Not Just About Politics
Dear Non-Politicians:
I know it’s my fault for running on and on about DC politics, but
please remember that themail isn’t just about politics. You can write
to themail about anything that has to do with life and living in the
District of Columbia; anything that impressed you as something you want
to share with your fellow inmates in this asylum. This forum isn’t
just about the deed s and misdeeds of our elected and appointed
officials; it’s about what happens in the neighborhoods of this city
that’s important to the people who live here; the news that is so
local that local news outlets overlook it.
This is one of those short issues of themail that happen
occasionally, usually around Christmas holidays when the weather starts
to gets warm, and again when the weather gets very hot. Take this
opportunity to let your fellow citizens know about what you know that
they need to know.
Gary Imhoff
gary@dcwatch.com
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Last week was not a good one for the Department of Parks and
Recreation. On Sunday evening at 7:00 p.m., DPR Director Clark Ray was
summoned to the Wilson Building by City Administrator Dan Tangherlini
and fired. On Monday morning, Mayor Fenty held a press conference to
announce the appointment of Ximena Hartstock, an Arlington, Virginia,
resident who is Deputy Chief of Teaching and Learning at DC Public
Schools, as Acting Director of DPR. Hartstock becomes the seventh
director of DPR in nine years, following Robert Newman, Neil Albert,
Neal Stanley, Kimberly Flowers, Wanda Durdin, and Clark Ray. Her
appointment comes just weeks before the start of the busy summer
recreation season.
Because Hartstock would not be able to assume her position at DPR for
a week, Sean Conley, Clark Ray’s former driver at DPR, was quietly
named by Mayor Fenty to be the Acting Director for the week of April 19.
On Friday, Conley made his one and only executive decision as interim
director: he fired and/or RIFed fourteen key DPR employees, including
the heads of the aquatic division, the sports division, the risk
management division, and the partnership office, who were targeted for
dismissal by Tangherlini.
It is widely believed that Hartstock was chosen because she will
implement the Fenty administration plan to privatize many of DPR’s
programs — to fire city employees who run those programs and replace
them with contractors who will be given non-competitively bid contracts,
and also to merge several DPR programs with DCPS ones.
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Residential Permit Parking Reform (Continued)
Jack McKay, jack.mckay@verizon.net
Recently I described (themail, April 20) a solution to the problem of
Residential Permit Parking (RPP) restrictions in neighborhoods with
institutions with employees who commute from the suburbs, and no
commercial parking lots. The District Department of Transportation (DDOT)
agreed last October to provide daytime curbside parking passes to
employees of neighborhood businesses and institutions, thus allowing a
limited use of certain neighborhood blocks for commuter parking, at a
very reasonable cost, less than $2.50 a day. Residents of these unzoned
blocks, unhappy about 92 percent parking space occupancy rates, and
about being prohibited themselves from parking on adjacent, RPP-zoned
blocks, are delighted to see this arrangement. They want to have the
benefits and privileges of living on RPP zoned blocks, but they don’t
want to make it impossible for workers at our neighborhood institutions
to come to work in their cars, where public transportation isn’t
suitable. Eleven Mount Pleasant residents are now out collecting
signatures on RPP petitions.
But employees of these neighborhood institutions are very displeased.
They like using our residential streets as free parking lots, and resent
having to pay even a modest fraction of a commercial parking lot rate.
Their complaints have reached Ward One Councilmember Jim Graham, and he
in turn has put pressure on DDOT, which on April 24 notified the
Councilmember that “DDOT will wait until after we have had a chance to
discuss this pilot program with the community before we provide any
specifics regarding implementation.” This evidently pulls the rug out
from under the “specifics” issued by DDOT last October, and approved
unanimously by the Mount Pleasant ANC in November, with the advice “to
implement this program as soon as practicable.” All the RPP signs in
Mount Pleasant west of 18th Street have been re-labeled by DDOT “1DD,”
to show where the daytime passes will be valid. These passes were
supposed to have been available a month ago. All systems are go . . .
except suddenly they’re not.
What, I ask, is there “to discuss . . . with the community”? RPP
petition circulators report 80 percent approval from residents. Many
sign on only with the condition that these daytime passes be made
available to our institutional employees. Take away the daytime passes,
and the petitions will have to be withdrawn, depriving residents of RPP
privileges, and compelling them to continue with their curbside parking
92 percent occupied during the day, with more than half of those parked
cars displaying out-of-state tags. Does DDOT think that that’s what
“the community” might prefer? If not, and if the daytime passes are
essential for providing RPP relief to these long-suffering residents,
what is there to “discuss”?
