Disabled Parking
Dear Ticketed Drivers:
On March 8, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) issued a
press release announcing new parking regulations for disabled drivers.
The District is eliminating free metered parking for those who have
disability placards or license plates. Instead, it is installing “red-top”
meters, at which only disabled drivers can park during the hours that
the meters are operational, http://ddot.dc.gov/DC/DDOT/Services/Parking+Services/Red+Top+Meters.
The press release described the rationale for the program this way:
“The Red Top meter program is designed to assist persons with
disabilities by providing reserved spaces for them, particularly in
areas with a high demand for parking. By requiring everyone to pay to
park at any District meter, the program will remove the incentive for
fraudulent use of disability placards and license plates by persons
without disabilities. The program will also enforce longstanding but
previously unenforceable time limits.” But these are not the whole or
the primary reasons for the program. The city has a total of seventeen
thousand metered parking spaces, and when all the planned red-top meters
are installed by mid-April, approximately 1,500 spaces, or 9 percent of
the total, will be reserved for disabled drivers.
DDOT officials haven’t released any reasoning behind their deciding
to reserve 9 percent of all parking spaces for disabled drivers, but the
number seems very high. Think of suburban shopping malls, where a few
parking spots near each major entrance are reserved for disabled
drivers, and most of those spots remain vacant most of the time. Will
fifteen hundred parking spaces for disabled drivers really be utilized?
Or will they mostly remain vacant, frustrating and taunting drivers who
will be hunting for parking that is already rare?
There is another reason for the high number of disabled spaces —
the potential parking ticket revenue that the city will make from them.
The current issue of Washingtonian Magazine has an article by
Carol Ross Joynt, “The Startling Truth About DC Parking Tickets: How
Much Money They Rake in for the City, The Highest-Ticketed Areas, and
More Facts About Those Dreaded Pink Slips,” http://www.washingtonian.com/blogarticles/22938.html,
which details the profit the city makes from parking tickets (eleven
million dollars in 2011). The ordinary parking ticket costs a driver
just twenty-five dollars, however; the new parking tickets for drivers
who park at a red-top meter without the proper disabled placard will
cost two hundred fifty dollars. The opportunity for profit is enormous.
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Two other articles this week give an insight into the “urbanist,”
“smart growth” attitude that underlies the current hostility toward
drivers, the self-righteous assumption that people who own cars must be
made to pay for ruining the earth. Lydia DePillis of the Washington
City Paper celebrates DC’s Director of the Office of Planning in
“Urbanista!: Inside Harriet Tregoning’s Push to Reshape DC,” http://tinyurl.com/6rm27yh;
and Dillon Klepetar’s “Local Opinions” article in the Washington
Post, “Why Should My Bike Subsidize Your Car?” argues against
allowing any free parking for anyone, anywhere, http://tinyurl.com/6q2hrw4
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Most of us know that we have to be careful walking around DC. But
robberies, in particular, may be worse than you think. Please read my
most recent HuffPo story, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/georgiana-bloom/dc-crime_b_1313818.html.
It is part of a series about crime in the city — which includes every
ward/district. Your insights are welcome — and be safe, as spring
makes being outside even better!
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Spring Break and the DC Primary
Bill Mosley, billmosley@comcast.net
When the DC council set April 3 as the date for the primary election,
did the members consider that this falls during spring break for DC
Public Schools, as well as for many charter schools? Many families use
that week as an opportunity to travel, since the children do not have to
be in school. Yes, there is the opportunity for early voting and voting
by mail — but most people who vote still line up at the polls on
election day. I suspect that many people won’t realize this until too
late, and that voter turnout will suffer. I hope the word gets around
(via this posting and other means) and that the council takes account of
the civic calendar when setting election dates in the future.
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Zoning Commission Okays Waiver to EastBanc in
West End
Robin Diener, rdiener@savedclibraries.org
On January 13, the DC Zoning Commission voted to approve a waiver of
affordable housing requirements for a luxury condo development in the
West End by EastBanc/WDC Partners. The vote came just one week before
affordable housing emerged overwhelmingly as the top priority from the
mayor’s One City Summit.
