The Ongoing Story
Dear Story Tellers:
Here are a few items that build on issues we’ve been discussing in
themail recently. Tom Sherwood not only wrote something very similar to
what I wrote about the so-called “Home Safe” program in the
introduction to the last issue of themail, but he and I happened on very
similar titles. While I called my item “A Knock on the Door,” he
called it “A Knock at the Door” (http://www.nbc4.com/politics/15703551/detail.html?dl=mainclick).
Great minds, etc. Colbert King follows up on the “Battlefield Called
Wilson High” story that Mai Abdul Rahman broke in two messages to
themail: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/28/AR2008032802958.html.
The Associated Press did a good story that surveys how state and city
governments nationally are resisting sunshine laws that require them to
open their E-mails to public inspection: http://ap.google.com/article/ALegM5jLHBW90U6OIOk_5_RjDocjoaxJ3AD8VDVOD00.
And be sure not to miss the rest of Sue Hemberger’s long but
informative post on the Tenleytown development controversy that is
published only in the online version of this issue: http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2008/08-03-30.htm#hemberger.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Our New Rhee-ality Under Chancellor Rhee
Candi Peterson, kepmclp@msn.com
Our new Rhee-Ality under Chancellor Michelle Rhee reinforces for me
one basic fact: not a lot has really changed. On the surface it may look
better to some, but let’s take a deeper look. We still face violence
in our schools, as evidenced in the recent Post article regarding
the battlefield at Wilson, amongst a host of other ills. Discipline
problems are rampant; truancy rates are soaring; many school buildings
are still less than adequate; schools still lack educational leaders who
are competent, experienced, resourceful, and inspire their staff;
teachers still await supplies that never arrive; technology doesn’t
meet the demands of today’s techno-savvy world; and many parents are
uninvolved and unavailable to help their children.
I do believe that some of the problems we face in our urban school
setting are linked to the lack of parental involvement, poverty,
frequent changes in DCPS superintendents, jumping on one educational
bandwagon after another, and community attitudes that have fostered the
belief that parents have to go elsewhere to find good education versus
staying put and demanding excellence within their own neighborhood
schools. I do not believe that parents opting out for education in the
suburbs and charter schools is the panacea that many would like us to
believe. The struggles under our new Rhee-Ality reinforces for me one
basic fact: school systems that enroll many poor children can’t just
be merely effective, they have to be “super effective” to bring
student’s reading levels to proficiency, as poor children face a host
of social ills, unlike their more advantaged peers.
If we want our high school students to go to school regularly, then
we also have to create viable programs where students can see a future
for themselves. Cutting many of our vocational/trade programs dating
back to the ’90s said to me that we did not value vocational
education. Most recently, proposing the closing of the MM Washington
vocational program makes no sense. Students who decide not to go to
college after high school have to wonder what is in it for them. I do
not think that our new Rhee-Ality is up for the challenge to fix our
schools. DCPS requires more than a one-size-fits-all model. We need
extraordinary help, we must put the public back in public education, and
be creative in finding solutions to meet the challenges that our young
people face. More than just looking at the surface issues, all of us
have to look deeper and become a part of the solution by demanding that
our city officials do whatever it takes to come up with viable options,
rather than just the standardized models of education that we currently
have. We know that there is no one-size-fits-all student, nor should
there be only one option for educational reform. We just might need more
alternative schools, more vocational high schools, more schools for the
arts, more peaceable schools that teach our students how to resolve
conflicts, and other creative ways to reach our youth, like more
programs that teach our young people how to be entrepreneurs.
I encourage you as concerned members of our community to stop taking
this sitting down and to let the powers that be — like Chancellor Rhee,
Mayor Fenty, DC city councilmembers, and media outlets — hear our
voice through the power of the pen. I am starting by writing a letter to
Senator Akaka and Senator Voinovich in the US Senate to let them know
that DC city officials do not have a long-term educational strategic
plan for the District, lack transparency in the school closure process
and other educational issues, and have failed to include the community
at every stage of their proposed plans. Won’t you join me in this
effort? The children are depending on us!
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Robert Wines, Mayor Fenty’s Board of
Education Nominee
Cherita Whiting, cherita_whiting@yahoo.com
Robert Wines is the mayor’s nominee to the DC Board of Education to
replace Tonya Kinlow. Why? He has absolutely no experience in education;
he has only lived in DC since 2005 and moved to Ward 8 in 2006. He
stated at the council hearing that he has attended all of his ANC
meetings. He couldn’t give the name of his ANC Commissioner when asked
by the council during the hearing, But he has been attending all of the
commission’s meetings?
