Prudence

Dear Prudentials:

From one city councilmember to another: Montreal’s city councillor Marvin Rotrand has written a letter to Washington, DC’s, city councilmembers warning them about dealing with Major League Baseball, and it’s the wise voice of bitter experience: “I believe that you may find that MLB’s prime interest in Washington is for little more than securing an infusion of public money for a new stadium. I realise Washington’s interests and Montreal’s may not be the same in this matter. However I urge the District of Columbia Council to exercise prudence when dealing with MLB. Washington’s first concern should be its taxpayers and it is far from clear that Washingtonians will be the ones that benefit from paying the entire price for the Expos relocation.” There’s a lot more good advice in Rotrand’s letter (http://www.dcwatch.com/govern/sports041122b.htm), but most of the council has shown itself impervious to good advice in this matter.

This Tuesday there will be a showdown between the prudent councilmembers who put the interests of Washington’s residents and taxpayers first and the reckless, spendthrift councilmembers who put the interests of wealthy sports promoters ahead of their constituents. As things stand, it is likely that the prudent councilmember will be in the minority. It is likely that a majority of the council will pretend that they believe the transparently phony low-ball cost estimates for the ballpark, and will send the clear message to Congress that DC doesn’t need any more federal assistance because this city is so flush with money that it can waste more than a half billion dollars (with the costs rising daily) on the worst deal that any city ever made to get a sports team.

Since these councilmembers are determined not to listen to their constituents, their constituents have only one recourse: return the favor; take names and kick butt the next chance we get.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

###############

Land Costs
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com

Every element of the administration’s estimate of the costs of building a ballpark for Major League Baseball is underestimated, each in its own way. There hasn’t been much public discussion, however, of how the administration minimized its estimate of the cost of purchasing the land for the stadium. The DC Auditor’s letter report on the ballpark (http://www.dcwatch.com/auditor/audit041112.htm) criticizes the $65 million administration estimate, saying that it “was not based on an appraisal of the 67 properties at the proposed South Capitol Street site. An actual appraisal may yield different results. The $65 million estimate appears to be primarily based on a comparison of the sales price of six comparable properties sold between May 2000 and January 2002.” It also concludes that “given the substantial growth of commercial and residential property values in the District, the market value of these properties may be significantly higher than the $65 million that is currently budgeted.”

The mayor’s estimate of $65,000,000, divided by the 5,488,560 square feet in the area that is to purchased, works out to a land value of $11.84 per square foot. However, when the location of the ballpark was announced one lot which is within the stadium’s footprint, on Square 701, was being offered for sale at $40 per square foot. And that isn’t the limit of how much the land values in that area will rise, with or without a ballpark. Councilmember David Catania has noted that all of the area that the city would have to purchase is within what is known as the Buzzard Point-Capitol Gateway Overlay District zoning text and map case (Case No. 96-3/89-1), which has been pending before the Zoning Commission since 1989, and was subsequently amended in 1996. After all these years, this case has been completely settled, and the final order is now resting on the desk of Carol Mitten, the chairman of the Zoning Commission (who is also the Director of the Office of Property Management). When she signs off on the order, the properties within this area will be rezoned from “M,” for industrial uses, to “CR,” for commercial, retail, and residential. This rezoning alone will boost the value of the land substantially. The city cannot escape the cost of this rezoning by simply postponing it, either; since the case has been voted on and settled, any court would see through the postponement as an obvious trick, and disallow any appraisal that did not take the enhanced zoning into account.

The best estimate, therefore, is that the administration’s estimate of $65 million for land acquisition costs is not just low; at a minimum it is less than half of what will be required, and more likely it is just a third or even a quarter of what the city will eventually pay to buy the land for Major League Baseball -- and that’s before adding in the costs of eminent domain litigation.

###############

Hooray for Linda Cropp
Ed T. Barron, edtb@aoldotcom

Linda Cropp has taken a very reasoned approach during the manic drive for bringing a Major League baseball team to Washington. Ms Cropp has suggested that the costs associated with bringing the team to Washington be capped at some level. This will ensure that costs, which will likely rise dramatically as soon as the Council approves the deal, will not be absorbed by the businesses (and ultimately the taxpayers). This is a very sound proposal, and I hope that those on the Council who will vote for bringing the team to DC will recognize the merits of Ms. Cropp’s approach.

