Colby Explains It All

Dear Explainers:

Both Alan Suderman and Mike DeBonis have already pointed to it, but it’s worth pointing again to the transcript of C-SPAN’s Q&A interview with Colbert King, http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1408. Here’s how C-SPAN describes the interview: “He discusses his twenty-two year career at The Washington Post and details the current political situation within the government of Washington, DC. He describes the resignation of the District of Columbia’s City Council Chairman, Kwame Brown after pleading guilty to felony bank fraud and campaign violations. He talks about the jailing of another City Council member, Harry Thomas, Jr., after he admitted guilt for theft of funds and filing a false income tax return. King describes the historical evolution of local government in the District of Columbia, along with the troubled history of past administrations including the arrest and conviction of former Mayor Marion Barry in 1990. He details recent charges of campaign irregularities surrounding the incumbent Mayor of Washington, DC, Vincent Gray.”

Now, doesn’t that make you want to read it right away?

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Save McMillan Park
Daniel Goldon Wolkoff, amglassart@yahoo.com

McMillan Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., is a gem in the Emerald Necklace of parks planned by Sen. McMillan’s Senate Parks Commission in 1906, parks that the DC government does not think this section of the city deserves. This is difficult to understand. Why are the residents of this city confronted with wrestling our own resources back from a government and development community, obsessed with huge new construction, which needlessly destroys our parkland? The simple recognition of the limits of resources, nature, energy and available land, need to be recognized and adhered to for a healthy living environment. This tunnel vision would not have allowed New York’s Central Park or Rock Creek Park to exist unless excessively built over.

We need to emulate Manhattan’s Central Park, one of the world’s “Great Places.” It is over five hundred acres, and it was declining in the 1970’s, when a conservancy joined with the city of New York for a twenty-six-year public-private partnership to restore, manage, and enhance the magnificent park. It is hard to accept the District’s fencing off McMillan, our Olmsted park, wasting this “Great Place” and over nine million dollars for over a quarter of a century. It spends over $250,000 annually to mow a lawn no one could ever sit on, picnic on, stroll on, or in any way benefit from! How could it leave this precious , large tract of parkland to waste, instead of simply planting trees which by now would have already grown into a tall lush forest with all its critical benefits to the environment, the storm water retention, the air, and the health of the community.

In any city with proper planning, the millions of dollars would have supported a McMillan Park Conservancy and funded the restoration of the park and all its activities for our city years ago. The complete waste of McMillan Park demonstrates the neglect and contempt the DC government has for DC’s eastern section, under-served for generations, with one fifth the park space of the northwest section, which is always given preferences. The Vision McMillan Partners development, which destroys most of the historic landmark continues this unacceptable imbalance. I encourage the Historic Preservation Review Board to reject the city’s development plans.

The McMillan Site is protected under the Landmark and Historic District Act of 1978, DC Law 2-144. The entire site and its context are “protected!” VMP itself commissioned the Historic Preservation Report by EHT Traceries, Inc. which states “this level of development, is inconsistent with historic preservation of the site, “ and that is self-evident. We need all of this park space, our land, even more we need an expanded park system for critical community activities and recreation. We need the vision of Sen. McMillan to restore and complete “The Emerald Necklace” of green space, woods, and trails for the health of our central city and for a higher quality of life, like the upper income areas of DC have enjoyed, since Olmsted designed Rock Creek Park in 1890. [Continued online at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2012/12-09-12.htm#Wolkoff]

Our wasteful city government is sucking every dollar it can out of the tax paying residents, while it talks about increasing its revenue from McMillan. But the richest government in the world can increase its tax revenue as the parkside property values rise and the concessions, performances, art classes, and a huge city market generate tax revenue and fees in McMillan Park.

Revenue and benefits to our city will also come from the new residents, who do not buy condos on our parkland, but who buy and rent in alternative locations and renovate derelict properties, thus returning them to the tax rolls. Medical offices can be built across the street at Washington Hospital Center, where they belong. Meanwhile patients from all the hospitals, especially Children’s National Medical Center, and their families, can get some fresh air, take a nice walk, and help their recovery in a “Healing Garden” at McMillan.

