Free Parking

Dear Parkers:

I haven’t taken a position yet on the decision of the Department of Transportation to reserve public street parking spaces for the exclusive use of the Zipcar and Flexcar auto rental companies, but there are a few questions I’d like to ask. Here are two. First, why shouldn’t these companies pay the District for the spaces? I understand the argument that some people make that providing convenient rental cars is in the public interest. However, companies usually pay when they use public facilities, even when the public approves of the work that the companies do. Sidewalk cafes are desirable public amenities, but the restaurants that run them pay the city for occupying the public sidewalks. Second, why should Zipcar and Flexcar get preferential treatment over other car rental companies, like Hertz and Avis and a score of others? If the public interest is being served, however indirectly, by Flexcar and Zipcar, why aren’t their competitors serving the same public interest? After all, Flexcar and Zipcar are much more expensive than these other companies; if you shop around a little, you should easily find a company that will rent you a car for a full day for less than Flexcar or Zipcar charges for a few hours. Flexcar and Zipcar may be marginally more convenient, if you live in a neighborhood where they park their cars, but don’t live near a car rental office. But if Enterprise, National, and Thrifty were given free reserved public parking spaces, they might develop a business plan to place some of their cars in neighborhoods, too.

Supporters and opponents of the plan to give reserved street parking spaces to Zipcar and Flexcar, please convince me. Let me know what I’ve missed in the arguments, and where I’ve gone wrong.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Labor Department Files to Overturn WTU Election
Jonetta Rose Barras, rosebook1@aol.com

Last week, US Department of Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao filed a lawsuit in United States District Court for the District of Columbia against Washington Teachers’ Union Local 6 [http://www.dcpswatch.com/wtu/060215.htm]. The lawsuit seeks “declaratory and injunctive relief.” Chao wants the court to void the elections held on December 28, 2004, and the run-off held on January 26, 2005. The Labor Department also wants the court to direct the union to hold new elections.

The lawsuit grew out of complaints filed almost immediately after the elections by Jerome Brooks, Vernita Jefferson, Elizabeth Davis, and Benita Nicholson, [http://www.dcpswatch.com/davis/050601.htm] according to the filing, a copy of which I obtained. The secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers, the union’s parent organization, had denied the quartet’s request for new elections. They then filed a formal complaint with the Labor Department. The Department found that the union failed to mail an election notice to every member at that member’s home address at least fifteen days prior to the election; failed to mail a ballot to each member in good standing, and as a result denied members the right to vote; and permitted ineligible voters to vote. No one from the Washington Teachers Union could be reached for comment.

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Positive DC Experience
Anne-Marie Bairstow, annemariebairstow at hotmail dot com

Every once in a while Gary reminds us to bring up some of the good things about living in DC. I am pleasantly surprised to report on a very positive experience with the Department of Motor Vehicles inspection station. I went down there on a Wednesday morning around 9:30 a.m. Remembering previous visits, with lines around the block, I wondered if this was foolish because I had to pick up my son at noon, and I might be stuck in the lines. Well, at 9:50 I walked out, registration in hand. That’s right, twenty minutes, start to finish. Now my dilemma — what to do until noon?

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Callous Councilmembers
Ed Dixon, Georgetown Reservoir, jedxn@erols.com

Callousness has taken on a new layer of insensitivity at Chez Wilson with the $90 thousand a year part-timers. Kathy Patterson and Jack Evans have shown how shallow their commitment to public schools is this past week. After receiving press attention for their school modernization bill, the two found out from financial pundit Natwar Gandhi that surpluses this quarter would not support their bill. Both council members threw public school advocates and housing advocates a bone to fight over . . . a shared revenue source. Since current growth was not sufficient to help the city educate and house its own, the two sets of advocates would have to fight it out on their own to decide which basic need is a greater public priority. Hmmm, a place to live or a place to educate my children. Why don’t we flip a coin? This unconscionable lack of concern immediately after wasting the city’s resources upon a baseball stadium deal should not rattle the true cynics in the crowd, based upon who these council members really are and who they represent.

As Ward 2 and 3 representatives, both Patterson and Evans live in million-dollar homes and have been sending their children to $20-thousand-a-year-plus private schools. Clearly, as a result, they are emotionally and physically detached from the daily toil of the majority of the city’s residents. Yet, somehow, in this election year, these two councilmembers hope to ascend to higher office through the good will of the electorate. I can only wonder who would vote for either of these individuals based on last week’s performance. Neither councilmember understands the issues before the residents of this city, let alone is able to speak to them in a way which shows any empathy regarding basic needs of this city’s electorate. The people of this city need affordable housing and affordable education, not million-dollar homes and private schools. And we certainly didn’t vote for anyone to support corporate welfare and handouts in the shape of the ongoing baseball stadium graft.

