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August 19, 2007

Impatience

Dear Patient Readers:

Impatience and a full-speed-ahead, damn-the-torpedoes attitude is no substitute for good management. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee spoke at a Ward 4 meeting on education recently, and “said her own employees have fallen into the trap of tolerating senseless inefficiency. She said she admonishes them and reminds them they should focus exclusively on students’ needs, and if they need to break or circumvent a rule, so be it. ‘I refuse to be hamstrung by rules and regulations that are not serving our students,’ Rhee said” (Ian Thoms, “Rhee Blasts School System for Tolerating Inefficiency,” http://www.currentnewspapers.com/admin/uploadfiles/NW8.15.07p1-15web.pdf, page 5). Although Thoms reports that Rhee got an enthusiastic response from her audience, this sentiment is completely wrong, and it is a recipe for future disasters. Aside from the fact that good and prudent school managers will not break or ignore the rules and regulations on the off chance that their superiors will support them if their illegal shortcuts go wrong, it gives license to bad and corrupt school managers to ignore the rules and regulations that try to bind them, and to evade the supervision of their superiors. What happens then has been shown recently by the cautionary tale of DCPS senior administrator in charge of charter schools Brenda Belton, most recently told by Colbert King (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/17/AR2007081701580.html) and Carol Leonnig (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/18/AR2007081801181.html). If Belton had committed her crimes under Michelle Rhee’s reign, she would have a good excuse ready: “The Chancellor told me to break and circumvent the rules; she said she wouldn’t follow them herself.” No, the answer to bureaucratic inefficiency isn’t to give bureaucrats free reign to break and ignore the rules that keep them honest; it is for their supervisors to revise, streamline, and improve the rules so that inefficiency is reduced, but oversight and good management is maintained. That’s Rhee’s job, and she shouldn’t shirk it by telling her subordinates to gamble their careers by betting they won’t be punished if they deliberately break rules and regulations.

The Washington Post has partially redeemed its ill-advised editorial position supporting the destruction of government electronic communications (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/11/AR2007081101054.html), which I wrote about in the August 12 issue of themail, by publishing the wise advice of John Chelen today (“An E-Mail Land Mine for DC’s Government,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/17/AR2007081701633.html). Chelen is a former special counsel in the Office of the Chief Technology Officer, and his article is filled with good recommendations, including this: “All DC government e-mail should be retained for at least several years for two reasons: productivity and accountability. The price of storing E-mail is not very high and is rapidly decreasing, while our need to rely on and analyze electronic data is rapidly increasing. Moreover, we citizens lose important protections when E-mail is destroyed. While Mayor Adrian Fenty is on the right track in trying to reduce costs at the office of technology, he would strengthen his administration by protecting these vital records.” Mayor Fenty and the councilmembers should read the whole article. If Fenty won’t rescind his executive order and issue a new one requiring the government to save its electronic records, rather than to destroy them after six months, the city council should pass a law to protect the legal and historic record of our city.

A scandalous story has broken out of the street whispers, gossip, and rumors stage, and unto the pages of a usually reliable web site: http://www.mediatakeout.com/10229/move_over_superhead_-_mya_to_release_a_tell_all_book.html. The Afro-American is reporting this story aggressively and asked for an official comment a couple days ago. Look, I told you it was scandalous gossip, so don’t get all scandalized and offended. Your own curiosity made you click on the link; I didn’t. You don’t read every Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and Britney Spears story in the newspapers, do you? Yeah, so do I.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Justice Denied
Bryce A. Suderow, streetstories@juno.com

Two years ago my Dell laptop was stolen by a man named John Mayberry. I met with a police detective and identified Mayberry’s picture from half a dozen he presented to me. He took a report. The case was never solved because the police discovered that Mayberry was homeless and they claimed that could not be located.

Today while at 14th and H, NE, I saw Mayberry. I phoned 911. It took an hour for a police car to arrive. The officer told me, “He’s gone, man. I’m not gonna chase a bus. You got a detective? You work with him.”

So much for DC’s finest.