The Commission’s written decision will not be issued for some
weeks, but in public deliberations, commissioners failed to clarify many
questions, including ones they raised. Most notably, how can
construction of the library and firehouse be considered “amenities”
worthy of a waiver of legally required affordable housing, when the cost
of construction for these facilities is being paid by taxpayers, not
EastBanc? Other questions remain. Why is city land assessed at $30
million being sold for $20 million? Why did the city negotiate a per
square foot price of $91 when the independent land valuation listed
comparables at $150-190 per square foot? Why is EastBanc exempted from
the initial deed and recordation transfer fees worth $2.1 million? Why
is the city paying for an interim library and firehouse and for
relocation of the Special Operations Police Station? (And, by the way,
where is the new location?) Why is the city paying for library parking?
And what about the other developer who competed for the bid under terms
that have now been substantially changed?
By far the most resounding question is, “What price would this land
fetch on the open market?” Ward Two Councilmember Jack Evans has
frequently noted that these parcels are the “last underdeveloped land”
in the West End, located between Georgetown and downtown K Street. This
is some of the most valuable land in the country. Developers don’t
need incentives to build here. If the land were simply put up for sale,
there would be a bidding war worth untold millions to the District. The
DC Library Renaissance Project also contends that the construction
budget for the new library is grossly inflated. In addition, the
presence of a library operated at city expense is a significant value to
the EastBanc development, but that contribution was not accounted for in
this equation despite being raised by the Commission itself. Once you
consider all the waivers and exemptions and discounts, EastBanc is
getting some of the city’s most prime land at what can only be called
a fire sale price.
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“The corporate influence . . . that is undermining the city council
is in full display with this nomination,” DC Consumer Utility Board
chairman Herb Harris told TheFightBack Wednesday at a protest outside
the John A. Wilson Building. Civic and union leaders gathered to call on
the DC council, and Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander in particular,
to hold a vote on Mayor Vincent Gray’s nomination to the Public
Service Commission, Elizabeth “Betty” Noel. “This woman has been
scrutinized more than a US Supreme Court justice,” said Metro Council
President Josh Williams. “We call upon Yvette Alexander to release
Betty Noel.” Williams let councilmembers know that Noel’s nomination
was “a litmus test,” and he called for the vote to come prior to the
April 3 primary election so unions can use the polls to let politicians
“know where labor stands.”
For eighteen years, Betty Noel served as head of the DC Office of
People’s Counsel, where she fought to ensure that DC’s electric,
gas, and phone utilities provided quality service at a fair price. As a
result of her work as a consumer advocate, Noel has built up a
broad-base of support, at least among residents. Utility companies, led
by PEPCO, launched a campaign to ensure that Noel isn’t confirmed to
the three-member PSC, which regulates them. So far, the effort has been
a success, as Councilmember Alexander, who chairs the Committee on
Public Services and Consumer Affairs, has refused to bring Noel’s
nomination to a vote. Although that appears to be changing. “There
will be a [committee] markup before the end of this month,” Alexander
told protesters Wednesday. “Either it’ll be an approval or
disapproval resolution, but there will be a vote.?
“I would love to approve the mayor’s nomination,” Alexander
said of Noel, whom she characterized as ”more than qualified.” But
Alexander also echoed PEPCO and the Washington Post’s
objections to Noel’s nomination, saying her work as People’s Counsel
would force her to have to recuse herself from many cases before the PSC.
A December 13 Post editorial noted, “Ms. Noel would, at an
annual salary of $146,457, be constrained from participating in more
than half the current cases.” But Harris contends that many of the
open cases are old and non-critical, and therefore Noel shouldn’t be
punished for PSC’s inefficiencies, which only point up the need for
her nomination to be approved.