###############

The Sound of Money Leaving DC
Ed Dixon, Georgetown Reservoir, jedxn@erols.com

Last summer, Congressman Tom Davis chaired a Congressional committee hearing on the need to increase the federal payment to the DC treasury. Stephen Trautenberg of the DC Chamber of Commerce, Ted Trabue of the Board of Trade, Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institute, and Mayor Anthony Williams all testified that the District needed federal aid to cover infrastructure costs in the areas of public transportation, communication, and education. Local big business leadership has argued that it cannot afford to take on a tax increase locally that would pay for improving these services. Needless to say, Congresswoman Norton’s office claimed a victory for airing DC’s need for additional federal revenues. But realistically, Norton’s office also knew that the measure would never leave committee in a contentious election year.

Last week’s reporting on the Omnibus spending bill (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8674-2004Nov23.html) showed how far the District has to go in lobbying Congress. Both Prince George’s Al Wynn and Fairfax’s Tom Davis’ got tens of millions of federal outlays for Metro and other suburban transportation construction in their counties. Even though Davis feigned support by holding the summer hearing, his county’s tax grab reinforces the current imbalance. With each federal dollar going to the suburbs, this banana republic can rest assured that DC’s political capacity to rally metropolitan support to re-engineer the suburban economic vacuum dwindles. As the local tax burden in the suburbs is reduced by federal outlays, suburban governments can give tax credits to businesses to set up shop outside the District. This scenario leaves District leaders making silly deals that bankroll billionaires just to get their attention and leaves all of us with a sense of false pride in publicly financed projects with little or no return for the city’s residents.

###############

Video Tribute to a Favorite Teacher
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com

In the future it’s going to be more common for students to put on the web video tributes to their favorite teachers. I felt I ought to start the ball rolling on this and created this video tribute to a favorite teacher of mine. Mr. Cappucci, who taught me high school math twenty-five years ago, started teaching high school in 1957. He has no plans to retire (http://dotmac.info/pages/19703). This QuickTime video is 15 minutes in duration and 75 megabytes in file size. It is best viewed with a high speed Internet connection and the Safari or Firefox web browsers. You might need to download QuickTime, which is available for free from http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download.

A few months ago Mr. Cappucci viewed this video from his home with a cable modem Internet connection. In June 2004, we met for lunch for the first time in twenty-five years. He’s simply incredible.

###############

Cell Phone Do Not Call Registry
Erich Martel, ehmartel at starpower dot net

A directory of cell phone numbers will soon be published, and all consumers will have access to it. This will open the doors for solicitors to call you on your cell phones, using up precious minutes that we pay lots of money for.

The Federal Trade Commission has set up a “do not call” list. It is called a cell phone registry. To be included on the “do not call” list, you must call from the number you wish to register. The number is 1-888-382-1222, or you can go to their web site at http://www.donotcall.gov and add your number to the do not call list. Give this to friends who have cell phones.

###############

Impressions of the French
Ed T. Barron, edtb@aol.com

It only took a week in the Normandy Coast region of France, two weeks ago, to alter my opinions of the French people. We spent no time in Paris where anti-anybody attitudes seem to prevail, but opted to tour the beautiful region of northwest France, including a tour of the Normandy beaches. We were on our own and found only two people in eight days who spoke (or even really understood) English. Despite our lack of local lingual skills in this lovely country, the people we met, and especially those we needed some help from, were most helpful, warm, and friendly. Arm and hand signals, including wringing, seemed to work just fine. My impressions of the French people have been dramatically altered.

###############

Dick White and the Emperor with No Clothes
Gabe Goldberg. gabe at gabegold dot com

[Larry Seftor, themail, November 24, wrote:] “Dick White did not come lately to Metro; he oversaw a good part of Metro’s decline. The Metro system has a solid design and a booming ridership. All it needs now is a manager that brings more than a ‘reputation’ to the table.”

