Game Playing
Dear Lobbyists:
This commenting stuff sure is easy when all you have to do is point
to what somebody else wrote and say, “Yes, that’s right.” Colbert
King had it right in his column on “How the Game Gets Played in DC”
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/20/AR2006012001635.html).
He gets it right again in “How the Game Gets Played in DC, Part 2” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/27/AR2006012701209.html).
In this column, King writes again about “the corrosive effect of money
being introduced into DC politics.” He writes, “There is simply no
way that a resident of the District can know in a timely fashion how
money is influencing elections for mayor, council or the board of
education. Until a fuss was kicked up last year, the identities of
contributors to a candidate’s exploratory committee did not have to be
disclosed. To get an idea of how secretive the process had become —
and the reach of special interests — consider that when Orange was
pressured to disclose the identity of donors to his exploratory
committee, he had to return $100,000 from contributors who refused to
allow their names to be made public. Who were they? Orange told The
Post they were Washington area business people. Tracking the
activities of lobbyists is equally difficult. Their reports to the
Office of Campaign Finance (OCF), for example, are skimpy on details,
usually posted well after the fact, and disclose as little as possible.
Even then it takes a while before the short-staffed OCF can get around
to posting the reports on its Web site so that citizens can see for
themselves. As for the OCF actively analyzing the reports and checking
them for accuracy — I’d rather rely on the Three Blind Mice.”
King recommends much tighter restrictions on lobbyists and stricter
reporting requirements for them, but is pessimistic that the city
council would pass them. He’s right; neither the mayor nor the city
council really wants to control the influence of money in our
government; they certainly don’t want to limit the contributions they
receive. Besides, if lobbyists were required to report, they would
simply deny they were lobbyists, and in our current system they would
get away with it. When Mayor Williams was sued by a campaign consultant
for not paying his bill, the mayor was represented by Mark Policy, of
the real estate law and lobbying firm Greenstein DeLorme and Luchs. Both
the firm and Policy himself were registered with the Office of Campaign
Finance as lobbyists, and Policy told the opposing counsel and affirmed
to the court that he was representing the mayor pro bono. That
would make his representation of the mayor an illegal gift from a
lobbyist to an elected official. But Policy said that he and his firm
weren’t lobbyists, even though they had registered as lobbyists and
advertised they were lobbyists. (They still advertise that they are
lobbyists; see http://www.gdllaw.com/index_files/page0023.html:
“the firm represents clients, as a registered lobbyist, on District of
Columbia legislative matters. This representation, which relates in
significant part to real estate and taxation issues, includes advocacy
before both the Executive Branch and the Council of the District of
Columbia.”) Policy argued that he and the firm received no income from
lobbying; they charged their clients for legal work, and did all of
their lobbying pro bono. Both the OCF and the Board of Elections
and Ethics bought that argument, and accepted that neither Policy nor
Greenstein DeLorme were lobbyists. (Policy also argued that he was
charging the mayor for his legal work in the case, and had merely misled
the opposing attorney and the court by claiming that he wasn’t.) That
means that DC’s lobbying law is completely toothless -- a lobbyist
just has to pretend that he collects his fees for other activities, and
doesn’t charge his clients for lobbying, and he’s freed from all
restrictions, contribution limits, and reporting requirements.
You can’t fight city hall, the old saying goes, but the unspoken
corollary has always been that you can buy it.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
###############
NCMC: Trying to Dress It Up; It Still Has No
Clothes
Eric Rosenthal, eric.rosenthal@mac.com
On January 12, Councilmember Vince Gray and representatives from the
Williams administration, Howard University, and the Walker Marchant
Group — a self-described “communications boutique specializing in
crisis communications, issue management, community relations, public
affairs and reputation management” — met with supporters of the
National Capital Medical Center. Out of that meeting came a new
organization, Citizens for the National Capital Medical Center (CNCMC).
