Weed Clusters
Dear Back Yarders:
Lydia DiPillis, in the Housing Complex blog of The Washington City
Paper, tells Ward 5 residents they should learn to accept and admire
pot growers and dealers in their neighborhoods — otherwise, they’re
NIMBY’s. Her argument is that the pot trade is a desirable business:
“Concentrating marijuana production (and even sales, although that's
not what these applications are for) in Ward 5 would be a boon to the
area, not a blight — they're employment centers, after all, that will
pour capital back into the communities they inhabit. Cannabis
greenhouses would celebrate and compliment the presence of the
neighboring National Arboretum. They're heavily regulated enough that
any leakage of product to people who shouldn't have it would get them
shut down in a jiffy. . . . I have no idea why a neighborhood wouldn't
welcome a weed cluster. It's hell of a lot better than strip clubs,” http://tinyurl.com/66m589n
Shani Hilton, on the other hand, tries to be more open-minded to the
opposition of Ward 5 NIMBY’s in the City Desk blog of the City
Paper, http://tinyurl.com/5u5xg8f:
“Sure, logically, the signs point to pot dispensaries being a good
thing in neighborhoods. But decades of pot-is-a-gateway-drug training
are hard to undo. And for longstanding black residents who saw drugs
destroy communities, it's not a surprise that they're less willing to
draw a distinction between pot and other drugs. Besides, the pillars of
Ward 5, like those in every other ward, often don't want anything new,
be it a pizza joint or a pot dispensary. Like NIMBY’s everywhere, they
fear traffic, noise, new people walking around. And in the case of a
dispensary, they have this extra armament to fight against the proposal
by demonizing drugs. While I agree with Lydia, I'm not surprised at all
that people reflexively don't want weed, legally or illegally, being
sold in their backyards.”
Oh, those misguided NIMBY’s. Just because they saw their
neighborhoods devastated during the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s by
the trade in such a useful and socially beneficial drug by locally based
entrepreneurs, and just because they saw those upstanding capitalists
turn their communities into shooting galleries (in both senses of the
word), they stubbornly stick to their irrational prejudice against a
harmless recreational medicine. As commentator “ER” replies to
DiPillis’ question, “I have no idea why a neighborhood wouldn’t
welcome a weed cluster”: “You could ask them.”
#####
The hunt for the spring-removes-snow quote continues, and it may be
inching closer to success. One correspondent wrote that he doesn’t
want to be quoted because he hadn’t researched it yet, but that, “I
seem to recall that the snow controversy came in Barry’s first year
when he allowed Post reporter Milton Coleman to ride along with
him in his car. I think Milton may have quoted Barry as saying God
brought the snow and He could take it away. I do remember that Barry was
so furious at the Milton Coleman article overall that I don’t think
another local reporter ever rode with Barry.”
Erica Nash, nashe@starpower.net,
has done a thorough search, and has come up with another close call, a Washington
Post article by Ed Bruske and Leah H. Latimer on January 29, 1987.
“[Marion Barry], who took a helicopter tour of the city yesterday
morning after arriving home from California, said he had requested a
blow-by-blow account of how the District deployed its snow removal
resources, to determine whether equipment and planning could be
improved. But he and other officials, hit by a barrage of complaints
that city streets had remained unplowed too long, refused to take any
blame for poor road conditions. ‘I wish it had not snowed this way,
but obviously we have cold weather and certainly I'm not very happy that
any resident or any commuter was inconvenienced,’ Barry said. But he
said residents must recognize that ‘Washington is not a snow town.
We're not Buffalo. We're not in the far Northeast where snow is
confronted all the time, where you spend a lot of money on it.’”
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Lottery Board Plays Bait and Switch
Andy Litsky, ANC 6D-04, alitsky@aol.com
I received a call moments ago from Charles Allen in Tommy Wells'
office. He was just told that the Ward Six i-Gambling community meeting
that was scheduled for this Thursday — tomorrow — has been moved by
Buddy Roogow to next Thursday. No messages regarding this change ever
went out from the Lottery Board to any Ward Six organization — none of
the Ward Six ANC commissioners — none of the Ward Six community
listservs — and none of the customary Ward Six web sites.
After being called on the carpet by the media for scheduling their
community meetings in the middle of August and over Labor Day, once
again the Lottery Board is tampering with the process that they
themselves established. If Buddy Roogow and his Lottery Board crew can't
be trusted to maintain a simple schedule of community meetings, how can
they be trusted to run a citywide gambling operation? Flying way under
the ethics radar screen, they are either wildly incompetent or too cute
by half and boldly believe that can get away with no supervision.
The Council needs to step up to the plate and exercise some
oversight. And while it may be fine to some that Buddy Roogow, as a
Maryland resident, pays no DC taxes — someone needs to remind him that
his salary is being paid by the residents of the District of Columbia
and that he still reports to the Council's Committee on Finance and
Revenue.
