Safety
Dear Safety Guards:
Nobody has written about it in themail, but last week’s terrorist
attacks on London and the frequent precautionary evacuations of
congressional buildings here make it a necessary topic. Do you feel safe
in the city? Has it affected your lives? Do you use public
transportation and go to public events as frequently as ever, or have
you cut back and stayed closer to home? Do you feel that the federal and
city governments are taking enough precautions against terrorist attacks
here or, alternatively, do you feel the threat to this city is
exaggerated and the precautions overdone? If you feel that some disaster
will inevitably happen here eventually, are you confident that the
federal and local government agencies will respond as efficiently and
well as they did in London? As residents, do we need to demand more and,
if so, more of what? What have you seen, what do you know, how do you
feel about it?
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Update on the New Howard University Hospital
and Medical Center
Frank Zampatori, frankz05@att.net
This past Thursday, July 7, at Kelly Miller Middle School in Ward 7,
an important meeting occurred on a topic that will have a great impact
on our city. It was sponsored by Ward 7 Councilmember Vincent Gray and
attended by the mayor, the City Administrator, the President and Vice
President of Howard University, seven councilmembers including the
chairman, and between 275 and 300 residents, a majority of whom were
from Ward 7. The topic was the creation of the proposed Howard
University National Capital Medical Center on Reservation 13 in Ward 6,
between Independence Avenue, SE, and the proposed Burke Street, SE,
extension, adjacent to the construction site for St. Coletta School.
There has been an almost complete lack of information about the content
and purpose of this meeting in the printed and televised media since
this meeting occurred.
During the 2 1/2 hour meeting, a wealth of information was presented
by the City Administrator and the President of Howard University, and
there was a question and answer period with audience members for the
last hour. I will attempt to provide you with some salient points of the
discussion. 1) The Howard University National Capital Medical Center
will include a 250-bed all-digital hospital with all private rooms on
nine acres of land on Reservation 13. 2) The facility will include the
hospital proper, plus additional sections designated for medical/doctors
offices, diagnostic testing, “research,” and residential treatment
programs for substance abuse treatment and mental health treatment. 3)
It is projected that the hospital will primarily draw its patients from
Ward 7, northern Ward 8, southern portion of Ward 5, eastern Ward 6
north of East Capitol Street, and Prince George’s County in Maryland.
(PG County is now identified as a service area for the new Hospital.) 4)
The nine acres will be leased by the District to Howard University for
$1.00 a year for 99 years, similar to the arrangement with St. Coletta
School. 5) The hospital is to be a level 1 trauma center with a
full-service hospital that will include a “healthy patient mix of
those with insurance and those who are subsidized.” 6) The District’s
total available hospital beds among all of the city’s hospitals will
not increase, because 250 beds, which is the number of beds in the new
hospital, will be removed from use at other hospitals. In other words,
available hospital beds will need to reconfigured citywide. 7) It was
clear from the discussion and Q and A that the current Howard University
Hospital on Georgia Avenue, NW, will cease to exist in its present form
at some point in the future, and at best will continue to function as an
ambulatory care center with no inpatient beds. 8) The City Administrator
is prepared to present to the city council on October 1, 2005, a
contractual and financial agreement between the city and Howard
University. 9) The city is committed to funding 50 percent of the
building costs, which is estimated to be a direct cost to the city of at
least $200 million. 10) Howard University will own and operate the
complex. 11) The contract will not call for a future DC subsidy, but the
mayor made it clear that if some financial shortfalls arose in the
future in specific program areas, the city would step in to fill the
void. 12) There was a section on the percentage of projected patient mix
according to those with insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, age, and no
insurance. Unfortunately, the City Administrator went through the
figures so fast, I was unable to write them down. This information is
needed in part to help determine the financial viability of the
hospital.
There were a few other points I would like to mention. Several
speakers from the audience who were alumni of Howard were concerned
about the University’s ability to carry out this project without
negatively impacting the financial well-being of the University as a
whole. Also, it was clear from the comments of the program speakers that
this topic had moved to an emotional and political level, with the
selling point being that Ward 7 needed a hospital “East of the
Anacostia River” — even though the proposed hospital is in Ward 6,
west of the Anacostia River, on Reservation 13. And finally, many
speakers from the audience supported the idea of a new hospital but were
concerned about the overall cost and scope of the project, and felt they
needed more information. Councilmember David Catania will conduct an
oversight hearing on the “Status of the National Capital Medical
Center” to be held this Wednesday, July 13 at 10:00 a.m. in the DC
Council Chambers, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, 5th floor. If you wish
to testify in person or present written testimony, contact Benjamin
Young via E-mail at byoung@dccouncil.us
or phone 724-8170 by close of business on July 11.