He has not attended the Ward 8 Dems meetings or the Ward 8 Education
Council meetings. Replacing the outgoing person from Ward 8 with another
from Ward 8 is great, but Ward 8 has thousands of residents who would
bring more to the table on education and who have lived here longer. It
has others who have seen the problems and will be able to offer
solutions, because Robert Wines couldn’t when asked during the
hearing. Why appoint someone who has no clue?
His resume [http://www.dcwatch.com/council17/17-645.htm]
shows nothing to do with education or even being involved in education
for DCPS children. So again I ask, why?
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Recently, Mayor Adrian Fenty and DC Councilwoman Mary Cheh attempted
to take credit for Ben Murch Elementary School’s winning a US
Department of Education Blue Ribbon Award. Ben Murch Elementary School
has an attendance rate of 96 percent and a promotion rate of 100
percent. The fact is, Ben Murch Elementary School has been a school in
good standing for long before Mayor Adrian Fenty and DC Councilwoman
Mary Cheh came on the scene, and for them to attempt to take some credit
as if the mayor’s education plan had something to do with it is pure
bunk and just another example of Fenty’s deceptive behavior.
As a matter of fact, all that has taken place to date is the results
of things started by former mayor Anthony Williams and Clifford Janey,
but Mayor Fenty is unwilling to give credit where credit is due and
wants to continue to deceive the voters again and again so he can be a
part of as many photo opportunities as possible. Hopefully the voters
are smart enough to realize the Fenty Plan has had no impact on our
schools to date.
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It Ain’t Ebbets Field
Ed T. Barron, edtb1@macdotcom
The new Nationals ball park is nothing like the old Dodgers bandbox,
Ebbets Field. What this new ball park lacks in charm and electricity it
more than makes up for with high tech bells and whistles, and it is a
great place to watch a ball game. I was one of more than twenty thousand
folks at the park on Saturday night’s exhibition game with the
Baltimore Angelos, the first major league game played at the park.
Arriving an hour and a half before the early game time, 6:00 p.m., via
Metrorail, I had a lot of time to scope out the new facility. The front
entrance of the National’s Park looks much like a gaudy shopping
center from the 1960s. On the inside, however, the park really shines.
There’s not a bad seat in the house. From my relatively distant perch
in the mezzanine in right center I had a magnificent view of the game
and a great view of the visiting team’s bullpen.
Getting there was more than half the fun, taking only forty minutes
from my front door to my seat in the center field mezzanine. Green Line
trains were crowded, but the flow of folks from the Navy Yard station
was safe and steady. Getting home was another story. I left at the end
of the seventh inning, along with most of the remaining folks, and faced
a real mob trying to Metro their way home. Transit folks metered the
crowds and let enough only folks through that would completely fill one
train at a time. It took more than twenty minutes to get onto the Green
line for my transfer to the Red line and then home to Tenleytown. In
all, the trip home, from seat to front door, took an hour, versus a trip
there in forty minutes. The supporting facilities, food services and
bathrooms, are splendid, and located just steps from the field seats at
all levels. Vendors offering some nice food were a bit slow but will
speed up as they learn their jobs. In all, the Lerners and the stadium
designers seem to have hit the mark. Not easily impressed at my advanced
age, I was dazzled by this new stadium. At $22 for my seat it is
probably equivalent to the thirty-five cents I paid for my bleacher seat
at Ebbets Field some sixty-five years ago. I look forward to seeing a
whole lot of games this season. Now let’s get a good team on the
field.
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As we slide into Opening Day, let me make some predictions: 1) the
Nationals will win more than 81 games in ‘08. They will score a lot of
runs, and their staff of good young arms will elicit comparisons
(farfetched, to be sure) with the Orioles of the middle to late 1960’s.
2) Austin Kearns will have a big year at the plate and, as usual, rob
the opposition of runs with his fine defense. 3) By the end of the
season, Jesus Flores will establish himself as the team’s starting
catcher. 4) If he isn’t traded, Felipe Lopez will earn his way back
into the starting infield and be an important contributor offensively.
5) Nationals Park will play in such a way as to favor some member of the
team we have overlooked and turn him into a local hero. 6) Folks who
live or do business around the new stadium will get their first taste of
changes coming to a neighborhood which, were they to jump forward five
or ten years, would be hardly recognizable. Some of these changes they
will enjoy. Some they won’t. In any event, they will be the proud
possessors of extremely, extremely valuable real estate. Play ball!
