Posts
Good morning, I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Here are clips from after 7:30 a.m. on Friday through this morning. As always, Monday's clips are long. Let's get to it.
Best, Karyn-Siobhan Robinson a/k/a DC Government Clips
D.C. Government/Council media clips: Friday, November 5 (after 7:30 a.m.) through Monday, November 08, 2010.
Missed Friday? http://bit.ly/akNoVz
For Mayor-elect Gray, pressure piles up even before he takes office - Washington Post
Job 1 for Gray: Helping to reduce persistent D.C. unemployment - Washington Post
What Vince Gray can learn from Obama's 'shellacking' - Washington Post
No more meddling - Washington Post
The latest on Team Thomas - Washington Post
As construction begins on convention center hotel, officials consider its future impact - Capital Business (Washington Post)
Building of long-awaited convention center hotel starts this week - Examiner
Fenty cancels developer's plan to convert historic D.C. school - Washington Post
Stevens School on the market again - Washington Business Journal
Fenty ends ROWE at D.C. Office of Chief Technology Officer - Federal News Radio
D.C. school security guards land raises - Examiner
Bay cleanup could cost billions, require tax hikes - Examiner
Homeless in D.C. may face added burden: Proof of residency - Washington Post
Jason Chaffetz May Not Be Our Overlord - Loose Lips (Washington City Paper)
Where’s My Job? - Loose Lips (Washington City Paper)
Fenty gets praise on 'Real Time with Bill Maher' - D.C. Wire (Washington Post blog)
District considers longer school day - Washington Post
Judiciary Square courthouse wants to grow - Washington Business Journal
D.C. Courthouse Could Get More Transparent (Literally) - Housing Complex (Washington City Paper)
Dangers Ahead for Mayor-Elect – Jonetta Rose Barras (Examiner)
Missed
In the Capital, Rethinking Old Limits on Buildings - New York Times (November 3)
For Mayor-elect Gray, pressure piles up even before he takes office
By Tim Craig
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/07/AR2010110704188.html
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/07/AR2010110704188.html
Sunday, November 7, 2010; 7:10 PM
The head of the Dunbar High School Parents Teachers Association wants Mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray to name a new principal and reduce class sizes.
District taxi drivers, key supporters of Gray (D) during the campaign, are demanding rule changes to make it easier for individuals to work for themselves.
And business leaders and advocates for public transportation are pressuring Gray to reappoint transportation chief Gabe Klein and retain the city's new bicycle and bus lanes.
Even before Gray is sworn in Jan. 2, pressure is mounting for him to deliver.
Not since Marion Barry won a third term after a bruising primary and general election contest in 1994, observers say, has an incoming mayor of the District faced so many immediate challenges that could further divide the city's electorate.
Gray, who toppled Mayor Adrian M. Fenty in the September primary, now must decide whether to raise taxes, how to manage the new city-owned hospital and what level of social services the city can afford. In less affluent parts of the city, Gray's supporters are counting on him to make good on campaign promises by tackling chronic unemployment. Everyone is looking for a signal about how he plans to govern a city divided along racial and class lines.
His challenges are magnified by his showing in last week's general election, when nearly one out of four voters wrote in Fenty instead of casting their ballot for the D.C. Council chairman. In several precincts in Georgetown, Upper Northwest and Capitol Hill, more voters wrote in a candidate than supported Gray.
"He just has to hit the ground running," said council member Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 7), a close ally of Gray. "He gets no honeymoon, not even in the transition."
There already are signs of trouble. On the day after the general election, Gray met with the leaders of his transition team. Noticeably absent were representatives of organized labor, many of whom had urged Gray to challenge Fenty. Unions spent hundreds of thousands supporting his campaign.
"We are going to be having some discussions about that," Dwight R. Bowman, national vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents about 20,000 employees. "I was willing to give a honeymoon between the primary and the actual election Tuesday because he needed to be a politician. But now that the election is over, it's time to be an administrator and work with all segments of the city."
