper is as
intent on telling the schools what to do as are the mayor, the council,
and the Board of Education. The Post has probably reported more
dirt on DCPS than any other institution in the city. But with all the
investigating that Post reporters have done, one would think its
editorial opinions would be more stable regarding DCPS. During last
years budget season, the editorial page decried DCPS' proposed
increase to its budget and encouraged city leaders to pursue vouchers as
educational policy. Once Education Secretary Paige made it clear that
vouchers would support religious instruction, the Post editorial
page felt compelled to waiver in support. And again this December when
major layoffs were brewing, the Post editorial page redirected city
leaders to find some money to cover costs that the school system had
asked for a year before.
In the last week, the Post editorial page ran two pieces on
DCPS' interim superintendent, Dr. Elfreda Massie. The first one seemed a
snide and indirect attack on her and her supporters on the Board of
Education. Massie had told the Post earlier that she was very interested
in a long term position as superintendent of DCPS. Massie started her
thirty-year career in education as a elementary classroom teacher in
Baltimore County, moving up into administrative posts as she earned her
master's and doctorate respectively at John Hopkins and the University
of Maryland. The Post editorial listed a number of qualifications it was
sure were unnecessary: “education insider,” “brainy academic,”
“visionary,” “thin skinned shrinking violet,” and “classroom
teacher.”
By week's end, Massie withdrew her name from the superintendent
search that had begun. This sudden turn around drew an immediate
response from the editorial page. “If Ms. Massie cannot be persuaded
to stay on and lend her considerable talents to the school reform effort
in some other major capacity, the public school system will be the real
loser.” The Post dodged blame by saying, “no self respecting
administrator will want to take on a post that is the focus of competing
governing authorities' efforts to see who can exert the greatest
influence on the school system.” Unfortunately for the sake of full
disclosure, the Washington Post left its editorial board out of
the equation. The editors claim that “many of the school system's
problems are internal and self-induced,” but one has to wonder.
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Help Fight Back Against Graffiti
Don Squires, dsquires(at)erols.com
A few months ago, the Washington Post reported that two men
were arrested in the act of spray painting graffiti on a building on
Florida Avenue, NW. The two men, ages 21 and 22, who live in Colesville
and Beltsville respectively and who are gainfully employed, apparently
get their kicks by plastering their "tags" on as many DC
properties as they can. Their tags are not ornate but they are very
recognizable — they are “NORES” and “KOMA.” This is not the
first arrest for these particular vandals. They were arrested once
before for vandalizing Metrorail cars and were given community service
as a punishment. Their current case is now pending in District Superior
Court. I have been in touch with the Assistant US Attorney handling the
case who said that it would be helpful to collect photographic evidence
of these vandals' "art work" to be used to help guide the
judge at the eventual sentencing hearing. Anyone willing to help is
welcome to take and E-mail me pictures of their work. To be useful, the
pictures should be only of these particular graffiti vandals — that
is, only those that portray the tags “NORES” and “KOMA.” They
should also be taken to show the entire building, so that the judge can
plainly see that these are each different instances (and not just a
hundred pictures of the same wall). Finally, it would help to record the
address or location of the building and the date the picture was taken.
I don't have an estimate on when this case is likely to be resolved.
Obviously, the sooner I can collect the pictures the better. For anyone
really interested in going the extra mile, we could also use some
letters from community leaders or business persons who have been
victimized by these or other vandals to help demonstrate that graffiti
is not simply an eyesore but has real economic effects for small
business owners and DC residents.
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Guidance on Tax Preparation for Low- and
Moderate-Wage Workers
Susie Cambria, scambria@dckids.org
The DC Earned Income Tax Credit Campaign has prepared a one-page
information flier entitled “Don’t Pay to Get Your Money, Have Your
Taxes Done for Free!” This piece is designed to arm DC residents with
the information they need to make an informed decision about getting
their taxes prepared. While the DC EITC Campaign is promoting the use of
free tax prep sites, we know that these sites cannot begin to help
everyone who is a low- or moderate-wage earner. So, for those who decide
to go to a paid preparer, we offer the following advice: 1) choose a
preparer who has a permanent office and will be around if there is a
problem with your tax return. Ask friends and neighbors who they use and
trust. Also, the preparer should be properly trained. Ask how recently
the preparer took classes. 2) Ask about the fees up front, before the
tax return is prepared. Ask if there are any costs for additional
schedules (like the EITC) or forms. Ask about fees for refund loans. 3)
Pay preparation and filing fees by cash or check instead of asking the
preparer to take the fees out of your refund. 4) Avoid anyone who
suggests you lie or fudge figures. You will be responsible for errors.