“She’s the best appointment this mayor or any mayor has made in
decades,” DC Tenants’ Advocacy Coalition’s Jim McGrath told
protesters. In a recent TENAC press release, McGrath wrote: “This city
is rapidly becoming unaffordable for all but the well-to-do and forcing
an exodus of poor and limited income people. The cost of living is
spiraling here, fed in large part by exorbitant utility costs. Betty
Noel is one of the few people capable of reversing that trend.” See http://thefightback.org/2012/03/release-betty-noel/
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This afternoon, March 9, we got a doorknob hanger from PEPCO telling
us that our electric service will be off from 8:15 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
tomorrow, Saturday. That’s a seven-hour planned, “scheduled”
service interruption with far less than twenty-four hours of notice. If
you try to call them about this, you will find that the listed number to
call, 833-7500, starts an endless round of “options” with no live
person available unless you say “emergency,” to indicate that there
is a “life-threatening emergency.” Since I did want to threaten a
life, I said “emergency.” The perfectly nice lady I got was just a
flak-catcher, of no help at all.
So I tried to complain in Spanish, at the “numero para espanol”
as they call it (making two mistakes in just three words). The number
given there turns out to be that of a perfectly nice-sounding private
citizen on her answering machine. The number they give on the hanger is
wrong by one digit: it should have been 202-872-4641. The first number,
202-833-7500, finally gets exasperated and tells you to call
1-877-737-2662 for any problems not covered by their system. That number
just runs you through the whole “options” run-around a second time.
PEPCO is just plain evil. Councilmember Vincent Orange, ex-PEPCO
vice-president: do they treat you like this too?
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For many years, the DC Public Schools have failed in their duty to
educate all students in the District of Columbia who wish to attend a
public school. For the past five years, that failure has continued,
because Chancellors Rhee and Henderson have had only one goal: creating
a teacher evaluation formula that would enable them to fire hundreds of
teachers annually, while effectively delaying them the hearings where
they could challenge the process that led to their less than effective
evaluations. You have yet to hold Chancellor Henderson accountable for
her shared responsibility with Chancellor Rhee for the failure of our
schools to improve. In fact, you are now planning to let her set up
charter schools.
Approximately 46 percent of the staff in the thirty-seven IFF-labeled
schools were hired under Chancellor’s Rhee and Henderson. Their
actions disrupted the lives of thousands of children and hundreds and
hundreds of teachers. And now, that their actions have failed, you are
going to give the chancellor the break that she and her staff never
considered giving to teachers. Teachers can be terminated after one or
two years, yet Chancellor Henderson is allowed to tinker with the
schools and fail, and you now want to give her time to tinker even more.
The reason she wants to close schools is so she can force more teachers
into the “termination through excess” process. This is outrageous.
You have apparently aligned yourself with the destructive
self-interests that have been invited to take over the DC schools and
treat them, the students, and the staff as a colonial possession, with
an open invitation to mercenary foundations to engage in all kinds of
experimentation. Think for a moment: You and the councilmembers traveled
to New Hampshire to plea for support for DC statehood, that is, for
greater local control of DC affairs. Yet at the same time you have
opened the door even wider for special interests, accountable to faraway
powers, who care little for the accuracy and validity of school data, as
long as schools are closed and teachers are terminated, to take over our
schools. How could you? [Finished online at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2012/12-03-11.htm#martel]
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InTowner
March
Issue Now Posted Online
P.L. Wolff, intowner@intowner.com
The March issue content is now posted at http://www.intowner.com,
including the issue PDF. There will be found the primary news stories
and certain features, including the popular Scenes from the Past (this
month titled “Local Boy John Hoover Made Something of Himself and Was
a Good Neighbor”) — plus all photos and other images; other features
not included in the PDF, such as Recent Real Estate Sales, Reservations
Recommended and Food in the Hood, can be linked directly from the web
site’s home page.
This month’s lead stories include the following: 1) “Disposition
or Retention of MLK Main Library Building Subject of In-Depth Report to
Guide DC Library Trustees”; 2) “Adams Morgan ANC Rejects New Hotel
Plan”; 3) “Historic Church Faces Earthquake Repairs.”
Our editorial this month focuses on our picks for the forthcoming
Democratic primary (From the Publisher’s Desk, “Our Democratic
Primary Election Favored Picks”). Your thoughts are welcome and can be
sent by clicking the comment link at the bottom of the web page or by
E-mail to letters@intowner.com.