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Is it just me, or do other people living near the new ballpark and
the southwest waterfront feel bamboozled by the DC Department of
Transportation, and perhaps ANC6D as well? When parking restriction
plans have been discussed and questioned up to now, they have been
presented as a way to make life easier for area residents only on game
days. Well eighty or so days a year we may need protection. However, now
that the one-to-a-household guest parking stickers have been mailed and
the street signs have gone up, we now discover that the parking
restrictions are for every day of the year, two hours only,
Monday-Sunday, from 7 a.m. to midnight! Well, there go dinner parties,
Super Bowl parties, birthday and anniversary celebrations, family
reunions, etc., for anyone living anywhere near the ballpark. I was
prepared to change my lifestyle eighty days out of the year. I am not
ready to completely change how I live in order to accommodate Major
League Baseball. I wonder what the impact will be on home values once
potential buyers realize that they’ll never be able to have their
friends visit them again if they move here.
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Don’t Let the Police Come In, Period
Star Lawrence, jkellaw@aol.com
I have been away from DC for twelve years, but I can tell you this
“Hello, could we come in?” thing is huge with police out here in the
Phoenix area. When my kid was a teen, I made the mistake of letting them
in to get a friend of my daughter’s who had been declared a runaway.
It was two female officers. I thought they would step inside while I
called the girl. Instead, they fanned out and started opening cabinets
and went into my daughter’s room. This irked me so much, I pulled the
girl aside and said don’t talk to them, don’t say anything. They saw
that popular marijuana leaf poster on my kid’s wall and came to me and
said, “You should throw your daughter out of the house.” Yeah —
thanks for the input.
Another time, they came (don’t remember what they said) and asked
if they could come in. I said, “I’d rather you didn’t, I can step
out.” One looked at the other and they laughed. I said what’s so
funny? One said, “One time we asked a guy if we could come in and he
said, ‘Let me just bring the dope out, my wife’s asleep.’”
Yet another time, three cars’ full came because a toad in my pond
out back was making a screaming noise and someone said a child was being
tortured inside my house. They asked to come in, and I said, couldn’t
you lean over the fence? They left but they had that “there has to be
some way to get her” look. These people are not coming on my property.
And no, I don’t have anything to hide. It just aggravates the hell out
of me, that’s why.
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Concerning that Knock at the Door
Sue Ostroff, sostro@earthlink.net
In the March 26 issue of themail, Gary Imhoff spoke about the current
controversy surrounding police checks of homes for weapons in certain
neighborhoods overrun by violence. His concern is understandable: there
was an attempted assurance in the Washington Post this week that
Cathy Lanier, in the capacity of surrogate “sister” to many
grandmothers in such neighborhoods, is being encouraged to check for
hidden weapons held by youth in their care. For better or worse, as
other stories have cited, this is a campaign being attempted in other
cities around the country.
I would like to describe another type of “Knock at the Door” that
Imhoff and Lanier have neglected to address, but which may be related:
that of intervention on behalf of the suspected mentally ill. The loved
ones and police may fear that the individual may become violent and
harbor weapons. Certainly, the newspapers have been rife, this past
year, with debate concerning how to intervene to protect against
individuals who, unguarded, may go on a later rampage. As we approach
the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings and twenty years of
reported record breaking number of shootings in DC neighborhoods, the
question is still what could have been done differently to prevent the
bloodshed. Yes, the mentally ill have privileges and the right to
privacy, but so do unknowing victims in their paths. College students
are now reported to be partnering with campus police to monitor the
mental health of fellow students and to plan intervention if needed.
Nonprofit organizations on behalf of disturbed individuals in the
District are struggling to stay afloat while keeping services free to
those who need them most.
What happens when an intervention is necessary on behalf of a loved
one? How are police brought to approach the door of an unsuspecting
individual immersed in internal psychosis or bottom-out depression? The
knock is heard. The announcement is made, “This is the police. Are you
all right? You haven’t been seen in days. Loved ones are worried about
you.” There is no answer. The individual is terrified and may retreat
as far away from the door as possible or grab something for protection.
More voices are heard outside the door. More police and the sound of
radio transmissions from the dispatcher. The episode may end quickly if
a key can be found to enter and handcuff the individual. Or more police
may be called in to surround the home in a standoff. Eventually, a door
may be bashed in by a battering ram and furnishings damaged. The police
may pile onto the individual with riot shields and guns in tow. The
individual is quickly surrounded and handcuffed, not allowed to take
change of clothing or identification, and is placed in a police car
bound for an unknown destination for completion of F-12, questioning,
and forced medication. The patient may end up in hospital for an
extended stay of two months, having to trust that home belongings are
not being pilfered or stolen and papers not being rifled through.