Sadly, according to at least one attendee, some of the rhetoric emerging
from the meeting included appeals to racial divisiveness and threats to
defeat elected officials who support the Certificate of Need Process or
oppose the National Capital Medical Center, presumably including both
leading mayoral candidates.
The DC Primary Care Association, the DC Hospital Association, the DC
Medical Society, the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, the Hill East
Waterfront Action Network, ANC 6B, the Capitol Hill Restoration Society,
the Washington Times, the Washington Post, the DC
Examiner, the Washington Business Journal, several
councilmembers from both sides of the Park, Jonetta Rose Barras, Dorothy
Brizill, Alice Rivlin, at least one of the city’s own consultants, and
many other health experts and citizens have raised serious and
fundamental questions about the National Capital Medical Center,
questions that remain unanswered. Rather than resorting to
intellectually lazy and divisive appeals to race and political threats,
I hope the CNCMC will make a serious attempt to demonstrate that the
National Capital Medical Center is needed and that it would make
Washingtonians healthier. That is where the debate should be, but the
advocates have yet to try to make that case.
The next meeting of Citizens for the National Capital Medical Center
is tomorrow, Monday, January 30, at 6:30 p.m., at the Marshall Heights
Community Development Organization, 3939 Benning Road, NE. The meeting
is billed as only for supporters of the National Capital Medical Center.
On a related note, the city and Howard should disclose the list of
consultants they have used in this process, the cost for each, how much
Howard is being reimbursed, and whether any of the contracts was put out
to competitive bid.
###############
I’ve received a few requests for an update on the sentencing of
Gwendolyn Hemphill, the former special assistant to the president of the
Washington Teachers Union, and James Baxter, the union’s former
treasurer, who were convicted in the embezzlement from the WTU. As I
wrote in themail on January 11, their sentencing was postponed because
of legal motions filed by the defendants’ attorneys pertaining to the
federal sentencing guidelines.
Sentencing has also been postponed because Hemphill’s attorneys are
claiming that she suffers from a mental disease or defect. She was
hospitalized for a short time earlier this month in the psychiatric unit
of the Washington Hospital Center. It is unclear whether Hemphill’s
attorneys are claiming that her mental disease caused her to commit her
crimes, or whether they merely want to claim that it should influence
her sentencing, both where she should be confirmed as well as the length
of her confinement. The US Attorney’s office has insisted, and the
court has agreed, that its psychiatrists or psychologists be allowed to
examine and evaluate Hemphill and that all of Hemphill’s medical
records and history be submitted to the court. This process will take
approximately two months.
Currently, the sentencing timeline for Hemphill calls for doctor’s
reports and new sentencing memorandums to be filed with the court, and
for the sentencing to be held on May 22. It is possible that Baxter’s
sentencing hearing will be held at the same time.
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DC Income Inequality Has Widened
Ed Lazere, lazere@dcfpi.org
The gap between high-income families and poor families in the
District of Columbia grew significantly between the early 1980s and the
early 2000s, according to a new study by two national research
organizations. The incomes of DC’s richest families nearly doubled
over the past two decades, while incomes remain virtually unchanged for
the lowest- income families. The District’s middle-income families
experienced some income growth, but far less than among the wealthiest
families.
The key findings of the new study are highlighted in an analysis by
the DC Fiscal Policy Institute and can be found at http://www.dcfpi.org/1-26-06inc.pdf.
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Noise in the District
Joan Eisenstodt, jeisen@aol.com
I know . . . move out of the District if I don’t want noise. But c’mon
— it’s not that easy to uproot and more. Doesn’t the District have
laws about when things can and cannot be constructed? I’ve called,
left messages, and got one call back, from the wrong person, after
leaving five messages. The construction at 6th and H Streets, NW, goes
on seven days a week. It is debilitating to those of us who live and
work here. There is not one day of rest for them and for us. I can’t
believe there is not some ordinance that disallows this for this many
days. Someone suggested calling 311. I asked them if they could do
anything, and they said no.
