Denials
Dear Deniers:
Don Whiteside, on the We Love DC site, correctly argues that “Sulaimon
Brown Is Right,” http://www.welovedc.com/2011/09/12/sulaimon-brown-is-right/.
In fact, Brown’s behavior after he was pulled over for having a burned
out tail light bulb follows exactly the advice that any responsible
police department should give you in similar circumstances: if your car
is pulled over by an unmarked car, and a group of men in civilian
clothes surround your car and demand that you get out, stay in the car
with your windows rolled up and your doors locked, call 911, and don’t
get out until a marked car with a uniformed officer arrives and the
officer can assure you that it is a legitimate police stop, and not a
robbery or a carjacking. If the police charge you for not following
their orders, fight it in court, but don’t compromise your safety.
#####
An organization called Men Aiming Higher is holding a jobs fair on
September 22 at the Prince Georges Sports and Learning Complex “to
address unemployment in Prince Georges’ County. The job fair will
bring employers face to face with Prince Georges’ job-seekers,” http://www.menaiminghigher.org/news.htm.
Two of the employers listed are the DC Department of Employment Services
and the Marshall Heights Community Development Corporation, but when
Dorothy inquired, DOES denied that it is participating or, indeed, that
it will attend the jobs fair.
#####
Harry Jaffe argues that the District of Columbia should solve its
financial problems by selling valuable city properties and using the
proceeds to “replenish the city’s fund balance.” Here’s the
bright idea: “Plans to sell off city property have been floating
around for at least two years. DC Councilman Jack Evans, chairman of the
finance and revenue committee, first suggested the city consider selling
four buildings: One Judiciary Square; the Daly Building, police
headquarters across the street on Indiana Avenue; the Recorder of Deeds
facing the Daly Building, and the Reeves Center at 14th and U streets
NW,” http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/dc/2011/09/can-gray-sell-property-restore-dc-savings.
Both Harry and Jack are old enough, and have been around long enough, to
remember that the cleverest moneysaving plan was to move city offices
out of leased office buildings and consolidate them in buildings that
the city owned.
#####
Both Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr., in a posting to the Ward 5
listserv, and Councilmember Michael Brown, first in a telephone call
from his chief of staff and then in a personal telephone call, denied
having the conversations that they had last week in the Wilson Building
to help recruit people and garner support for Sekou Biddle’s next
campaign for an at-large council seat.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Advisory Neighborhood Commission Redistricting
(continued)
Jack McKay, jack.mckay@verizon.net
I complained in the August 25 issue of themail that the redistricting
of ANCs to account for the 2010 census results is being conducted with a
bogus interpretation of the DC Code, which says, awkwardly, that, “Each
single member district [of an ANC] shall have a population of
approximately 2,000 people, and shall be as nearly equal as possible.”
This doesn’t say that SMD populations “shall be 2000 persons,” but
that’s the interpretation made by the Office of Planning, ignoring the
“approximately” adjective.
The problem is that ANC populations don’t come in neat multiples of
two thousand, and ANC commissioners don’t come in fractional sizes, so
something has to give, if that goal of two thousand persons per SMD is
to be met, even within the plus-or-minus five percent allowed. Hence,
the task forces — our Ward One task force, anyway — are chopping up
neighborhoods, slicing off pieces of one neighborhood and shoving them
into another neighborhood’s ANC, in pursuit of this two
thousand-person chimera. Forget neighborhood integrity, it’s all about
achieving that magic two thousand, plus or minus one hundred. In the
business world, this is known as “management by spreadsheet,”
ignoring the reality on the factory floor.
What the law really says is, define your ANC any way you wish —
yes, let’s respect neighborhood sensibilities — then divide by
whatever number of commissioners results in “approximately 2000 people”
per SMD. Then set the SMD boundaries within that ANC to achieve the “as
nearly equal as possible” criterion. That way, no residents of one
neighborhood find themselves divided, some residents in one ANC, some in
another. But try to tell that to the Office of Planning. Defenders of
this bizarre interpretation argue that it’s necessary to achieve voter
equity, every voter having an equal say in ANC commissioner selection.
But the thirty-eight ANCs of the District are separate entities, never
meeting as a single body, and voting as a group. Requiring that the
resident count per commissioner in one ANC be equal to those in another
is like insisting that the boards and commissions of counties across the
US all have the same number of residents per elected representative. The
commissioners of one county don’t meet, and vote alongside, the
commissioners of another county, so nobody worries about differences in
the number of residents per county commissioner. Ditto the number of
residents per ANC commissioner, across different ANCs. “Approximately
2000” is the requirement. Equality of residents per commissioner is
required within an ANC, not from one ANC to another. But in the vain
pursuit of the Office of Planning dictated two thousand persons per SMD,
neighborhoods are being butchered. This isn’t necessary, it isn’t
required by the law, and it’s not needed for voter equality. It’s
just somebody’s wrongheaded interpretation of a poorly written law.