It also needs reliable and nonpolitical long-term funding for operations, maintenance, and capital construction. Any Metro manager, no matter how good, is constrained by what local jurisdictions (and occasionally the Feds) will pay for. Right?

I’m of course not defending an environment where parking lot clerks get to keep the proceeds, where Metro runs out of the cards it’s just made mandatory for parking, where trains bang into each other. But the problem is broader than the one person running Metro; it’s that the region has skimped on supporting the system. And that problem is broader than jurisdictions simply "skimping" on Metro. They do face other problems, have other priorities. If the reality is that there’s not enough money to do everything necessary (roads, schools, cops, fire departments also need money and have constituencies that think that those areas are shortchanged) maybe everything won’t get done to everyone’s satisfaction. At least in a climate where politicians are elected on the basis of how little taxes they’ll impose. And where citizens vote against taxing themselves to pay — for example — for transportation.

###############

Williams’s Frequent Absences from DC
Doreen P. Conrad, dpconrad_dcwriter@yahoo.com

As an activist DC resident since 1971, I remember complaints about the frequent travels of all of our mayors. Who can forget how many times the Mayor for Life was AWOL on his frequent trips to Africa (which he said were for business generation, though never realized) and never letting anything get in the way of attending Super Bowls, often unapologetically absent during historic snow storms, floods in the bottoms of Anacostia and Georgetown, hurricanes, and other natural and unnatural disasters? Pratt was not much better, attending “summits” in the Caribbean and taking long vacations in the summer playgrounds of Massachusetts and elsewhere at other times of the year.

I’m no fan of Williams, but frequent travel is apparently a perk of Mayorhood (-dom?) not only here but throughout the US, despite lack of confirmation that such thinly disguised boondoggles do the city and its residents any good.

###############

Mayoral Travel
Tom Sherwood, tom.sherwood@nbcuni.com

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I want to share a reasonably modest observation. On NBC4 and in The Northwest Current, the mayor’s frequent travel is a two-year-old story. I think the Lori Montgomery-Yolanda Woodlee story in The Washington Post was very good (except for just quoting one person — frequently quoted Adrian Fenty). Still, well over a year ago, in columns and conversation, I told the mayor and his staff who complained about my stories that they could dismiss one reporter’s frequent chronicling of the mayor’s travel. But I said he and they would never get out from under the criticism once the Post began writing about it. And now, that has come to pass. Even the City Paper’s Loose Lips gently has made fun of my reporting on this subject.

This is the bottom line. The mayor and his staff may find a credible and compelling reason for every one of his trips. It’s not the individual trips themselves, but the totality of them. That’s something the mayor’s administration has yet to grasp. It will only get worse as some important trip after another comes up because the mayor in December becomes the president of the National League of Cities. Marion Barry was notorious for going out of town and getting into trouble. Sharon Pratt Kelly (Dixon) was not-fondly known as Air Dixon for her frequent trips. And both tried, like the current mayor, to justify their travel by saying a) they were only a phone call away and, b) that they only took a fraction of the trips on which they were invited. It’s a no-sale.

And now Williams. I think we joked a few times in the Notebook column that the mayor — who doesn’t own a home in DC — should get an RV. Make it easier on everyone. The mayor says he often travels on weekends, not week days. But I don’t remember the mayor running for election or reelection saying, “Elect Me and I’ll be your Monday-to-Friday mayor.”

###############

CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

DC Public Library Events, December 1-2
Debra Truhart, debra.truhart@dc.gov

All events at Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library, 901 G Street, NW:

Wednesday, December 1, 12:00 p.m. Main Lobby. Library officials will be joined by Dr. I. King Jordan, president of Gallaudet University and Alice L. Hagemeyer, founder of Friends of Libraries for Deaf Action and the first Librarian for the Deaf Community at the D.C. Public Library at this first of several yearlong events in recognition of the Library’s outreach programs to the Deaf community. The program will also feature Dr. Robert Davila, senior vice president of Communications Service for the Deaf and Rita Corey, drama teacher at Maryland School for the Deaf. Public contact: 727-2145 voice or TTY.

Wednesday, December 1, 1:00 p.m. DC Public Library staff will read their favorite poems. Public contact: 727-1281.