5) Do not sign a tax return that is blank or completed in pencil. Sign
the return only after you have reviewed it with your preparer. 6) Make
sure the preparer signs your completed return and includes their address
and Employer Identification Number (EIN) or Social Security Number. This
is required by law! 7) Make copies of all the documents you give the
preparer and get a copy of your completed return and keep it.
The complete publication is available on-line at http://www.dcfpi.org/eic2003/outreach.htm
(Paid Tax Preparation Information (one-page PDF) or by calling Ann
Pierre at 408-1080.
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Political Action and Property Taxes
William Haskett, gollum@earthlink.net
I wonder if the discussion of property taxes has now matured to the
point where individual viewpoints on it might be translated into an
effective political movement? This would mean trying to discover what
the actual overlaps of arguments occur, and reducing them to a political
(rather than a series of individual statements) position, which might
then be transmitted by one or more reporters to the powers-that-be, or
their surrogates in the media, for wider distribution. The elements of
the situation are relatively clear, I suppose, to everyone: i.e., 1) the
ostensible creation of “wealth” by the increase of market-prices; 2)
the detachment of this “wealth” from current income, so that home
owners have to meet extraordinary tax-increases out of income that is
not related in the least to the increase in the apparent “value” of
their houses in a market place; 3) the determination of government to
maintain its revenues in the face of mounting demands upon them from all
kinds of worthy causes, including community health-needs, the multiple
challenges of urban-education. the advanced decay of many services, not
least among them the public-library system; and 4) the developing crisis
of population-pressure on limited free-space for new housing, linked to
the problem of time-distance for commuters of all kinds.
We even have at least preliminary calculations of the uneven
distribution of benefits from all of this, as well as some from the
solutions presently proposed by the council, mayor, et al. None of this
is quite definitive, and probably cannot be made so, given the divergent
interests involved. But we ought to be able to distinguish agreed upon
numbers from wild guesses. From such a process, we should all take
something. It should be more widely-known perhaps that there is legal
challenge to the manner in which the District's agencies have
used/misused the defects of the present system to create a morass of
confusion. No more than four years ago, we were given a trifold division
of the District and a triennial system of assessment: this was abandoned
for another that ensured that two of the three resulting zones would be
badly (and probably inequitably) affected by the new system of annual
assessment, which was applied before the triennial system had even gone
through one complete cycle.
The arithmetic consequences of all of this were subject to a hugely
optimistic application of compounding: it was discovered that a 25
percent cap on actual increases in taxes per year (independent of the
assessments arrived at by statistical extrapolation) would double the
taxes in two to three years. In an effort to deal with widespread
discontent over this outcome, we now have a cap of 12 percent, which
doubles them in five to six years. All without reference to either
income or some system of making the impact progressive, as that term is
normally used. Naturally, what I summarize as common knowledge is a
shorthand for my own views. I have testified on them before Jack Evans
committee. I am impressed by the intelligence of recent comments in
themail on these issues, and wished simply to suggest that we might try
to meet to work out a more comprehensive and workable set of comments
that reflect something of this apparent agreement on at least the
central issues. This might then be put into a form (with defensible
calculation of impact and effect) that would spread further than
individual comment ever can. Who knows, we might then reduce to order at
least one part of the overall confusion that is all that comes to mind
in the discussion of the government and administration of the District
of Columbia, and help to give it a real political form.