This reform of residential permit parking is, or would be, the first
implementation of a “Parking Benefit District” in DC, a method that
is “one of the national best practices being discussed and promoted
around the country” (Donald Shoup, The High Cost of Free Parking,
2005). But it’s been brought to an abrupt halt, apparently by people
who want commuters from the suburbs to be allowed to park on our
neighborhood streets for free. “With the help of the District
Department of Transportation, we’ve created a solution for [suburban
employees of valued neighborhood institutions], namely inexpensive
daytime-only parking passes so that these commuters can continue to park
here, on RPP-zoned blocks. But commuters wanting to park here and take
Metro downtown, and residents whose cars aren’t registered in the
District, cannot.” Residential Permit Parking (RPP) is intended to
prevent commuters from using neighborhood streets as free, all-day
parking lots. This is a problem not only near downtown, but within
walking distance of any Metro station. But the District does RPP zoning
block-by-block, not neighborhood-wide, resulting in islands of unzoned
blocks surrounded by seas of RPP-zoned blocks. If commuters can park on
those unzoned blocks,
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Marriage is not about children, as some would have you believe,
because childbearing or the ability to do so is not a legal requirement
for marriage. Even churches that require a willingness to accept
children do not require fertility to celebrate a marriage (only the
ability to have sex). When you wed, you in essence divorce yourself from
your family of origin and create a new family with your spouse. I
support gay marriage, despite the heat we may take from Congress,
because quite simply there is no rational basis that I can find to grant
carte blanche to a heterosexual spouse in relation to the an individual
and their family members while denying the same privileges to a
homosexual spouse in the same relationships. Before people lingered
under medical care and were rich enough to leave much property, marriage
was not an issue, since if you got sick, you died or got better. With
the improvement in medical science came the question of who gets to
decide to stop life support, along with gay liberation where long time
companions were unafraid of asserting their rights as spouses. Marriage
codifies these rights and more importantly celebrating gay weddings
would allow families in a church setting to consent to the new union
(who gives this man) and pray for the new family. Regardless of what
happens in churches, unless someone can come up with a rational basis to
treat one spouse differently from another in relations with the family
of origin based on sexual orientation, gay marriage in inevitable.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Department of Parks and Recreation Events,
April 27-30
John Stokes, john.astokes@dc.gov
Monday, April 27, 10:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m., Fort Davis Community Center,
1400 41st Street, SE. Personal assistance shopping day for ages 55 and
up. Shoppers in wheelchairs or who are otherwise physically challenged
will take a trip to Shoppers Food Warehouse, Target, and the Dollar
Store in Forestville, Maryland. For more information, call Tonya Cousins
at 645-9212.
Monday, April 27, 4:30 p.m.-7:00 p.m., Stead Recreation Center (Ball
Field), 1625 P Street, NW. Kite flying for all ages. Participants will
enjoy of day of kite flying. For more information, call Jacquay Plummer
at 673-4465.
Tuesday, April 28, 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m., King Greenleaf Recreation
Center, 201 N Street, SW. Water conservation water quality workshop for
ages 55 and up. Seniors will receive valuable information relating to
water quality and conservation. For more information, call Kim Campbell,
Recreation Specialist, at 645-7454.
Tuesday, April 28, 7:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m., Upshur Recreation Center,
4300 Arkansas Avenue, NW. Area residents may attend this community
meeting to discuss master plan for Upshur and Hamilton Parks. For more
information, call Jackie Stanley at 671-0420.
Wednesday, April 29, 6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m., Emery Recreation Center,
5801 Georgia Ave., NW.
Adapted Power Soccer Clinic, for all ages. National Rehabilitation
Hospital’s (NRH) Paralympic Sports of Washington, DC, will host a
Power Soccer Introduction Class with guest appearances from DC United.
Instruction and equipment will be provided free. This class is for power
wheelchair users. Instruction will be provided by Virginia Power Soccer
Association. For more information, contact: NRH’s Therapeutic
Recreation Department, at 877-1420. Please arrive a half hour early to
attach equipment. Class will begin at 6:00 p.m., with participants
arriving at 5:30. Please note the date is subject to change.
Thursday, April 30, time to be announced, 4801 Nannie Helen Burroughs
Avenue, NE. Lederer Gardens Community Kick Off Event. DPR in conjunction
with Scotts Miracle-Gro will host a Community Garden Kick Off that will
inform participants about the importance of community gardens, edible
gardens, and sustainability. Did you know that growing and eating from
your own garden can improve your health, save money and decrease your
carbon footprint? This Community Garden Kick Off will highlight the many
benefits that gardening has to offer. There will be a special guest
appearance by Carl Edwards, driver of the #60 Scotts Ford Fusion in the
NASCAR Nationwide series, from 4-6 p.m. Come learn about the many
benefits of gardening with DPR! Call Kelly Melsted, Environmental and
Education Specialist, at 671-0396 for more information.
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CLASSIFIEDS — IN SEARCH OF
I am trying to find Lou Ursitti, who did a fabulous job of
refininshing a table of mine, but who still has a piece of furniture
made by my father that I gave him to work on. Last I heard he was in the
Takoma (DC or Maryland) area. I had to move suddenly and could not get
to him before that move (a child kept answering the phone), and I
subsequently lost his card. If you know him, please have him give me a
call at 483-7042 or E-mail me at denisewiktor@yahoo.com.
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