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Voting Hours and Locations for August 21 Special Election
Bill O’Field, wofield@dcboee.org

District of Columbia voters who reside in Wards 1 and 2 are reminded that their polling places will be open on Tuesday, August 21, during regular voting hours from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. for the Special Election for District I Member of the Board of Education. All registered voters in Wards 1 and 2 may cast a ballot in this special election.

Ward 1 and Ward 2 voters should go to their assigned voting location. Any voter who has moved since last voting, who does not know his or her assigned voting place, or who wants more information about the upcoming special election should visit the Board’s web site at http://www.dcboee.org or call 727-2525 (TTD 639-8916).

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Unnecessary Loudness and Unnecessary Noise
Jim Champagne, remyjec@aol.com

Is it just me? It seems that since 9/11 the official side of DC public safety has gotten increasingly louder with each passing day. Police sirens have ratcheted-up their volume even when not on an official mission. Ambulance drivers too have become louder, even when there is a green light in their favor and no traffic at the intersection (usually the case at 2:30 a.m.) as they speed to GW Hospital, presumably with a patient in dire need of quick care. Fire trucks, and the personnel who work on them, win the booby prize, however. In addition to upping the loudness quotient by what must be the highest of multiples as they race to McDonald’s on M Street, NW, for take-out lunch (I have personally witnessed this), certain DC fire personnel have scaled new heights. Indeed, I must say that Friday night, August 17, took the cake when the inhabitants of the fire station at 23rd and M Streets, NW, decided to cut the grass at 9:00 p.m. with a power mower; followed that with a motorized edger at 10:30 p.m.; and trumped it all with a motorized leaf blower at 11:45 p.m.

Finally, my wife (we live across the street from the offenders’ place of work) got out of bed and walked over to the station to inquire about the sanity level of the personnel working there. She was told that it was a rookie. I guess that makes everything all right.

Really, I understand the need for public safety vehicles to announce their presence in order to fulfill their mission of saving lives and property. But the noise levels do not seem warranted or justified in every instance. So who is going to save us from them?

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DDOT Has a Marvelous Sense of Humor
Kerry Stowell, kerrystowell@mac.com

"The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) and its partners who operate the DC Circulator announced today that the Circulator transported its 4 millionth rider this week, marking a significant milestone for the increasingly popular two-year-old transit service."

This notice was sent out last week, and I am still laughing. Four million riders? Anybody seen the red Circulator buses lately? I have, daily, and I cannot imagine how they were able to get to this figure. Perhaps they could share the financial numbers with us?

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Call in the Exterminator
Ed T. Barron, edtb1@macdotcom

When your house is full of nasty bugs you call in the exterminator to terminate those pests. In the case of the school system Central Office that’s exactly what school chancellor Rhee should do. Colbert King, in Saturday’s Post, has accurately described the fraud, corruption, and nonperformance of the Central Office which reigned above, and outlasted, all the school system reformers in the past. The only way to assure that all the bad bugs are gone is to get rid of them all. If there were any good folks in that office they’d have come forward and exposed the mess a long time ago. Since no one has come forward, they are all accomplices to the crimes committed. Fire them all and start fresh. As questions come up that need someone on a Central Office position establish an ad hoc team to work on that question or problem. Over a period of time you’ll find that a very small Central Office is really needed to keep the school system running smoothly. The Central Office should work for all those it serves. It should not act like everyone in the system works for the Central Office.

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DC’s Most Influential? Whom Would I Mention?
Kathleen Wills, koltwills@aol.com

Hands down, Ann and Larry Hargrove. Ann, formerly head of the Committee of 100, is the most knowledgeable person in town when it comes to zoning and planning matters, and her husband Larry is a talented, retired attorney. For decades, these two have been doggedly fighting the good fight here in DC almost full-time on behalf of the city’s residents, slogging through mountains of regs, ordinances, and legal briefs, battling city hall: the mayor’s office, the Office of Planning, the Board of Zoning Adjustment, and this and that favored developer.

Those of us who seek to protect the integrity of our neighborhoods and hold the feet of city officials and petty bureaucrats to the fire to do their jobs with, if not vision, certainly integrity, to follow the laws and act in the interests of everyday residents, know just how difficult it is to stop the juggernaut of arrogance and incompetence that bulldozed its way through DC communities during the Williams administration and which shows no signs of abating under Fenty. This is a town where the mayor and other city administrators have abjured responsible planning and instead written blank checks to developers and other moneyed interests, where the city council all too often simply has rolled over and green-lighted appallingly wrong-headed and sometimes illegal projects, doing so at the expense of the integrity and safety of our neighborhoods, healthcare delivery system, and now our schools, parks and public libraries.

