Candid Cameras
Dear Video Subjects:
The Fenty administration’s unending list of missteps has,
surprisingly, resulted in some setbacks recently. It seems that, as long
as the city council doesn’t have to stand up and gather the courage to
vote, but can counter Fenty’s mistakes just by asking questions and
shedding a little light in the dark corners, some of the most egregious
assaults on good government can be beaten back, or at least postponed.
The Safe Homes Initiative has been thoroughly exposed as an unwarranted
intrusion on citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights, although Fenty
continues to deny it. It gives me pleasure to have the opportunity to
congratulate Councilmember Mary Cheh for taking a correct and courageous
stand, and telling MPD Chief Lanier to her face that she wouldn’t let
the police search her home (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/dc/2008/04/home_gun_searches.html).
The highly profitable and highly suspect Lottery Board contract that the
administration submitted to the council couldn’t withstand the most
basic questions (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/06/AR2008040602306.html),
and just a day after it was presented to the council it was withdrawn
for “further review” (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/dc/2008/04/breaking_news_lottery_contract.html).
Of course, not a day can go by without a new outrage and insult to the
civil liberties of District residents, so Fenty has announced a program
to consolidate over 5,200 government spy cameras (who knew there were
that many) into a single system to be run by the DC Homeland Security
Agency (http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080409/METRO/769331158/1004).
Dorothy writes more about that below.
Since the Fenty administration won’t do anything right, I’ve been
forced to write scolding, disapproving, quarrelsome introductions to
themail for the past several issues. This greatly misrepresents my
normally easygoing, good-humored nature. (Pause here for your laughter
to die down.) Therefore, I’d like to make a friendly recommendation in
two words: Susan Wong. Wong is a soft-voiced pop-jazz vocalist who has
released five albums, Close to You, I Wish You Love, A Night at the
Movies, These Foolish Things, and Someone Like You. She mostly explores
the later additions to the Great American Songbook, choosing songs from
the past few decades that, in her performances at least, turn out to be
direct descendants of the classic Berlin-Gershwin-Porter era. She sings
them with a light touch against a lush orchestral background reminiscent
of the forties and fifties. The kicker is that she’s Chinese, born in
Hong Kong and now based there, but raised mostly in Australia, and that
she has made a career of singing American songs in English throughout
Southeast Asia, mainly outside of Hong Kong and China. Her albums, as
far as I know, are available in the US only as imports. (The best source
may be yesasia.com, though I’d welcome learning about more convenient
or cheaper distributors.) However, a small selection of her songs is
available on YouTube by searching her name. Her web site, http://susanwong.net,
won’t tell you much more than this, but who needs to know the singer
when we have her songs?
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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At a Tuesday press conference, Mayor Fenty announced his
administration’s “launch of the Video Interoperability for Public
Safety (VIPS) program to connect the city’s more than 5200 cameras
into one network” (http://www.dcwatch.com/mayor/080408.htm).
The proposal would create a surveillance network consisting of more than
5200 video surveillance cameras (CCTVs, or closed-circuit television
cameras) that are currently operated by eight District agencies: DC
Housing Authority, 720; DC Public Schools, 3,452; Department of Parks
and Recreation, 181; Department of Transportation, 131; Metropolitan
Police Department, 92; Department of Corrections, 218; Office of
Property Management/Protective Services Division, 466; and DC Homeland
Security and Emergency Management Agency, 4 (http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080409/METRO/769331158/1004).
The video monitoring system will consolidate the CCTVs from these eight
agencies within the District’s Homeland Security and Emergency
Management Agency (HSEMA). The Fenty administration asserts that the
surveillance network will enhance public safety in the neighborhoods.
However, it fails to acknowledge that most of the CCTV’s are located
inside District government buildings. In addition, while HSEMA has
already begun to implement the initiative (including constructing the
monitoring facility at their offices inside the Reeves Center), the
Fenty administration still cannot detail the project’s total cost,
although it claims that “the VIPs program will reduce the cost to
monitor the city’s CCTV cameras by one third.”
