“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” —Declaration of Independence

The Post is reporting that the latest attempt to move voting rights forward will probably fail.

As you may recall, in early January Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D – DC) introduced a bill to give the District a voting member of the House.  Progress on the bill stalled when the Senate added an amendment essentially repealing much of the city’s gun laws and restricting the Council from regulating firearms in the future.

Since a repeal of gun laws is politically unpopular in the city, Congressional backers gave up on the bill, opting to find another way to give the District representation.

The latest plan, now in peril, involved attaching the voting rights language as a rider in the conference report for the defense appropriation bill.

But now it looks as though that will fail, too, despite the Democratic majority, as the Post writes:

Democrats fear that if they did use the defense measure, the National Rifle Association would “score” the vote as though it were directly related to the gun issue. Interest groups across the ideological spectrum rate the voting records of members of Congress, but few have as much clout as the NRA. If the group announced that it was scoring a vote for the defense bill (and the D.C. Voting Rights measure) as a vote against gun rights, it would put Democrats — particularly those from conservative and rural districts — in a very tough spot.

Yet again, we must suffer the abridgment of our moral right to elect the people who pass laws we must obey.

Our McMillan is hosting a public meeting tomorrow, Wednesday, October 28, 7 – 9 pm., on plans for redeveloping the McMillan Reservoir site.  The Reservoir site at issue is bounded by North Capitol Street, Michigan Avenue NW, and Channing Street.  It’s certainly among the area’s more controversial projects.

Venue:
St. George’s Episcopal Church
160 U St NW (2nd & U Sts NW)

From the Civic Association:

Just a friendly reminder that our monthly, 4th Tuesday of the  month meeting falls tonight, October 27, 2009. Same time, same place, 7:00 PM at the Florida Avenue Baptist Church, 623 Florida Avenue. Don’t be discouraged by the rain; we’ll be  there and hope to see you too!

On the agenda:

• Gage Eckington Demo/Park Update —Councilman Jim Graham & ANC 1B Commissioner Myla Moss
• Information on neighborhood dog park project —Maria Fyodorova & Christian Seitz
• Public Space Update & 2009/10 Budget –Alice Aughtry & Andrea Feniak
• Civic Association Volunteer Opportunities

Please join us to meet your neighbors, find out what’s going on and put in your two cents!

We wrote yesterday about Attorney General Peter Nickles’s determination that park construction contracts, including the contract for the new park in LeDroit Park, should have received approval from the City Council. Well, somebody in the mayor’s office must have paid Mr. Nickles a stern phone call; the Post reports that he is now recanting his previous statement.

Mr. Nickles now insists that Council review should be reinstated henceforth, but not retroactively for current construction contracts.

The Council, however, is not too pleased.

Council Chairman Vincent Gray (D) is annoyed and told the Post,

For the attorney general to give a carte blanche green light to these questionable contracts, even before council hearings or any legislative action, is inappropriate and not in compliance with my reading of the law. If they are required to be submitted, we make no distinction between the past and the future. We expect to receive these contracts.

Councilmembers Kwame R. Brown (D – at large) and Harry Thomas Jr. (D – Ward 5) will hold a hearing on the matter on Friday and are threatening to sue to halt the contracts.

However, ANC Commissioner Myla Moss (ANC1B01 – LeDroit Park), in an email to Councilmember Jim Graham (D – Ward 1), wrote that the park project in LeDroit Park

was reviewed and discussed before the Council during the last round of appropriations negotiations at which time the Council voted to allocate funds for the project.

While a bidding process was absent this project was not only transparent, it also involved inter-agency and inter-governmental collaborations.

When we spotted Councilmember Graham at last night’s streetcar open house we didn’t realize the urgency of this issue or we would have strongly expressed our opposition to further delays (while of course chastising the mayor for his illegal maneuverings).

The Council and the mayor’s office are at odds; let’s hope that LeDroit Park doesn’t fall victim to this clash of titans.  In fact there’s something better than hope: you can email Mr. Graham your opinion.

Also, you can attend the LeDroit Park Civic Association meeting tonight; Mr. Graham and Ms. Moss will discuss the issue.  It’s at 7:00 pm in the basement of the Florida Avenue Baptist Church (623 Florida Avenue).

The former Gage-Eckington School, which has just been torn down to make way for the new neighborhood park, is caught-up in a citywide controversy over Mayor Fenty’s funding for numerous park projects. City law requires that the Council approve all contracts over $1 million, but the mayor has funneled the $1.7-million park renovation contract through the D.C. Housing Authority, which, as a quasi-independent government agency, considered itself exempt from the requirement.