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Ward 3 ANC Redistricting has been a distressing affair. I was
horrified by the lack of democracy and the lack of concern for Ward 3
citizens, as ANC lines were redrawn with little or no consideration for
residents. A coup by ANC 3E, which retained its small five-person
commission, resulted in the ANC’s taking over all the issues in
Tenleytown, leaving more than half of Tenleytown’s citizens in ANC 3F.
The five commissioners of ANC 3E now have jurisdiction over every
business and institution in Tenleytown (including DC Public Schools
Janney, Wilson, and Deal and countless private schools) and all
businesses on Wisconsin Avenue between the District line and Veazey
Street, while being accountable mostly to citizens in American
University Park and Friendship Heights. Yes, there are a few of us in
Tenleytown east of Wisconsin who are now in ANC 3E, but not enough of us
to be a political force or to have our own SMD. My new single member
district will be populated mostly by people who live on the opposite
side of Wisconsin Avenue, mostly residents of AU Park. Unlike most of my
neighbors, my home was pulled into ANC 3E because of a last minute deal
that puts local ANC boundaries on small, non-arterial residential
streets. Most of my neighbors, whose lives are centered on Wisconsin
Avenue and Tenleytown institutions, will be represented by ANC 3F (whose
commissioners resisted the coup) that must now focus on Connecticut
Avenue issues, far to the west of where they live.
It was a situation where the majority of the Task Force
representatives were responsible to no one but themselves and/or their
employers. Most who voted against the residents did not feel compelled
to answer our letters and still fewer gave reasons for their votes. But
there was code: “the reunification of Tenleytown” was how several
ANC 3E commissioners repeatedly characterized their stick of dynamite.
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Language Requirement in DC Schools?
Bryce A. Suderow, streetstories@juno.com
A couple of days ago someone told me that two weeks ago it was
required that students must take three years of a foreign language in
order to graduate from our DC high schools. Is this true?
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Answering Questions about the Clean Rivers
Project
Alan Heymann, DC Water, alan.heymann@dcwater.com
Pat Taylor [themail, October 16] raises some great questions about DC
Water’s ongoing Clean Rivers Project to reduce combined-sewer
overflows into District waterways. We are grateful for the opportunity
to answer them. The Clean Rivers Project is mandated by a federal
consent decree, an agreement similar to many in cities with combined
sewer systems. Planning for the project began in the late 1990’s,
resulting in a long term control plan. This plan was completed in 2002
and forms the basis of the Clean Rivers Project. It underwent extensive
public and stakeholder review during the development process. The
planning process included comparison of several viable alternatives and
technologies and analysis to determine the most cost effective solution.
In 2005, DC Water (then called DC WASA) entered into the consent
decree with the federal government and several environmental groups. The
result was a twenty-year completion schedule to minimize the financial
impact to District rate payers. (Note that as an independent agency, DC
Water’s capital projects and operations are almost entirely funded by
its retail and wholesale customers, not by District tax dollars.) From
2005 to 2008, DC WASA moved ahead with facilities planning — including
budgets — for the projects affecting the Anacostia River. The program
implementation has continued to move forward since 2008, and DC Water
has applied technical and management controls to maintain the project on
schedule and within budget. Nonetheless, we aim to finish the project
for even less than its initial budget.
At last week’s groundbreaking, we announced the start of
discussions with the United States Environmental Protection Agency to
reopen the terms of the consent decree. The goal would be to explore
green-development technologies that could reduce or eliminate future
pieces of the project, create jobs, green the District and reduce rate
increases for customers. Other cities, notably Philadelphia, have
proposed solutions that rely heavily on green techniques instead of
tunnels. You can read the consent decree, the entire long-term control
plan as specified in the consent decree, and the details of the first
tunnel system at http://www.dcwater.com/cleanrivers
###############
Was the Sewer Tunnel Reviewed?
Marchant Wentworth, Brookland, marchant_wentworth@msn.com
Pat Taylor asks if the DC Sewer tunnel system was reviewed. Yes. For
years. And years. Lots of alternatives were examined, compared,
particularly in regard to rate impacts and clean up effectiveness, and
discussed at hearings in every part of the city. In my view, the tunnel
system is simply the easiest and quickest way to clean up the Anacostia.
A huge amount of DC drains into the Northeast Boundary Sewer that
runs roughly under Florida Avenue. That one sewer is the largest single
polluter of the Anacostia River — discharging millions of gallons of
raw sewage into the river when it rains. The tunnel will allow that huge
volume of mixed sewage and rainwater to be stored till after the rain
and then sent to our sewage treatment plant to get cleaned.
Will it work? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes. Although it sounds like a
huge amount of money, it is over a ten- year period. But ultimately it
will result in a cleaner Anacostia (and Rock Creek and Potomac —
portions of which you do not want to approach after a rain). There have
been lots of studies done on the benefits of cleanup -- they far exceed
the costs. It is literally a deal we can not afford to refuse.