I haven’t had a chance to research the code, regulations, and legal
issues surrounding the camera consolidation, but off the top of my head,
I think the program is illegal in several respects. 1) When MPD Chief
Ramsey proposed the police surveillance cameras, there was a great deal
of public discussion, and a formal rulemaking exercise adopted specific
procedures that were approved by the council regarding those cameras:
including who can view them, storage of the tapes, etc. Under this
proposal, MPD’s cameras would be accessed by DC’s Homeland Security
employees as well as, possibly, employees of other agencies. By doing
this, the Fenty administration will be violating the specific rules that
were adopted by the council regarding MPD’s cameras. 2) More than
three thousand of the cameras are in DCPS facilities. As you know, there
is a great effort made to protect the privacy of children in the
schools, and a volume of the municipal regulations addresses the school
system. For example, in order for a news outlet to take a camera into a
school, it has to get the permission, not only of the principal, but
also of the chancellor. While school cameras are now used only by school
personnel on an in-school basis, under this proposal students would be
surveilled by Homeland Security employees away from school campuses,
violating the privacy of school children. 3) The administration is
implementing Phase 1 of the plan — the build-out at Homeland Security
and the detailing of personnel to Homeland Security — now, but it is
proceeding unilaterally, without any council approval of the initiative
or any budget reprogramming. Indeed, the initiative first appears in the
FY2009 budget on page C55 of volume 2. Essentially, the Fenty
administration is illegally evading the council’s budget process and
the need for council approval of the program, and daring the council to
confront it.
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Mitch Wander [themail, April 6] asked for suggestions about balancing
the budget without taxes. I will be the first to say that I don’t
consider the DDOT fees taxes, as the nineteen dollars, with a
seven-dollar renewal, couldn’t have covered the processing of the
permits for street occupancy and certainly provided no incentive for
builders to get off the street. Read the Budget Support Act on the
cfo.dc.gov web site.
That being said, here is my list of things that could leave the mayor’s
proposed budget without impacting city services. These start on page 66
of the Budget Support Act and are part of twenty-four million dollars in
grants that have no requirements for what they are used — I would at
least put a requirement for their use in. There is a ten million dollar
grant to Ford’s Theater. Why the heck are we giving a grant to the
Feds? Two hundred fifty thousand dollars for Fort Dupont Ice Arena,
another Federal venue. Three hundred thousand dollars for the National
Building Museum, but for no program in particular. One million for the
Washington Ballet (down from five million last year), but not for any
program in particular, although they do have programs in the schools and
community.
I personally think that fourteen of this twenty-four million should
be put into a grant fund for a competitive grant competition; there is
one hundred thousand dollars in administrative expenses included. Many
of these are worthy causes but are being given a competitive advantage,
as other nonprofits have to go through a Request for Proposals process
and monitoring of their spending. There is also another twenty-plus
million in dedicated grants starting on page 28, billed as economic
development projects. The tax that galls me is the .3 percent increase
in registration fees for property sold for under four hundred thousand
dollars (I cannot fined the line item at the moment).
One also needs to take a look at how much DCPS is really getting. It
is stated that they are getting a thirty million dollar, increase but
there are also numerous costs they have lost, while they have not lost
the budget funds. For example, maintenance has been transferred to the
new maintenance agency, but the money was kept in the DCPS budget. As of
January 10, OCTO took over the IT functions for DCPS — a fifteen
million-dollar function plus more than forty DCPS employees who were
fired, yet only 2.5 million was transferred to OCTO. So the money
available to DCPS has gone up at least twice the additional 30 million
they are receiving in this budget. Executive salaries in the Mayor’s
office have also gone up in the budget far more than the cost-of-living
increases or performance awards would allow (assuming the performance
award program had not been suspended).
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Math Errors in DC FY09 Budget
Rob (I Hate Math) Fleming, rflemin@verizon.net
I’ve been looking over the FY09 Budget Request for the Addiction
Prevention and Recovery Administration and I’m finding a lot of math
errors — probably transcription errors and/or calculations based on
earlier figures and not updated in the totals columns. Others might want
to take a look at some other agencies and see if there are mistakes
there, too.