I started to write that the Hargroves are the E. F. Hutton of DC city planning and community development: when they talk, people listen — although those in power often don’t like what they have to say. But their unassuming posture, temperament, and influence actually are closer to that of James Stewart’s George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” We know just how much closer DC would be to Pottersville than Bedford Falls without Ann and Larry’s myriad, selfless contributions. And for that we all owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude. They belong on the list.

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Inverted Logic
Tom Blagburn, ztburn@msn.com

I’ve lived in this city all my life and been a part of city government, directly and indirectly, for about three decades. Influences ebbs and flows, and it is exceeding fleeting. Often it is an illusion. During my time in government I’ve seen influence peddled, borrowed, and stolen.

When I first came into the government the most influential men I was privileged to meet were Walter Washington, Julian Dugas; Jimmy Jones, Joe Yeldell, Carver Leach, and the members of the DC city council. I also quickly learned that it also included members of the US Congress on both the House and Senate side as well as key staffers. The Reverend Lewis Anthony, whom I met when he was an intern before he left for Harvard University. We were both young and awed by what we saw daily. On any given day a celebrity would visit the District Building, as it was called then. I remember meeting Redd Foxx, Pearl Bailey, George Allen, and Dick Gregory, whom I am still friends with today.

People like Julius Hobson and Lillian Huff always had a presence inside and outside of District government. Today, so-called influential people come and go much like women’s hem lines. We tend to compartmentalize influence and generalize about it even more. The real people who work very hard to make this city better too often go unnoticed. Too much of being able to draw attention and influence, unfortunately, is based upon class, money, job title, and zip code! The notion of having real influence should be bestowed upon those who place humanity and the helping of others as our city’s highest value. Tragically, the field of choice is very narrow; there are simply too few of those people to pick from.

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Influence
Angie Rodgers, angie.rodgers@gmail.com

I think Dorothy’s question of what names come to mind [themail, August 15] can also be asked of DC’s huge nonprofit sector, particularly those organizations and individuals working exclusively on behalf of the city’s poor, ill, inadequately housed or homeless, poorly skilled and/or jobless, etc. In a city with such an enormously high poverty rate, surely some folks who spend their days toiling on these issues will find their way onto the list (public school advocates notwithstanding).

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Real Influence
Jenefer Ellingston, jellingston@earthlink.net

Dear Dorothy, you scored. I read your counterpoint reply to M. Austermuhle [themail, August 15]. You poignantly distinguished between (notorious) influentials and city leaders (very few) who are dedicated to prosperity for all, for local business, for homegrown ownership and for all our residents, not just private profiteers. The gap between rich and poor grows wider (locally and nationally) as more of the city’s resources are undercut or privatized.

We all know the list of public buildings and services washed out with the “economic development” tide and landed on a shore outside the city or appropriated by corporations. Exploiting this ripe territory . . . has been very rewarding for some years, until there is nothing left worth plucking. Gentrification has been a tsunami, and Fenty is no better than Williams (who gave it away as fast as he could — sometimes in emergency legislation).

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Salvadorans’ Temporary Protected Status Extension
Michael Spevak, mspeva02 at georgetown dot edu

I am writing to themail out of some desperation. Although it’s a national, federal issue, DC’s large Hispanic population is largely Salvadoran, and so it may not be inappropriate: Secretary Chertoff announced an extension of Temporary Protected Status on May 2, for Hondurans, Nicaraguans, and Salvadorans, and the former, whose TPS expired in July, have been processed. A grant of TPS is needed to have a current, valid employment authorization document, or work permit. Salvadoran TPS expires on September 9, and there is still no administrative process in effect for Salvadorans. There has been no media coverage of the lapse, which affects some 236,000 Salvadorans and their families in the US, very many of whom live in the DC area. When their work permits expire in a few weeks, their employers will be under great pressure to fire them, as they will have joined the undocumented through no fault of their own. I have contacted the Salvadoran embassy, and they tell me they know nothing. I’ve contacted Immigration and was told to check a couple of times a week. My phone messages to the Washington Post, NPR, and the Post’s and NPR ombudsmen have gone unanswered. Why is the press giving the administration a free ride about this? Might Eleanor Holmes Norton be able to help?