Anyone interested in joining this fight? Anyone on this list who has
the power to do anything?
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Mid-Century Gem Decaying on Fourteenth Street
Robert Marvin, dcbubble@gmail.com
On http://www.dcbubble.blogspot.com,
D. Kamili Anderson, president of the Brightwood Community Association,
writes about the need to save a mid-century apartment building from
falling apart and becoming more of an eyesore. 6625 14th Street, NW, is
a mid-century gem worth preserving and the DC government “should
exercise whatever authority it has . . . to ensure that 6425 is made
habitable again,” said Anderson.
Built in the 1950’s, the apartment building was designed by
nationally renowned architect Joseph Henry Abel. According to Cultural
Tourism DC’s Brendan Meyer, Abel’s firm, Berla & Abel, "can
make a pretty solid claim to be the most prominent modern architects in
DC in the 40s." Abel also designed the Shoreham Washington on
Connecticut Avenue. See photos here: http://dcbubble.blogspot.com/2006/01/saturday-observer-move-over-south.html.
###############
The Wastefulness of the DC City Council
Jonathan R. Rees, jrrees@peoplepc.com
As it concerns our DC city council, it is well known for proposing
legislation galore, holding hearings, and then never voting yes or no in
the end but shelving it for eternity. This to me is a waste of taxpayer
dollars and needs to stop. If the council has no real intention of
acting on proposed legislation then it shouldn’t propose it.
Voters should pay a visit to the Council’s web site, look at all
the legislation proposed, acted on in part, and then disappear never to
become law or anything else. One such piece of legislation was one that
was going to improve upon the issue of non-child support. The council
talked it up big time, held hearings, and then it totally disappeared
from the radar and is now collecting dust with hundreds of other pieces
of legislation.
This bill would have made child support more reasonable, improved the
likelihood that a custodial parent would receive such payments, and
helped the non-custodial parent meet the obligation. It was a good bill
and in the end, it was never voted on. The council needs to stop this
bad behavior of wasting our tax dollars on proposing legislation and
going through the routine knowing it will never become law.
###############
The Mayor proposed imposing higher registration fees on households
with two or three cars in an attempt to ease parking congestion. I doubt
that the proposal will have the desired effect. First, how many of the
cars on the street in congested areas fit that description, i.e., second
and third cars owned by single households who don’t already have
off-street parking? Given that census figures show DC to have one of the
highest single-member household populations in the country, I would
venture to guess that a relatively small percentage of households in
congested areas like Adams Morgan and Dupont try to park two or three
cars on the street. Second, are the proposed $50 and $100 fees really
going to deter anyone from owning an additional car? Not likely.
I do agree, however, with the part of Cheryl Cort’s posting [themail,
January 25] in which she suggests a 24-hour residential parking permit,
which the Mayor did not propose. We’re not likely to see this simple
solution proposed by any councilmember, perhaps based on their fear it
would reduce out-of-state visitors and therefore tax revenues. Keep that
in mind when you’re voting in this year’s election.
###############
Omnibus Parking Amendment Act of 2005, Bill
16-536
Clyde Howard, ceohoward@hotmail.com
As stated in my testimony of January 19, before Councilmember
Schwartz’s committee hearing, the proposed increases for zone parking
stickers are nothing more then a form of taxation upon the residents of
this city. There is no rational connection between the increases in
parking stickers and the freeing up of additional curb space for
parking, nor is there a connection that residents will use public
transportation more often. Zip and Flex car do not fill the bill for
those who must transport persons to and from the store, move household
hardware, attend meetings, attend to one’s spiritual needs and conduct
the business of family. This government, after a number of years of
study, brings nothing to the table, but scams to bilk more money out of
the pockets of the residents of this city and give nothing in return.
