People Who Don’t Like DC
Dear People Who Do Like DC:
Last week, Mayor Vince Gray, DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, and
Congressman Darryl Issa (R-CA) announced that they are going to work
together to eviscerate the law that sets a height restriction on DC
buildings. See the coverage in The Washington Post, http://tinyurl.com/82o2r9z,
The Washington Business Journal, http://tinyurl.com/6vz93nx,
and The InTowner, http://tinyurl.com/7jlq764.
Developers are pushing this special interest law enthusiastically,
because they see the opportunity to make massively bigger profits. But
the great majority of DC residents like living in the District of
Columbia because, among other things, it’s a beautiful city whose many
vistas, sights, and walkable streetscapes are enhanced by its low-rise
architecture. To counter the residents’ preferences, Gray, Norton,
Issa, and their colleagues make several weak and false arguments. Most
prominently, they argue that developers and architects design boring,
block-like buildings in DC because they want to squeeze as much profit
as possible from the sites on which they build. If they could build
taller buildings, they say, they’d build more interesting ones,
because they wouldn’t have the same motivation to maximize their
profits. That’s nonsense, and their second argument is also
nonsense. They say that rents would fall and the city become more
affordable if taller buildings were built here. No landlord is going to
charge lower rents in a fifteen-story building than in a ten-story
building, and no DC apartment dweller is going to save money by moving
to a taller building.
Finally, Gray, Norton, Issa, and the people for whom they advocate
promise that, if the height restriction is lifted, they will use the
additional height restrictively, to encourage development in poor
neighborhoods away from downtown, and will still preserve the important
vistas that Washingtonians treasure. How naive and gullible do they
think we are? Developers will build those new, taller buildings in the
most expensive commercial and residential neighborhoods, where the
property values justify the additional building costs, and where they
can charge for the new vistas they will create by blocking the vistas
that exist now. And Gray, Norton, and Issa say that developers want only
an additional ten or twenty feet in height, one or two stories? That’s
the opening, reassuringly small wedge to get the height restriction
lifted. Then we’ll “unexpectedly” discover that one or two stories
isn’t enough to stimulate any of the benefits that were promised, and
another modest increase, a few more stories, is needed, And when that
isn’t enough, it’ll be time to scrap any limits. The skyscrapers of
Anacostia are a fantasy, but the twenty and twenty-five story buildings
of K Street and downtown will be real. Back in the 1950’s the
professional urban planners who were sure that they knew best how to
build cities fought against the citizens associations in the District.
The planners said the District, in fact the region, needed wide,
high-speed highways crisscrossing the city and dividing neighborhoods.
If the word “nimby” had been in use in the 1950’s, the planners
would have used it then to denigrate the Washington citizens and
community groups who fought against their highway plans.
Now the planners have turned against highways. Today’s planning fad
is “walkable” cities in which neighborhoods are designed to make
cars difficult and expensive to own. Some of those who advocate trashing
the height limitation are simply ideological smart-growth advocates who
don’t like DC as it is. They are envious of Manhattan’s skyscrapers,
and think that the best cities are the biggest cities, with the most
congestion and crowding. These advocates don’t like most of America’s
cities, which have modest, lower-scale buildings and neighborhoods that
are friendly to car-owning families. Most American cities, like
Washington, are mostly composed of neighborhoods of single-family homes,
and those neighborhoods repulse smart-growth city planners almost as
much as suburbs. But these are the neighborhoods and cities that most
people prefer to live in, and these are the neighborhoods and the city
in which most Washingtonians want to live. The developers and the
smart-grown advocates who dominate planning circles scorn the people who
prefer low-rise neighborhoods; they call them “nimbys” because they
don’t want skyscrapers built in their backyards. But the public isn’t
fooled. We know that the developers and their partners among the
smart-growth advocates promise us a rebuilt Washington that is just like
Manhattan, except that all the buildings will be as attractive and
interesting as the Chrysler Building. What we’ll really get, if they
get what they want, is downtown neighborhoods like the built-up central
