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August 12, 2007

Beat the Heat

Dear Beaters:

Adrienne Washington’s column on Friday about the Washington Times’ editorial interview with Chancellor Michelle Rhee summarizes my feelings well (http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070810/METRO/108100065/1004): “I was waiting with bated breath. I was hoping against all odds. I tried ever so hard to keep an open mind. Maybe, just maybe, if I sat still and wished hard enough, I would actually hear something different. You have no idea how much, for the sake of DC children, I longed to hear something different, to feel the aging cynic in me nudge. Unfortunately, the yack-yack was the same during a one-hour editorial board meeting with DC Public Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. . . . She is the latest in the long line of superintendents who sat in the same seat and spewed forth the same reformer’s rhetoric about this failing ‘faceless bureaucracy.’” No, I’m not motivated by cynicism or negativity, and Adrienne really isn’t either. And nobody wants Rhee to do badly or to fail. It’s just that Mayor Fenty is handicapped by a rookie’s arrogance, sure that he’s smarter, harder working, and more capable than anyone who preceded him, and that led him to make phony promises of rapid, dramatic improvement in school performance that he can’t keep. Rhee is now saddled with having to make it appear that she will fulfill those promises, and that she has a reservoir of knowledge and competence and a bag of tricks that her predecessors didn’t have.

The administration is instituting a very bad public policy, and the Washington Post is giving Fenty at least a partial pass on it — even though his recent executive order to destroy the record of governmental electronic communications badly harms the principles of open government and freedom of information that the Post world normally champion (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/11/AR2007081101054.html). In May, an insider leaked to Dorothy the information that the government had an unofficial policy of retaining government E-mails for only six months, and totally erasing them after that, and that there was a plan to make that policy official and shorten the retention period. Dorothy researched the situation and found that the city government didn’t have an official retention law or regulation in effect. Dorothy went to Councilmember Carol Schwartz and suggested that the government should develop an official policy about preserving electronic communications, and sent a copy of her recommendations to the Washington Post’s editorial board. Keeping electronic records is important because over the past several years almost all internal government communications have moved from being written memoranda to being E-mails. Now only the most formal and final government actions are reduced to paper memoranda, which are automatically retained and archived. E-mails and instant messages, in which all the real business is now done, will now be lost to reporters looking for the real story, to history, and to legal proceedings. Several recent national corporate and government legal cases have emphasized the importance of keeping the E-mail record. But the DC government has decided the safest policy is to bury the evidence. Every DC government E-mail older than six months will be deleted automatically and permanently, unless it has been flagged by its author as historically important or unless the government has been officially notified that the E-mail may be needed as evidence in litigation. What is most questionable about the Post’s editorial support for this destruction is that the newspaper buys the government’s fraudulent rationale for it -- that it costs too much to save electronic records. The cost estimate given by the government and quoted by the Post is $1.2 million for three years to save all electronic communications. That’s only $400,000 a year, a fraction of the cost of archiving paper records, and the cost of saving electronic records has been dropping like a stone for decades, and will continue to get cheaper and cheaper. (The first widely available hard drives in personal computers were 10 meg., and cost several thousand dollars; 500G hard drives, fifty thousand times larger, now cost $100 at retail.) No, cost isn’t the issue, and cost-saving isn’t the purpose of destroying the record of how government decisions were made and why government actions were taken — keeping information from the press and the public is what this is all about.

Latest ice cream and sorbet news: lime sorbet, even tarter than lemon sorbet, is the most refreshing so far; watermelon and tomato sorbet, a recipe from the current issue of Southern Living (http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1634658), is the most unusual (we substituted commercial tomato juice for fresh squeezed, since we prefer the consistency of the commercial variety); and fresh peach ice cream is up next. What are you eating to beat the heat?

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Public Land Sales: The View from Tenleytown
Sue Hemberger, Friendship Heights, smithhemb@aol.com

At an ANC 3E meeting Thursday night, David Jannarone from the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, told a stunned audience that his office was hoping to issue an RFP (Request for Proposals) for the Tenley Library-Janney School site by the end of this month. As community members peppered him with a series of challenging questions, Jannarone reassured them that the Mayor’s goal was simply to unleash the value in the land to serve neighborhood goals and that the community would be fully involved in the process. He hoped that this deal, the first of many, would serve as a model for the rest of the city.

