Public Business
Dear Fellow Public:
I apologize for the unscheduled week-long break in themail. The
electric line to our house failed last Wednesday afternoon. The line was
seventy to eighty years old, and this has been the first electric outage
we have had in twenty-five years, so it would be churlish of us to
complain. It took PEPCO a few days to narrow down the cause of the
failure, and when it did it refused to replace its line until we
replaced our old fuse board, which was similarly antique, with a new
breaker board. All the work is now proceeding, and in the meantime we’re
on temporary power and back online.
On September 18, Post reporter Theola Labbe revealed that the
city had entered into a severance agreement and settlement with former
superintendent Clifford Janey, but that it refused to disclose its terms
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/17/AR2007091701676.html).
Labbe further pressed the mayor’s general counsel, Peter Nickles, who
had negotiated the agreement, and Dorothy sent him an E-mail saying,
“I would be interested to learn the legal rationale under which the
District government can escape legal requirements to disclose the terms
of its financial dealings to the public simply by agreeing with a party
to keep their business dealings secret.” In a couple days, the
severance agreement was made public (http://www.dcpswatch.com/mayor/070829.htm).
If only the city government’s business would be made public so quickly
every time an official tried to keep it secret from the public.
WTOP reporter Mark Segraves has started a blog, the Malcontent
Minute, at http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=694&sid=1251065.
Segrave’s current posting is certainly hot news: WTOP commentator and
political activist Mark Plotkin, who’s still unhappy that ball points
replaced quill pens, is now actually carrying a cell phone. If Plotkin
were managing his own apartment house, it would still have a fuse board,
that’s for sure.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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I’m curious about others’ impressions of yesterday’s Car-Free
DC. This is what I noticed along our upper Connecticut Avenue corridor
between 8 and 8:15 a.m.: 1) many fewer cars -- possibly due to the
Redskins’ fans’ hangovers, or were many of you deliberately leaving
your car at home? 2) Pathetic bus service. During a fifteen-minute span,
no L1’s but instead two L2’s, one right after the other. At that
time of day, there is supposed to be a bus every six minutes, with the
L1 alternating with the L2. It appears Metro blew a golden opportunity
to impress people like me who don’t usually get on its buses.
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While we’re on the topic of Metro: for twenty years I’ve been
complaining about the shabby condition of the Tenleytown Metro station.
The entrance on the west side of Wisconsin has improved considerably
since Best Buy and the Container Store went into the old Sears building
at Wisconsin and Albemarle, but the entrance on the east side still
looks awful. While other stations has gotten attractive new canopies,
Tenleytown has none, meaning that our escalator is exposed to the
elements and frequently breaks down. The escalator and elevator entrance
is surrounded by at least sixty tacky-looking newspaper boxes of every
shape and color. Most aren’t even in use, and are filled with trash
and the clothing and blankets of our resident street people. The
sidewalk surrounding the Metro entrance is covered with chewing gum. The
trash receptacles are often overflowing. The landscaping is pathetic.
Out of four ornamental trees, three are dead, as are a lot of the
bushes. Metro workers often store their equipment at the top of the
escalator, behind the elevator entrance. For months there were two
portable toilets there, supposedly because there were no facilities down
below for Metro personnel to use. No shelter is provided for the
American University students waiting for the shuttle, so groups of
around thirty stand on the sidewalk or crouch on the curb in all kinds
of weather.
This depressing view greets riders every day as they exit the Metro.
Maybe most people are used to it and don’t notice anymore, but what
will visitors to our neighborhood think? Will they be encouraged to
linger and shop here? When is this going to improve?
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Mayor Fenty’s Car-Free Day
Malcolm L Wiseman, Jr., Washington Free DC, mal@wiseman.ws
Perhaps related to Mayor’s Car-Free Day: I regularly observe him
with his bicycling training crew in my neighborhood. I frankly admire
their regimen and example. Since his retirement (for the most part) of
the security detail and their several vehicles from this assignment, our
block has seen a lot less impact. Why, it’s synergistic! Fewer cars on
the streets, more cycling, more trust, less fuss, better health, DC
statehood!