On return, heavily sedated, from involuntary hospitalization in
inpatient care facility, the individual faces the monetary cost of that
knock at the door with no compensation or apology from police or loved
ones, who are just relieved the patient is on medication, problem
solved, though not necessarily for the individual. Attempts at FOIA
inquiries to obtain financial compensation for damages to home and
belongings go unanswered. The cost of co-pay and medication and doctor’s
visits mounts. If the individual had no health insurance, the costs
could be insurmountable. Some individuals remain stabilized and find the
right balance of medication and cognitive therapy to better integrate
with others. Some individuals end up lashing out and in prison or
voluntarily homeless living in parks shouting incessantly at invisible
voices as the conversation continues. What are the solutions that
balance freedom and protection? DC police and Health and Human Services
face these issues every day. There is no simple solution to preventing
that knock at the door and protecting the right to privacy. We’re all
in this together and need to do better next time.
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The Right to Bear Arms and Home Rule
Jack McKay, jack.mckay@verizon.net
I think I can tell you right now how the Supreme Court is going to
decide DC’s gun law case, and it’s going to be a thumb in the
District’s eye. Historically, the Bill of Rights has restricted only
the federal government, not the states. Only in the middle of the
twentieth century did the Court judge that, courtesy of the Fourteenth
Amendment, some elements of the Bill were binding on state and local
governments as well. But the Second Amendment, with its right “to keep
and bear arms,” has never been so “incorporated.” So one can argue
that only the federal government is barred from imposing restrictions on
guns.
Does that mean that the District can regulate guns, despite the
Second Amendment? No, not if the District is merely a piece of the
federal government. The Constitution says that Congress has the power
“to exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever” in the
District. So if our home rule is merely a fig leaf over the reality of
government by the feds, then the District, alone among all of the cities
and states of the Union, is subject to the Second Amendment, and may not
infringe upon “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”
The Supreme Court could decide to “incorporate” the Second
Amendment, interpreting it to restrain the states as well as the feeds,
as gun rights people invariably, but incorrectly, assert. While that
might suit the conservative bent of this Court, they’re not likely to
take such a drastic step, not when they can just knock off the District’s
gun control law by declaring home rule a sham. That’s what’s coming,
just wait and see.
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On the Second Amendment question: a fair reading of the punctuation
and the order of words is surely that the “right to bear arms” is
linked grammatically to the premise of the whole sentence, which is that
a militia is a necessity, and the right and duty to have arms is a
simple derivative of that premise. But, of course, the sentence, as it
stands is ambiguous between “duty” and “right.” I have always
thought that the “committee on style” that compiled the actual
wording from the debate and proceedings of the constitutional convention
of 1787 must have had a resonantly dubious tin ear for clarity — if
you doubt this, look at the monstrous pig’s breakfast of the tortuous
Tenth Amendment, which is so fouled up that it has never been tested in
a court, I understand.
There is also the missing elephant in the room, constituted by the
absent third party to the discussion, i.e., the question of the “standing
army,” which is the only conceivable alternative to a militia that the
eighteenth-century English/Americans could imagine, since it stood for
many of them for an all-powerful and tyrannical executive king. If you
are not to have an army “always on call and therefore ‘standing,’”
you need a citizens’ militia, and if you need a citizens militia, you
need a citizenry prepared and armed to serve the threatened state. You
do not need a single individual, therefore you need a group, and that is
called a “militia.”
Its weapons did not include a machine gun of any variety (they had
not yet been invented) and the handgun which is so often used now to
deprive others of “life, liberty and/or property” was hardly thought
of to refer only to two of the undesirable consequences of individual
weapons we can have by mail, or by an hour or so’s journey into
neighboring states. Clarity above all.
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Ed T. Barron, in responding to the concern some have about homeless
people using the public libraries as a place to lounge [themail, March
26], said, jokingly I assume, that there is no Tenleytown library.
Actually there is. There’s an interim library that’s been in
operation for over a year just two blocks from the site where the old
library was torn down. It’s a small but very modern library, which I
visit often. It’s always well populated with people using the library
services, not just lounging. In this sense, it’s a much better library
than the one that was torn down.
Let’s hope DC can get it right on the new library. Right now there’s
just a push to get a library quickly, because the community, even the
usually well-informed Mr. Barron, have been led to believe there’s no
library in Tenleytown. Let’s hope our government will build a truly
outstanding library, not just rush to build a new library in Tenleytown
because of the complaints about the lack of a library.