blocks of Rosslyn and Crystal City, with buildings as blocky and
uninteresting as on K Street, except that they will be two or three
times as tall.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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DDOT and Greener Storm Water Infrastructure,
Part V
David Jonas Bardin, davidbardin@aol.com
How will DC fund greener storm water infrastructure? One place to
start is DC’s Storm Water Fee, set by the Director of DDOE, a mayoral
appointee. Landowners, including federal agencies, now pay $2.67 per
1,000 square feet of impervious area they own. DC Water collects those
fees for DDOE, which distributes funds to DDOT and other agencies for
duties imposed on the city for about two-thirds of its land area by EPA’s
MS4 permit. Those fees will have to go up to pay for rain gardens,
pervious pavements, and other green infrastructure measures that DC
decides to have DDOT undertake. Parallel DC Water charges support its
Clean Rivers program of deep storage tunnels. DC Water’s fee, now
$6.64 per 1,000 square feet, is proposed to rise to $9.73 in October and
will go up every year (projected to reach $31.17 in 2020). DC Water
wants to shift some of that revenue to green infrastructure for 10
percent of the city’s land area. See http://www.dcwatch.com.columns/bardin.htm,
Customer bills spread the costs of handling storm water over
425,789,000 square feet of impervious area in DC (9,775 acres), excluding
streets and sidewalks in rights of way. Runoff from DDOT streets and
sidewalks adds exactly the same proportion to all bills for the
other impervious surfaces. So a widow in Ward 7 who rarely crosses the
Anacostia River and whose neighborhood has relatively little impervious
surface has the same proportion added to her fees as a K Street landlord
whose tenants commute downtown daily to an intensely impervious part of
the city. And DDOE is anxious to provide percentage discounts, up
to 55 percent (i.e., perpetual abatements, not one-time grants), to
properties that install and maintain green infrastructure — which
would raise the fees for everyone else.
Sustainable DC may ultimately go for more or for less green
infrastructure, but there will be lots of work to organize and do, by
many hands and many contractors, requiring lots of money for a
multi-decade effort. For example, an “intensive” effort modeled
8,500 sidewalk rain gardens (“bio-retention planters”) and 22,000
curb bump-out rain gardens, District-wide. See LimnoTech’s 2008
Enhanced Green Build Out Model (which LimnoTech continues to refine)
posted at http://www.tetratech-ffx.com/greencsos/pdf/4cs.pdf.7
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Finalists of the Larry Neal Writers’
Competition
Marquis Perkins, marquis.perkins@dc.gov
Mayor Vincent C. Gray, along with the DC Commission on the Arts and
Humanities is pleased to announce the finalists of the 29th Annual Larry
Neal Writers’ Competition. The competition commemorates the artistic
legacy and vision of Larry Neal, a renowned author, academic, and former
Executive Director of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
Winners will be announced at the Larry Neal Writers’ Awards
ceremony on Friday, May 4, at 6:30 p.m. in the Folger Shakespeare
Library’s Elizabethan Hall, held in partnership with the PEN/Faulker
Foundation. Julie Otsuka, 2012 winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for
Fiction, will provide opening remarks. The ceremony is the culminating
event for the writing competition, which was open to writers who reside
in the District of Columbia.
Finalists: Poetry finalists: adults, Holly Bass, Sandra Beasley, Fred
Joiner; teens, Asia Alston, Ellington HS, Idia Leigh, Ellington HS,
Lauryn Nesbill, Ellington HS; youths, Muhammad Ali, Hart MS, TyJuan
Hogan, Hart MS, LaShanda Jones, Hart MS. Fiction finalists, adults,
Abbey Chung, Gabriel Louis, Robert Williams; teens, Marcus Brown,
Ellington HS, Kehinde Dosunmu, School Without Walls HS; Cara Rancin,
Ellington HS; youths, Shu Yu Offner, St. Peter School; Claire Schmitt,
Lafayette ES. Dramatic Writing finalists, Randy Baker, Paco Madden,
Danielle Mohlman
For more information regarding the Larry Neal Writers’ Awards
ceremony, please contact Carlyn Madden, carlyn.madden@dc.gov or
724-5613), or visit www.dcarts.dc.gov.
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InTowner
April
Issue Now Online
P.L Wolff, intowner@intowner.com
The April issue content is now posted at http://www.intowner.com,
including the issue PDF. There will be found the primary news stories
and certain features, including the popular Scenes from the Past (this
month titled “With But a Minor Clue to Start, a Mystery is Solved”)
— plus all photos and other images; other features not included in the
PDF, such as Recent Real Estate Sales, Reservations Recommended, and
Food in the ‘Hood, can be linked directly from the web site’s home
page.