Thursday, Gray angered the leaders of the Fraternal of Police when he failed to show up at the funeral for Officer Paul M. Dittamo, who was killed Oct. 30 when his police cruiser struck a utility pole in Southeast. A Gray spokeswoman said he did not realize the funeral was taking place.
Gray also was scrutinized last week for deciding to hold his election night party at Love nightclub, which is owned by Marc Barnes. Barnes owes the city $860,000 in back in taxes, records show. And Gray faced questions about one of his top advisers, Reuben C. Charles II, who has a $236,000 tax debt in Illinois. Charles, widely viewed as a top contender to become the Gray's chief of staff, said the debt is related to a company with which he was formerly affiliated.
Mo Elleithee, Gray's communications strategist, acknowledged the transition got off to a bumpy start.
"As the transition progresses and more people come on board and the transition team gets up and running and more permanent staff gets put into place, you will see a marked difference," Elleithee said.
Four years ago, Fenty enjoyed an extended honeymoon from the public and media when he swept into office after winning every precinct in the Democratic primary. Viewed as an energetic reformer, Fenty was able to spend his first two years in office enacting landmark school reform and gaining praise for expediting the construction and renovation of long- awaited schools, playgrounds and recreation centers.
Former mayors Anthony A. Williams and Sharon Pratt also enjoyed relatively smooth and controversy-free starts to their administrations. But neither Pratt nor Williams had held elective office locally before being elected mayor, and the media and pundits gave them time for a bit of on-the-job training.
As council chairman for the past four years, Gray is viewed as an insider, heightening expectations that he should quickly settle into the job.
Because of Gray's close ties to most council members, he likely will start his term with good relations with his former colleagues. But the city's budget challenges will immediately test the mayor's and council members' ability to cooperate in setting priorities.
Competing interests
The District faces a $175 million shortfall in the current year's budget, part of a larger shortfall projected to be as much as $500 million over the course of Gray's four-year term. With Gray and the council hoping to start tackling the problem even before he takes office, battle lines already have been drawn.
Social service advocates are pushing for tax increases on the wealthy to avoid severe cuts to social programs. Such tax increases that could alienate residents in well-off neighborhoods who have been skeptical of Gray.
Absent a major tax increase, council members say, Gray could be forced to make cuts to public education just as he's trying to combat concerns that he's not fully supportive of school reform. Other budget cuts could be so severe, according to council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), that the city might have to reduce direct cash assistance payments to needy families.
"There is a great deal of denial about the depth of the cuts that we will have to make," Wells said.
Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) said Gray needs to quickly engage in "a very somber conversation with citizens of the city to prepare them for" tax increases, layoffs and cuts to some popular programs.
Bowman, noting that many city employees enthusiastically backed Gray over Fenty, said the union is prepared to discuss possible layoffs or furloughs.
But he asked, "Who are you going to lay off? Is it going to be the EMS crews? Is it going to be the inspectors? Is it going to be the garage people at the police department who make sure the cars are running so the police can patrol the streets?"
At the same time, Gray will be under enormous pressure to continue efforts by Williams and Fenty to improve city services.
"He can't give the impression he is letting things slip," said council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2).
The names game
Gray's first test, many advocates say, will be his cabinet appointments.
Fenty and Gray's appointment of Kaya Henderson as interim schools chancellor after Michelle A. Rhee stepped down last month generally was well-received. But Gray suggested last week he will be deciding "early in the year" whether Henderson, a protege of Rhee, will be the permanent schools chief.
And at a recent meeting of the D.C. Young Democrats, Gray was peppered with questions about alleged overcrowding at Dunbar High School, which school officials deny.
"We expect quick response to our concerns," said LaTanya Cherry, head of the Dunbar PTA. "These are our children, and time is of the essence."
Gray also is under considerable pressure to keep transportation chief Klein and Harriet Tregoning, the head of the Department of Planning, in order to send a signal he embraces Fenty's vision for bicycle lanes, more mass transit options and lively neighborhoods.