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Meltdown in the Council
Don Oakley donoak@gmail.com
In themail of March 26, Mr. Bill Coe provides a critique of the March
18 DC council hearing exchange between Councilmember Mary Cheh and ANC
3E Commissioner Anne Sullivan. Mr. Coe takes issue with Ms. Sullivan’s
version of the exchange in themail of March 23. The subject was
Councilmember Cheh’s support of private development at the Janney
School/Tenley-Friendship Library site. I watched the same exchange at
the link provided by Ms. Sullivan and drew an entirely different
conclusion. What I saw was Ms. Cheh experiencing a very evident
meltdown. Mr. Coe states that “. . . [Councilmember Cheh’s] stated
intention was to allow the person representing ANC 3E to explain clearly
(for a change) what is meant by words they wrote for the council and the
public to read.” An unbiased observer will see that Councilmember Cheh
interrupted and talked over all of Ms. Sullivan’s responses.
Torquemada’s revenge, I would say, with no opportunities for
discussion. Indeed, the display of petulant, prosecutor’s arrogance on
Councilmember Cheh’s part eliminated any possibility for discourse. To
her credit, Ms. Sullivan remained composed throughout the rudeness.
Undeterred by the West End debacle in mid-2007, Councilmember Cheh
already had her sights on a similar heist at the Tenleytown site. At the
same time, Deputy Mayor Albert’s office began an inept and poorly
explained process to solicit bids for the Tenleytown site, and damn the
schedule for a new library. In time the community, with much digging,
has been able to weigh the pros and cons of the development proposal.
The result is discussed in Ms. Sue Hemberger’s posting in themail of
March 26, “Community United in Rejecting the Tenleytown PPP Proposals.”
If Ms. Cheh really wants to have a civil conversation on Tenleytown
development, this would be a good starting point.
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DC Has Overseers?
Theresa Conroy, tlennonc@aol.com
Like Bill Coe, I too watched the videotape he wrote about [in themail]
on March 26, of Anne Sullivan’s testimony at the council hearing. I
disagree with Mr. Coe that Anne Sullivan’s testimony was “oddly
impolitic . . . coming as it did from someone speaking for a subordinate
advisory group to its elected overseer.” First and foremost, Ms.
Sullivan, as all who testify before the council, was entitled to be
treated with respect. Secondly, she is an elected official in her own
right, entitled to her own views. She does not have an “overseer”
for whom she must moderate her opinions.
Politics ain’t beanbag, as the expression goes, but a politician,
once elected, has a duty to govern. Part of governing is listening to
the views of citizens. If Councilmember Cheh did not like what she heard
or read from the ANC, she certainly should express her objections. But
basic rules of decorum apply at council hearings, and they apply to
councilmembers as well as to those testifying. Councilmember Cheh should
have treated the witness with dignity and courtesy, rather than as an
“overseer” dressing down a subordinate.
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Why Cheh’s Conduct
Merits Censure
Sue Hemberger, Friendship Heights, smithhemb@aol.com
Though I see Councilmember Cheh’s interrogation of Commissioner
Sullivan as an attempt to shut down, rather than open up, a discussion
of the councilmember’s role in the Tenleytown Request for Proposals, I
agree with Bill Coe (themail, March 26) that the YouTube clip of this
exchange leaves viewers unable to judge whether or not Cheh has been
falsely accused of dereliction of duty. As one of the co-authors of the
“Cases for Concern” alluded to in that clip, I’ll do my best to
satisfy Bill’s curiosity (and that of other readers) as to some of the
specifics that have prompted criticism of Councilmember Cheh’s role in
making land at the Janney Elementary/Tenley-Friendship Public Library
available for private residential development.
The Causes for Concern was part of a packet of documents submitted to
the DC Auditor requesting an investigation into how the Office of the
Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development makes decisions
involving the disposition of public land. It argued, among other things,
that the Fenty administration’s policy of allowing a single Ward
councilmember to determine whether public land gets put on the auction
block is deeply problematic and likely to throw the legitimacy of such
transactions into doubt. In part, that’s because individual
councilmembers may act in ways that do not provide the sort of
transparency and notice required for official council action. The
document then laid out a series of actions taken by Councilmember Cheh
that did not inspire confidence in the integrity of the process. Anyone
who wants to read the original texts (letter to the Auditor, Causes for
Concern, FOIA’d documents with supporting evidence, and the Auditor’s
response) will find them online at http://www.anc3e.org/documents.html.
I think Bill’s formulation of the ANC’s grievance, “that Ms.