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Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts
Jonathan R. Rees, jrrees@peoplepc.com

Long ago, when Council Member Kathy Patterson proposed her $1-billion-dollar plus school renovation bill, I was telling people beware, it is an election year ploy to get votes, that the money just isn’t there, and that Mrs. Patterson knew it when she tried to make all of us believe that she was our education champion. People criticized me for saying such, but this past week, our beloved CFO Gandhi said what I was saying all along — namely, the money just isn’t there.

The sad truth is, if we are even able to pump $300 million dollars over the next ten years into renovating our schools we will be lucky as our city council has over extended us with way to many commitments. People need to remember this is an election year. Politicians will promise anything to get your vote but rarely will they deliver after your vote has been cast.

The DC government is not going to be able to keep many of its commitments until it begins to trim the fat (civil servants) down. That would free up $1.6 billion dollars a year, which is more than enough to renovate all our schools in half the projected time span.

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Steve Case Parks for Free
P. Walters, tmdcw@pwalters.com

In the last edition of themail, Annie McCormick asks what’s up with the parking spaces reserved for Zipcar and Flexcar all around town. According to the Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/21/AR2006012100903.html), these two companies were awarded the spots gratis on the theory that parking a car outside a Metro station encourages use of public transportation and reduces congestion — therefore, the argument goes, giving away city property is good for all of us and should be encouraged. Whoever in city government concocted that phony argument must be practicing economics without a license (or playing hooky from her job on the stadium spin team). Even the Wall Street Journal downplays the value of car sharing services (http://online.wsj.com/search/date.html#SB113357562186313131) and suggests that they are not good consumer options.

The real reason for the freebie, of course, is that Steve Case owns a controlling interest in Flexcar and Mayor Crony Tony just loves giving District assets away to rich guys. What did we get in return for this one? Unlimited software CDs that are good for eight free hours on AOL?

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Citizen Nader
Tom Sherwood, tom.sherwood@nbcuni.com

Did we miss Mr. Nader’s becoming a legal resident of the District? The issue came up in 1998 when the national consumer advocate endorsed Anthony Williams for mayor. More recently, Nader has attempted to join the public debate on the baseball stadium. At the last check, Mr. Nader is a legal resident of Connecticut and pays his taxes to that state. It’s nice that anyone is interested in the well-being of District citizens and the financial accountability of our government, no matter what the issue. But it does seem a bit discordant for anyone outside the city -- Nader, President Bush, or the 534 members of Congress who deny us voting rights — to presume they know best for District citizens. And certainly it’s worth being a citizen here, one would think, for one who in fact lives here.

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Parking Reserved for Flexcar and Zipcar
Alan Kimber, alan@alankimber.org

Regarding the reservation of parking spaces for Zipcar and Flexcar, it is unfortunate that Ms. McCormick did not hear about this initiative, but it was quite well publicized in themail and other local press. I wasn’t involved in the initiative, but I certainly support the ends it is intended to accomplish. Ms. McCormick is correct that there is a severe parking shortage in DC. One of the most obvious ways to address this shortage is to encourage people who are able or want to do so to forego the luxury of having a car. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that this person or that person is not entitled to the “luxury” of a car, I’m referring to people who do not have a driving commute or other circumstances that, given the right encouragement or availability of viable alternatives, might decide to go without a car.

In addition to directly addressing the parking shortage that plagues the District, shared car services reduce our reliance on cars, save gas and reduce pollution, all while ensuring that individuals still have access to a car when necessary for errands, doctor’s appointments, etc. In light of all the benefits, I’m happy to give up a few parking spaces for this initiative. It is important to remember, also, that people wouldn’t get tickets if they (including me) didn’t park illegally. One final note, at least one of the companies is a nonprofit, so it’s not so much of a corporate giveaway — and certainly not anywhere near the scale of the baseball fiasco.

My main complaint with the initiative has to do with the way that DDOT (I think) determined when and where to designate the spaces. There was little opportunity for the ANCs and citizens to respond to the initiative and to guide the selection of spaces. For something that so directly affects the lives of citizens on a local level, there should have been more opportunity to comment.