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Don’t Let Near-Term Distractions Stymie DC’s Long-Term Necessities
Len Sullivan, lsnarpac@bellatlantic.net

NARPAC sits back in the heat of summer and assesses DC’s progress over the past decade. In its longer-than-usual monthly editorial, it identifies six great successes in making our national capital city more prestigious as well as six major areas in which the city government appears to have made virtually no progress at all. The Fenty bullpen is focused on short-term issues, often clumsily, as in the West End development goofs. We strongly urge the DC council to get the ball moving with kickoff legislation for appropriate actions on these key long-term deficiencies. Our editorial is at http://www.narpac.org/EDIT.HTM#708. Our summary of the potentially avoidable "West End Disgruntlement" is added to our earlier analysis of the energy-consuming GWU versus Foggy Bottom controversy at http://www.narpac.org/REXGWU.HTM#westend.

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

DC Public Library Events, August 21
Randi Blank, randi.blank@dc.gov

Tuesday, August 21, 12:00 p.m., West End Neighborhood Library, 1101 24th Street, NW. West End Book Club. We will discuss Tevye the Dairyman by Sholem Aleichem. For more information, call 724-8707.

Tuesday, August 21, 7:30 p.m., Palisades Neighborhood Library, 4901 V Street, NW. Palisades Stamp Club. Are you a philatelist? For more information, call 282-3139.

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Public Property Action Day, September 18
Parisa Nourizi, parisa@empowerdc.org

City Council Action Day to save public property: Tuesday September 18, 9:00 a.m., Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. Empower DC will sponsor a rally, press conference, and convergence on the city council. Our message: we demand a moratorium on public property dispositions until our broken system is fixed. Change DC law and listen to communities, not developers. Public property is for public use, not private profit. No public property giveaways; there is always a public use for public property.

Pledge your support by sending an E-mail or fax on your own behalf or on behalf of your organization: “We endorse the September 18th Action. I/we pledge to turn out ___ [number of people] to the action.” Return to Empower DC, fax 234-6655, parisa@empowerdc.org.

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2007 Champions of Democracy Awards Reception, October 23
Ilir Zherka, info@dcvote.org

Join DC Vote as we honor our 2007 Champions of Democracy on Tuesday, October 23, 6:30-9:00 p.m., at the National Music Center at the Carnegie Library Building, 801 K Street, NW. US Congressman Tom Davis, The Honorable Hilda Mason and Charles Mason, Royal Kennedy Rodgers and Johnathan Rodgers. Special guest, Mayor Adrian Fenty. For more information about purchasing tickets, becoming a sponsor, or donating to our silent auction, please visit http://www.dcvote.org or contact Danny Rose by phone at 462-6000 x14 or by E-mail at drose@dcvote.org.

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CLASSIFIEDS — RECOMMENDATIONS

Left Bank
Mark Eckenwiler, themale at ingot dot org

In the last issue, Paul Penniman asked for recommendations of local banks. I’ve used Adams National Bank for over ten years now and am relatively happy. There have been a few rough patches — several years back they had serious problems getting printed statements mailed out in a timely manner — but the problems seem to have been ironed out. There are branches and ATMs around town (http://adamsbank.com/locations.html), and from time to time Adams has offered a promotional no-interest checking account that imposes no fee for use of non-Adams ATMs. (The other bank may still impose a fee, although I’ve used my card free of charge at ATMs from Chiang Mai to Crete.) My primary checking account, which bears interest, albeit at a pretty low rate, costs nothing because I have direct deposit set up through my employer. (I may be grandfathered in; folks should check whether this benefit is still available.) And account access and transactions are available both online and via automated telephone system.

Disclosure: I have no ties to Adams National Bank other than as a satisfied longtime customer. Also, I see that I wrote more or less the same recommendation six years ago (http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2001/01-09-05.htm), for what that’s worth.

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