This month’s lead stories include the following: 1) “Planning
Progresses for Implementing Phase Two of Dupont East’s Stead Park;
Rehab of Athletic Field to be the Focus”; 2) “Artists Studios Anchor
Shaw’s East End; Annual Open House Set”; 3) “Ward 2 ANC Boundaries
to be Realigned.” Our editorial this month focuses on our picks for
the forthcoming Democratic primary (From the Publisher’s Desk, “Our
City’s Historic Views May Be Under Attack: Nip It In The Bud Before We
Create A Weed Patch”). Your thoughts are welcome and can be sent by
clicking the comment link at the bottom of the web page or by E-mail to letters@intowner.com.
The next issue PDF will publish early in the morning of May 11 (the
second Friday of the month as usual). For more information, either send
an E-mail to newsroom@intowner.com
or call 234-1717.
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DeBonis’ Tweets Validate Brizill’s
Concerns
Pamela Johnson, JohnFCookDescendant@gmail.com
On April 2, one day before the District’s primary election, Mike
DeBonis, The Washington Post’s lead District reporter and a
trusted opinion leader on local politics, tweeted, “the sucker’s
wide open.” DeBonis’ Washington Post Twitter account has
thousands of followers and is linked to the online version of The
Washington Post, which gives his tweets an even larger sphere to
inform, influence or — in the case of this tweet — unjustly malign.
To be the target of a defamatory tweet from a Washington Post
journalist, especially from DeBonis whose pen and ink is revered as the
gospel on DC politics, is guaranteed to have a negative impact on any
candidate’s election bid. And, for DeBonis to have branded At-Large
Candidate Vincent Orange — as a sucker — is unprofessional, and
validates Dorothy Brizill’s argument why The Washington Post
needed to disclose DeBonis’ personal relationship with Sekou Biddle’s
press secretary, Dena Iverson.
“The sucker’s wide open,” was neither the first nor the last of
DeBonis’ tweets circulating in cyberspace to impact Orange’s
campaign and give his major opponent, Sekou Biddle, an unwarranted
advantage. DeBonis’ other tweets analyzed why the so-called “sucker”
was wide open; and, on Election Day, he tweeted about Orange’s Robo
Calls and included a link that criticized the calls. These value
judgments by DeBonis seem only to have been directed at Orange, the
incumbent in what was a heavily disputed election against Sekou Biddle,
whose PR Director, Dena Iverson, is DeBonis’ girlfriend. This
inappropriate practice with blatant hallmarks of impartially was beyond
the scope of journalistic professionalism.
For an editor and media critic [themail, April 11] to be dismissive
of an independent party’s — Dorothy Brizill of DC Watch’s —
legitimate concerns regarding a potential conflict of interest by a
staff member, has me questioning the media’s ability to police itself.
It is neither Dorothy Brizill’s nor the public’s responsibility to
demonstrate that there is a cause and effect, but rather to bring
awareness of a potential bias behavior when personal and/or intimate
relationships are commingled with professional journalism. A disclosure
at the outset would have been a sine qua non condition to dispel
the hint of unfair, unbalanced and partial reporting by The
Washington Post.
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Laughable, Patronizing, and Arrogant
Ayanna Brown, ayannabrown876@yahoo.com
Laughable, patronizing, and arrogant. These were the adjectives that
came to mind as I read Mike DeBonis’ and Erik Wemple’s response to
Dorothy Brizill’s recent revelation about Mike DeBonis’ and Dena
Iverson’s three-year relationship.
Dorothy’s questions were fair and reasonable. In fact her questions
and the ensuing responses sparked some outrage in the community. The
outrage isn’t about two young star-crossed lovers, who just happen to
work in similar fields finding their way into a relationship. Nor is
this fodder for some TMZ type of gossip. But the issue stems from the
mistrust that many in the community have toward the DC’s media,
especially towards the Post.
Over the past couple of years (really more) many in the community
have lauded complaints about the DC media’s lopsided unobjective
reporting. Complaints seemed to reach a boiling point under the Fenty
administration, which included Michelle Rhee’s tenure and most
recently the DC city council at-large race. Ironically, Ms. Iverson held
positions where she worked as press secretary to Mayor Fenty, as
spokesperson for DC Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and as Press
Secretary under former at- large candidate Sekou Biddle.
I’m sure Mike, Dena, Erik, the Washington Post, and the City
Paper, have heard these accusations before, and logically one would
think that either the City Paper or the Post would have
disclosed the relationship to its readers to avoid any issues regarding
conflicts of interest. Actually, it’s ironic because this is a topic
that both the Post and the City Paper have covered heavily
over the past two years. And disclosing the relationship wouldn’t have
been unprecedented. In fact Jay Matthews, who is an education columnist
for The Washington Post and covers DCPS, disclosed that he
thought it was important to tell his readers that he had a bias because
his wife Linda Mathews worked at USA Today as a senior project
editor, and she “conceived and edited” the series, Testing the
System. Linda Mathews’ series uncovered the DCPS’ eraser debacle. So
it looks like all the community will receive is an arrogant response
from Mike and Erik, and silence from both the Washington Post and
the Washington City Paper.