###############
Civic Leadership Like a Deer in the Headlights
Dino Drudi, drudi_d@bls.gov
Were I still living in DC, I can imagine I would be an even more
remonstrative member of the civic leadership than I was in the early
2000’s because I would not be willing to sit still for the civic
leadership’s lackluster opposition and even acquiescence to these
changes this bloc of 20- and early-30-somethings is pushing down
everyone’s throats, starting with their egregious bicycle lanes, which
are symbolic of their much broader attempt to take over civic affairs
from their Twitter accounts.
Some had forewarned us five years ago, with the Comprehensive Plan’s
portending how this bicycle crowd would, given an inch, take a mile,
with bicycle lanes everywhere, but what makes it worse is everything
that comes with the bicycle lanes: 1) “transit-oriented”
over-development, which they support as a quid-pro-quo for
developers’ supporting their bicycle lanes; 2) perverse bicycle lanes
such as on 15th Street, which the civic leadership has not opposed
aggressively enough, so that by now Jack Evans is even “convinced”
they have become “accepted”; 3) dumping Tourmobile and junking up
the Mall with BikeStations (why didn’t the Federations, the Committee
of 100, etc., make an alliance with Tourmobile to stop this); 4)
bicycle-friendly special legislation for attorney’s fees for
aggressive driving offenses vis-à-vis bicycles, but not vis-à-vis
pedestrians or other automobiles, to create preferential treatment for
bicycles in law, http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/dc/2011/09/cyclists-donning-video-cameras-safety-feature.
These 20- and early-30-somethings have little use for the traditional
citizens association, believing instead that they can “make a
difference” by blogging, and can replace real community with an online
“community” of folks who are too busy to attend meetings, but who
are capable of minuteman mobilization that can generate masses of E-mail
from folks who log on in their pajamas to, for example, save the H
Street trolley-to-who-knows-where, which the city bought before it even
laid tracks and kept in storage for years, http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/transportation/dc-slashes-then-restores-h-street-streetcar-funds,
started building even though overhead wires were illegal (and maybe
still are depending on how the court rules) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Streetcar,
and continues building even before tying down the route, etc., http://tinyurl.com/63ly4bt,
http://tinyurl.com/3csfr4a.
These 20- and early-30-somethings intend to reduce the traditional
citizens association to an anachronistic dinosaur. And, in the face of
this existential challenge, the civic leadership has stood like deer in
the headlights and let them get away with doing this.
###############
CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
The Importance of Art in Public Places: A
Conversation, September 17
George Williams, George.Williams2@dc.gov
This Saturday, the DC Public Library invites you to attend a
provocative discussion on why government and public institutions such as
libraries, schools, courthouses, and city halls invest in public art,
and the impact public art has on communities. Moderating the discussion
is The Washington Post culture critic Phillip Kennicott. Joining
the discussion as panelists are Wanda Aikens, executive director of Ward
7 Arts Collaborative; Mary Brown, executive director of Life Pieces to
Masterpieces; local artists Rik Freeman and Craig Kraft; David Furchgott,
president of International Arts and Artists; and Deirdre Thayer Ehlen,
public art manager for the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities. The
discussion will begin at 1:00 p.m. and take place at the Anacostia
Neighborhood Library, located at 1800 Good Hope Road, SE. There will
also be fun art workshops for children beginning at 11:00 a.m.
###############
National Building Museum Events, September 18,
20
Stacy Adamson, sadamson@nbm.org
Sunday and Tuesday, September 18 and 20, Interschool Student Design
Competition. Design Charrette Sunday, 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.; Awards
Ceremony Tuesday, 5:00 p.m. On Sunday, September 18, teams of students
from the area’s six collegiate architecture programs participate in a
day-long design competition held in the Museum’s Great Hall. Visitors
can observe the collaborative design process and watch students bring
their ideas to life in 3D drawings and models. An award ceremony takes
place on Tuesday, September 20. Part of AIA|DC’s Architecture Week.
Free drop-in program. No registration required
Tuesday, September 20, 6:30-8:00 p.m., Spotlight on Design: LA
DALLMAN: Re-fabricating the City. Grace La and James Dallman, principals
of the Milwaukee-based architecture practice LA DALLMAN, discuss urban
transformations of site and infrastructure. The firm is the recipient of
the 2011 Rice Design Alliance’s Spotlight Award. $12 members and
students, $20 nonmembers. Prepaid registration required. Walk-in
registration based on availability.
Both events at the National Building Museum, 401 F Street, NW,
Judiciary Square Metro station. Register for events at http://www.nbm.org.
###############
From September 23-25, the District’s smallest quadrant, Southwest,
will hold its first annual SW ArtsFest. SW ArtsFest 2011 will bring
together ten different organizations to present a cross-section of
Southwest’s cultural community through a three-day festival with the
theme “Discover Southwest.”
As part of SW ArtsFest, Christ United Methodist Church will be
sponsoring and cosponsoring several events, including a Human Rights
Film Festival, a yard sale, an arts display, a music concert, and a
dance/fitness workout session. For more details on CUMC’s
participation in SW ArtsFest, visit http://www.cumcdc.org/announcements.
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