Dirty Deals
Dear Dealers:
Richard Layman wrote about the city council’s hearing on the New
Town plan for the Florida Avenue Market in his blog on Friday, http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2006/10/down-and-dirty-politics.html:
“I just spent five hours at a council hearing that makes me feel so
dirty and despondent that I want to move out of the city tomorrow. I
sure have a lot of sympathy for Suzanne Kelo [of the Supreme Court case
that vastly expanded eminent domain powers] right now. Too bad there
weren’t journalists in that room -- the cavalier attitude towards
takings, and the mendaciousness, well, I do this stuff out of felt
beliefs. To hear people say that John Ray has vision, or that Fred
Greene was a great DC Planning director. Gosh, how can one not vomit on
the spot? And to see how they line up support (the ANC people, who face
it, aren’t that sophisticated, the bused-in seniors, the social
service program directors, the civic associations that received some
meager donations, etc.), again, it’s all laid out in Dream City
[the biography of Marion Barry by Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood] but to
have your nose rubbed in it is really tough. To see it is beyond
belief.”
Here’s what Richard’s outrage is about. Sang Oi Choi, a
businessman with interests in the Florida Avenue Market, has bought
influence with the mayor and a number of councilmembers through a series
of favors, including being a major financial sponsor of the mayor’s
trip to Korea. Choi is the principle founder of New Town Development
LLC, which wants to do a large development project that would supplant
the entire Market and additional land around it. Choi and other
principals in the New Town project also accompanied the mayor on his
trip to Korea, so they had his undivided attention for the five days of
that trip in June. He is supported by outgoing Ward 5 Councilmember
Vincent Orange, and his lawyer is former Councilmember John Ray. The
problem is that a number of property owners, including his own brother,
don’t want to sell out to Choi, so Choi wants the city to use its
eminent domain power to force them out and give their land to him.
Additionally, some of the adjoining property that Choi wants is owned by
Gallaudet University, and Choi hopes that Gallaudet will sell that land
to him if the city gives Hamilton Junior High School to the University.
This is one of the dirtiest deals around. The bill to make it happen,
the “New Town at Capital City Market Revitalization Development and
Public/Private Partnership Act of 2006,” Bill 16-868, was introduced
on July 14, a little over a month after Choi and the mayor returned from
their Korea trip. The bill is supported by the mayor and cosponsored by
eleven councilmembers, all of them except Councilmembers Catania and
Schwartz. The mayor and eleven councilmembers are saying that the city
will be glad to muscle small businesses out of their properties and out
of business, and to give away city property, in order to benefit an
influential businessman and political contributor who can’t get his
way through the normal course of business. Richard’s right; this is
disgusting, and they don’t even bother to hide the corruption.
Now is a good time to recommend Councilmember Schwartz’s bill to
restrict eminent domain to its original intentions, so that the DC
government can take our private property only for government uses, not
to benefit political donors’ private business pojects. It is the
“Protection from Eminent Domain Act of 2006,” Bill 16-912 (http://www.dcwatch.com/council16/16-912.htm),
and unlike many eminent domain bills that have been passed in other
states in reaction to the Kelo decision, it is a clean bill that has no
gaping loopholes that eviscerate it. It is a bill that all citizens who
do not seek private favors from the DC government should support; of
course, no other councilmembers are cosponsoring it.
Gary Imhoff and Dorothy Brizill
themail@dcwatch.com and dorothy@dcwatch.com
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What do people think of the current DC Charter School Scandal? Has
anyone been reading the coverage in the Examiner?
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Homeland Security Appropriations: No Funding
for Coast Guard Move to St. E’s
Stuart Gosswein, sgosswein@aol.com
The appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security for
the fiscal year ending September 30, 2007 (HR 5441, Public Law 109-295),
forbids DHS from moving the Coast Guard headquarters to St. Elizabeths
and expresses dissatisfaction with current plans to move DHS
headquarters to the site. The specific language is found in the
committee report that accompanies the law: H Rept 109-699. It reads as
follows:
"Headquarters: While the conferees have fully funded the budget
request of $8,206,000 for enhancements to the DHS headquarters on
Nebraska Avenue, no funding has been provided to move the US Coast Guard
headquarters to the St. Elizabeths complex. This move has been proposed
as the first phase to consolidate most or all of DHS at the St.
