Dear Governors:
Every once in a while, the DC government surprises us and does
something right, or at least refrains from doing something stupid. This
week, there were two such pleasant surprises. The DC council cut city
government financing for the streetcar system in half, logically
determining that the city didn’t need eight billion dollars in streetcar
financing over the next few years because it didn’t have a sensible plan
to spend the money, and therefore couldn’t show how it would build a
useful streetcar system. Eleven councilmembers voted for Council
Chairman Mendelson’s proposal to allow taxpayers to keep half the money
in the form of tax cuts for middle income and lower income taxpayers;
only two councilmembers voted against it. Councilmember Marion Barry
voted against it because he wanted all of the streetcar funds to be
redirected to social programs, and Councilmember Tommy Wells voted
against it because he wanted the streetcar system to get all the
funding, regardless of whether the city had good plans.
The second surprise was that the DC Zoning Commission signaled its
disapproval of the Vision McMillan Partners plan to develop McMillan
Park for housing and office buildings. “The commission expressed strong
concerns about the height of medical office buildings planned for the
site, especially as they relate to nearby rowhomes adjacent to the
development. They also cast doubt on VMP’s plans to bring in more
transit for people living, working, and accessing the site.” (Lark
Turner, “Zoning Commission Not Ready to Approve McMillan, Asks For More
Details,”
http://tinyurl.com/moxkqoc).
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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H Street Overhead Streetcar Wires
Tolu Tolu,
tolu2books@aol.com
H Street Overhead Streetcar Wires have ruined the beauty of the city.
Have others taken a look at the new H Street skylines. They are a
throwback to the old DC streetcar days with the overhead wires that the
whole country (I thought ) had decided to get rid of.
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Streetcars Can Be Practical
Richard Layman,
rlaymandc@yahoo.com
Streetcars can be practical, but in DC streetcars can be both
practical and have tourism dimensions, just like San Francisco. For what
it’s worth, in cities like Toronto, Portland, and increasingly Seattle,
streetcar routes are created to support intracity mobility with minimal
consideration for how they may be appealing to tourists. In Portland and
Seattle streetcar lines were built primarily to support economic
intensification of previously underutilized districts proximate to the
central business district.
That being said, DC, being a highly visited city, has the opportunity
to reach the tourist segment as well, as San Francisco does, with a mix
of tourist oriented streetcar lines (F line, cable car) as well as light
rail that functions as streetcar like service. (SF’s light rail is
higher capacity than DC’s streetcar will be.) It happens that I first
suggested accommodating tourists as an element of streetcar planning in
a post in 2006 (http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2006/01/adding-cultural-heritage-dimensions.html),
and last year I wrote a couple of posts about city visitor
transportation services more generally and especially in the vicinity of
the National Mall and how a San Francisco-like F line service could be
implemented there (http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-national-mall-focused-heritage.html).
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Broadening Political Representation Within DC
Richard Layman,
rlaymandc@yahoo.com
With regard to Perry Redd’s posting in themail [May 14], over the
years I have made a number of suggestions about how we could change the
city’s political structure to bring about greater opportunity and more
and different representation. Hopefully this would bring about greater
representation in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, etc., but of
course there is no guarantee,
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2013/01/continued-musing-on-restructuring-dcs.html.
First, probably there should be more wards. Second, I’ve suggested
that each ward should have two councilmembers, with one up for election
in each election cycle. Third, there should be an increase in the number
of at-large members. While I hesitate to expand the council this much,
if DC truly wants to make the case that deserves statehood, having a
council function more like a legislature would be a point in favor. An
advantage of a larger council would be making it harder to pass
legislation, which would provide a useful check on the current process.
With an expansion of the council, you could move to a part-time
positioning and cut the salary. Or you could keep it full time. An
advantage of having two councilmembers per ward would be an increase in
intra-ward political competition rather than the somewhat authoritarian
system we have now, where the councilmember is also the ward boss, for
all intents and purposes, and some people are boxed out of
participation.
I haven’t recodified my latest thinking on some of these issues, but
I do think that DC could consider having a system like New York State,
where candidates for office can run under more than one party line.
While the New York Times criticizes this, I think it would be a
benefit here because the dominance of the city by “Democrats” (including
me) means that candidates for the most part don’t really have to have a
platform. Running on multiple party labels (like Working Families,
Statehood-Green, etc.) would allow for a more careful parsing of
candidate positions presuming that the other parties would require
adherence to and support of specific positions in return for
endorsement,
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2014/04/legalizing-electoral-fusion-as-another.html.
I have been a proponent of an elected Attorney General for some time,
although I argued the position should be up for election in the
non-mayoral election cycle. Separately, I have suggested abolishing the
Inspector General and the DC Auditor and replacing them with an elected
Public Advocate, like in NYC, with full investigative powers, but also
independence, which clearly is needed, given the current system.
With regard to primaries, in Seattle they don’t have official party
affiliations, although people do in fact have affiliations. But the
primaries are open, and the top two vote receiving candidates move
forward to the general election for each open position. Shockingly, in
Seattle this past fall that ended up resulting in the general election
win by a candidate affiliated with the Socialist Alternative party. She
was second in the primary but ended up winning.
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