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Parking and the Baseball Cap
Greg DuRoss, internetgreg@verizon.net

Regarding Ms. McCormick’s recent post [themail, February 15] about the free parking spots for Zip and Flex cars, I don’t find it "outrageous," as she suggested. I find it stupid. Why? Because both companies are paying individuals and businesses to lease spaces on private property. Just like the baseball stadium, once again the city approaches negotiations with an attitude of what do we have to give you to make this work instead of a real business negotiation based on both sides giving something and both sides getting something in return.

As for whether the baseball cap is really a cap, I have my doubts; but we’ll know the answer soon enough. If it is a real cap, Major League Baseball will no doubt refuse to accept the revised lease, because they know that the real cost is going to exceed the $610 million cap.

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Why Car Sharing on City Streets Makes Sense
Andrea Arnold, andreaceleste9@yahoo.com

I live on 16th Street and Park Road in Mt. Pleasant. I sold my car last summer in part because I knew I could join Zipcar and still have access to a car without the expense or hassle of owning one. Over a third of DC residents don’t own cars, and car sharing is an excellent resource because anywhere from one to 48 individuals (if a different person uses the car each half hour) can share the vehicle in a given day. Car sharing takes cars off the road as people realize there are alternatives to owning their own car. Before the DC Department of Transportation secured on-street parking, the closest car to me was in an alley and in a private drive. I never felt safe dropping the car off late at night. With the public access that on-street parking provides, car sharers are more likely to feel comfortable using the vehicles. Every Advisory Neighborhood Commission in the city approved the designation of spots for shared cars. While these spots are technically for private companies, they serve many more drivers than that space would serve for an individual who parks their private car there. There are many examples where private companies get access to curb space -- loading zones and taxi cab stands -- and these service fewer individuals than car sharing companies. I’m extremely grateful (as are many of my friends and neighbors) that DDOT and the car sharing companies joined together to make their vehicles more accessible.

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Chinese Embassy Legality
Ron Leve, theron@comcast.net

David Sobelson, “Slavery in DC?” (themail, February 15), writes of the possible legal limits on the Chinese workers employed to work on the new embassy on Van Ness. It’s clear that the DC restrictions on hours of work to restrict noise levels (7 a.m. to 7 p.m.) are not in effect, as I’ve seen and heard them working long after that digging an awfully big hole. I’ve not been by on weekends to know what takes place then.

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The Administration’s Response
Vincent Morris, Director of Communications, Office of the Mayor, vincent.morris@dc.gov

I would be more concerned about the careless errors in Dorothy’s posting about rent control if she were a reporter. However, I felt the need to correct the record on this, since we made a generous effort to include her in our meeting to explain the mayor’s rent control proposal. She seems to have ignored everything she heard. She writes that the mayor was in “private discussions” about rent control. Not true. We met with the Tenant Action Network, the Urban Housing Alliance and the Gray Panthers. We also met with Empower DC, New Capitol Park Plaza Tenant Association, the Brandywine Tenant Association, and others. We also met with specific tenants and with property owners, to round out the discussion.

She also cites a lack of “public disclosure.” Not true. The council held hearings on this and we testified. Also, the mayor’s staff met with the above-mentioned groups, as well as individual councilmembers. Finally, she writes that our staff could “come up with only one group” that we’d consulted with. Wrong again, and we specifically named them during the meeting, while offering to provide more names if she followed up later.

She also says the mayor’s plan would “eliminate middle-class tenants” from rent control. Not true. In fact, the mayor’s plan for means testing is designed purely to help open up housing stock in the city to middle and low-income residents by factoring -- for the first time -- income. The same sort of means testing is used on dozens of other government programs, from financial aide to health care. It’s good policy and a welcome change from the status quo.

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Rent Control Developments
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com

As I reported in last Wednesday’s issue of themail, Mayor Tony Williams publicly revealed for the first time at his press conference that day that the administration had been working on a comprehensive revision of rent-control legislation. The mayor, and his spokesmen at a quickly organized follow-up briefing for reporters, said that the administration had been working cooperatively with Councilmember Jim Graham to introduce the mayor’s revision as a substitute for or as amendments to five rent control bills that councilmembers had introduced, and that were scheduled to be marked up in Councilmember Graham’s Committee on Consumer and Regulatory Affairs that Friday. The mayor’s staff even distributed a copy of his proposed bill, with Councilmember Graham listed as the introducer of the bill [http://www.dcwatch.com/council16/16-x.htm#bill]. After the mayor’s revelations, however, things went awry.