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Entropy Increases: Metrorail Continues to Get
Worse
Larry Seftor, Ward 3, larry underscore seftor .them757 at
zoemail.net
Richard Layman, in commenting on my post about Metrorail (and missing
the fact that my reference to Omaha was tongue-in-cheek), pointed to a
piece in the McKinsey Quarterly on transit systems [themail,
September 16]. It is too bad that Mr. Layman didn’t tell us what the
piece said, which is that “public-transit agencies could lower costs
and raise the quality of service by emulating best practices from around
the world.” This message is just a restatement of my point that
"there is no lack of information for how to run an underground
railroad."
The problem with public entities is that they are unconstrained
systems. Rather than improving performance and productivity, it is
easier to create PowerPoint that justifies increased fares and lowered
service levels to a compliant Metro board. After all, the public
increasingly has no viable alternatives. The Metro board should do their
job and apply a few constraints (e.g., no immediate fare increase, no
immediate service reductions) and force Metro management to improve the
productivity of the system. How? As Mr. Layman points out, the McKinsey
study offers some thoughts about places to start.
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Does anyone know how and to whom to report a car with District plates
that is driving in an unsafe manor? On September 19, at approximately
6:40 a.m. on 19th Street, SE, in the vicinity of 19th and East Capitol
Streets, SE, a DC vehicle with the license plates DC 5379 was driving at
excessive speed and making reckless lane changes. The car was so out of
control that I had to note the time and location of the behavior.
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Never Thought This Would Happen
Ed T. Barron, edtb1@macdotcom
Whoda thunk that I’d ever be in agreement with former mayor Marion
Barry. In the case of Greater Southeast Community Hospital and the
proposed open ended bailout to the tune of $79 million by the D.C.
taxpayers, I agree with Barry. That’s Too Much (as they say on the
Price is Right). A far better alternative would be to establish three
walk-in clinics in southeast DC that would provide first response
emergency services and practice corrective and preventive medicine for
the residents of that under served community. There are ample hospitals
and beds in DC’s existing hospitals. There are ample emergency rooms,
as well. What is needed is a place where ailing folks can get easily
accessed treatment and education on preventive medicine. We don’t need
a money pit that won’t do near as well as walk-in clinics.
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The Great DC Medicine Man Show
Jonathan R. Rees, jrrees2006@verizon.net
Mayor Adrian Fenty to give residents of the District of Columbia the
impression that he is a proactive mayor is running up and down the
streets of the District of Columbia attending on an average one public
event a day. This activity on the part of Mayor Fenty is designed to
make people think that he is doing things for the District of Columbia
but, if you take a very close look at what he is doing, he is really
doing nothing.
What Mayor Fenty is doing is attempting to deceive residents into
believing that images of him in action are really actions when in
reality, they are not. Detract people from matters he does not want them
focusing on and gear himself up for 2010. We are now in the ninth month
of the Fenty Administration and still, we are being feed one line
promises. It is becoming painfully clear that Mayor Fenty still cannot
offer us anything of real substance that we can point to as being the
result of his actions. What little he can, is something he, Reinoso,
Tangherlini, or someone else in his administration ripped off from the
hard work of others and/or was already in the works long before he
became mayor.
When is this fraud going to end? When are people of DC going to see
that they were like the fools at a medicine man show who were sold this
magic elixir that would cure all our ills by a con artist named Adrian
M. Fenty?
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Keep Our Baby out of West End’s Bathwater
Bill Coe, bceedeec@aol.com
This responds to one of Robin Diener’s opinion pieces in themail of
September. Diener, along with lots of other people, is unhappy with a
proposal for redeveloping the library and police station in West End. I
don’t live down there so don’t know precisely what that transaction
entails. It seems that many objections to it revolve as much around
process as substance. Even its loudest critics, such a Councilmember
Mendelson, concede the bottom line result might be a good deal for the
citizens of West End, but that the proposal is irreparably corrupted by
bad administrative and legislative handling. Process, it appears, trumps
everything else in West End. Be that as it may, I ask Diener and the
other protesters not to link their controversy to the public-private
partnership under discussion in Tenley, which would rebuild the local
library and put desperately needed improvements into Janney Elementary
School. No one in Tenley argues (as they do in West End) that such an
agreement would amount to a giveaway of public property. There is a quid
pro quo — the argument being over whether it’s sufficiently
attractive or not. In exchange for a slice of real estate on Tenley’s
library-school site, which would go to the construction of private
housing (with a portion set aside for residents in the workforce), the
developer proposes to finish rebuilding the library earlier than
currently planned by the District — using DC’s architect, working to
the community’s specifications. The developer would also complete
improvements to Janney Elementary several years earlier than the target
date now set under DCPS’s Master Facilities Plan.