Elizabeths campus. However, the Department is unable to elaborate on the
reasons why St. Elizabeths is the best location for a permanent DHS
headquarters, what other sites have been considered, which specific
components would move to that site, the total space requirements for DHS
headquarters, and the total costs associated with using the St.
Elizabeths site as a headquarters location. The Department must develop
a comprehensive long-term plan for the future location of all DHS
offices and components, rather than the piecemeal approach currently
being used. As such, the conferees prohibit the Department from
relocating the Coast Guard’s headquarters, or any other DHS component,
until DHS completes a new, comprehensive headquarters master plan and
submits a prospectus for Congressional review and approval. In addition,
the conferees direct the Department to regularly update the Committees
on Appropriations on the expenditure of funds provided to improve the
current DHS headquarters on Nebraska Avenue, as specified in the Senate
report."
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Mayor Tries to Stack DCSEC with Cronies
Tim Monroe, tmonroe77@yahoo.com
See http://www.wtop.com/?nid=428&sid=949328.
Whoever made the point recently about this baseball stadium and the DC
Sports and Entertainment Commission being all about handing out perks
and political sops was right on. The new administration can’t allow
the DCSEC or other entities to be run like this.
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Serfs
Larry Seftor, larry underscore seftor .them757 at
zoemail.net
I feel somewhat like a serf, bound to the land (or at least living as
a resident of DC) and obligated to do the will of the Lerners. The
Lerners have made it clear that the citizens of DC must serve their will
in support of the Lerner’s personal money making venture, the
Washington Nationals. Like the nobility of old, the Lerners are using
the work of others (DC taxpayers in this case) to provide wealth and
security for their family (a self-described benefit of owning the team
that was documented in the recent Washington Post article about
the Lerners). I’m not sure why the city council put me in this
position of servitude, but I don’t like it and I think it is time for
a little push back.
We live in an age where eminent domain allows governments to place
public good over personal interests. In fact, Wikipedia states that,
“Governments may also condemn personal property, including a contract
or a franchise . . . .” Accordingly, contracts with governments have
always been unfairly biased towards the public good and a government can
act at its “convenience” (see Federal Acquisition Regulation
52.249-1 as an example). Hopefully our new mayor will act as a
representative of the people, instead of as a shill for baseball (wouldn’t
that be novel), and will protect the interests of the citizens of DC.
Explaining to the Lerners that governments serve the public good rather
than private interests might be enough. If not, the DC government should
be willing to find and use legal tools to correct this absurd situation.
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Twenty Millions Dollars of Metro Allocation
Goes to Ballpark Metro Stop
Ed Delaney, profeddel@yahoo.com
See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/19/AR2006101901696.html.
Of course, city officials originally promised that the costs would be
covered by the city and/or the team as part of the DC ballpark project.
However, Major League Baseball worked the lease deal so that the city
became obligated for the costs of improving the Metro stop, and the
baseball boosters in city government simply moved those costs out of the
stadium budget, instead dispatching city officials as lobbyists to get
the feds to foot the cost of the ballpark-prompted improvements. The
main lobbyist, Gregory McCarthy of the mayor’s office, accepted a
consulting position with the team last week, according to this week’s City
Paper, in the latest example of inbreeding amongst the baseball
brigade. With the “money for construction coming from federal funds
allocated to the District,” it represents a clear case of funds used
towards the ballpark project that could’ve been used for other needed
city purposes, such as making much needed repairs to the system,
something which city officials pledged up and down would never occur.