What is needed is better parking enforcement, stopping out-of-state cars
from parking in our neighborhoods overnight, requiring commercial
vehicles (i.e., taxicabs, panel trucks, vans, etc.) to park elsewhere.
Bus service must be improved to provide timely service; most of all the
city government must construct city-owned municipal parking garages.
Before there is any increase in zone parking stickers an earnest effort
must be made to provide viable alternatives in transportation modes.
Metro does not do the job, because all sections of the city are not
accessible as they were when street cars and buses operated in this
city. We must stop buying into the pie in the sky plans of government,
we must fully brainstorm the results of such plans and separate out the
chafe from the wheat or continue in the blind notion that the ideas of
cause and effect are of great benefit to the residents of this city.
###############
Would it be too much to ask that your readers be spared asinine
appeals like the item by Anise Jenkins [themail, January 25]? Barry is a
felon, a crook, a drug addict and now a tax evader; unless your
readership consists of felons, crooks, drug addicts and tax evaders, I
don’t see what commonality justifies the alleged call for
“solidarity.”
###############
To anyone who would so mindlessly compare an attack on a white
citizen by black persons, to an attack on one black person by another,
must have underestimated someone’s intelligence, or else shown his
lack of such. Let’s use an attack on a defenseless, retired black man,
in his own neighborhood, by two criminal-minded and malicious white men
from a neighborhood in another part of town, as a comparison. What an
uproar there would be, and the racist implications would be obvious!
In the case of the reporter, not one mention was made of a racial
motive, although it’s more than obvious that a person does not have to
be killed for his material possessions. People only insult themselves by
their actions/comments, and they are due their just reward/punishment.
One of the lessons to be learned from this is that the only way to
get to any hospital, when needed, is any way other than a so-called city
service (for which you are billed) vehicle. The incompetence of the
personnel at many local government agencies has been more than obvious
for a very long time now, and what will happen to you in their hands, in
an emergency, is purely a matter of chance.
###############
It is beyond the comprehension of thoughtful and fair-minded
residents of this community that the chairperson of the District of
Columbia city council would solicit $2,000 from each councilmember in an
effort to raise money for the DC public school basketball championship
game to be held at the MCI Center in February! Have we finally gone
completely over the deep end? Or is this simply the way we really think
when in comes to supporting youth development in the District of
Columbia?
Our city has a multi-billion dollar budget. We have more than enough
money in our city coffers, if we wanted, to give every man, woman, and
child a gift of one-million dollars in cash and still have a more than
two-billion-dollar government to operate. Let residents pay for their
own trash pickup like it is done in other locations. But don’t always
short change the children. We spend more on consultant hourly rates to
fix traffic lights and photo-speed cameras than we do to help children
really learn, to keep them out of the juvenile justice system, and to
give struggling, working-class parents the level of support they
deserve.
At times I am ashamed to say that I am a lifetime District resident.
We have been grading the leadership of this city on the proverbial
“grading curve” for far too long! Our schools are in disrepair; too
many kids can’t read, truancy and dropout way too high, not to mention
school failure or the lack of vocational training; our recreation
centers are in need of staffing and new equipment, our police department
always too reactive and paying too little time and attention to the
etiology of basic crime prevention; our public transportation costs way
out of sync with daily wages! And we wonder why there is so much
personal anger and violence across this great city. Our thoughtless
response is always a call for more police, as if law enforcement were
that special elixir for every human social ailment by which our problems
would be solved. It isn’t, and it never will be. Our society has made
policing the institution of first response for every problem we could
ever imagine. There are more than two million prisoners in American
jails and prisons, and the numbers keep climbing, taking huge chunks of
municipal budget expenditures. Police are needed at every school
sporting event, every school dance, to manage school security, and to
help with school crossing. We could hire and train unemployed parents to
do a much better and less costly job! But that is another issue.