Robin Diener is simply incorrect in asserting a “lack of public
inclusion in plans for other libraries including the Tenley. . . .” DC’s
Chief Librarian, Ginnie Cooper, has come to Tenley for at least two
public meetings, both well run and heavily attended, at which she
briefed neighbors on the city’s plans, collected extensive input on
desired features for the library, and answered questions. Folks in
Tenley know as much as she does about what the reconstructed library
will include. The PPP would not affect the building of that library,
other than to speed it up.
Neighbors in Tenley have waited years for the reconstruction of their
library and have endured several delays just in getting the work
started. DC’s improvements to Janney Elementary — so badly wanted by
parents in a neighborhood jam-packed with toddlers — are now
officially projected to be finished no earlier than 2014, which means
that children set to enter first grade one year from now will never see
them done. Just about any proposal which would do all this work faster,
in a couple or three years, is worth considering. Doing it by means of
emergency legislation only reflects the long-standing frustration of
Tenley’s neighbors, as they wait year after year for the replacement
of their library and endure the embarrassing structural shortcomings of
their elementary school. (It is also worth noting that the additional
housing, in a neighborhood served by Metro, is beneficial for the city
as a whole, economically and environmentally. The pressure on DC’s
housing market constitutes an ever growing emergency for those in the
workforce seeking decent places to live.) Those protesting the proposed
development in West End might have good arguments, but they should keep
Tenley out of their fight. We in this part of town know what we need,
and we’re looking at a creative offer from the private sector which
might get it done for us, and done more timely to boot. What
right-minded citizen would not at least consider accepting such a deal?
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Loopholes in Project Labor Agreement
Ed Delaney, profeddel@yahoo.com
From http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=2528:
“Although residents were promised a chunk of construction jobs at the
stadium, the work hasn’t come through. By the end of June, District
residents had worked only 23 percent of the highly paid journeyman hours
at the site along the Anacostia River, according to a recent report.
Much of the money fleeing with workers to the suburbs was supposed to
stay in the city: In 2006, Mayor Williams fashioned a ‘project labor
agreement’ (PLA) with trade unions, the construction giant
Clark/Hunt/Smoot [a joint venture of three construction groups formed
for the job], and the DCSEC. The agreement promised 50 percent of
journeyman hours to local residents.” What, a ballpark promise of
benefits to the city made by Williams and the baseball brigade that
falls far short of the promise? Say it ain’t so!
“Hiring procedures for stadium jobs are spelled out in the
agreement. When subcontractors need workers, they are required to ask
the unions to dispatch a DC resident. If the unions cannot find one
within 24 hours, they pass the query to the DC Department of Employment
Services, which sends available workers to the site. If the department
cannot fill the job within 48 hours, subcontractors are free to hire
nonresidents.” One has to wonder how vigilant each level of
bureaucracy has been on this front, given the pathetic percentage of DC
workers that are reportedly being retained. Some of the developers carp
about skill levels as the culprit in this story, but developers are
notorious for setting up their own rules and hiring whoever’s cheapest
regardless of residency and even legality to work in the country, so it’s
incumbent upon the city to do the necessary oversight on a constant
basis to ensure that benchmarks are met properly. Then again, this
project is a monument to the lack of oversight and accountability that
the city was supposed to have over the private business sector, so it’s
hardly surprising to find more of the same shortcomings here.