Wednesday, December 1, through Sunday, December 5, Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library. The Embassy of Sweden presents an exhibit on the life and work of Swedish author Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002), creator of Pippi Longstocking, Emil, The Brothers Lionheart, and Karlson on the Roof. The Swedish Institute created this innovative exhibit. Children’s furniture has been provided by IKEA in College Park, Maryland. Public contact: 727-1183.

Thursday, December 2, 12:00 p.m. Room A-5. 2004 Brown Bag Recital Series. Cellist Vasily Popov and Pianist Ralitza Patcheva will perform Stravinsky, Liszt, and Korchmar. Audience members may bring their lunch. Public contact: 727-1285.

Thursday, December 2, 6:30 p.m., Room 307. Veteran journalist Burt Solomon will discus his new book, The Washington Century: Three Families and the Shaping of the Nation’s Capital. Solomon’s book traces the political evolution of Washington, D.C. through the lives of three insider families: Boggs, Cafritz and Hobson. Solomon is a contributing editor to the National Journal. The Washingtoniana Division of the D.C. Public Library sponsors the program. Public contact: 727-1213.

###############

National Building Museum Events, December 1
Brie Hensold, bhenhold@nbm.org

At the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square stop, Metro Red Line.

December 1, 6, 15, 10:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m. Holiday shopping days. Get into the holiday spirit at the National Building Museum! Members enjoy a special 20 percent discount in our acclaimed Museum Shop.

Wednesday, December 1, 6:30-8:00 p.m. Design Like You Give a Damn. Architecture for Humanity (AFH) founder Cameron Sinclair will discuss the organization’s response to global, social, and humanitarian crises through architecture and design. On this World AIDS Day, he will announce the winners of AFH’s competition for an athletic facility in Somkhele, South Africa, which has one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in the world. $12 museum members, $17 nonmembers, $5 students. Prepaid registration required.

###############

Robert Bobb at Cleveland Park, December 7
George Idelson, g.idelson@verizon.net

City Administrator Robert Bobb will address the Cleveland Park Citizens Association on Tuesday evening, 6:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Park Library, Connecticut Avenue and Macomb Street, NW. CPCA’s monthly meetings are open to the public. For more about CPCA, visit http://www.ClevelandParkIsUs.org.

###############

Stories About Winter, December 14
Brad Hills, bradhills@washingtonstorytellers.org

Washington Storytellers Theater presents: The SpeakEasy open mic featuring Frostbite and Hot Chocolate: Stories About Winter. Open Mic brightens up the coming of old man winter with this evening of tales to freeze you up or thaw you out. Host Kelly Quinn welcomes Wallace Boyd and Kathy McGregor to the stage and then opens up the mic to the audience.

At HR-57 Center for the Preservation of Jazz and Blues, 1610 14th Street, NW, between Corcoran and Q Streets, on Tuesday, December 14, 8:00 p.m. Ticket Price $5 (corkage: $3 per person); purchase at the door (doors open at 7:30 p.m.). Street parking; Metro Red Line (Dupont) or Green Line (U Street/Cardoza). On the first of each month, we will begin taking sign-ups for that month’s Open Mic. Call the WST Office to reserve a space.

###############

CLASSIFIEDS — FOR SALE

Toyota Corolla
Charles Stevenson, anjinsan@geotrees.com

For sale in outer Annandale/Fairfax, but available for seeing in northwest DC: a 2000 Toyota Corolla 4-door Sedan with about 65,000 miles on it. This car has automatic transmission, four-speaker stereo with cassette player, powerful AC, and gets about 40 MPG on the highway (city/mixed mileage is lower). Very easy to park. Well maintained, with one owner. Color: a light champagne. This car does have some scratches on the body; its owner is an elder who can no longer drive. Price: $5500. More information? Please call her sons at 703-425-5343 or 571-332-5755.

###############

themail@dcwatch is an E-mail discussion forum that is published every Wednesday and Sunday. To subscribe, to change E-mail addresses, or to switch between HTML and plain text versions of themail, use the subscription form at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/subscribe.htm. To unsubscribe, send an E-mail message to themail@dcwatch.com with “unsubscribe” in the subject line. Archives of past messages are available at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail.