The LeDroit Park post office, located at the entangled crossroads of Rhode Island, Florida, and New Jersey Avenues and S and Fourth Streets, is a mystery to us. Every time we have paid it a visit— even during the day on weekdays!—  it has been closed for lunch or just closed for the rest of the day. In fact, we have never set foot inside due to its inconvenient hours.

When in April the City Paper reviewed the post office (yes, they used to do such a thing), they awarded it a D+, but we doubt the reliability of such a whimsical alt-paper metric.

Nonetheless, just before we moved to the neighborhood— that is, before we left for LeDroit— we couldn’t help but wonder how a post office with such inconvenient hours could generate enough revenue to justify its existence.

Our intuition was right, for we soon learned that the Postal Service had added the location to its list of offices to close nationwide.  Makes sense, after all, and the second-nearest post office isn’t too far away, located on the Howard campus.

Not so fast.  Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) congratulated herself in her most recent biannual newsletter for removing all District post offices from the closure list.  Though Ms. Norton surely believes she’s helping her constituents, nowhere does she explain how the Postal Service is supposed to close a projected $238-billion budget gap over the coming decade.  If every Member of Congress intervenes on the behalf of each low-performing post office in his own district, the Postal Service will have to find other ways to compensate for the resource drain, perhaps by raising rates and eliminating Saturday delivery.  Mrs. Norton may think she did the District some good, but she and her colleagues are hastening the demise of the mail.

Thanks to a wave of citizen pressure on the council, LeDroit Park narrowly avoided yet another delay in park construction.

Last night we learned that Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr. (D – Ward 5), would offer a bill this morning to prevent the mayor’s office from re-appropriating $1.5 million to the park project here in LeDroit Park.  His stated reason for throwing a wrench in the process was that his bill was simply a “procedural matter to ensure that the funding source is constant with the Deputy Mayor['s] testimony that the funds will not be taken from other projects and that the funds are properly identified.”

As though a phone call within the Wilson Building wouldn’t have answered that question.  Threatening to further delay a much-needed construction project that the council and mayor had already promised may not be the most prudent way to stick it to the mayor’s office; Mr. Thomas woke the sleeping dragon.

Deluged with emails between residents, civic association leaders, Jim Graham (D – Ward 1), Kwame Brown (D – at large), and Mr. Thomas, himself, the council passed a revised version of Mr. Thomas’s bill, this time explicitly approving the re-appropriation.  Now there’s a u-turn!

Our thanks to all the residents who contacted the council to voice their disapproval.  Mr. Thomas admitted receiving an avalanche of 230 emails this morning on the matter.

And who said citizen democracy doesn’t work?

After last year’s contracting controversy simmered down, Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr. (D – Ward 5), assured residents that he would not block the park project in LeDroit Park.  He wrote in an email:

I would like to confirm that I am in support of moving forward with this project and supportive of the steps and work that the LeDroit Park community and many members from the Bloomingdale neighborhood have taken to support the Ledroit Park Project and will commit to ensuring that I will continue to support a contract process that moves this project forward and ensures its completion. (our emphasis)

It seems a councilmember is entitled to change his mind.

Mr. Thomas will introduce a bill tomorrow in the Committee on Libraries, Parks & Recreation, a committee he chairs, to prevent the mayor’s office from allotting $1.5 million for the park.

We’re not sure why Mr. Thomas has changed his mind, but residents are encouraged to call him or email him to ask why and to express the importance of the park.  If the site remains a mud pit in November, voters in Bloomingdale (Ward 5) may remember that on their way to the polls.

The District government uses GPS to track its plows and publishes the location data for the public to see.  Enter in your address or an intersection and watch an animated history of plowing over the past few days near you.

Please recall that under District law, property owners should have cleared their sidewalks by now. It’s certainly no fun, but it helps life return to normalcy.

Happy New Year!

Now pay up.

Our city council and mayor, ever desperate for new sources of revenue, have levied, effective today, a five-cent tax on every paper and plastic bag.  So unless you carry reusable bags in your pockets for every unforeseen trip to the store, get ready to shell out.

The stated purpose of the tax is to clean up the Anacostia River and three or four cents of every nickle collected will go to the Anacostia River Protection Fund.  Some stores have the option of offering a five-cent credit to customers who bring their own bags.  In such cases, store owners will be allowed to keep two of the five cents of the tax they collect.

The bag tax applies to every store that sells food or alcohol.  Since Best Buy sells candy near its check out lines, the tax applies there, too; you’d better take a reusable bag to carry your new DVD player home on the Metro.

Paper bags, which are biodegradable, are also taxed, not because of any potential impact on the Anacostia, but because of politics: store owners feared that a tax on plastic bags would encourage customers to opt for their more expensive paper counterparts.

For those who own cars (your author is not one of them), it might be easy to store one’s bags in the trunk and to pull them out at the store.  The rest of us are expected to carry bags on our persons, which is a nuisance that the mayor, with his city-provided SUV, and the council, with their free street parking in front of the Wilson Building, probably don’t understand.

Our biggest complaint about this tax is not so much the money, but the degree of condescension it exudes, implying that those who use plastic bags are sinners destroying the Anacostia.  Readers of this blog will note our distaste for litter, especially the heaps of it that pile up in front of the Howard Theater on the Block of Blight.  It’s easy to levy a feel-good tax, whereas a sustained effort to fine people who litter and to sanction businesses whose customers litter isn’t nearly as sexy.

New Year, Newspeak

Adding to the condescension is the legislation’s wording, which refers to the tax by the more innocuous word fee, as though city residents are too stupid to identify a tax when they see it.