“In addition to the low local journeyman hours, lower-paid
apprentices are doing less work than promised. Unions and subcontractors
have also fallen short of a pledge to hire DC residents for all new
apprentice jobs. By the end of June, one of ten lived elsewhere.” Now
that’s just ridiculous. All means all, doesn’t it? “Construction
companies and the unions haven’t failed on all of the labor agreement’s
targets. Among all new hires this year, 480 of 868 were from DC, which
exceeds the 51 percent goal. Still, these new hires have had a paltry
effect on the amount of hours worked by locals. Jerry Lozupone,
executive secretary treasurer of the Washington DC Building and
Construction Trades Council, says that’s because some subcontractors
arrived with out-of-town crews and simply aren’t hiring. He seems to
be correct. Among the 56 contractors listed on the June task force
report, 18 of them did not hire workers this year.” That’s another
loophole that the city could have closed to the benefit of District
residents, had there been more interest in ensuring those benefits than
greasing the skids to ensure construction didn’t slow due to the
promises made by the Brigade to the city.
“The local hiring issue has come up before, most recently during
the 1990s construction of the Washington Convention Center and MCI
Center. It’s likely to be an issue again with other city projects near
the stadium, task force and construction sources say. There is much
hand-wringing over the stadium labor numbers, but some question whether
the city ever took the agreement seriously. ‘I really think they knew
it couldn’t get met,’ Lozupone says about the resident worker goals.
The bigger issue is getting the stadium built before Opening Day, he
says. ‘Come April next year, nobody is going to give a rat’s ass.
Everybody forgets it. It goes away.’” What other promises were made
that the Brigade might not have taken seriously? Well, we know about the
land acquisition, infrastructure, and parking cap that should’ve
forced the city to move the project to the RFK Stadium site, which a
local developer (Herb Miller) close to certain baseball boosters on the
council (Jack Evans) reportedly was able to convince a majority of
councilmembers not to follow through on. We also know about the promise
of a supposedly rock hard, “we really mean it this time,” ballpark
cap that was exceeded but circumvented (thus eliminating it as a hard
cap) by moving escalating costs outside the budget. This includes the
latest outrage of Mayor Fenty abandoning his previous sensible approach
of opposing ballpark cost excesses by shifting around $770,000 of public
money from the budget of one department to another for something as
frivolous as stadium art which the private sector could’ve easily
covered but instead had an apparently brow-beaten Fenty into jumping
through hoops to deliver.
When the local media essentially gave them a pass on each and every
circumvention, the council didn’t bother with the pretense of a cap
when it came to their ever-escalating legal services tab with Venable
LLP. They simply used emergency legislation to ignore the joke of a
rock-hard cost cap, with Vincent Gray offering the weakest of excuses,
“The city is in too deep to back out of the Venable deal now” (Examiner,
June 7), and no doubt hoping that Lozupone was right that everyone will
forget it and it’ll just go away. (Of course, Gray and many of the new
councilmembers are in office thanks to the overwhelming ouster of
pro-stadium council members, so one can only hope that accountability
will keep coming in that form.)
Next of the city’s sunny promises to be tested are those on stadium
revenue over the next thirty years, for which any shortfall will have to
be covered by the city directly regardless of any promises made that the
stadium would not cost DC residential or business taxpayers one cent. We’ve
already seen projections fall short at the current stadium (see the last
two editions of themail from March 2006 for the gruesome details), only
to have the CFO dubiously forecast 2.8 percent increases in stadium
revenue starting in 2011 and continuing annually despite the fact that
aging stadiums lose appeal and therefore revenue over time. By then, I
fully expect the usual suspects to be promising all sorts of pots of
gold for the city associated with a new DC United stadium and making
even more promises connected with a new Redskins stadium (as Jack Evans
has already started to do). One would hope that city officials will
remember the empty promises that have marked the current ballpark
boondoggle and not go chasing blindly after such promises again.
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National Capital Metro Area Dies of Protracted, Self-Induced Suicide
by Traffic: arguably the world’s most important capital metro area was
declared dead today, suffocated by its own indifference to change for
more than a decade. Head in sand, thumb in mouth, eyes fixed on its own
backyard, the corpse was found petrified in traffic gridlock. Its
various body parts appeared grotesquely dissociated, splayed in
contradictory directions. Swarms of single-purpose activists were seen
dancing about the remains, seemingly undisturbed by the economic
disaster visited on future generations. Gradual strangulation was caused
by a combination of well-known diseases for which cures are readily
available. They can be lethal, however, if not rigorously applied by
responsible public and private authorities.