"There are people who are going to look at these appointments, and he needs to send a clear message he's going to move things forward, or he can send a message he is not," said Dave Alpert, founder of the Greater Greater Washington blog, which advocates for smart growth and public transportation.
Yet, as the election proved, amenities such as bike lanes have more appeal in Northwest then they do in some other areas of the city. In Southeast, where Gray won 80 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary after vowing to combat chronic unemployment, he will need to manage expectations.
"He has to keep them from instantly believing he can get them a job," said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D).
Meanwhile, demands on Gray keep piling up.
Derje Mamo, a taxi driver who helped run transportation for the mayor-elect's campaign, said cabdrivers already are pushing Gray to reshape the Taxicab Commission and allow for the creation of a medallion system. A medallion or certification system would limit the number of cabs operating in the city. Proponents of such a system argue that too many taxis are flooding D.C. streets.
"He's got one year, that's it," Mamo said.
Job 1 for Gray: Helping to reduce persistent D.C. unemployment
By Nikita Stewart
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/06/AR2010110602399.html
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/06/AR2010110602399.html
Saturday, November 6, 2010; 9:34 PM
In the basement of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown Washington last month, more than 500 men and women clutched resumes and desperately tried to get off one of the city's most lingering rolls: the unemployed.
"I've been out of a job for three years," said Keith Mayo, a Northeast resident who worked for the U.S. Postal Service.
Surrounded by muted light and hopeful - yet realistic - conversations between applicants and potential employers, Mayo estimated that he has applied for 500 jobs. The District native is now banking on Mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray to lift him out of his three-year struggle. "I'm hoping he creates more jobs for people like me," said Mayo, 30, who attended technical college and has work experience.
That's a tough task for any mayor in a weak economy - but particularly for Gray. He campaigned on a promise to help 40,000 jobless residents qualify for and get jobs, but he is inheriting a city with double-digit unemployment, sagging revenue and crushing debt. Experts say those conditions will undercut any job-creation initiative at the Department of Employment Services, which critics say is a directionless, mismanaged agency that operates perennially over-budget programs lacking long-term strategies to decrease the jobless rate.
According to government reports and interviews, DOES spent more than 60 percent of its employment-creation funds on the controversial summer jobs program for youths. An apprenticeship program produced more than 1,500 new slots last year, but just one out of every four jobs went to city residents. The public-private entity that advises the mayor and city government on its workforce development and guides millions of dollars in federal funds was run by an employee whose permanent residence was two states away. He was replaced last month.
Advocates for the unemployed say DOES needs an overhaul and the kind of aggressive attention that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty gave to public education - a step Gray appears poised to take but that observers say could prove eminently more difficult.
"The District is a place where everyone expects something to happen instantaneously," said Gregg Irish, the director of DOES under Mayor Anthony A. Williams who now runs the Workforce Investment Board in Los Angeles. "You can't do it in four years. If I were Vince, I'd come up with an eight-year plan."
And summer jobs are not the trick, Irish said. "Summer programs are like instant coffee," Irish said. "You've got to brew something else up."
An untrained workforce?
Even as the city's jobless rate reached a record 12 percent in January 2010, the Fenty administration continued to pour taxpayer dollars: $46 million of $74 million designated for workforce development. Advocates for the jobless say the administration shortsightedly dedicated itself to a program with jobs that are neither permanent nor full time.
Gray has promised to greatly reduce the amount of money going to summer jobs. But advocates say he should brace for a backlash because many parents expect their children to be employed during the summer.
On the campaign trail, Gray also hammered away at the Fenty administration's poor enforcement of First Source, a city law that requires businesses receiving city funds for their projects to fill 51 percent of new jobs with District residents.
A D.C. auditor's probe, released in May, found that just four out of 16 development projects surveyed met the requirement.