A brief look at that model thus far: 1) choose which sites to sell based on "unsolicited proposals" floated by developers. Don’t insist that such proposals be actual offers. Think of them more as "concept plans." The value of a "concept plan" is that it can be all things to all people. It’s concrete enough that specific benefits can be claimed ($16 million in additional revenue, no loss of green space), yet elastic enough that any new request (affordable housing, a larger library, tripling the size of the school project) can always be accommodated. How? Talk is cheap when there’s no offer on the table and you’re just seeking buy-in on the concept. At this stage, there’s no budget, no comprehensive site plan, and no detailed timeline to constrain the project. Gain credibility by enlisting the support of an enthusiastic councilmember, who will assure the community that there’s a political solution to every legal, financial, or temporal obstacle, while assuring the mayor and other councilmembers that the community is eager to explore this option.

2) Ignore the fact that the site in question contains DCPS’s most overcrowded school, as well as a shuttered library branch whose reconstruction has already been shamefully long in coming. Also ignore the fact that both projects are already fully-funded through capital budgeting. Use the fact that the school and library projects are on very different schedules to suggest that yoking the two will make the school project happen sooner. Treat the prospect that this scenario will further delay the library project as a justification for acting quickly to make a deal with a private developer. ("Quick, DC government is on the verge of building a library. They must be stopped before it’s too late!")

3) When controversy erupts over whether public land deals are being based on cronyism rather than the public interest, commit to issuing an RFP. Get the RFP out as soon as possible -- don’t wait to do any (short- or long-term) facilities planning for the site. Don’t assess your real estate holdings to decide whether this is a piece of land you should be selling. Don’t even wait to forge a community consensus around what should be built at the site. After all, an RFP commits you to nothing. And, who knows, maybe some developer will come up with something interesting that people will like. Urge everyone to wait and see. Suggest that if they don’t like the proposals, they can reject them. Backpedal when asked if the community will actually have that kind of veto power. The decision will be the mayor’s.

Tenleytown is where the mayor and the council will decide what lessons have been learned from the West End debacle. The need for competitive bidding and public notice (not to be confused with community consent) has become apparent. But they still don’t seem to understand the planning issues or the perils of letting developers name the parcels to be sold and frame the options for providing public facilities. The local media have done a terrible job of covering public land issues and, as a result, major decisions with lasting implications are being made without much public oversight or even awareness. I find it hard to believe that the same citizens who overwhelmingly supported Adrian Fenty’s populist, neighborhood-centered candidacy expected his administration to be selling public lands out from under our schools and libraries to build more condos. Yet in West End and Tenleytown that’s precisely where we’re headed.

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Security Details
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com

Today, the Washington Post writes about Mayor Fenty’s decision to forego being shadowed constantly by a large security detail (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/11/AR2007081101047.html): “Mayor Adrian M. Fenty no longer has a full-time police detail to protect him as he travels about the city on official business, preferring to drive his own vehicle, unaccompanied by officers.” This is a good move, since ever since Mayor Barry the size of the mayor’s security detail has been inflated beyond any reasonable purpose, and more often than not police officers on the detail are relegated to simply standing around and holding the mayor’s hat and coat. As the Post noted, Fenty used his security detail ostentatiously and unnecessarily in the first few months of his administration, “when he traveled in a motorcade that frequently used emergency flashers and sirens to cut through traffic as he whipped around the city to attend community meetings.”

Moreover, as WUSA-TV reporter Bruce Johnson noted on his blog last month, “The DC police officers assigned to guard DC Mayor Adrian Fenty and his family are required to sign confidentiality forms . . . swearing they won’t repeat ever to their wives and girlfriends anything they see or hear while accompanying the mayor throughout his busy work day and evening.” (To access the story, go to http://www.wusa9.com/news/columnist/blogs/brucejohnson.aspx, click on July 2007 under Archives, and scroll down to July 21.) The policy of having sworn officers sign confidentiality forms may have been of questionable legality; whether or not it was, it certainly went far beyond what even Mayor Barry had required of his security detail.