For instance, in Table 40-PBB, they show a FY09 request of $47,515
and a FY08 appropriation of $45,048, and say this is an increase of $16.
It’s actually an increase of about two and a half million bucks,
because they list dollars in thousands.
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How do we, as younger people, become actively involve in the affairs
of our community for an extended period of time for issues and causes
that are dear to us? I ask this question because those of us who were
born after the civil rights generation have to stake claim to our future
eventually. Current situations, such as educating our children, school
loans, job security, and affordable housing should warrant some type of
action by us, right? I mean if we are to inherit a legacy and a future,
we should at least begin to examine closely the true value of that
legacy and our future.
As a student of history, I see that monumental accomplishments were
achieved in all areas of social justice and equality for minorities.
However, after forty years are those achievements still available to us?
And if so, what do we need to do to ensure that they will be there for
our children and their children? Just a random thought
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Our Power Down
Lisa Swanson, Petworth DC, melatar@yahoo.com
“DC may be seen as a government town, but tourism is our industry.”
Regarding our urge for tourists to create their own power trip: can we
let all the tourists know that DC’s power doesn’t even reach all the
way to a vote in Congress?
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Mayor’s $2 Million Power Trip Campaign Benefits His Family’s
Business
Paul D. Craney, press@dcgop.com
Mayor Adrian Fenty’s two million dollar “Power Trip” marketing
campaign which is intended to promote tourism for the District has a
subliminal message: shop at Fleet Feet Sports, owned by Mr. and Mrs.
Phil and Jan Fenty. The ads include one with Mayor Adrian Fenty jogging
in Rock Creek Park wearing a shirt with the logo “Fleet Feet Sports.”
Mayor Adrian Fenty announced the city will unleash its latest
marketing campaign, a two-million-dollar branding effort with the theme,
“Create Your Own Power Trip,” run by Destination DC, which gets 75
percent of its funding from the Hotel Occupancy Tax. The mayor’s lack
of better judgment in promoting his family’s business with taxpayer
funded ads is unethical and in bad taste. He should remove himself from
all the DestinationDC.org ads to avoid the appearance of a conflict of
interest.
To view a copy of the ad, go to http://washington.org/planning/press-room/campaign-elements/power-play.
To view Fleet First Sports, go to http://www.fleetfeetdc.com.
[There’s very little chance that the use of taxpayer dollars to
promote the Fenty family’s business was inadvertent. As a comment on
one of the blogs that covered this controversy pointed out, this is no
candid photo. Fenty and the other runner cast no shadows, so they are
either vampires or they and Fenty’s advertising T-shirt have been
Photoshopped into the park background. — Gary Imhoff]
###############
Although I live in Clarksville, TN, this attempt to strip the
citizens of one of their basic rights as provided for by and in the
Constitution of the United States, could have a far more reaching
consequence than one could imagine. It sounds to me as though these two
persons have either lost their mind, are not knowledgeable of the
Constitution and the amendments, the positions they hold have gone to
their heads, or they want to be little dictators. Either way, they sound
as though they need some serious professional help, or need to be
removed from office. This is not Cuba, China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq or
any other country that is controlled by a dictator/madman. If this is
what they want to do, they need to go to some country where it is
allowed. This is the United States of America, a free country, and the
likes of these two people are not needed, or wanted, and will not be
tolerated by the citizens.
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Do the Right Thing at Tenley
Ron Lefrancois, American University Park, nicmich at
verizon dot net
Lest your many readers fall for the overheated rhetoric of the
anti-everything crowd, please note that many Tenleytown-AU Park
residents favor redevelopment of the now-demolished Friendship-Tenley
Library as a mixed use building. It is apparent to me that a combined
Janney School-Tenley Library project is too much for the community to
swallow. A few close-minded folks have committed themselves to derailing
a commonsense, long range plan for the entire Janney-Tenley campus, so
it’s time to move on.