We charge exorbitant user fees just for residents to use recreational
facilities. Local teams often can’t find space because so many outside
teams are using local facilities. I had asked an official at DC Rec. to
assist with finding a local recreation facility so that a public charter
high school basketball team could practice two hours a day. Sure. But
the cost was $1200 for the month. After protesting and because of my
contributions to this city I received a discount of about 50 percent.
Thanks! How quickly those at the Department of Recreation forget:
Many years ago, I coordinated the District’s Late Night Hoops
Basketball tournament. It was an incredibly successful program that
focused not just on basketball but taking young men off city street
corners and helping them with jobs placement, obtaining their GED, or
returning to school. Twenty-one, all from public housing neighborhoods,
participated and it operated every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night
from 8 p.m.-1 a.m. I would often visit the facility at 12 a.m., and the
gym would be packed with 500 spectators cheering for the local team. It
was a wholesome activity that many celebrities, such Washington football
team Hall of Famer Daryle Greene and even the great Muhammad Ali
visited. Every TV station showed up, I think just to see if there was
going to be a fight! There were none. And crime went down as well in
that so called “high crime” area. But spending about $35,000 a year
to address idleness and to keep hundreds of young men off the streets
was too expensive. So after a year the program was cut by the then
Control Board!
I remember during our planning that the basketball goals were in such
bad shape and that the gym did not have breakaway baskets so players
could dunk. The Metropolitan Police Department under Police Chief Ike
Fulwood spent $13,000 to give Patricia R. Harris Middle School new NBA
glass basketball backboards and break away rims. It was done for the
simple reason this it was for our children. To this day those basketball
backboards and rims are still there.
What is wrong with our city? Have we loss the ability to think
clearly? Is this issue of a baseball stadium so clouding our thinking
and connection to those who live here that we just can’t get it
straight? The right thinking people of this city had been better really
understand this fall that ideology matters. We need leadership who can
listen and who understand that the human conditions that have festered
for decades continue to sap the vitality of our community through
poverty, alienation, illiteracy, substance abuse, crime, and this
uncaring attitude! We don’t have to be a jurisdiction of three cities,
one poor, one struggling just to maintain, and the other affluent and
making too many wrong decisions.
If your didn’t want to spend $25,000 on renting the MCI Center for
a high school basketball tournament, at least let the kids know in
September. They would have raised the money themselves by now because
basketball is the one sport the masses of people in this town will
support, deeply care about, and love!
###############
Baseball Brigade Gives
More Revenue to MLB in Lease Revision
Ed Delaney, profeddel@yahoo.com
From http://wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=681854:
“The deal calls for the city to split with the team the proceeds of
land sold for development.” In other words, the baseball brigade was
charged by the DC council with finding a plan that covered cost overruns
and capped the city‘s liability, yet returned with a plan that not
only doesn’t trim Major League Baseball’s take from this boondoggle
but sweetens it further by shamelessly directing more public revenue
into MLB’s coffers! How arrogant are both the Brigade and MLB that
they’re actually going to try to perpetrate this? If this is the best
that these schemers can come up with when charged to improve the lease,
then the Brigade’s MLB-friendly services are no longer required.
“The city does stand to lose one of its sky suites at the stadium
if it asks any more money from MLB. The parties also agree that if the
executive branch of the DC government, including the commission and the
Anacostia Waterfront Corp. or the chair of the Council or the District
Council, requests even $1 more or anything of the equivalent value of $1
more from the team or MLB, the commission will relinquish one of the two
suites at the ballpark, the cover letter says.” If MLB wants to play
rough on the luxury suites front, the DC Council can accommodate them by
simply insisting on the original agreement and thus removing MLB’s
luxury demand for an entire concourse level of luxury suites and club
seats. If MLB insists on maintaining this antagonistic “we won‘t let
go of a dollar but you can‘t cap a cent of public money” mindset to
the letter of the law (reported by WTOP but tellingly excluded from the Post
and Times stories), then this lease must be rejected out of hand.