The Housing Authority is responsible for public housing, Section 8 vouchers, and HOPE VI projects, so the mayor’s choice to spend park money through the Authority should raise eyebrows.

Now, after the controversy already erupted, D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles has determined that the Housing Authority, too, must submit its million-dollar contracts to the Council for approval. Nickles’s decision is based on a 1996 legal opinion by the city’s corporation counsel, the predecessor to the Attorney General’s office.

How does the LeDroit Park project fit into this? The Examiner reports that the park is one of the unapproved contracts awarded to Banneker Ventures LLC:

The Housing Authority recently awarded more than $72 million in contracts to a pair of companies with ties to Mayor Adrian Fenty, none of which were ever seen by the council.

Further complicating the matter is the mayor’s personal ties to Banneker Ventures, the company constructing the new park and several other parks:

Banneker Ventures LLC is the construction manager for at least a dozen parks and recreation contracts, 10 of which exceed $1 million. Banneker has ties to Fenty friend and former fraternity brother Sinclair Skinner.

Even in the event that the contracts were competitively bid and awarded without undue influence, the Council would be right to examine the contracts since they certainly look suspicious. Whether the Council will reject the LeDroit contract—which is well underway—is unclear, but what is clear is that the mayor skirted the law to get this project through.

To follow up on the previous post on reviving the city’s streetcar network, d. has produced a video simulation of what the K Street Transitway will look like.  Skip ahead to 5:07 to see the streetcar cameo.

The District Department of Transportation (d.) is holding several open houses to display the department’s long-term and short-term plans for expanding transit in the city.  These plans, often dubbed DC’s Transit Future, have been on the record since 2002 and a few of the recommendations (the creation of Circulator routes and Metro Extra service) have been in place for some time now.

The most ambitious feature, a network of streetcars, is still in the works.  As it stands, the city already owns a set of three streetcars (one is pictured above) and is storing them in Plzeň, Czech Republic, until they can be deployed on the reconstructed H Street in Northeast.  The first segment of the reincarnated streetcar system was set to be the short Anacostia streetcar “demonstration” project, but a series of delays and heavy lobbying by Councilmember Tommy Wells (D – Ward 6) have caused Mayor Fenty to reallocate the streetcars to H Street NE (more on the trouble with that below).

Earlier this evening d. released its latest proposal for an eight-line, 37-mile streetcar network to be built in three phases.  Three of the proposed routes will border LeDroit Park:

• Orange Route – Georgia Avenue-U St-Downtown-Foggy Bottom-Waterfront: In Phase 1 this section will run along Georgia Avenue from Petworth to Florida Avenue, at which point it will turn west to follow Florida Avenue onto U Street, then south on 14th Street into downtown.  At K Street, it will turn west and follow the forthcoming K Street Transitway to Washington Circle in Foggy Bottom.  In Phase 3, the train will be rerouted so that it stays on 14th Street all the way downtown, where it will turn east on F Street, then south on 7th Street all the way to the Waterfront on M Street SW.  The route will end on 4th Street SW at Fort McNair.
• Purple Route – Rhode Island Avenue-Florida Avenue-U St-Downtown-Foggy Bottom: Phase 2 calls for constructing a line along Rhode Island Avenue in Prince George’s County all the way to Florida Avenue on the edge of LeDroit Park, at which point, the route follows Florida Avenue (a very congested section of roadway)  northwest and onto U Street, then south on 14th Street to K Street.  At K Street, it will turn west and follow the forthcoming K Street Transitway to Washington Circle in Foggy Bottom.
• Green Route – Woodley Park-Adams-Morgan-U St-Florida Avenue-Capitol Hill-Anacostia-Southeast: Phase 2 also calls for a crosstown route route to pass beside LeDroit Park between Woodley Park and Southeast Washington.  The route will start on Calvert Street in Woodley Park, cross the Ellington Bridge into Adams-Morgan, where it will follow 18th Street south to U Street, where it will turn east all the way onto Florida Avenue (at 9th Street).  It will follow Florida Avenue all the way to 8th Street NE, on which it will travel south into Capitol Hill to the Navy Yard at M Street SE.  It will cross the Anacostia River on the future 11th Street Bridge and follow MLK Avenue through Anacostia and into the far southern reaches of the District.

We have created a map illustrating how the streetcar plan will enhance mobility for LeDroit Park.