###############
Other Property Tax Ideas
Peter Luger, Dupont Circle, luger p j at george town dot
edu
I agree with Nora Bawa that the property tax system should not be one
size fits all. (This assumes that the DC government is capable of a
system that has different rules for different situations, but that's a
different argument. This posting assumes the government is capable of
running the city.) Perhaps homes should be reassessed at the time of
sale, so the new owner is paying the correct amount of taxes and knows
from the start what he or she is getting into. It might be necessary to
add something to closing costs (maybe make this part of the recordation
tax, for example) to offset the cost of reassessment. This could be paid
by the seller. The assumption would be that the seller has, over so many
years, had reasonable property tax increases, but would be willing to
pay a few hundred dollars at the time of sale for the true reassessment,
which would be a lot less than the tax savings on the real property
value. Then, the buyer takes on the higher, true tax burden into the
future. This would be in addition to a reasonable reassessment every
three years for all homes. Over the course of time, the assessed value
of homes would level out so most were assessed correctly and the
reasonable increase at periodic reassessments would have some basis in
reality. There should also be a mechanism where home values could not be
assessed higher if there is a depressed market. The government may not
agree to this because it would be at the exact same time they'd be
looking to increase their revenue. Hopefully the days of decreased
property value are gone, even if the days of ridiculously inflated value
go away.
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I was reassessed at a high 14.6 percent last year, and again this
year at an additional 22 percent. Now that the cap is 12 percent, can I
go back to the Office of Tax and Revenue and ask them to redo my last
2004 assessment?
[The council-passed bill does not affect or lower the property
assessments; it only caps the amount of additional tax that can be
charged an owner-occupant. — Gary Imhoff]
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Good Old All-American Denial
Larry Seftor, Larry underscore Seftor at compuserve dot
com
In downplaying my comments about the shooting in Friendship Heights
Richard Layman attempts to analyze the problem away. If I read between
the lines, the essence of his argument about why we should not be scared
is that shootings happen between “those people” and don't affect
“us people,” even if the shots fired are in our midst. I reject this
argument on three counts. First, while I didn't know the cook from
Booeymonger, I did know a lawyer who was shot in Friendship Heights. He
did not know his assailant and doesn't fall into one of Mr. Layman's
at-risk groups. Second, I reject the concept that we can tolerate
shootings as long as they are restricted to particular groups of people
or particular places. Suggesting that we can seems barbaric to me.
Third, I believe in what Jim Nathanson called preventative visibility.
People will be less likely to use guns in an area with persistent,
continual police patrolling. We pay enough in taxes to support it. Other
locales have it. There is no reason we should live in a heightened state
of risk because we don't have it. Frankly Mr. Laymen, I don't really
care about the “etiology of crime.” I do care about the police
keeping me safe.
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Planning
Edward Cowan, Friendship Heights, edcowan1114@yahoo.com
On January 29, Gary Imhoff wrote, in part: “Good city planning is
done to benefit the residents of the city, and involves the citizens in
the process of planning from the very beginning. When planning is done
right, it is done from the bottom up; it starts with and builds on the
needs and desires of the residents.” Without commenting specifically
on Anacostia or Wisconsin Avenue or any other project, let me offer a
brief reaction. As philosophy, this is fine. But as a schematic, a plan
for doing something, it is naive and insufficient. In a city that is
growing — at least, a city whose leaders seek growth — and changing,
“the residents” alone are ill-equipped to initiate planning for
development or renewal. They lack knowledge — what might be
economically feasible, who the prospective commercial tenants are, which
real estate entrepreneurs are interested, what sort of tax deals the
city is willing to cut, where water and sewer capacity can be expanded,
and so on. Expert knowledge is needed. Some local activists hate
experts, and super democrats will deride them, but they have knowledge
that is essential.
Moreover, ascertaining the collective will of the residents is no
simple matter. Listening at an ANC meeting is not sufficient. Most of
the neighbors who come are the “agins,” the people who want nothing
to change, no temporary disruption — and construction is disruptive
— and no modification of the character of a neighborhood. Do they
speak for everyone? Not likely. Those who favor development or who have
no opinion don’t come to those meetings. If the city is to observe
Gary Imhoff’s stricture literally, it must survey the residents —
all of them. What questions to ask them and how to summarize or
synthesize their replies are matters that will provoke more controversy.
(How questions are phrased and the sequence in which they are asked
influence responses.)