When this started years ago, many of us saw a modern library with a
few floors of apartments above. Perhaps affordable apartments for
teachers, cops, firefighters, seniors, or even a few neighbors who are
clawing their way out of poverty. Parking garage under the adjacent
Janney soccer field. Instead, we’ve been subjected to semisecret “special
committee” meetings, half-baked redevelopment plans (exhibit A is the
$3 million flushed away on the earlier Tenley library “plan”), and a
degree of close-mindedness that is just sad.
Let the Janney experts fight out the school expansion battles [with
all that “free, budgeted” money — as if our kids won’t pay that
bill — while commonsense, transit-oriented development happens on the
corner of Wisconsin and Albemarle. If private development of apartments
above a new library is too much to bear, let the library/apartment
building be completely city-owned. I’ll be at the front of the line to
volunteer time to make it a success. I’m in a hurry for a new library
too, but I am not in a hurry for a wasteful single-use building on top
of a Metro station. Scrap the current proposals and focus on a class-A
dual-use building on a prominent corner in our neighborhood.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Friends of Cleveland Park Book Sale, April 12-13
Jill Bogard, Jill_bogard at ace.nche.edu
The Friends of the Cleveland Park Library invite you to its annual
spring book sale this Saturday and Sunday, April 12-13, from noon to
4:00 p.m. both days. Choose from thousands of books in all subjects at
great prices, many in brand new condition. All proceeds benefit the
Library. Cleveland Park Library, 3310 Connecticut Avenue, NW, at Macomb
Street. Take Red Line to Cleveland Park, walk south one long block to
Macomb Street.
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Historical Society DC Emancipation Day Events, April 16
Karen Sallis, klsallis@historydc.org
Wednesday, April 16, 12:30 p.m. Musical performance for DC
Emancipation Day: Freedom Blues. Blues man extraordinaire Michael Baytop
performs traditional African American spirituals and early blues from
the pre-slavery and post-slavery era. RSVP@historydc.org
with the subject line: DC Emancipation or call 383-1828.
Wednesday, April 16, 1 p.m. Reenactment of Frederick Douglass’ 1883
DC Emancipation Speech. Frederick Douglass IV, a direct descendant of
the legendary abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass, will reenact
the speech Douglass gave in recognition of the twenty-third DC
Emancipation. RSVP@historydc.org
with the subject line DC Emancipation or call 383-1828.
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Upcoming Talk for Change Toastmasters Meeting, April 16
Corey Jenkins Schaut, tfctoastmasters@gmail.com
Please join us this Wednesday, April 16 at 6:45 p.m. for our next
meeting of Talk for Change Toastmasters. We meet at the Teach for
America offices, located at 1413 K Street, NW, on the 7th floor. At Talk
for Change, we believe in the power of education. By following the
Toastmasters curriculum, we have an opportunity to continue to develop
and improve our leadership and speaking skills in a safe environment.
Many of us our former teachers and alumni of Teach for America. Many of
us are making a difference in our community through work in the
nonprofit sector. And many of us just value the opportunity to keep
learning. We welcome anyone to join our friendly, fun-loving group.
Are you curious what Talk for Change can do for you? We welcome you
to join us at an upcoming meeting to see what we are all about. We meet
on the first and third Wednesdays of every month. As your improved
communication skills become obvious within the workplace, increased
visibility, recognition and promotion will follow. Your improved
presentation skills will win you the respect and admiration of your
colleagues and employees — and make them wonder what you did to
change! Leadership skills acquired through participation in Toastmasters
will increase your management potential. You will acquire an increased
ability to motivate and persuade, making you more effective as a
supervisor or manager. You’ll have access to a wide range of
educational materials, including books, CDs, DVDs and seminar programs,
available at reduced cost through the Toastmasters International Supply
Catalog.
We look forward to welcoming you as our newest member! If you have
questions, feel free to send us an E-mail at tfctoastmasters@gmail.com.
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