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A Quick Fix for Metro’s Financial Problems
Larry Seftor, larry underscore seftor .the757 at
zoemail.net
In the Post article on Saturday about the new Circulator bus [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/08/AR2005070801803.html],
it is noted that the bus service is being outsourced to a private firm,
First Transit, rather than Metro. It seems that First Transit can
operate the busses for $57 an hour, rather than the $76 that Metro would
charge — a savings of fully 25 percent. I suggest that Metro should
take this lesson and outsource its bus operations. Private industry is
moving to outsourcing for many of the same reasons that would lead to
savings for Metro. The fact that Metro is part of the public sector does
not mean that it should not do the same. While First Transit might not
be able to handle the full Metro bus fleet, some private firm would be
able to do the job. Given the current financial status of the Metro
system, it would be irresponsible not to pursue this option.
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Evaluating Performance
Ralston Cox, Dupont Circle, ralston.cox@verizon.net
A brief squib in Thursday’s District Extra section of The
Washington Post caught my eye, and I wanted to make sure others saw
it [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/06/AR2005070601069_2.html].
Mayoral spokeswoman Sharon Gang was asked about the District’s
delivery of the glossy twenty-page “Summery Fun Guide” to DC
households in the last week of June (yes, folks, the last week of
June!). When asked about why the publication came out so late in the
summer, “long after many parents had made their summer camping
arrangements,” Ms. Gang said that it took so long because it
incorporates information from a variety of nonprofit and city agencies.
But the quote of the day; from Ms. Gang: “The fact that it came out
with very few mistakes is a triumph.” Let’s see now. Get it out too
late to really be of use, get it out with at least some — but only a
“few” — mistakes and the city declares it a triumph. Yessirree,
that’s a surefire way to evaluate performance — and get nothing but
the usual mediocrity, at best.
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Gun Control Petition
Bell Clement, 2024944014 at verizon dot net
My gun-control activist brother in California has sent this petition
— access it at http://www.petitiononline.com/s1082/petition.html
— calling for enforcement of the District’s gun control laws and
respect for local democracy. Please have a look, sign on if you are
able, and circulate as widely as you see fit.
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Possible DC Parking Ticket Scam
Gabe Goldberg, gabe at gabegold dot com
Dana Miller [themail, July 6] reported receiving notices from the
Department of Motor Vehicles for failure to pay two separate tickets
that she never received. I received a similar notice. In my case, I was
parked in violation of alternate-side-of-street signs — but there was
no ticket on my car. I paid the ticket’s face value when I received
the nonpayment notice, enclosing a letter explaining that I’d never
seen the ticket. A while later I received an even nastier letter
demanding money but showing that I owed $0! So someone likely entered
part of the necessary info — marking the ticket “paid but not fully
satisfied” or some such. So I wrote another letter, enclosing a copy
of the first; we’ll see what happens. Maybe I should have enclosed a
check for $0 marked “Payment in full for ticket #xxxxxxx.”
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I publicly apologize for my unpleasant posting to Mr. Bull in the
last issue of themail (July 6). I could have made my point without being
so confrontational. Yes, my postings are negative, but they are born of
seventeen years of suffering at the hands of a corrupt and incompetent
city government whose only interest is to squeeze money out of its
citizens. I phoned Gary and asked him to yank the letter, but obviously
he got the message too late.
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Broad Generalizations
Anne-Marie Bairstow, annemariebairstow at hotmail
In response to Bryce Suderow’s posting in the July 6 issue of
themail: I’ve lived here fifteen years and been a subscriber to
themail for a while, and I definitely do not agree that "none of
the city agencies is functional." When you make an overly broad
generalization like that, you weaken your entire case.
Two generalizations I do feel comfortable making: 1) it’s a lot
easier to whine and complain than to actually make some positive change
in this town; it would be better if people concentrated on the latter.
2) Just because someone is new to the District doesn’t mean their
opinion should automatically dismissed -- sometimes a fresh approach is
the best.