The District Department of the Environment, which is responsible for administering the new tax (oops, I mean “fee”) has jumped on the Orwellian bandwagon, too, refusing to use the word tax.  Even worse, their campaign against plastic bags (see the image above) is an exemplar of newspeak, urging us to “skip the bag [to] save the river”.  For those of use who don’t litter— the majority of District residents— to “skip the bag” will not “save the river” since we wouldn’t have littered anyway and by reusing other bags, we avoid paying the tax to finance the river clean-up.  Ironically, by skipping the bag, we are not helping to save the river.

Cleaning up the river is a worthwhile goal, but levying yet another regressive excise tax wrapped heavily in moralistic rhetoric is neither honest nor fair.  Financing river cleanup should come from proven sources of river pollution, including sewers (by taxing water bills), impervious real property (WASA already charges a fee for this), and by enforcing anti-littering laws more aggressively.  Many of us, the majority I’d expect, use plastic bags and dispose of them responsibly so they don’t soil our communities and rivers.  Nonetheless, we are the scapegoat pretext for this new tax.

We are willing to bet a shiny nickle that this latest feel-good tax will do little to curb littering and we expect the heaps of garbage to continue to pile up in front of the Howard Theater.

Councilmember Jim Graham (D – Ward 1) informed his constituents via email this afternoon that the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development will rebid the construction contract for the park project in LeDroit Park.

The project is back on track, but the rebidding process will necessitate a delay of several months.

The D.C. Council voted unanimously to reorganize the controversial park construction contracts.  Ten of the contracts will be managed by the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization, which mainly handles school reconstruction.  The office is highly regarded as efficient and reliable.

Three of the contracts, including the one for the park in LeDroit Park, will be handled by the Department of Parks and Recreation and not the Housing Authority as originally planned.

Banneker Ventures, which had received all of the original contracts, is threatening to sue the city for a breach of contract.  D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles believes Banneker has strong legal footings upon which to build a case; the Council is not so sure (or doesn’t care).

Councilmember Jim Graham (D – Ward 1) believes the three contracts directed to the Dept. of Parks and Recreation may be able to go forward as originally planned because of the more open nature of their original approval.

Perhaps our local mud pit will open next year as verdant as planned after all.

We got word that a representative from the mayor’s office will walk through the neighborhood on Wednesday, December 2, starting at 10:00 am at the corner of Fourth and W Streets.  The purpose of this public walk-through is to compile a list of nuisances, graffiti, abandoned property, broken traffic signals and signs, etc., that the city should address.

If you cannot attend, please leave comments below and we will try to relay the issues to the mayor’s office.

Read their email for details:

This week the Mayor’s Liaison to the Office of Community Relations will be conducting a Fix-It on December 2nd at 10:00am at the following locations in your Ward:

• Meeting location: Corner of 4th and W Streets
• 200-400 blocks of T Street
• 200-400 blocks of U Street
• 200-400 blocks of Elm Street
• 200-400 blocks of V Street
• 200-400 blocks of W Street and the surrounding area on Florida Avenue.

We will be addressing the following issues: Abatement of all bulk trash, graffiti removal, abatement of rats, inspection of potential vacant properties, abandoned autos, street signage, street light audit. Please join us!!

Operation Fix-It is Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s multi-agency initiative aimed at abating crime, blight, and compliance issues in communities throughout the District of Columbia. The Fix-Its are held weekly and the locations are generated directly from concerned citizens.

To learn more about Operation Fix-It and how you can join us on our next project in Ward 1, please contact the Ward 1 Helpdesk at 202.727.6224.

Yesterday’s Council hearing, one in a series on the parks debacle, revealed an expedited (but opaque) process for awarding park renovation contracts.  The Housing Authority issued a Request for Qualifications (RFQ), which simply determines which companies have the ability and experience to bid on the final contract.  An RFQ saves time by eliminating groups who do not have the ability to follow through on a project.

The second step is supposed to be a Request for Proposals (RFP), in which the qualified bidders submit cost estimates and designs.  The submitted proposals are what the city government and public review and debate until a final selection is made.

In response to the RFQ, a five-member panel composed of officials from the Housing Authority and mayor’s office selected Banneker Ventures, a firm owned by a close friend of the mayor, from among 13 applicants.  Recall that this step is merely supposed to determine who is qualified to proceed to the next step to bid on a contract.

Well, the administration decided it should end there and, after selecting Banneker as qualified, did not issue an RFP and just handed the $82 million in renovation work to Banneker to manage.  Banneker was awarded $4.2 million to manage the work to be performed largely by other firms.

None of this was done with Council approval, as required by law, and on Tuesday the Council voted on emergency legislation to restrict funneling of park money through the Housing Authority and to require the Housing Authority to notify the Council of all contracts above $75,000.

Voting Yes:

• Yvette Alexander
• Marion Barry
• Kwame Brown
• David Catania
• Mary Cheh
• Vincent Gray
• Michael Brown
• Phil Mendelson
• Harry Thomas
• Tommy Wells

Voting No:

• Muriel Bowser
• Jack Evans
• Jim Graham (who represents LeDroit Park)

The Post reports that Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr. (D – Ward 5) will introduce a bill later today to prohibit the CFO from transferring any money to the Housing Authority, which is responsible for the construction of the new park in LeDroit Park, for 90 days.

Mr. Thomas believes the contracting improprieties warrant delaying the projects.  The Post writes:

Thomas, chairman of the Committee on Libraries, Parks and Recreation, said the council’s oversight powers supersede concerns about delaying construction of the recreation facilities.

“This is just government at its worst,” he said. “We can’t get caught up in the fact that neighborhoods have been promised things.”

Expect delays.