In sum, when city planners take soundings in a neighborhood, there
must be a predicate — a proposal of some kind to which people can
react. The notion that the process can begin spontaneously at the grass
roots, with the neighbors, appeals to the Jeffersonian democrat in each
of us but does not offer a useful guide to planning for tomorrow.
###############
I don't know anything about the baseball stadium, but as an ordinary
citizen I have been involved with the Office of Planning and their
efforts toward modernizing our Comprehensive Plan. My experience is they
have more than gone out of their way to involve every aspect of the city
and federal government in an almost exhausting effort to be consultative
and inclusive. I have come away from that experience with great
admiration for our Office of Planning. My opinion is that we are
fortunate to have such a team working on behalf of our city.
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Planning in DC: We've Met the Enemy and He Is
Us
Len Sullivan, lsnarpac@bellatlantic.net
Pogo's famous quote when the denizens of the Okefenokee Swamp felt
threatened by imaginary intruders seems to apply here. Some DC residents
feel that whenever they don't get their way they should angrily attack
their elected officials (or even recall them), and block urban progress
however they can. This shows a deep misunderstanding of the
representative democratic process in a free market society, and the
compromises it requires. Gary Imhoff reinforces this by asserting that
“good planning is done from the bottom up; (starting) with and
(building) upon the needs and desires of the residents.” I find this
patently misleading. Clearly, the “needs” of some residents will
always conflict with the “desires” of others, and there are many key
stakeholders beyond residents. These include the thriving commercial
businesses and their employees (that pay a good chunk of DC's bills);
the federal government and its varied camp followers (the only reason DC
exists, and doesn't resemble Camden, NJ); and all US citizens who expect
their national capital city to reflect the best of our national
lifestyle, not just the pettiness of single-purpose activists.
DC leaders are in the tricky business of taking just enough money
from some to meet just enough needs of others plus the short- and
long-term needs of the city as a whole. NIMBYs, NOOMPs (not out of my
pocket), DIMWOEs (do it my way or else), and ICDIBAs (I could do it
better alone) seem to have little interest, understanding, or experience
in the city's fiscal needs. DC has way more than its share of the
region's poor, attracts too few middle-class entrepreneurs, and gets
most of its local revenues from wealthy residents and firms who focus on
national and global affairs, not grubby urban controversies. DC depends
more on Federal handouts than any of the states it wistfully aspires to
be, and does less to carry out those functions.
To answer a frustrated Sue Hemberger, the real problem with DC's
leadership and those hired to plan our capital city's physical and
economic future is that they seem preoccupied with humoring residents'
whims. Those legally picked to drive this very special moving train
focus too much on a few riders bouncing in their seats, and too little
on analyzing, explaining, and doing what it takes to keep the engine
running and the tracks clear, as Congress and the world watch!
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Floral Arrangements, Monday, February 2 and 9, 6:00 p.m., Capitol
View Neighborhood Library, 5001 Central Avenue, SE. A free six-week
class on how to make floral arrangements. Public contact: 202/645-0755.
Cleveland Park Film Club, Tuesday, February 3, 6:30 p.m., Cleveland Park
Neighborhood Library, 3310 Connecticut Avenue, NW. Come see the 1971
Joseph Losey directed film The Go-Between, starring Alan Bates.
Public contact: 282-3080. With These Hands, Tuesday, February 3, 7:00
p.m., Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Library, 3160 16th Street, NW. Writers
Danny Strickland, Jomo Graham, Lisa Pegram and others will speak about
the influences of key political and literary figures in their lives and
in their writing. Public contact: 671-0200.
African American History and Culture, Tuesdays, February 3, 10, and
24, 7:00 p.m., Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, 901 G Street,
NW, Room A-5. Historical lecture series on African Americans presented
by area scholars. February 3, House Negroes in the Attic: Neo-Black
Servants of the Neo-Confederate Movement by Asa Gordon, who has
investigated the roles of African Americans in the Union and Confederate
armies. February 10, When God Was a Woman: The African Origins of
Today’s Major Religions presented by Carter Ward, lecturer on a
broad range of topics including Blacks in early Europe and Asia, the
origins of race, and multiculturalism. February 24, Crusade Against
Tyranny: The First World War and the African Diaspora
presented by C.R. Gibbs, author lecturer and historian of the African
Diaspora. Gibbs is the founder of the African History and Culture
Lecture Series, which began in 1989 at the Francis A. Gregory
Neighborhood Library. Public contact: 727-1211.