So what has led to Fenty’s cutback, aside from the obvious possibility that it is just a commonsense move? Perhaps the answer is that Fenty, who has never stopped campaigning, realized that using police officers as drivers and servants undermines his image as a populist and man of the people, or perhaps it is just another instance in which he is modeling himself in the image of his mentor, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Fenty now drives himself around the city, just as Mayor Bloomberg is known for getting to work by riding the subway (although the New York Times tailed Bloomberg and found his security detail was actually driving him from his town house past several subway stations before dropping him off closer to his office, so he would have a shorter and faster subway ride — http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/shadowing-the-mayor-of-new-york/).

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Hear the Latest About the Federal City Council?
Gina Arlotto, DCPS Parent, Ward 6, citymom@dcaccess.com

Contrary to the implication in the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/08/AR2007080800959.html), those of us who oppose and question the Federal City Council’s unelected and undemocratic role in our city’s policy decisions are not simply wild-eyed conspiracy theorists. The glaring omission in Yolanda Woodlee’s item in the District Weakly (misspell intended) is that the Washington Post is a major tool of the Federal City Council. As readers of themail surely know, the FCC was created by Philip Graham, and several of the Post’s past and present corporate board members are current FCC members as well. It’s too bad that Yolanda did not provide readers with the courtesy of a full disclosure notice. What was correct in the item is that I stand by my post in themail. The fact that everyone gets worked into a lather and starts backpedaling whenever the FCC is mentioned proves that there is some damage control afoot and we’ve clearly touched a nerve. A very well-respected attendee at the meeting of the DC Economic Empowerment Coalition who prefers to remain anonymous (natch) stands by the account of what was stated quite plainly: that any initiatives must “secure approval” of the FCC before implementation in DCPS.

Additionally, John Hill (Executive Vice President of the FCC and another FCC link to DCPS and DC Libraries) is repeatedly asked if he is running DCPS through the Post, the Federal City Council, EdBuild, or EdAction? Let’s put them all out there: Victor Reinoso, former (?) direct employee of the FCC, now Deputy Mayor for Education (who has disingenuously bristled at the mere suggestion that the FCC has had any impact on his decision making as a school board member and now as the author — and I use that term loosely — of the school takeover scheme); John Hill, FCC VP, Chair of the DC Public Library committee, board member EdAction, and founder of EdBuild (which received a major no-bid contract to prepare collocation space for charter schools and supposedly thereby “help” the host DCPS school); Neil Albert, former Chief Executive Officer of EdBuild, currently Deputy Mayor for Economic Development (for more on the FCC, Neil Albert, EdBuild, and the $2.5 million in modernization funds, see http://stateofcolumbia.com/weblog/archive/2007/05/24/following-the-money-all-roads-lead-to-the-federal); and Kaya Henderson, our new Deputy Chancellor of Education, board member with John Hill on EdAction and EdBuild. I’m not sure if Kaya has been invited to join the ranks of the much-vaunted FCC, it’s more of a good ol’ boys club after all, but maybe she’ll get the nod soon, along with the most popular gal in town, Chancellor Rhee. Don’t think I’ve forgotten the ultimate man behind the curtain: Terry Golden, Chair of the Federal City Council, charter school cheerleader and pusher, tuition voucher mastermind (to name just a few roles) gives everyone, including our esteemed mayor, their marching orders and everyone falls into line. If Dr. Janey had had the chance, surely he would have told Michelle Rhee that if she doesn’t dance with Terry Golden and the Federal City Council, she might not get asked to the ball.