At a recent town hall meeting in Ward 4, Gray drew laughter and applause when he said businesses that do not meet the requirement can expect to lose contracts. "In Monopoly, they would say, 'Do not go past go,' " he said, "and you don't get a get-out-of-jail-free card."
But there are already rumblings in the business community about pushing back on Gray's plan for compliance as companies grapple with a local workforce that may not be qualified for the jobs that are being produced.
Rod Woodson, a co-chairman on the Workforce Investment Council that advises the mayor on job development in the city and guides federal funds, said politicians talk about First Source like it's magic. "It is not," he said. "It never has been."
Woodson, like others, said the key to turning around the city's unemployment rate is to look forward to the growing industries of banking and finance, health care, and tourism and hospitality.
Gray's economic development plan looks at those areas. He has appointed Barbara Lang, executive director of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce, and Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, former president of George Washington University, to advise him on jobs and economic development during his transition.
Gray has repeatedly said that his plan will revive vocational education in schools, rely on the newly opened community college at the University of the District of Columbia to train residents and reform DOES.
"I don't want our DOES to be defined as the place where you go to get unemployment benefits," Gray said.
Problems at the top
A running joke in city government is that DOES is not DOES; it's the summer jobs employment agency. And the public-private entity created years ago to make sure DOES is on track received little help from the Fenty administration, according to current and former board members.
The Workforce Investment Council continues to lack the necessary organization, leadership and interest to deliver on its mandate, said Bill Dean, chairman of the WIC and in charge of corralling the 39-member board.
"At the end of the day, the WIC, as a body, has never, ever been properly engaged. It has never fulfilled its proper function," said Dean.
Until he was replaced last month, the executive director of the WIC lived in Pennsylvania. Keith Mitchell, who was a holdover from the Williams administration, is a respected official knowledgeable of federal job rules, but his residence was less than desirable. Though Mitchell was "one of the best policy guys I've known," his residence "two states away . . . compounds the problem," said Dean, chief executive officer of Dulles-based M.C. Dean Inc.
In an e-mail, Mitchell said he lived with relatives in Southeast Washington while working in the city, although his permanent residence was in Harrisburg, Pa.
When Mitchell was there, he was pretty much it, board members said. Without a staff, Dean said, he and the WIC couldn't function. "What am I going to do? Sit around. I decided to move past it," he said.
Dean assigned two of his own employees, at the expense of M.C. Dean, to work at the council.
Lang, Dean's predecessor, said she, too, assigned chamber employees to help her because the administration did not. She said she broached the idea of turning the WIC into a nonprofit to give it the ability to raise funds but was rebuffed.
Former DOES director Summer Spencer confirmed Lang's account, saying Fenty was not on board. "Unfortunately, in the end, it turned out that . . . the mayor was no longer interested in structuring the WIC as its own separate . . . entity," said Spencer, whom Fenty later removed after the summer jobs program went $30 million over budget in 2008. The WIC's problems preceded the Fenty administration. In 2006, The Washington Postinvestigated D.C. unemployment and found a nonfunctioning WIC. As happened then, minutes of recent meetings show that appointees often send representatives in their place, which advocates say signals the lack of commitment outside the administration.
Frustrated, Emily Durso, president of the Hotel Association of Washington, said she, too, has not been to a meeting in well over a year. "Even at the height of participation, you always had more nonprofits in the room than employers," said Durso.
Sara Oldmixon - director of the Greater Washington Workforce Development Collaborative, which helps low-income residents get good-paying jobs - agreed with Durso. "Without strong relationships with local employers, DOES will have a difficult time tracking which jobs are most in demand, which could translate into missed employment opportunities for District workers seeking employment," she said.
Durso, who will leave the hotel association at the end of next month and amid speculation that she will join the Gray administration, said the problems appear surmountable. "There doesn't seem to be a problem finding money for training. We, District businesses, don't do a good job [of] having jobs ready for them when they get out," she said.
There are major opportunities approaching, she said. "Homeland Security is coming to St. E's. Twenty-two thousand jobs. Let's train people for those jobs," Durso said, referring to plans for the federal agency to move to the Southeast property of St. Elizabeths Hospital.