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In a final response to Mr. Suderow’s latest letter [“A Positive
Suggestion for the Police,” themail, July 6], I would like to say that
I could not agree more with him that there are definite problems
revolving around the DC Metropolitan Police Department. I have seen
those issues since I first moved to Washington in 1974. I remember the
shame that descended when this city was known internationally as the
murder capital of America, when Rayful Edmund was pathetically revered
by the city’s youth as some sort of persecuted folk hero. Those truly
were awful days, and so many of the systemic problems that beset the
city then — mismanagement, incompetence, corruption, embezzlement,
etc. — still exist. But the answer — as I read it in Mr. Suderow’s
response — is not simply to sit back, “waiting for things to
improve.” It is to stand up, to work with the existing institutions,
to fix them, to work with others who also share such a goal, and to say
that this stuff will not be tolerated and, as it were, to move on. That
is why I do go to community meetings, why I am getting involved. Perhaps
Mr. Suderow is also attending these meetings, I don’t know — that
would certainly be a positive thing.
But along those lines, one thing that is also needed is to get new
blood into the system. If we are going to revitalize Northeast, and do
so respectfully of those who do already live in the area, who also want
change, then it will take cooperation and a considerable sense of hope.
Had I not already been living in this city, were I still only thinking
of moving to Northeast, reading a post where someone derisively and so
paternalistically refers to new residents as “newbies” would not
entice me to proceed. I have never understood that way of thinking,
where those who do have the benefit of experience and supposed wisdom
feel a need to dismiss and denigrate newer members of the community.
That is simply counterproductive nonsense.
Rather than give credence to what one bad cop apparently told Mr.
Suderow about not seeing one drug dealer in five years (nonsense), I am
simply going to assume that he was one of those people, present in any
and all professions, who are simply there for a paycheck. Of course they
are in the MPD: they are everywhere. We have all seen such attitudes;
the answer, however, is not to throw up hands in sarcastic despair. We
do not need to be victims of a system; we do not need to be victims at
all. We need to work to solve our problems. Of all the people in our
neighborhood with whom I have had any contact, Mr. Suderow is the only
person who has done anything other than simply welcome my wife and me
into the area, make us feel we have something to contribute, and tell us
he is glad to have us in the neighborhood. That is a great thing.
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This is to advise that the July 2005 on-line edition has been
uploaded and may be accessed at http://www.intowner.com.
Included are the lead stories, community news items and crime reports,
editorials (including prior months’ archived), restaurant reviews
(prior months’ also archived), and the text from the ever-popular
“Scenes from the Past” feature. Also included are all current
classified ads. The complete issue (along with prior issues back to
March 2002) also is available in PDF file format directly from our home
page at no charge simply by clicking the link provided. Here you will be
able to view the entire issue as it appears in print, including all
photos and advertisements. The next issue will publish on August 12 (the
second Friday of the month, as always). The complete PDF version will be
posted by the preceding night or early that Friday morning at the
latest, following which the text of the lead stories, community news,
and selected features will be uploaded shortly thereafter.
To read this month’s lead stories, simply click the link on the
home page to the following headlines: “Historic Preservation Design
Decisions Seen as Being Unfair and Inconsistent”; “Neighbors
Mobilize to Save Century-Old Ginkgo Tree on Sheridan Circle”;
“Longtime 14th Street Car and Truck Repair Business Sells Property to
Developer.”
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
A View from the Hill, July 14
Brie Hensold, bhenhold@nbm.org
Thursday, July 14, 12:30-1:30 p.m., at the National Building Museum,
401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square stop, Metro Red Line. A View from the
Hill: Reflections on the National Politics of Smart Growth. Who are some
of Congress’s current leaders on livable communities, and what may be
effective strategies and leverage for creating stronger federal
partnerships? Sharing her perspective from six years on Capitol Hill
working for Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D, Third District, Oregon),
Maria Zimmerman, vice president for policy, Reconnecting America and the
Center for Transit Oriented Development, will share her observations
about changing views and opportunities for advancing smart growth
policies in Congress. Ms. Zimmerman, who recently joined the nonprofit
transportation group Reconnecting America, will also highlight the
growing demand for transit-oriented communities and new provisions
within the current federal transportation reauthorization bill to
strengthen the connection between transit and economic development.
Free. Registration not required.
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CLASSIFIEDS — HELP WANTED
I need someone to design a web page for my father, who owns a
construction company. Please phone me at 262-7709.
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CLASSIFIEDS — RECOMMENDATIONS
I don’t need him this summer (knock on rotting drywall), but I
heartily recommend Clarence Gaines for brickwork, plastering, roof
patches, and lots of other fix-it jobs. You can call Mr. Gaines at
445-3291.
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