The main problem besides dedicating more city funding to the ballpark
project is that the station needs more than double that amount to meet
Metro’s original $47 million expansion plan designed to accommodate
game-day traffic. This estimate was already considered a bare minimum
improvement, given the lack of adequate platform at a single-line
station for the crowds of thirty to forty thousand that are expected at
the parking-starved new ballpark. According to the February 21, 2005, Washington
Business Journal, a reduction in spending to $20 million would lead
to a situation that “officials acknowledge might create a logjam on
sold-out game days that could keep hundreds or even thousands of fans
milling about South Capitol Street and the surrounding area.” In other
words, the $20 million item does not provide a solution to the
transportation problems created by the issues of the current site and
does nothing for the cost certainty that the mayor and the baseball
brigade were supposed to provide on the Metro improvements front after
shifting these costs outside of the ballpark project‘s budget.
Not only that, but a Metro spokesman pointed out late last year that
in order to bring the Navy Yard Metro stop up to standards required to
support the numbers of people going to ball games, work would have to
start “no later than June of 2006” (WTOP, December 1, 2005). It’s
quite a bit later than that, which again puts pressure on all involved
to cut corners and hurry up to meet the Opening Day 2008 deadline, all
of which figure to yield a compromised product in what is already a
cut-rate white elephant of an operation and a further logistical
nightmare at this horribly-placed ballpark with its nightmare of a
transportation issue.
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Another One Bites the Dust (Redux)
Larry Seftor, larry underscore seftor .them757 at
zoemail.net
Long time readers will know that I track the loss of the city’s
movie theaters. Each theater lost had its own character and each added a
little life to its neighborhood. We can add the Wisconsin Avenue Loews,
which is closing at the end of November, to the following list: the
Biograph, the Cerberus, the Fine Arts, the Inner Circle, the Jennifer,
the Key, the MacArthur, the Paris, the Studio, the Tenley, the West End,
the Outer Circle, and the Cinema (formerly next to Rodmans on Wisconsin
Avenue). (Longer time residents would also add the Circle, the Senator,
the Penn, and others to my list.) Fourteen screen multiplexes may offset
some of the loss in screen count, but they cannot replace the lost
neighborhood presence.
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Google SketchUp, A No-Cost 3D Digital
Playground
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com
With new operating systems coming from Microsoft and Apple in the
next few months, there are going to be a lot of donated computers
available to youths and families in the DC-area in the next year. Some
youth will be getting their hands on their first computer -- and will
lack funds to buy software for it. As a community, we want those youths
to be developing general skills, competence and confidence at using
computer programs. I can think of no better program than Google SketchUp
for this purpose. SketchUp is a free 3D drawing program that Google
released a few months ago. Designed originally for architects, this
program is easy enough for first graders to use.
To help others learn what this program can do, I’ve created several
screencasts, narrated explanations of screen activity, showing Google
SketchUp in action. These screencasts are collected together at http://infinitemuseum.blogspot.com.
Google Sketchup is available at http://sketchup.google.com.
Thanks for spreading the word to youths and to youth organizations you
know — and to any families you know who have received, or expect to
receive, their first computer in the coming months. In our community, we
share information that empowers each other. Creativity is wealth. We
must boost creativity for all members of our community, sharing wealth
while creating new wealth.
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This month we have belatedly posted our comments to DDoT last April
on their plans for “deconstructing” the Whitehurst Freeway at http://www.narpac.org/REXLRPRO.HTM#whitfree,
and last May on their plans to downgrade South Capitol Street while
adding an overly elaborate new bridge at http://www.narpac.org/REXLRPRO.HTM#ncpcapst.
And for those who couldn’t connect to last month’s more important
final testimony to the council on DC’s Comprehensive Plan, we try
again to get it right at http://www.narpac.org/REXDCPLAN.HTM#dccowtest.
All reflect our deep concern for the city’s present (and future?) tin
ear as regards long-range transportation infrastructure needs. We have
also updated our longer-term statistics on crime in DC compared to other
cities through 2005 at http://www.narpac.org/SJI.HTM#crim9305.