Forensics show the presence of ten untreated ailments: unwillingness
to plan far enough ahead (intracranial myopia); paralysis caused by
inability to harness change (chronic metamorphobia);
inability to visualize, embrace new technologies (endemic
retrotechnetricism); trying to turn the transportation clock centuries
back (retropathic moronism); mistaking regional transportation needs for
decorative local entertainment venues (morbid tangherliniphilia); dread
of assimilation into a larger unified jurisdiction (extra-insular
paranoia); ignorance of mobilization/emergency response needs (gross
whatmeworriatrics); refusal to set regional infrastructure management
outside political expediency (multiple polipanderemia); intent on
creating national infrastructure on the cheap (bipolar econofatuity);
and paying mediocre government managers way beyond their competence (bux-inflamed
duhism).
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
There will be a health, nutrition and fitness expo at the Masonic
Temple on 1000 U Street, NW, on Saturday, September 29, from 10:00 a.m.
to 2:00 p.m.
I have an Internet radio program called “The Jazzy Health
Program,” at http://www.Im4radio.com, broadcast on Mondays from 8:00
p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
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DC Public Library Events, September 27-30
Randi Blank, randi.blank@dc.gov
Thursday-Sunday, September 27-September 30, Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Memorial Library, Great Hall, outside under the G St. Overhang, and
Auditorium A-5. The thirteenth annual DC International Improvisation
Festival will take place along G Street, NW, between 7th and 12th
Streets, NW, throughout the weekend. Free performances by dancers,
improvisational theater groups, performance artists, and musicians. For
more specific information, please see the festival’s web site at http://www.improvfestival.com
or call the Music and Recreation Division of the DC Public Library at
727-1245.
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Cleveland Park Library Book Sale, September
29-30
Jill Bogard, jill_bogard@ace.nche.edu
The Friends of the Cleveland Park Library will hold its annual fall
book sale on Saturday and Sunday, September 29 and 30, from noon to 4:00
p.m. at the Cleveland Park Library, 3310 Connecticut Avenue at Macomb
Street, NW. Take the Metro Red Line to Cleveland Park, walk south one
long block to Macomb Street. We have a great selection of donated books,
many in pristine condition, in every subject. Most books are $1.00 for
hardcover, 50 cents for soft. Mass market paperback mysteries, romances,
and science fiction are 10 cents each. First editions and art books are
individually priced. For this sale we’ll have boxes of free books
(mostly fiction and biography) on the sidewalk in front of the library
(weather permitting). Please don’t donate books during the week before
the sale (September 22-29). We just don’t have time to sort them —
we’re too busy getting everything ready for the sale! Questions?
Contact Nathalie Black at 362-3599 or nvblack@earthlink.net.
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Miss Navajo: This Is No Ordinary Beauty Pageant, will have a sneak
preview on Wednesday, October 3, at 7 p.m. at National Geographic
Headquarters, 1600 M Street, NW, Grosvenor Auditorium. There will be a
reception following program (with real Navajo fry bread). Miss Navajo
will be broadcast on the Emmy Award-Winning PBS series “Independent
Lens” on November 13. No admission fee; RSVP required to missnavajo.oct3@communitycinema-dc.org
or telephone to 939-0794. For more information, see http://www.communitycinema-dc.org.
No ordinary beauty pageant, the Miss Navajo Nation competition is an
opportunity for young women to honor and strengthen Navajo culture.
Filmmaker Billy Luther, whose mother was crowned Miss Navajo in 1966,
follows a determined tomboy through her own quest for the unique title,
which celebrates cultural history and traditional skills. Billy Luther
and Crystal Frazier will discuss the film following a sneak preview
screening October 3 to kick off National Geographic’s All Roads Film
Festival. This screening of Miss Navajo is presented by ITVS Community
Cinema in partnership with the National Geographic All Roads Film
Project.
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CLASSIFIEDS — SERVICES
Bookkeeper Available Part-Time
Laurie England, LEng20007@aol.com
Carol Samson has done comprehensive bookkeeping services for my
mother for nearly two years and has always been honest, punctual, loyal,
and discreet. She organizes, handles insurance, personal finances,
writes checks, and keeps track of all incoming and outgoing bills,
investment related matters. You can reach Carol at 703-508-4586 (cell)
or via E-mail at kcsamson@aol.com.
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