City residents and our visitors need parks, destinations, and “Great Places.” The real McMillan (Senator from Michigan) had that vision over one hundred years ago. What about this miserable failure, the DC government, recommends them to develop, pave over, and sell out our park? The flooding we see from storm water runoff in adjacent neighborhoods, with sewage overflowing their toilets, will be worse. I support the park restoration and sustainable community design by CUA Professor Miriam Gusevich, a design that sun lights the underground creek creating a sand beach, offers us urban agriculture and forestry, and brilliantly creates a world-class city market, in adaptive reuse of the huge existing undersurface masonry galleries. Even the “so dangerous” manhole covers can be converted to skylights for a natural light source as you buy your fresh local farmed ingredients for dinner in the city market below.

The restoration of McMillan is an incredible opportunity that the vision-less DC government is destroying. The reservoir in New York’s Central Park serves thousands of joggers everyday, where people meet and walk for good exercise and camaraderie. It is a center, a social gathering. Meanwhile our reservoir has been fenced off and our park wasted since the 1980’s. Even as First Lady Michelle Obama promotes exercise, urban gardening, and good nutrition, we need our jogging paths, our reservoir, and our urban farming system in the city center at McMillan. This is really a last chance, as all remaining available land is being overdeveloped in an anti-environmental onslaught by the DC government and the big developers they serve, at our expense.

We need space where youth and underemployed can train in masonry (that’s how it will be affordable to restore the park), carpentry, plumbing, landscaping, forestry, and so much more. The restoration of McMillan will be a wellspring for the whole city. Training programs can spin off into urban conservation corps to help seniors fix-up and insulate their houses, etc. We need sustainable energy demonstrations, and we can preserve functioning sand filtration cells to exhibit the legacy of McMillan. And even more so, it is critical that we preserve all of McMillan as a back-up emergency clean water system. The fence went up in World War II to protect McMillan. In today’s world of terrorism and sabotage, how irresponsible is it to demolish this critical clean water infrastructure.

The shining example of Glen Echo Park in Montgomery County benefits all ages with a myriad of art, education, dance, theater, and festivals 365 days a year and preserved the charming 1930’s amusement park and 1890’s Chattaqua. Why did Montgomery County and the Maryland Park System join with the National Park Service and a Park Consortium, and do the most spectacular historic renovation? They considered a mixed use development at Glen Echo, too, but they had the foresight and they valued the population and the area’s young people, and provided such wonderful services and recreation and preserved the history.

It is very sad how mindless the DC government is, and it is no surprise we suffer crime and disrespect in return from our urban youth. They are killing each other and lives are destroyed, as DC launches another and another and another development for the rich. At McMillan, the community is ready to support our “Glen Echo” as a place to develop DC youth in health, character, and respect, in community building.” Every city official campaigns on supporting our young people, and all continue to fail them, and our homes and neighborhood security suffers the result.

We need this “Great Place” to help our youth and underemployed to succeed. We can teach masonry, carpentry, electrical, landscaping, forestry, urban agriculture and gardening, pottery and theater, all useful trades for becoming a responsible, productive adult.

McMillan is a protected landmark. The entire site is protected by our law — all of it — not to be demolished, paved, sectioned off with fifty buildings and strips of green space. We need to restore our Olmsted Park. It is your responsibility as the HPRB to preserve the historic character of our city, and McMillan is ready for such beneficial adaptive reuse. The report from the developers, that McMillan is too deteriorated for reclaiming, is ludicrous and they would have built over Manhattan’s Central Park, too. I encourage the HPRB to reject the city’s development plans. Stop wasting a fortune in treasure and preserve historic McMillan Park, for so many excellent reasons, for its value to the environment, to our city, to our young people.