Don’t be mistaken; these are just three of eight lines under consideration.

Though we are enthusiastic about the plan, we harbor several concerns about the future direction of this effort.

First, the city must sustain the political will to follow through on these projects.  Building a streetcar network requires money and popular support.  We have lamented privately that DC’s leadership often ignores transit improvements, but it appears that the projects have the support of Council Chairman Vincent Gray (D – At large) and Councilmember Wells as well as the support of Mayor Fenty and d. director Gabe Klein.  However, the fact the Anacostia line is several years late illustrates some of the complexities involved with building a new system.

Second, some jurisdictions have seen the price tags of such improvements and lost their nerve.  Some have sought to build cheaper alternatives to streetcars by providing buses that run in their own dedicated bus lanes.  This mode, called bus rapid transit, usually requires payment before boarding and has worked well in some cities (e.g. Curitiba, Brazil).  The problem is that in America, buses carry a negative image and will have difficulty attracting middle-income riders who would otherwise drive.  Additionally, streetcars have higher ridership capacities and are better able to attract development to their routes— no one has ever marketed a property by noting its proximity to a bus stop, after all.

Third, streetcars require overhead catenary wires for power.  For the past 120 years Congress has prohibited such wires within the L’Enfant Plan (roughly the area bounded by Florida Avenue, the Potomac, and the Anacostia) and in Georgetown.  Unless Congress repeals the ban, streetcars will stop at Florida Avenue or the city will have to invest in some alternative, experimental source of power (e.g. batteries or electromagnetic induction through the street pavement).

Either way, it’s important for residents to ask questions and show their support.  The Ward One open house is set for Monday, October 26, 2009, from 7 – 8:30 pm at the Columbia Heights Education Campus, 3101 16th Street, NW (metro: Columbia Heights).  d. is hosting open houses throughout the city through November 4.

Anna J. Cooper Circle

In August we spotted the Google Street View car (a camera-equipped VW Beattle much like this one) photographing LeDroit Park.

Lo and behold, the neighborhood has been updated in Google Maps to provide more recent imagery of the neighborhood.  Some notable changes include coverage of the 400 block of Elm Street and imagery of Fourth Street after completion of the street’s reconstruction.

Care to look around?  Here’s Anna J. Cooper Circle.

The Post is running a series of articles (Part 1, Part 2) about rampant mismanagement of the District’s HIV/AIDS program.  Over the past several years, the city has doled out millions to community groups that have misspent the funds while failing to provide adequate services to infected residents.  Washington, lest we forget, suffers from a 3% infection rate, surpassing many West African nations.*

The Post’s articles lay much of the blame on Debra Rowe, the former housing chief of the D.C. Health Department’s HIV/AIDS Administration.  Certainly Ms. Rowe holds much of the blame for the mismanagement and corruption—one of the most egregious grantees employed members of her family.  However, District residents must wonder why neither the head of the D.C. Health Department, neither Mayors Fenty nor Williams, nor the City Council intervened to fix the problems, prosecute misconduct, or even sue to recoup the misspent money.

Fortunately these articles have embarrassed the Fenty administration into investigating the matter, hopefully to recover the money and to implement more oversight for the Banana Republic agency.  Said the mayor yesterday, “Blame me as the mayor of the District of Columbia. We probably did not move fast enough to get at these inexcusable deficiencies.”

Yes, we do partly blame you.

Perhaps the Post will also investigate the Whitman-Walker Clinic, which itself may have engaged in some improper behavior to receive city money.

Nonetheless, the real victims are not so much the taxpayers as they are the AIDS patients who have been denied the care to which they are entitled.  Let’s hope the city ends its investigation with a real resolution in addition to prosecution and restitution.

*Admittedly, the high statistical rate could be due to better methods of detection in the city.

Email and the ailing economy are hurting the U.S. Postal Service as mail volume and postal revenues have dropped. This summer, the USPS proposed a list of 3,600 offices to close nationwide, including our very own LeDroit Park Post Office at Florida, Rhode Island and New Jersey Avenues.

The Postal Service has now narrowed the list of proposed closures to 371 and the LeDroit Park station remains on the list. Since moving to the neighborhood, we have wondered about the economic viability of this particular post office, especially with its limited business hours.  The Postal Service cannot afford to keep all of its post offices open and we understand why they have chosen our post office to close.

If this post office closes, the nearest post office will be at 2400 6th St NW at Howard University. Its hours are similar to those of the LeDroit Park Post Office.