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Lack of Respect
Clyde Howard, ceohoward@hotmail.com

Michelle Rhee, the new public school reformer, is certainly a chip off the Fenty block. Fenty disrespects the parents of the children he claims he is working hard for to improve their education. Ms. Rhee disrespects the immediate communities in close proximity of Cardozo’s Football Field by allowing nonresidents of the District of Columbia to use the Cardozo High School Football Field to play soccer on Sundays. These nonresidents, from Maryland and Virginia, bring large numbers of cars to the immediate neighborhoods that they park illegally; tie up all available curb space preventing residents from parking; and leave their trash, making the community look seedy. The sad thing is that while Ms. Rhee is trying to budget money to enhance the educational quality of instructions for the students she is allowing nonresidents to ruin Cardozo’s football field’s playing surface, which will be costly to put back into shape for the students who participate in high school athletics as for the little league’s competition with other teams.

How is that we are so agreeable to letting nonresidents use our school’s facilities to the detriment of our students, who need facilities comparable to other those of other school systems? If it is so important for these nonresidents to play soccer, let them make the necessary arrangements where they live and not use our public school facilities. Perhaps ICE should make an appearance at these soccer games because I am sure the pickings will be very good.

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Speeding Ticket — The Resolution
Gabe Goldberg, gabe at gabegold dot com

Folks with good memories may remember that I griped last Fall about being tagged for speeding (53/30) westbound in the District’s E Street Tunnel. Note that it’s not a city street: it’s a submerged highway. There are no pedestrians, no houses, no stores, no schools, no entrances or exits from one end to the other, no traffic weaving sections, and no safety hazards. 30 is a ridiculously low speed limit.

Since 53/30 — more than twenty miles over the limit — is or can be considered reckless driving, I asked for a hearing to dispute the ticket. After some fumbling — I’d moved, they had an old address, etc. -- I received a hearing date. I prepared with various arguments that thirty is an unsafe speed in the tunnel (it obstructs traffic and is dangerous because of people coming up much faster from behind) and that I’m a safe driver (decades of safe-driver insurance discounts, no tickets/accidents). I showed up a bit early, was pleasantly astonished that the waiting room wasn’t a nasty mob scene and the woman in charge was pleasant and competent.

I overheard a lawyer advising a client that if the charging officer didn’t show up, the hearing examiner would offer three choices: guilty, guilty with an explanation, and deny. If you deny and the officer’s not there, charge dismissed. My officer didn’t appear, I denied, the ticket was dismissed. The hearing examiner was also competent and professional. My officer wasn’t the only one to no-show — I was almost (almost!) disappointed I didn’t get to argue the ticket but I was just as happy to have it go away. So spending the couple hours to prepare and go through the process was worthwhile.

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Fresh Viewpoint at the Washington Post
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro@his.com

I commend the Washington Post for adding Catherine Rampell to their editorial board. This young writer has fresh insights and many sensible things to tell us. (See http://tinyurl.com/2ahfm4.) Her editorial says as much about the topic she’s writing about as it does about a slightly expanded mindset at the Washington Post.

But check out the abysmal editing. Rampell uses the word “despise” in describing the characters’ attitude towards each other in the Dr. Seuss story “The Sneetches.” That’s an absolutely incorrect word. Nobody ever despises anyone in a Dr. Seuss story. The characters in “The Sneetches” exhibit jealousies about stars on bellies (and non-stars on bellies), but nobody despises anyone. Would it be asking too much of the person who edited that editorial to thoughtfully read “The Sneetches”? Is that asking too much?

Rush, rush, rush. Mush, mush, mush. If we all go too fast, we’ll all fall on our Tush.

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Sidewalks Blocked by Construction
Norman Metzger, normanmetzger@verizon.net

Jim Champagne had it exactly right in his posting on “Construction Blocking Roads and Sidewalks” [themail, August 5]. When I testified recently before Jim Graham in hearings on DDOT’s budget, I told what happened when my wife and I spent a long weekend in New York City and walked all over Manhattan. We passed many, many construction sites and not once — I repeat, not once — were we ever forced out of the sidewalk. That was because every construction site had a fully protected and lit walk-through on the sidewalk. At a DC construction site, however, there’s inevitably a sign telling you, in effect, to go away — try the street or the other side, but just go away. The danger it creates for pedestrians is obvious, never mind the blatant arrogance and flipping DC law. Chairman Graham agreed with me and so afterwards did the DDOT Director, albeit blaming the problem on “third-party contractors.” Is it so hard to enforce the law? So far, as Mr. Champagne confirms, the problem is as bad as ever. I plan to return when the council next has DDOT hearings to ask what’s been done and armed with pictures of construction sites in NYC and DC. Likely won’t be a pretty comparison.