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Taxi Meters
Matthew Forman, Matthew.Forman2@verizon.net

Can someone please explain the deal with the new smart meters to me? What exactly is the city getting for $35 million? Why is the city paying for it and procuring the service, now under bid protest? If uniformity is desired, why doesn’t the city just mandate a technical standard and have the taxis purchase the meter from whatever vendors are selling it? Do the taxis have to pay anything for installation, and if so, to whom are they paying it, if the city is already paying $35 million? What is the surcharge being used for? Will it repay the $35 million, or will non-cab-riding taxpayers and cash-paying cab riders have to foot the bill for the fraction of the population that wants the convenience of using a credit card for a cab ride? Why don’t only the credit card riders have to pay the surcharge? Do the taxis collect the surcharge and forward it to the city coffers? How many bureaucrats will it take to track all that? Who’s paying for the credit card service fee charged by Visa to the merchant? I tried to Google all this and search newspaper and city government web sites, but came up with incomplete and conflicting reports.

I don’t understand what could possibly cost $35 million — divided by 6,500 cabs, that’s over five thousand dollars per cab. A cabdriver could get the same functionality for only a few hundred dollars with either a smartphone or tablet, such as GPS and credit card reader — the “square” reader is free to obtain, and used by many merchants such as Starbucks. The whole thing could be done with an iPhone or iPad app for a fraction of the cost. I’ve been in a taxicab in New York city, and I don’t see how it’s worth paying a fifty cent surcharge every time I get in a cab to be able to look at a little TV screen feeding me propaganda from NBC.

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DC Statehood Green Response to the Democratic Party on DC Statehood
Scott McLarty, scottmclarty@hotmail.com

Readers of themail may be interested to read a sharp response from the DC Statehood Green Party to the failure of the Democratic Party to endorse DC statehood in its national platform (http://www.gp.org/press/pr-state.php?ID=546). The Green Party remains the only party with ballot status in the District that unequivocally supports DC statehood. The DC Statehood Green Party is affiliated with the national Green Party.

Jill Stein is the Green Party’s presidential nominee. If you’re thinking about voting for Dr. Stein to register a complaint against the Dems but you’re worried that your vote will help elect Romney, don’t fret. Obama will win a strong majority in DC and take all three of DC’s electors. (There are other good reasons to vote for Dr. Stein, too, but we’ll save that for another discussion.)

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Why Expect Anything From DC Pols?
Earl Shamwell, Ward 4, earlshamwell47@gmail.com

Are people’s memories so short that they have forgotten that both Gray and Norton, for that matter the entire council in 2010, when the Democrats controlled everything, decided that DC’s ineffective gun laws were more important than our having full voting rights in the Congress? They rejected the deal with the Republicans regarding the Utah House congressional district exchange proposal that would have given us a full vote. Who knows whether the deal would have survived a court challenge, but at least it was something.

Frankly I can’t figure why people here continue to elect Holmes-Norton. She simply has been ineffective over the last nineteen or so years, and in fact she does not seem — as the Democratic convention revealed — even to have the respect of her own party on the Hill. Gray is another story, the final chapter of which has yet to be written. But at a minimum, he has been a major disappointment for me, who voted for him enthusiastically.

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Speed and Accidents, Part 2
Michael Overturf, mike@overturf.info

Gary, your education suggestions are good ones, and I might further suggest that these be some remedies among many. The government, by being the issuer of driving privileges, has a pedagogic obligation to convey its will and intent to the driving population, revenue or no. However, I assure you: traffic violators come in all sizes, shapes, genders, ages, and colors. There isn’t one particular group that’s any worse than any other, excepting perhaps that younger tend to have more accidents, as you and the actuarial analysts suggest. Further, you also quote a source (Allstate) of data that is a partial sampling, at best. Here the NHTSA traffic fatalities report for DC between 2005 and 2010: 2005, 48; 2006, 37; 2007, 44; 2008, 34; 2009, 29; 2010, 24.