The next issue PDF will publish early in the morning of April 13 (the
second Friday of the month as usual). For more information, either send
an E-mail to newsroom@intowner.com
or call 234-1717.
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Your posts on Pay to Play are a great example of investigative
reporting. Too bad newspapers and TV won’t or can’t do it any more.
It certainly does seem that Jeff Thompson has had a huge amount of
influence, tied to his donations, spread far and wide. As an aside,
although I have had issues with Tommy Wells, it is a compliment to him
that he is the only councilmember not to have received Thompson money,
and that his opponent did receive Thompson money (Jeffrey Thompson, Part
1, themail, March 4). Congrats to you two for doing such important
scrounging of evidence!
But I don’t want to leave the impression that the closing of DC
General wasn’t a good thing for DC residents, even if Thompson cash
was involved. There was a commission of health specialists at the time
who reviewed DC General’s operations and concluded that DC General was
far below acceptable standards for a hospital. You may remember that
many of their physicians weren’t certified, for example. Why not? Why
was it that DC General, but not other hospitals, appeared to have such a
large percentage of uncertified physicians? I knew one of the members of
that commission, and what she had to tell me was scathing.
Ask yourself this: would you have wanted to be taken to DC General in
an emergency circa 1999, instead of to GW or Georgetown or Washington
Hospital Center? And if you wouldn’t want your own fate to be in their
hands, why should others have to accept their fate when an ambulance
took them there?
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Environmental Health Group (EHG) Events, March
13
Allen Hengst, ahengst@rcn.com
World War I munitions, bottles filled with chemical warfare agents,
and contaminated soil have been found in and around the Spring Valley
neighborhood of northwest DC. The Environmental Health Group (EHG) seeks
to raise awareness of the issues and encourage a thorough investigation
and cleanup. Every Sunday at 2:00 p.m., please join the Environmental
Health Group for an informal discussion about Spring Valley issues. In
the cafe at the Glover Park Whole Foods Market, 2323 Wisconsin Avenue
(one block south of Calvert Street). For more information, visit the EHG
on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Washington-DC/Environmental-Health-Group/67807900019.
Tuesday, March 13, 7:00 p.m.: Brenda Barber, USACE project manager,
will be giving a special presentation on the “Demolition and Disposal
Plan for 4825 Glenbrook Road,” which details how the house structure
at the property will be removed. At the monthly Restoration Advisory
Board meeting with the US Army Corps of Engineers, Saint David’s
Episcopal Church basement, 5150 Macomb Street, NW (one block north of
MacArthur Boulevard), http://www.nab.usace.army.mil/Projects/Spring%20Valley/.
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Poetry Out Loud District Finals, March 13
Marquis Perkins, marquis.perkins@dc.gov
The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities is proud to announce the
eighth annual Poetry Out Loud District Finals, presented in partnership
with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, on
Tuesday, March 13, at Arena Stage from 6:00-8:30 p.m. Poetry Out Loud is
a national competition that seeks to foster the next generation of
literary scholars by exploring the latest trends in poetry -- recitation
and performance. The program builds on the resurgence of the oral art
form of poetry, as seen in the slam poetry and spoken word movements.
The program invites these dynamic aspects into the classroom, where
teachers engage students through classroom memorization, performances
and competition. Through Poetry Out Loud, students master public
speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about their literary
heritage. More than 1,700 high school students from twelve DC public,
charter, and private schools participated in the Poetry Out Loud program
in 2011-2012.
Twelve students will advance to the District Finals on March 13. The
winner of the District Finals will receive a monetary award and a
variety of poetry literature for his or her classroom. The winner will
advance to compete for a $20,000 scholarship in the National Finals,
which will take place on May 14-15 at Sidney Harman Hall. Last year,
Grey Butler, a junior at Calvin Coolidge High School, was selected as
the DC Poetry Out Loud champion and represented the District in the 2011
National Finals last April.
High school teachers who are interested in participating in the 2013
Poetry Out Loud program must contact the DC Commission on the Arts and
Humanities' Arts Education Manager, Carlyn Madden at 724-5613 or carlyn.madden@dc.gov.
Teachers may also visit http://www.poetryoutloud.org
for more information.
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