Councilmember Graham denied, both in an E-mail to me and at a hastily called press conference on Thursday, that he had agreed to the mayor’s plan, “nor have I had even a single conversation with the mayor on this subject.” He issued a press release affirming his strong support for rent control and opposition to anything that would weaken the District’s rent control program, and promising that at the Friday markup his committee would vote on the five councilmember-introduced bills strengthening rent control [http://www.dcwatch.com/council16/16-x.htm#graham2]. However, on Friday afternoon Graham recessed the committee meeting to an undetermined date without bringing any of the bills up for a vote — in order, he said, to allow for further discussion and review of the legislation among members of the committee and the Williams administration. In short, Graham and the administration are now searching for a face-saving compromise that the other members of the committee (Catania, Ambrose, Fenty, and Brown) can accept.

The committee hearing, although it was held at 3 p.m. on a Friday preceding a three-day weekend, and although it recessed with no action taken, attracted an audience that packed the committee hearing room. Two prominent attendees with an interest in the mayor’s bill were Tony Bullock, the mayor’s former press secretary who is now the spokesman for the Apartment and Office Building Asssociation of Metropolitan Washington (AOBA); and Vincent Mark Policy, an attorney with the real estate law firm of Greenstein DeLorme and Lucks and the mayor’s personal attorney when his nominating petitions were challenged before the Board of Elections and Ethics.

In the message above, the mayor’s current press secretary, Vince Morris, attempts to discredit my account of the mayor’s press conference and the subsequent staff briefing of reporters. I may be wrong, but I choose to interpret his contempt as not being personal, but as implying that the Internet is an inferior to newspapers, radio, and television as a reporting medium. I think he’s wrong about that, but that’s a matter of opinion. He is wrong, however, on two matters of fact. First, on Wednesday, neither the mayor nor any of his staffers was able to come up with the list of tenant organizations that Morris now claims were included in discussions of the mayor’s plan. It will be interesting to find out if any of these organizations agrees that they were consulted about instituting means testing for rent control or about ending rent control ceilings, much less whether they “were enthusiastically supportive of the revised proposal, particularly with respect to the gradual abolition of the District’s rent ceiling system,” as the mayor claimed in his letter to Councilmember Graham [http://www.dcwatch.com/council16/16-x.htm#williams]. Second, Morris is simply being misleading when he claims that the mayor’s rent control revisions were publicly disclosed in the administration’s testimony to the council. The Committee on Consumer and Regulatory Affairs held its hearing on the five bills introduced by councilmembers on October 26, 2005. The administration was represented at that hearing by Deputy Mayor Stanley Jackson, and in his testimony Jackson spoke only about the council bills. He did not reveal that the administration would have a substitute plan of its own, much less discuss any of its elements.

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NCMC and Howard
Nick Kauffman, kauffman@prodigy.net

Have you ever considered that the NCMC project would ensure a 21st century position for Howard University Medical Center’s viability? A lot easier than trying to raise all that money via university development efforts.

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So Much Paper, So Little Time
Frank Zampatori, frankz05@att.net

Pity our city council. Barely have they finished with tons of paper dealing with leases, cost estimates, revenue projections, economic development, and hours and hours of debate dealing with a new baseball stadium, than Mayor Williams and City Administrator Robert Bobb drop a 197-page package requesting approval for the National Capital Medical Center (NCMC). The approval package contains proposals for a lease, a grant agreement, an exclusive rights agreement, tobacco settlement trust fund documents, a certificate of need exemption request, and background documents including whom the city and Howard University have hired as paid consultants. A lot of reading and much information to digest. Of interest was the section dealing with the Certificate of Need (CON) exception request which the mayor, city administrator, and Howard University believe the city council should grant.

Howard University hopes to fund its portion of the NCMC project cost, which is estimated to cost Howard a minimum of $212 million dollars, through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) HUD Section 242 program, which provides mortgage insurance. This will result in a higher bond rating and lower interest charges. To qualify for the insurance, the NCMC project will be evaluated and analyzed by the FHA. The city and Howard University propose that the NCMC should be exempted from the District’s own Certificate of Need process because they believe that the FHA no longer requires a CON review, that such a review was eliminated in 2004 by the FHA, that the FHA review will be as thorough as the District’s own CON process, and the CON process will be time consuming and costly.

The city administrator cites an FHA letter dated February 23, 2004, as eliminating the CON requirement. In fact, the letter appears to only affect projects in states without a CON process and permits the applicant in non-CON states to contract directly with companies for the studies required by HUD and FHA rather than requiring the applicant to first commission a state agency to act on its behalf. This process applies in both CON and non-CON states, and the letter outlines the requirements needed in such study. The FHA letter also attempts to make it easier for small rural hospitals to participate in the mortgage program. The FHA letter does not eliminate the need for a CON process in CON states.