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Controlling Snow 1996
Michael Bindner, mikeybdc@yahoo.com
When the 1996 storm hit, the District was knocked flat from lack of
equipment. Mayor Barry took the blame for it, even though he did not
have to. What people don't know was that Chief Financial Officer Anthony
Williams had frozen all purchases a few months before because he had
found that his predecessor had directed that no bills be paid because
the District was running shortfalls, which resulted in bills being put
into drawers unopened, rather than being forwarded to the Comptroller
for payment. The downside of this moratorium was that equipment upgrade
needs were unmet and the District was caught flatfooted. It would have
been easy to blame Tony or Mayor Kelly, but he took the fall instead.
Thank about that next time you look for a quip. By the way, when Tony
hired the former Comptroller as CFO, largely at the request of Alice
Rivlin, disaster almost ensued. To his credit, he fired her when she
proved to be incompetent.
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InTowner
October Issue PDF Now
P.L. Wolff, intowner@intowner.com
This is to advise that the October issue content has been posted at http://www.intowner.com,
including the issue PDF, which can be accessed directly by linking to
http://tinyurl.com/4xayf6b. There will be found the primary news stories
and certain features, including the popular Scenes from the Past (this
month titled “The Mansion Next to Washington’s Spanish Steps”) —
plus all photos and other images; other features not included in the PDF,
such as Recent Real Estate Sales, can be linked directly from the web
site’s home page.
This month's lead stories include the following: 1) “Reed-Cooke
Neighbors and Other Adams Morgan Residents Pack Meeting to Hear from
Hotel Developer and Ask Questions”; 2) “Rehab and Landscaping Work
Starting on Connecticut Avenue Median Above Dupont Circle and at Q
Street Park”; 3) “Historic Former Wonder Bread Complex in Shaw to be
Restored and Developed.” The next issue PDF will publish early in the
morning of November 14 (the second Friday of the month, as usual). For
more information, either send an E-mail to newsroom@intowner.com
or call 234-1717.
Special Note: We are now on Facebook and Twitter! On both we will be
posting alerts about news and information items that we upload on
occasion throughout the monthly issue period. It is easy to check by
simply clicking one of the link buttons located at the top of the button
panel on the left side of our home page – or, better yet, follow us on
either of these social networks.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
LeDroit Park OktoberFest, October 29
Alan Holmes, acholmes3@gmail.com
The LeDroit Park Civic Association and Common Good City Farm are
pleased to announce the first annual LeDroit Park OktoberFest.
OktoberFest is a family and community-oriented event with live music and
entertainment, games, food, and local vendors. The event will also
feature Common Good City Farm’s Harvest Festival, an afternoon of
activities like pumpkin carving and painting, scarecrow making, face
painting, and more!
OktoberFest entertainment will include the Peacemakers, one of the
original "go go" groups in Washington, DC, eisa taiko drumming
and dancing by the Chin Hamaya Culture Center, and traditional
German-style music and games. The LeDroit Park Civic Association thanks
the following sponsors for supporting this community event: Wells Fargo
Bank, Busboys and Poets, Zipcar, and Howard University.
OktoberFest will be held on Saturday, October 29, from 11:00
a.m.-5:00 p.m. at the Park at LeDroit, located on the 300 and 400 blocks
of Elm Street, NW. The Harvest Festival will be held 11:00 a.m.-2:00
p.m. at the Common Good City Farm (entrance between 2nd and 4th Streets
on V Street, NW).
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Christ United Methodist Church (CUMC) will be holding its annual
Mildred B. Twitty Jazz Vespers on Sunday, November 6, at 5:00 p.m. This
year's Vespers features the Vince Smith and Friends Group (starring Wes
"Suga" Biles on bass, Ronald Compton on drums, Bonnie Harris
and Julian Hipkins on vocals, Michael Thomas on trumpet, Sam Turner on
percussion, and Vince Smith on piano).
The Jazz Vespers will be held at CUMC, located at 900 4th Street, SW
(on the corner of 4th and I Streets, SW). Tickets cost $15, and can be
purchased by calling 316-7024 or 554-9117.
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CLASSIFIEDS — VOLUNTEERS
Reading Partners provides one-on-one literacy tutoring for students
in DC elementary schools that are reading below grade level. Tutoring
with Reading Partners requires absolutely no experience and can take as
little as 45 minutes per week. We provide tutors with an easy to follow
curriculum and there is a site coordinator present at each center to
provide assistance.
Opportunities are available Monday-Thursday from 8:30 a.m.-6:00 p.m.
Our tutors range from high school students (starting at age 14) to
retirees. We have 8 locations throughout DC (Ft. Totten, Anacostia,
Congress Heights, Columbia Heights, Thomas Circle, Edgewood, Trinidad,
Birghtwood). For more information contact twoolfolk@readingpartners.org.
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