That’s right, DC had half the traffic deaths in 2010 that it had in 2005. They must be doing something right, or are you going to argue that away also? You are wrong: DC has one of the lowest traffic fatality incidences per capita in the nation: 0.9 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled for 2009 (NHTSA State Traffic Fatalities Report 2009). Only Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Connecticut are lower. In the interests of service to your readers you ought to correct this impression you gave.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s no problem. A human being enters a car as an insulating and locomotive prosthesis, lessening the cost and lowering the effort of bad decisions. Every sense in your body, smell, feel, sound, and sight — suggests an “inside” and an “outside,” which may only be tangentially related, depending on how you feel. How else do you explain the behavior of normal, average people gunning for you in the crosswalk? If you don’t think this happens — get out of your car and observe for a while. It happens every few minutes, every day, all the time.

Drivers in city traffic are also naturally angry. Sitting still while cogitating on the difficulties of life is preternatural: the natural reaction to frustration is physical activity to work out the adrenaline and other hormones. Being cooped up in traffic, motionless, and having to obey rules is very difficult; its just a lot easier to behave poorly. If you want an anger parade, sit and watch traffic downtown sometime for ten minutes, look in the faces of the drivers that are stuck. Something’s gotta give. Summa sumarum: drivers who complain about traffic cameras, tickets, and the rule of law are toothless sheep, being flogged by a system they have, or want, to use. And DC is starting to do a great job of civilizing the entire sordid affair. Deal with it.

[For a contrary position, see Courtland Milloy’s column on September 11, “Speed Camera: Traffic Enforcement or Highway Robbery?” http://tinyurl.com/9uekakz. The unanswered question is why traffic fatalities are falling, but traffic accidents are not. As with the falling homicide rate, is part of the answer simply better medical care, saving more victims? Is the answer that state statistics report accidents on both low-speed city roads and high-speed highways, while DC accidents are all on low-speed roads? Can the answer be that speed cameras and red-light cameras are somehow effective at reducing fatalities, but not at reducing accidents? Does anyone have the answer here? — Gary Imhoff]

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Deputy Mayor for Education De’Shawn Wright’s Reply to My Open Letter on the IFF Report
Erich Martel, ehmartel at starpower dot net

The September 9 issue of themail contained my open letter to Deputy Mayor for Education (DME) De’Shawn Wright. It asked him to reject the IFF study of the DC public and public charter schools that he commissioned last year and that was released to the public in January of this year. I also requested that he specifically repudiate the recommendations of the IFF report and asks him to answer nineteen specific questions, http://www.dcpswatch.com/martel/120824.htm. On September 11, Jessica Sutter, the DME’s Senior Advisor, sent a response to my open letter, which is posted with my letter.

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Adams Morgan Hotel Logjam May Be Broken
Peter Wolff, intowner@intowner.com

Agreement has been reached between the Reed-Cooke Neighborhood Association and the developers of the proposed hotel — see our breaking news report now posted at http://www.intowner.com.

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

Empower DC Annual Meeting, Get Involved, September 15
Parisa Norouzi, parisa@empowerdc.org

Empower DC’S eighth annual membership meeting, Saturday, September 15, 11:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m., 2427 Martin Luther King Jr., Avenue, SE, adjacent to Anacostia Metro/Green Line (Thurgood Marshall Academy). Child care provided; please RSVP. With potluck lunch; bring something to share.

Agenda includes: organizational business; voting in new board members; director’s report on organizational growth and development; project reports and call to action on grassroots media project and youth organizing project; campaign reports and call to action to save public housing and public schools, the Child Care for All campaign, and job training not bus parking at Crummell School; and prep for city council action calling for a moratorium on public school closures and a council resolution honoring Brian Anders’ life. All are welcome to attend and participate, but only dues-paying members can vote on resolutions and board members. Dues can be paid at the event. RSVP to parisa@empowerdc.org or 234-9119 x 100.

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Fall 2012 Open Seminars for Veterans and Family Members
Erich Martel, ehmartel at starpower dot net

Veterans, service members and military family members, The Veterans Writing Project is a highly-recommended, two-day writing project, directed by Ron Capps. We’re only a few weeks away from our Fall 2012 Open Seminars. October 20-21 on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, DC. These are free and are open to veterans, service members, and military family members. Our instructors are all working writers with MA or MFA degrees who are all combat veterans. We teach the elements of craft in writing fiction, nonfiction and even poetry.