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[Re: “The End of Offensive Language in themail,” April 11] Mr. O’Keefe
could have put his time, resources, and imagination to better use by
investigating why voter fraud became an issue in the first place.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
DC’s Ethics Initiative, April 24
Anne Renshaw, milrddc@aol.com
The Federation of Citizens Associations of the District of Columbia
will hold a citywide meeting on “DC’s ethics initiative: can a
pledge help assure government employees’ proper behavior?” on
Tuesday, April 24, 6:45-9:00 p.m., at All Souls Memorial Episcopal
Church, 2300 Cathedral Avenue, NW (entrance off the church parking lot
on Woodley Place, NW; closest Metro stop, Woodley Park-Red Line.)
The guest presenter will be Greg Evans, Deputy General Counsel, DC
Department of Human Resources. He will brief the Citizens Federation on
DC’s new Ethics Pledge [Instruction No. 18-2] which city employees
must take by April 17 and the ramifications if they refuse. According to
DCHR Director Shawn Y. Stokes, writing in a recent mayoral publication:
“The purpose of the pledge is to inform, educate, and create a
heightened sense of awareness of the ethical standards of conduct
employees are expected to abide by, and corresponding federal and
District law, which carries administrative, civil and/or criminal
penalties for violations.”
DC agencies now have Ethics Counselors and Ethics Manuals. DC
Government employees who fail to take the Ethics Pledge must receive
remedial Ethics training by December 31. Will this Ethics Pledge instill
core values and principles in DC employees? Will it assure proper
behavior from District government personnel? Citizens want to know.
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Welcome to Georgetown, George, May 3-31
Jerry McCoy, sshistory@yahoo.com
A free author lecture series in commemoration of the two hundredth
anniversary of George Peabody’s arrival in Georgetown and the return
of his fully restored portrait that was damaged in 2007 Georgetown
Branch Library fire. This May marks the two hundredth anniversary of
seventeen-year-old George Peabody’s arrival in Georgetown in 1812 with
his older uncle and their establishment of a dry goods store on Bridge
Street, today’s M Street. Decades later, Mr. Peabody was a
multimillionaire, and in 1867 he donated $15,000 to establish a library
in Georgetown. Mr. Peabody believed that the only way to elevate oneself
was through education. That was why he funded a library in Georgetown
among dozens of other educational and cultural organizations throughout
the United States. The Georgetown Branch Library’s Peabody Room was
named in his honor in 1935 with the purpose of serving as a repository
of Georgetown’s neighborhood history.
Join us at 6:30 p.m. each Thursday in May at the Peabody Room,
located on the third floor of the Georgetown Branch Library, 3260 R
Street, NW (corner of Wisconsin Avenue). For additional information,
contact Jerry A. McCoy, 727-0233, or E-mail jerry.mccoy@dc.gov.
The lineup of Thursday, 6:30 p.m., author talks in May is: May 3,
Garrett Peck, The Potomac River: A History and Guide; May 10, John
DeFerrari, Lost Washington, DC; May 17, Michael Lee Pope, Hidden History
of Alexandria, DC; May 24, James H. Johnston, From Slave Ship to
Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the History of an African American Family;
May 31, David Mould, Remembering Georgetown: A History of the Lost Port
City.
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CLASSIFIEDS — VOLUNTEERS
I am a project leader for Common Ground Community Clean Up, a local
nonprofit project that seeks to keep public spaces in Washington, DC,
visibly cleaner, which may aid in a reduction to underutilization or an
increase of public safety and aesthetic pleasure. We are currently
looking for volunteers in neighborhoods across DC who can help us choose
places to clean up and participate in the clean up process. If you would
like to volunteer, please E-mail myself or my co-leader Chelsea at the
E-mails below. It is our hope that together we can make this a regular
project engaging our communities in a positive way. Interested
volunteers will sign up to clean a different public place in their
community for one hour every other Sunday morning. If you’re
interested in volunteering for this project, please contact Perry Yates Perry.Yates@roundtablesolutions.org,
or Chelsea D’Angona, Chelsea.DAngona@roundtablesolutions.org.
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