Cheh has somehow colluded backhandedly with private developers to
commandeer valuable public property, then ram and unwanted and unneeded
project down the throats of a community who solidly oppose it” is
basically on target. To me, the crucial issues are cronyism and a
betrayal of the public trust. Councilmember Cheh became a supporter of
this project without paying much, if any, attention to the underlying
facilities issues. And with each new problem that emerged as the
proposal circulated more widely, Cheh’s approach was to step on the
accelerator rather than the brakes.
A few examples: 1) two days after learning from DCPS’s facilities
people that Roadside’s proposal was premised on a gross
underestimation of Janney’s facilities needs, Cheh wrote a letter to
the mayor urging him to pursue such a project. 2) After ANC 3E’s
special committee published notes of a meeting in which a senior
economist at OCFO questioned the wisdom of this approach, indicating
that it would increase costs, delay the library, and be unlikely to
expedite the school’s modernization, Cheh’s chief-of-staff tried to
get the official to disavow or qualify his remarks. 3) When many of the
written submissions submitted to her by members of her taskforce (on
behalf of the community organizations they represented) came back less
than enthusiastic about the idea, Cheh failed to pass them on to
decisionmakers, as promised. Instead, two days after receiving this
input she urged DMPED to issue an RFP as soon as possible. Two weeks
later, when asked to provide DMPED with names of community members who
should be invited to provide public input on the contents of the RFP,
she offered the names of six people representing only three community
groups — Janney, Ward 3 Vision, and the condo board from the Roadside
project across the street — all of whom were boosters of the project.
Major stakeholders such as the Friends of the Library, St. Ann’s
Church and other abutting property owners, not to mention established
community groups like Tenleytown Neighbors Association and Tenleytown
Historical Society, didn’t make Cheh’s list.
By cronyism, I mean friends doing friends favors. The crucial
connection here is between Councilmember Cheh and Roadside Vice
President Susan Linsky. Linsky, then a DMPED official, was part of the
group of development-oriented professionals who endeavored to play
kingmaker in the Ward 3 race. They chose Cheh as their candidate. Linsky
then volunteered her services both during the primary and the general
election on the campaign and appeared to be one of Cheh’s most senior
and trusted advisors. Linsky left DC government at the end of October
2006. By Linsky’s account, her close relationship with Cheh continued
even after the election and her move to Roadside. In January of 2007
Linsky wrote David Jannarone (DMPED’s new Director of Development and
an ex-Roadside employee) that “I continue to mentor Mary and her staff”
as they transition into office.
Jannarone, patching ex-bosses Armond Spikell and Richard Lake into
their conversation, responded to Linsky’s E-mail by telling Roadside
that the best way to get DMPED involved in the Janney/Tenley library
project would be for the community and the councilmember to invite them
in. His advice was immediately followed. A week after the exchange,
Jannarone received an E-mail from a community member inviting him to a
meeting about the Roadside project and indicating that Spikell had
provided her with Jannarone’s name and contact info. For those
interested in a quid pro quo analysis, the timing of Roadside’s
contributions to Cheh’s campaign fund and her constituent services
fund is suggestive. Roadside’s first contributions to Cheh’s
campaign (one from the corporation, one from Roadside principal and MD
resident Richard Lake) were made during the second week of November
2006, after Cheh’s victory in the general election. Obviously,
contributions made at this stage aren’t motivated by a desire to
influence the outcome of an election; their most likely function is to
curry favor with the new officeholder. Then in December 2006, even
before she took office, Cheh expressed to Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper
her desire to see a mixed-use project at the Tenley-Friendship library
site.
The third contribution was made on May 31, 2007, when Roadside
donated to Cheh’s constituent services fund. A week later, Cheh wrote
to the Mayor in support of a public-private partnership at the Janney/Tenley
library site, praising Roadside’s proposal and providing Roadside (but
not the rest of the community) with a copy of that letter. In fact, that
letter’s existence remained a secret from the community until an ANC
3E committee member happened to attend a Library Trustees facilities
meeting where Linsky invoked it as evidence that there was widespread
support in the community for Roadside’s proposal. In fact, Cheh had
not even divulged its existence when she solicited feedback from her
taskforce, some six weeks after urging the Mayor to pursue the project.
In sum, I think that Cheh did a much better job of representing
Roadside’s interests than the community’s interests in this process.
She was more concerned with enabling private development than with
ensuring that our community’s public facilities needs were met. She
was more concerned with getting her way than with ensuring that
decisionmaking involving public lands emerges from a transparent,
well-defined, and standards-driven process. This land should never have
been offered for sale without a surplusing decision. But it was put on
the auction block because CM Cheh was eager to “cut ribbons” and to
please her friends and allies — not because anyone made a rational
decision that a public-private venture was the best way to modernize and
expand our school and our library.