The city administrator says that seven out of thirty FHA funded projects in the last five years did not go through CON. His numbers are correct, but the hospitals and their location provide an interesting study: 1) the Platte Valley Medical Center, Brighton, Colorado, with 58 beds; 2) the Grand Itasca Clinic and Hospital, Grand Rapids, Minnesota, with 107 beds; 3) St. Mark’s Medical Center, La Grange, Texas, with 65 beds and providing medical services for two counties; 4) Shoshone Medical Center, Kellogg, Idaho, with 25 beds; 5) Rio Grande Hospital, Del Norte, Colorado, with 14 beds; 6) Baptist Health Care System, Beaumont, Texas (unable to identify the hospital or determine the number of beds); 7) University of New Mexico Hospital, Albuquerque, New Mexico, with 375 beds which is also home to UNM’s Children’s Hospital, home to New Mexico’s only Level 1 Trauma Center serving two million residents in a 121,593 square mile area, and a hospital which allocates $80 million dollars out of a $320 million dollar budget for uncompensated care or 25 percent of its budget. Five of the seven hospitals mentioned are clearly in a rural setting, and six are in non-CON states. It is worth remembering that NCMC is proposed as a 250-bed hospital with a projected cost of between $400-$500 million dollars in a city with three or, depending on your source, four level 1 trauma centers serving a city with a population of 560,000.

Finally, the city administrator identified five cases where a CON took a long time to complete: 1) a new dialysis facility (3 1/2 years); 2) a residential treatment center (3 1/2 years); 3) Sibley Hospital expansion (2 1/2 years); 4) Washington Healthcare Group sale (three years); and (5) Good Hope Institute for an outpatient methadone clinic (1999-still pending). Missing from this list was the new George Washington University Hospital CON process, which took 162 days in 1998, or one example of where a CON was exempted and we are still living with those consequences -- the 2001 closure of DC General.

So much paper for our city council to digest. So little time to sort out fact from fiction. So little time between now and the September Primary. This should be an interesting next couple of months.

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

National Building Museum Events
Lauren Searl, lsearl@nbm.org

Thursday, February 23, 6:30-8:00 p.m. Building in the Aftermath Symposium: The Gulf Coast: Restoring Wetlands and Plant Life. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita not only destroyed countless buildings along the Gulf Coast, but also killed plant life and devastated the already-compromised coastal wetlands. The loss of these natural elements is doubly tragic, because if still intact, they could mitigate damage from future storms. A panel of landscape architects and planners will examine the role of these critical components in a healthy ecosystem and discuss the vital need for restoration of the wetlands and other issues. Moderated by Joseph E. Brown, FASLA, president of EDAW, the program will include Paul Rookwood, ASLA, AICP, managing principal of WRT, a planning and design firm working on the redevelopment of New Orleans; and Kevin Shanley, ASLA, who will address the importance of wetlands in the recovery planning process. The American Society of Landscape Architects has provided special support for this program. $12 Museum and ASLA members; $17 nonmembers; $10 students. Prepaid registration required. At the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square stop, Metro Red Line. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.

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CLASSIFIEDS — FOR SALE

Used Laptop Computer
Josh Gibson, joshgibson@alumni.ksg.harvard.edu

Used IBM laptop computer for sale — $500. IBM Thinkpad 600X (2645): Windows ME, Pentium II, 20 GB hard drive, 128 MB RAM, CD-ROM (read only). Extras included: external read/write CD drive, with all necessary software and cables; extra A/C adapter; extra battery; Microsoft Office installed. Note: Does not work on battery alone; must be plugged in. E-mail me at joshgibson@alumni.ksg.harvard.edu if you are interested.

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CLASSIFIEDS — HOUSING

Housing Sought for April
Joan Eisenstodt, jeisen@aol.com

A colleague of mine is seeking housing in DC or the suburbs for April. She asked me to post this: I am a 41-year-old single female professional looking to live in DC for one month, preferably the month of April (I have some flexibility with the dates). I am quiet, considerate, nonsmoking, and friendly, and would respect your home. I prefer the northweest DC area, Mt. Pleasant, etc., but am open to other locations including the Virginia and Maryland suburbs. My price range is somewhere between $700 to $1200 depending on the situation. I would need high-speed Internet, as I will need to work from home, and would also need parking. If you or someone you know would have a furnished apartment or room to rent for a short-term, please contact me at suziq123@verizon.net to discuss further details.

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