Proven Planning Ideas

Dear Planners:

Sam Shipley, sas821@hotmail.com, responded to my piece on the Rolling Stones and Peter Pan (themail, December 2) to the Ward 5 listserv: "It’s quite refreshing to see that Gary Imhoff’s ideas and thoughts aren’t stupid ones from a smart man, but instead stupid ones from an unintelligent and highly uninformed person. Always nice (and lucky?) to have that as your opponent when policy changes are being proposed and debated."

It’s nice to be appreciated.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Two More Candidates
Dorothy Brizill, dorothy@dcwatch.com

Two more candidates have announced for the April 23 special election to elect an at-large councilmember to fill Phil Mendelson’s vacated seat: Matthew Frumin and Jon Gann. That makes a total of seventeen potential candidates so far: Sekou Biddle, Anita Bonds, Michael Brown, Kwame Brown, John Capozzi, A.J. Cooper, Matthew Frumin, Jon Gann, Patrick Mara, Ron Moten, Kathy Patterson, Carol Schwartz, Peter Shapiro, Doug Sloan, Leon Swain, Ted Trabue, and Brian Weaver.

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Proven Planning Policies, Not Smart Growth
Karl Jeremy, mayandkarl@gmail.com

Recent issues of themail have focused on lifestyle changes, either implemented or proposed, by agencies of the DC government. Both the Office of Planning (OP) and the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) are on board with plans to alter the way residents live and move about and the city operates. As Gary Imhoff noted In his November 25 column (http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2012/12-11-25.htm), DC residents aren’t supposed to move outside their immediate neighborhood much less their ward; and commuters should expect driving in the city to become even more difficult.

There was a time when most decision making occurred at the local level in DC. Change bubbled up to decision makers. The ability of the public to affect decisions began to diminish when Adrian Fenty became mayor and determined to run the city "his way." He brought Smart Growth advocate Harriet Tregoning from Baltimore to head the Office of Planning. In the time she has been at the helm, Tregoning has created a strong power base, which allows the agency to impose changes with little public input. It’s unclear whether Tregoning, who is not a planner, even takes direction from her immediate boss, Victor Hoskins, Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, or if the mayor has granted her total autonomy. The public sees that Tregoning has strong empirical knowledge and wields incredible power in the city, They see the outcome of the campaign she has mounted to change the city very quickly. Even the Zoning Commission comes to full attention when OP speaks and is predisposed to approve whatever the agency proposes.

One of Tregoning’s well known handmaids, David Alpert, blamed "our society as a whole" for building communities that aren’t safe to walk in No doubt he was talking about a section of Wisconsin Avenue that has recently been redesigned to ensure greater pedestrian safety and promote walkability in Glover Park. While there aren’t hoards of people currently walking on this section of the avenue, pedestrians shouldn’t throw caution to the wind when they venture out there. DDOT has created obvious vehicular/pedestrian conflicts on Wisconsin Avenue, and is planning to implement a similar stupid design on other arterials. Arterial choke points make moving folks around the city impossible in emergencies. A quote from the October 17 issue of themail noted, "In their view, cars are a blight on society that should be cut back substantially if they cannot be completely eliminated. This coincides with the views of Councilmembers Wells and Cheh and Office of Planning Director Harriet Tregoning, and with the current fads and trendy anti-suburban prejudices in urban planning," http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2012/12-10-17.htm.

One current fad is the affordable housing coming to Ward 8. Hundreds of minimalist housing units are planned for construction. The new normal in DC housing will immediately feel like home to recent college graduates, since the units are the approximate size of dorm rooms. Then, when these kids are ready to move on to a larger affordable unit with neighborhood appeal, OP proposes the conversion of unused garages into two-story accessory apartments on residential lots. It seems strange that homeowners, who feel a great sense of relief when their own kids have left the nest, would convert their garages into mini-frat houses. The Office of Planning will present the new zoning regulations at a series of public meetings in each ward over the next two months. The public has an opportunity to let OP and the Zoning Commission know that it favors proven planning policies rather than the trendy anti-suburban prejudices found in smart growth initiatives.