Cheh’s supporters make two arguments in defense of her actions,
neither of which strikes me as very persuasive. The first is that Cheh’s
support for this project is entirely consistent with her oft-expressed
commitment to smart growth. On one level, I’m certainly willing to
believe that Cheh’s position on this project has been driven by
ideology. Cheh has consistently espoused a very simplistic version of
“smart growth” which basically boils down to “if there is a
Metrorail station, then maximize residential density.” This position
makes her popular with developers, of course, but I don’t think her
support for this project (or other similar ones) was bought per se. But
support for a concept doesn’t justify Cheh’s refusal to deal with
and her attempts to suppress the very real concerns raised by the
community about the project’s shortcomings.
Secondly, the fact that Cheh’s June 6 letter expressed a preference
for competitive bidding is, for me, not particularly relevant. As
Commissioner Sullivan’s testimony points out, the issue is whether the
land should have been put on the auction block at all. That was the
major hurdle that Roadside needed to clear, and Cheh’s letter was
essential to their success in doing so. The fact that Cheh didn’t ask
Fenty to award a no-bid contract for Roadside just means that sometimes
friends ask for things that are unreasonable, so you do what you can for
them and let them do the rest themselves. And, frankly, it has been
clear throughout these discussions that any competitive bidding process
would involve a very uneven playing field tilted in Roadside’s favor.
They had a major head start, information no one else had, and a former
employee running the show. And remember, a month later, when another
crony’s interests were served by a no-bid contract for a similar deal
in the West End, Cheh voted for it. See http://ocf.dc.gov/pdf_files/cfd/OCF%20FI2007-101_95.pdf
for details on Eastbanc VP Joe Sternlieb’s role in Cheh’s campaign.
Her Roadside letter didn’t rule out a similar approach for Tenleytown,
though the outrage that resulted from the West End deal made such an
outcome politically impossible.
As for Coe’s suggestion that Commissioner Sullivan was out of line
for criticizing Councilmember Cheh, I have to say that I’m very
pleased to be represented by ANC Commissioners who see their role as
that of advisors rather than sycophants. And I hope to be represented by
a councilmember who sees her role as serving the public interest rather
than handing out favors to courtiers. Yes, it’s regrettable and
counter-productive when the relationships between ANC Commissioners and
the Ward councilmember become this antagonistic. But it doesn’t follow
that the way to prevent that outcome is for ANCs to cower before the
lash of the “overseer,” to use Bill’s term. Maybe it’s time for
our novice councilmember to recognize that the ANCs can function as a
valuable resource for providing insight into the concerns of various
neighborhoods within the Ward. That’s what they’re there for.
###############
CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Ward 5 Democrats, March 31
Hazel Thomas, thomashazelb@aol.com
Remember to attend the Ward 5 Democrats meeting on Monday, March 31,
at 7:00 p.m. at the Michigan Park Christian Church, located on Taylor
Street and South Dakota Avenue, NE. Among the topics to be discussed
will be the upcoming May 5 DC delegate elections. This is an important
election year. Learn how you can play a part. Be sure to call friends
and bring them with you. For more information, contact Ward 5 Democrats
Chairman, Timothy Thomas at timthomas2202@gmail.com.
###############
Greetings from Hometown Washington, DC, April
2, 4
Jerry A. McCoy, sshistory@yahoo.com
This week Jerry A. McCoy, special collections librarian at the DC
Public Library’s Washingtoniana Division, will be presenting an
illustrated slide lecture, “Greetings from Hometown Washington, DC,”
at the National Postal Museum (April 2, 12-1 p.m.) and the Library of
Congress (April 4, 3:30-5 p.m.). The free talks feature vintage DC
postcards depicting hometown views of our city. For more information go
to http://www.loc.gov/loc/events/index.php?mode=detail&date=1207281600
and http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/museum/1b_calendar.html.
###############
Alternative Housing Pilot Program, April 3
Jazmine Zick, jzick@nbm.org
Thursday, April 3, 6:30-8:00 p.m. The Alternative Housing Pilot
Program: Building a Framework for Future Disaster Recovery. The
Alternative Housing Pilot Program (AHPP), funded by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, is a grant competition to develop more
useful, readily available, and culturally appropriate post-disaster
housing for Hurricane Katrina-ravaged areas. The inaugural program of
this new, three-year lecture series explores the AHPP project’s
critical issues and objectives. Free. 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.