There’s lots of work for the new city government.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Ward 7 School Board Candidates Forum, October
27
Patricia Chittams, pchittams@yahoo.com
A school board candidate forum will be held on Friday, October 27,
from 7:00-9:00 p.m., at the First Baptist Church, 3440 Minnesota Avenue,
SE, Rev. Harold N. Brooks, Jr., Pastor. This forum is sponsored by the
Educational Outreach Ministry of First Baptist Church. This is the only
school board candidate forum that will be held in Ward 7.
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Children’s Book Authors at Cleveland Park
Library, October 28
India Young, india.young@dc.gov
Saturday, October 28, 2:00 p.m., Cleveland Park Neighborhood Library,
3310 Connecticut Avenue, NW. An afternoon with children’s book
authors. Mary Quattlebaum will read from her book, Sparks Fly High: The
Legend of Dancing Point, and Erica S. Perl will read from Ninety-Three
in My Family. A book signing and sale will follow the author talk.
For more information, call 282-3072. Ages 4 - 8 accompanied by a parent.
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Rally for Workforce Development, October 31
Jessica Goshow, DC Employment Justice Center, jgoshow@dcejc.org
The Workforce Development committee of the DC Jobs Council is
organizing a rally for Workforce Development sponsored by the DC
Employment Justice Center. The rally is to make sure that the new
council and mayor know that the public cares about workforce
development. It will be at DOES headquarters (609 H Street, NE) at 10:00
a.m. on October 31. The rally will focus on three main themes. The first
is that the system needs to be fixed (DOES in particular); the second,
that more resources need to be given to attain both hard and soft
skills; and the last being that DC employers need to be encouraged to
hire DC residents.
Come out and support workforce development! For more information,
E-mail: jgoshow@dcejc.org or call
828-9675 x 20.
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DC Builds, October 31
Lauren Searl, lsearl@nbm.org
Tuesday, October 31, 6:30-8:00 p.m., DC Builds: Comprehensive Plans
for Large American Cities: The Process and the Product. Join in an
evening panel discussion with Otis Rollie, director of planning in
Baltimore, Peter Park, director of planning in Denver, John Rahalm,
director of planning in Seattle, and Ellen McCarthy, director of
planning in Washington, as they discuss the different processes and
approaches they each worked through to develop a comprehensive plan for
their respective cities and what the final outcome was for each. At the
National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW, Judiciary Square stop, Metro
Red Line. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.
$12 Museum members and students; $20 nonmembers. Prepaid registration
required. Walk-in registration based on availability.
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Mario Lavista Concert by Post-Classical
Ensemble, November 9
Barbara Ruesga Pelayo, bruesga@sre.gob.mx
The Cultural Institute of Mexico, GALA, and the Post-Classical
Ensemble invite you to a concert to pay homage to Mario Lavista on
Thursday, November 9, 8:00 p.m., at the GALA Theater, 3333 14th Street,
NW. This concert by the Post-Classical Ensemble (Angel-Gil Ordonez,
musical director; Joseph Horowitz, artistic director) will include
performances of Lavista’s Reflejos de la noche for string orchestra,
Marsias for oboe and tuned glasses, and Three Secular Dances for cello
and piano, as well as Debussy’s Syrinx for solo flute. A dialogue with
composer Mario Lavista will also take place. For tickets, contact
http://www.galatheatre.com or 1-800-494-TIXS. There is a special
discount for members of the GALA Theater, the Post-Classical Ensemble,
and the Cultural Institute of Mexico.
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CLASSIFIEDS — DONATIONS
Winter Scarves for the Homeless
Mary Boland, fotdfa@hotmail.com
Friends’ Action, a 501(c)(4) charitable organization that advocates
for Congressional voting rights for the citizens of the District of
Columbia, is once again collecting winter scarves to be given to those
who live on the streets of Washington. We ask for your assistance. Pull
out your warmest yarn, make something wonderful, and send your
creation(s) to Friends’ Action, PO Box 3138, Hagerstown, MD 21741 by
December 8. We will distribute all donations to DC homeless shelters in
December.
If you are not the creative type, you can still help us. Please pass
the word — to your craft guild, club, church/synagogue/mosque,
coworkers, and friends. Please note, for IRS purposes donations are not
tax deductible.
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