Poetry Read Here!, Wednesday, February 4, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Memorial Library. Public Library staff will read their favorite poems on
the first Wednesday of each month. Public contact: 727-1281.
2004 Brown Bag Recital Series, Thursday, February 5, 12:00 p.m.,
Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library. Pianist Ralitza Patcheva and
cellist Wassili Popov perform their monthly recital of chamber music.
This performance will feature the music of Bach, Brahms, Martinu and
Corigliano. Public contact: 727-1281.
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Washington Storytellers Theater announces Facing Your Fears, a
workshop with Elizabeth Ellis. Fear is the great "shape
shifter," appearing in our lives in hundreds of ways that sabotage
our progress and happiness. Learn to face them and use them for
heightened artistic development. Elizabeth Ellis is a versatile and
riveting teller of personal, Texas and Appalachian tales for all ages.
She is well known for her stories of heroic women powerfully presented,
and for being an inspiring teacher able to empower others to tell.
Elizabeth first appeared at the National Storytelling Festival in
1981 as part of the Twelve Moons Storytellers, with partner Gayle Ross.
She returned as a solo teller in 1986, and served on the National
Storytelling Association Board from 1994 to 1996. Elizabeth was the
first recipient of the John Henry Faulk Award from the Tejas
Storytelling Association . In 1997, Elizabeth received the circle of
Excellence Award from the National Storytelling Association given to
individuals for their efforts in preserving the art and for setting
standards of excellence in the field of storytelling.
The seminar will be held on Thursday evening, February 19, 7-10 p.m.,
at 8720 Georgia Avenue, Suite 303, Silver Spring, MD 20910. Workshop
fee, $35. Registration, 301-891-1129. For more information, visit http://www.washingtonstorytellers.org.
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DC Independent Film Festival and Seminars,
March 4-11
Vernard Gray, nsaqi@connectdc.com
The DC Independent Film Festival 2004 marks its five-year milestone
with an advocacy forum on March 5-7 at the Embassy Suites Hotel, 4300
Military Road NW (Metro: Friendship Heights, across from the Mazza
Gallerie). If relevance is the imperative for troubled times in the film
and video industry, the DC Independent Film Festival and Market deserves
credit for hosting its Film Industry Advocacy Forum. The forum, to be
held March 5, will bring together industry professionals and policy
makers as part of the annual festival and market. The forum, designed to
discuss pressing issues facing the film and video industry, is a new
programming thrust for DCIFF, which this year hits its five-year
milestone in the recognition and exhibition of independent filmmakers.
DCIFF 2004 runs March 4-11, with screenings, a film market/trade show,
and educational seminars at the Embassy Suites Hotel and area theaters.
For more information, visit http://www.dciff.org or contact Lisa Bass,
726-7228.
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CLASSIFIEDS — FOR SALE
Exercise Equipment at Great Sale Price
Erica Nash, nashee@starpower.net
Eleven aerobics brand new step. and one brand new small exercise
machine. Together $100 or best offer.
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CLASSIFIEDS — WANTED
Cast Iron Radiators
Marguerite Boudreau, margeet@hotmail.com
Cast iron house radiators wanted. Need at least two radiators 2 to 3
ft. wide, but will consider different sizes. Will pick up. Margaret,
332-5968, margeet@hotmail.com.
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CLASSIFIEDS — PERSONALS
Laurie — you dropped out of sight. Where are you? E-mail me.
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CLASSIFIEDS — RECOMMENDATIONS
My chimney on the roof needs new brick. Anyone know a brick/fixer
worker?
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Short Term Child Care/Babysitting Service
Jon Katz, jon@markskatz.com
Please give me your recommendations for quality organizations and
individuals that provide short-term child care/babysitting on-site or
off-site. The child needing this service is nine and lives in Silver
Spring; the service would be needed for regular weekend baby-sitting and
for snow days, etc. I know the best option is to find quality individual
baby-sitters, and I welcome those recommendations, as well.
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