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Rolling Stones and Peter Pan
A.J. Cooper, ajcooper@electajcooper.com

Thank you so much for your piece "Rolling Stones and Peter Pan" [themail, December 2]. I could not agree with you more! A couple of months ago I had the opportunity to sit down and speak with David Alpert and he used a similarly arrogant and short sighted argument with me. The only difference was that in this case he was talking to a young person who was not buying one bit of his propaganda. Rest assured, he does not speak for the majority of young people in this city and most of us find his attitude a bit off putting. After all the American dream that we were sold in high school includes a house with a picket fence and a car!

My major issue with Alpert is that he seems to forget that there are single parents out there who have to shop for families and cannot fit those groceries on a bike or lug them across town on a bus. While David Alpert may never have had to figure out how to get three kids under the age of twelve to school during the winter months, thousands of Washingtonians do. For them the best solution is a car. Why should they have to make their elementary school aged children brave the public transportation system when the elite of this city have their children driven to school? His response is that cars cause pollution and traffic. My response was that the bulk of the traffic in DC does not come from DC drivers in the first place, it comes from Maryland and Virginia. I then asked Mr. Alpert if he could choose to either have zero cars in DC or cars with zero emissions, which one would he choose. He said zero emissions. After hearing that, I informed him that perhaps he should focus on lowering the emissions on cars rather than making them inaccessible to all a but the wealthiest people in our city.

The basic fact is that Mr. Alpert does not know what it means to be poor, have a family, or be a senior. That by itself is fine. The fact that he has no compassion or willingness to take those people’s lives and well being into account however is unacceptable. I am all for saving the environment but not on the backs of our most vulnerable populations.

This is by no means a generational issue. It is an issue of those who live in a bubble attempting to force other people to live by their unproven and uncaring philosophies. Thank you so much for standing up for residents who do not have the time or energy to argue with people like Alpert. He seeks to divide and marginalize people. That is no way to grow a city. I cannot tell you how encouraging it is to know that there are people like you at there who will not let them get away with it.

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The Guise of Caring
Barbara Patterson, Ward 4, thebpatterson@rcn.com

I agree with you [themail, December 2] regarding DDOT’s summit: that the plan is a "done deal" and that a public forum is simply formality to give the public the guise of the city really caring what it thinks about plans that city administrators and legislators will move forward. As for David Alpert, it was disheartening to hear A.J. Cooper at a at-large candidates forum where he echo an eerily similar sentiment that dismissed older residents. Unfortunately, this city will not flourish without the wisdom and institutional knowledge of older residents, despite the haughtiness it’s showing thanks to gentrification by younger transplants to the city. Shame on Alpert and A.J. Cooper.

I will try to attend DDOT’s meeting tomorrow, but if not, I won’t feel that my input would’ve been valued by this administration. It never has and likely never will until a Statehood Green Party member has a strong voice in government leadership.

Also, I will write my councilmember, Muriel Bowser, and urge her to vote no on the "Board of Elections Petition Circulation Requirement Emergency Amendment Act of 2012" that would eliminate the requirement that petition circulators for candidates be registered DC voters.

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Driving Needs
Mary C. Young, marycyoung@starpower.net

Thank you for sharing Alpert’s concerns and yours [themail, December 2]. I watched the council committee meeting where he testified and was infuriated by his disdain for anyone who not only drives, but needs to drive — I am one of these persons so I dutifully wrote to the committee members about my concerns that a large part of our community are being ignored and that we, too, have needs.

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Peter Pan and Rolling Stones
Kent Slowinski, wksla@aol.com

Re: Peter Pan, the Rolling Stones and the Supreme Court Justices [themail, December 2]: Thank you. LOL

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Ward 5 Heartbeat Winter Issue Now Online
Abigail Padou, Editor, editor@ward5heartbeat.org

Hard copies of the newspaper will be delivered more than twenty thousand Ward 5 households in the next several days. Ward 5 Heartbeat is also online at http://www.ward5heartbeat.org. Ward 5 Heartbeat is a nonprofit community newspaper.