MLB’s arrogance is at an all-time high, and it’s up to the DC
council — whose interests were sold out once again by the Brigade to
MLB — to bring the League and the Brigade back to earth by rejecting
this farce of an unchanged lease.
“Parcels at the south end of the stadium site can be sold to
developers. The proceeds would be split between the team and the
District with the city receiving 57.5% of proceeds and the Nationals
receiving 42.5%. Hall values the land deal at the south end to be worth
$4.2 million to the city. Additionally, the team will help develop a new
youth baseball facility, providing [$3.5 million] to fund its operation.
DC will need to provide the land.” Though the Brigade is blatantly
attempting to make it look like they’ve wrangled concession and
contributions from MLB, they’ve done nothing of the kind. The
development rights revenue that MLB is slated to get from the land south
of the stadium and the amount of funding that MLB is slated to put
towards the youth baseball facility are both in the $3.5 million range,
so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that DC is financing
the youth baseball facility all by itself, land and all. Such cosmetic
changes which seem designed to deceive the council and the public that
significant changes and concessions have been made by MLB while nothing
under the surface has changed should let the council know all they need
to about this joke of a lease “revision.”
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/27/AR2006012701700.html:
“Some changes to the lease drew strong objections from the city’s
CFO. ‘The lease agreement as it is submitted, I have serious
reservations about,’ Gandhi said. ‘I cannot take it to Wall Street.’”
The CFO pointed out himself in his spring 2005 testimony concerning
private financing proposals that, “Typically, the least costly way to
finance any public sector construction project is to issue tax-exempt
general obligation bonds, [with] tax-exempt revenue bonds the next least
costly financing mechanism.” If that’s the route that city officials
have chosen, then it is up to the CFO to make it happen instead of
saying “I can‘t take it to Wall Street.” As with Tuohey vis-à-vis
his reluctance to accept the RFK Stadium site, if the CFO can’t comply
with the wishes of the city government and make the bond financing work,
the city should find someone who can.
“In a written statement, the mayor said he hoped the council would
approve the lease. ‘This package was hard-fought but worth it, because
we’ve addressed and answered every possible concern District residents
could have with the baseball agreement,’ Williams wrote. ‘We forced
MLB to come up with additional concessions.’” Wow. . . . The mayor
could have said, “We tried and this is the best we could come with,”
but his level of contempt for the citizens and the DC council is
apparently so great that he has no problem making this outrageously
false and deceitful comment. Does anyone think the mayor has
“addressed and answered every possible concern District residents
could have with the baseball agreement” as it concerns people like
Rosa Davis? Davis who according to the GW Hatchet this November
is “a 90-year-old resident who has rented an apartment at Half and N
streets for half a century, [who] said she’s unsure about what she is
going to do or where she is going to live once she is forced out in late
January. “I don’t have nowhere to go. I don’t have nobody to help.
I just go one day to another,’ she said. ‘Rent is high for me
because I’m just all by myself.’” Putting aside the mountain of
unanswered and unaddressed concerns associated with the baseball
agreement, the mayor’s bluster ceases to be merely political and
becomes very real when it serves to marginalized those like Davis, whose
concerns could be addressed and answered by moving to the RFK Stadium
site, where no one will be displaced or forced out.
“Brown and Gray acknowledged that the city has won some significant
concessions. In addition to the academy, which would teach children
about baseball and provide academic tutoring, the city would get 2,000
additional free tickets for disadvantaged youth.” We already know that
the academy is being paid for by DC, and giving away an additional 2,000
bleacher seats means a whopping $14,000 in balance-sheet value and
almost nothing in real value since the tickets would’ve largely gone
unsold, making the Post’s characterization of MLB’s other supposed
“significant concession” a complete joke and the result of
unforgivably bad analysis or agenda-driven reporting. The WTOP version
of the story noted that: “The Nationals also will increase by 2,000
the number of free tickets given to disadvantaged children in the city.