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Police Disbursements
Art Spitzer, artspitzer@aol.com

[Re: “Incommoding,” themail, August 12] I’m strongly in favor of police disbursements to demonstrators — we often seek such a remedy in our lawsuits — but I think you meant “the police may disperse them.” The heat must be getting to Gary.

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August 2007 InTowner
Peter Wolff, intowner@intowner.com

This is to advise that the August 2007 online 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 (the accompanying images can be seen in the archived PDF version). Also included are all current classified ads. The complete issue (along with prior issues back to January 2004) also is available in PDF file format directly from our home page at no charge simply by clicking the link in the Current & Back Issues Archive. 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 September 14 (the 2nd 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: 1) “Four Branch Libraries, Including in Shaw, to Get New Buildings — ‘Partnership’ Deals for Some Projects Raising Major Questions”; 2) “New Farmers Market in the Bloomingdale Neighborhood Welcomed and Very Popular”; 3) “Adams Morgan Day Festival Set for Sunday, Sept. 9.”

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

DC Public Library Events
Randi Blank, randi.blank@dc.gov

Thursday, August 16, 1:00 p.m., Chevy Chase Branch Library, 5625 Connecticut Avenue, NW. Summer Foreign Film Series. The second film in the series is The Prisoner of the Caucasus (1996), a film based on Leo Tolstoy’s story of the same title about an oddball pair of Russian soldiers who are captured by a Chechen father hoping to barter them for the release of his own captive sons. Directed by Sergei Bodrov. In Russian with English subtitles. Not rated. The series will continue in September. For more information, call 282-0021.

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CLASSIFIEDS — HELP WANTED

Organizing Job Announcement
Roger Newell, rnewell@teamster.org

DC Jobs with Justice is seeking a full-time organizer to make a six-month commitment, with the possibility of continuing. DC Jobs with Justice is a coalition of labor organizations, community groups, religious organizations, and student groups dedicated to protecting the rights of working people and supporting community struggles to build a more just society. Responsibilities: 1) campaign support: work with lead organizer and partner organizations to plan and implement coalition support for campaigns led by member organizations; 2) internal organizing: build and maintain working committees and strengthen participation of member groups in coalition campaign and activities; 3) mobilization: work with coalition member groups to mobilize for coalition actions and events; 4) coalition building: work with lead organizer and coalition leadership to reach out to allies and recruit new labor, faith, student and community organizations to the coalition; 5) fundraising: assist lead organizer and coalition leadership with grassroots fundraising efforts.

Qualifications: 1) organizing experience, including experience developing and implementing campaigns; 2) understanding of the labor movement and economic justice issues; 3) strong written and verbal communication; 3) computer skills, including word processing; database management, desktop publishing, and web design a plus; 4) proficiency in Spanish a plus. Term of employment: we are seeking someone to start as soon as possible, with a six-month commitment. The organization will be fundraising to make the position permanent and will evaluate the possibility of a longer commitment after four months. Compensation: $30,000-$35,000 a year, depending on experience; full benefits.

Please send a resume and cover letter to DC JwJ Search Committee at 888 16th Street, NW, Suite 520, Washington, DC 20006. Fax: 974-8152. E-mail: mbaris@dclabor.org. For more information, please contact Mackenzie Baris at 974-8224 or mbaris@solidaritycenter.org.

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CLASSIFIEDS — SCHOOLS

Hope Academy Public Charter School
Regina Rodriguez-Mitchell, Principal, rrodriguezmitchell@hopeacademypcs.org

HOPE Academy Public Charter School, an newly formed 5-8 grade college preparatory charter school in southeast Washington, DC, is currently enrolling fifth graders. If you are or know of interested parents, contact Hope Academy at 903-3100 or rrodriguezmitchell@hopeacademypcs.org. For additional information, see http://www.hopeacademypcs.org.

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