###############
Door-to-Door Police Searches: Help People
Understand that They Can Say No, April 5
Ann Loikow, aloikow@verizon.net
ACLU, DC ACORN, and coalition partners launch a day to educate the
community with a training session and community canvassing providing key
information in English and Spanish. On Saturday, April 5, there will be
training from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. at The St. James Episcopal Church, 222
8th Street, NE, between the Red Line’s Union Station and Blue/Orange’s
Eastern Market Metro stops. Neighborhood canvassing will take place from
1:30-5:30 p.m.
MPD says officers will go to Eckington, Columbia Heights, Washington
Highlands, and possibly other neighborhoods to ask residents’
permission to search their homes. They will ask residents to sign a
consent form, which answers some questions but not others. But even
though the form says that someone could be charged with a crime as the
result of the search, too many people may not understand what is written
or take the time to read the form carefully. Our job is to ensure that
residents really understand the consequences of agreeing to a search and
that they have an absolute right to refuse, without retaliation of any
kind. At our training session, we’ll give you what you need to talk to
residents about their rights. After that we’ll go into the
neighborhoods and help people decide for themselves whether to have
their homes searched.
For more information contact Johnny Barnes, Executive Director of the
ACLU- NCA (National Capital Area) at 457-0800 ext. 120, or Johnny.Barnes@aclu-nca.org.
Before coming to the meeting, please contact your five councilmembers
(ward, at-large and chairman). Since they all ask for your vote, give
them your views by phone or personal visit. Ask each of them to either
join us on April 5 or otherwise speak out against MPD’s home searches.
Following the meeting, we shall divide into three groups and begin the
canvassing. Please plan to canvass as long as you can. Just some of the
sponsoring organizations: ACLU National Capital Area, Metro Washington
AFL-CIO, National Black Police Association, AYUDA, TENAC, Stand Up for
Democracy, DC ACORN, Coalition for Housing Justice, and Dorchester House
Tenants Association, with other organizations and individuals joining
daily.
Remind the police and the people themselves that the US Constitution
protects our homes here in DC, too: “The right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no
Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and
the persons or things to be seized.”
###############
29th Annual MLK Parade, April 5
Dorinda White, dorindaw@gmail.com
The 29th annual Martin Luther King, Jr., Celebration Parade will take
place on Saturday, April 5, at 12:00 p.m. The parade will kick off at
Ballou Senior High School located at 3401 4th Street, SE, and end at the
corner of Good Hope Road and MLK, Jr., Avenue, SE. Local residents, city
and community leaders, along with participants and marchers from around
the Metro area will join each other for a day of celebration. Bring your
family and friends to celebrate the life of Dr. King.
Groups and organizations who wish to march in the parade can still
call 698-1666 or go to http://www.mlkparade.org.
We hope to see you there! To see and hear excerpts from last year’s
parade go to http://www.octt.dc.gov/services/on_demand_video/special/depts/MLK_DAY_PARADE.asx.
###############
CLASSIFIEDS — DONATIONS
“Send A Suit” Clothing Drive, April 2
Whitney Sousa, whitney.sousa@ketchum.com
FedEx Special Delivery and Dress for Success have joined forces for
the third straight year to help economically disadvantaged women in the
DC area enter the workforce by hosting “Send A Suit,” a professional
women’s clothing drive on Capitol Hill. This drive will take place on
April 2, from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., at the corner of 1st and D
Streets, SE, across from the Capitol South Metro Station. This is during
Dress for Success’s annual “S.O.S. — Send One Suit — Week”
from March 30-April 5. FedEx Special Delivery will collect donations of
gently used women’s suits, and professional attire and accessories
from DC residents, Capitol Hill staff, and members of Congress for the
Dress for Success store in DC. Since 2006, these “Send A Suit”
drives have collected more than one thousand items of clothing for Dress
for Success.
FedEx Special Delivery is a nationwide program that provides
transportation and logistical assistance for community and nonprofit
organizations. It connects FedEx team members with local groups and
residents to make a positive change in communities across the United
States. Dress for Success is an international not-for-profit
organization that promotes the economic independence of disadvantaged
women by providing professional attire, a network of support and the
career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life.
###############
Help a Twenty Year Old Get Her GED
Bryce A. Suderow, streetstories@juno.com
Eden Right, the twenty-year-old daughter of a friend of mine, is a
high school dropout living in the Trinidad section of town. Eden is
working to get her GED and needs a computer. Does anyone know how she
can obtain a free, preferably new, computer?
If you want to help, call Eden at 396-1518.
###############
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