The team will give out 10,000 tickets. [The DCSEC‘s Bill] Hall says
that’s a $600,000 value.” That works out to $60 a ticket! Somehow, I
don’t think the Brigade is going to switch from bleacher to box seat
giveaways from the underprivileged, especially at their new playground!
Yet, it makes for more dubious numbers from the Brigade that look good
in print, so it’s par for the course!
“Williams promised to send more documentation about capping stadium
costs in a separate document called the Construction Administration
Agreement [CAA], Brown and Gray said. That agreement, which is expected
to specify how the construction companies contracted by the city would
build the stadium, will be voted on separately by the council, setting
up the possibility of another tough political fight for the mayor.” We
all know the Brigade didn’t make the necessary changes in the CAA to
make it passable, and it’s critical as the lease agreement to reform
it due to the cost implications. For example, Section 6.3 of the CAA
gives the DCSEC "the authority to authorize additional project
costs, including the authority to reallocate funds among line items with
the project budget" for timely completion of the ballpark project,
comply with applicable laws, and to “serve the public interest,”
which essentially gives the DCSEC unlimited power to continue its budget
shell games like the ones that “reallocated” out the all-inclusive
costs of environmental remediation, parking, Metro, road and
infrastructure improvements from the agreed-upon deal. Section 6.4 of
the CAA gives the team/MLB amazing latitude to cover any “team
initiated project changes,” including “making an alternative funding
arrangement that the Commission determines to be satisfactory,”
conceivably something as expensive as a retractable roof at some point.
Further, the DCSEC could use all sorts of methods to allow MLB to defer
its payments or shift budget items to make the cost to MLB look much
smaller than they are, as the DCSEC did with adding the additional level
of luxury suites at MLB‘s insistence. Those items and others that were
not part of the original deal the DC council approved in December 2004
to need to be completely changed or removed before the deal will be even
remotely acceptable.
“The Anacostia Waterfront Corp., established by Williams to oversee
development of the waterfront area near the ballpark, would cover any
cost overruns on acquiring the needed 14 acres by selling development
rights on the stadium site, the letter stated.” Selling city assets is
obviously driving up the public cost of the project and is completely
unacceptable as a solution to cost overrun coverage which could run into
untold hundreds of millions of dollars for what is slated to be a
cut-rate “Buick or Ford”" ballpark with cut-rate and completely
inadequate parking, road and Metro access.
“The city also is negotiating with the federal government for
assistance with a $20 million renovation of the Navy Yard Metro Station.
The mayor’s statement said only that the city had "made
headway" in talks with federal officials.” Take your time on
getting firm commitments in writing, Brigade. It’s apparently only the
city which needs to make such commitments in writing.
###############
CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
National Building Museum Events, February 2, 4
Lauren Searl, lsearl@nbm.org
Both events at the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW,
Judiciary Square stop, Metro Red Line. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.
Thursday, February 2, 6:30-8:00 p.m. Lecture: Architectural Designs
for Early and Modern Washington, DC. Showing seldom-seen architectural
drawings at the Library of Congress, C. Ford Peatross, the library's
curator of architecture, design, and engineering collections, will
discuss some of Washington's most important buildings, monuments, and
memorials as well as anonymous structures of everyday life and ambitious
projects that were never built. The drawings tell the sometimes
surprising story of the capital's planning and growth over two
centuries. After the lecture, he will sign copies of his edited volume
Capital Drawings: Architectural Designs for Washington, D.C., from the
Library of Congress (Johns Hopkins University Press). $10 Members and
students; $15 Nonmembers. Registration required.
Saturday, February 4, 1:00-2:00 p.m. Film: Gropius: Man of Vision.
Written and narrated by Chester Nagel, FAIA, this documentary focuses on
the contributions of architect and teacher Walter Gropius. (1983, 50
min.) Free. Registration not required.
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