Dean said he is extremely proud of the city's apprenticeship council, which increased by 67 the number of District residents able to get the apprenticeships last year compared with 2008. But that number still stood at just 374 out of more than 1,500. "You just can't snap your fingers to make it from zero to 75 percent," Dean said.
What Vince Gray can learn from Obama's 'shellacking'
By Colbert I. King
Washington Post
Washington Post
Saturday, November 6, 2010;
When D.C. Mayor-elect Vince Gray joins President Obama for lunch at the White House on Dec. 1, it will be a meeting between two politicians who had sharply divergent election night experiences. Obama, in his own words, took a "shellacking" Tuesday evening as he watched his party lose control of the House of Representatives and barely hold on to the Senate.
Gray, on the other hand, waltzed to victory, along with all of his D.C. Council colleagues who sought reelection.
Yet if Gray isn't careful, he could end up having an Obama experience that should not be repeated, i.e., allowing the giddy atmosphere of victory and inauguration hoopla to overshadow an Election Day reality.
To recall: On that historic day when Barack Obama took the oath of office, Jan. 20, 2009, the cheering crowds drowned out the fact that only a few weeks earlier, on Nov. 4, 2008, nearly 60 million Americans cast their ballots for John McCain.
Those voters didn't go away or lose interest in government once Obama entered the White House.
Gray needs to bear that in mind. He can feel great about having captured nearly 74 percent of the citywide vote for mayor. But it would be a mistake for him to take office in January unmindful of the fact that in wards 1, 2, 3 and 6, which he lost to Mayor Adrian Fenty in September's Democratic primary, at least one-third of the voters chose to write in someone else's name for mayor in Tuesday's general election.
In Ward 3, dubbed "Upper Caucasia" by Washington City Paper, a surprising 43 percent of voters wrote in another person's name for mayor.
Message to Gray: Those 28,000 citywide voters who wrote in another candidate's name aren't going away. And like the 2008 McCain voters, anti-Gray voters aren't going to lose interest in the city's direction.
That lesson appears to have been lost on the Obama administration. Obama's team came to town and immediately got into the weeds of governing, allowing partisan insiders to guide them through the ways of Washington. Obama was warned against that ["A Heretic's Advice to Obama," June 21, 2008]. But "who reads the paper on Saturday?" as one critic demanded to know.
Of course, Obama inherited a colossal mess: a severe recession, a financial system teetering on collapse, a stalled auto industry and millions of Americans unemployed. So the White House went to work on those problems, fashioning solutions from a range of ambitious, generally center-left options. White House officials politely engaged Republicans on Capitol Hill, but their plans satisfied the appetites of mostly Washington Democrats.
They didn't understand the need to bring along the rest of the country. And they utterly failed to recognize that a sizable chunk of the nation, especially among McCain's 60 million supporters, weren't buying what the administration was selling, if it was selling at all, which in retrospect seems doubtful.
As Tuesday's exit polls revealed, many of the independents who voted for Obama in '08 had left his side by 2010, also dissatisfied with his stewardship. He was so entangled in Washington's weeds, however, that he didn't see Tuesday's results coming until it was too late.
Gray should avoid that mistake. He will, provided he resists getting tied down in the John Wilson Building or becoming captive to interests that couldn't care less about a divided city as long as they are on the right side.
Gray should review the Obama experience and follow another path. Here's some pithy advice for the mayor-elect, for what it's worth:
l Put away your passport. No lavish vacations. Stay away from Martha's Vineyard, too. Stray no farther from the District than one day's car drive. Live within your means.
l Family excluded, don't allow anyone or any interest group to have a leg up with you, including Reuben Charles, your transition director. Avoid private deals. They have a way of becoming public.
l Remain true to your principles and accessible to the people who hired you. But let not a week pass without visiting neighborhoods that were unkind to you at the polls. This is their city, too.
l Don't waver on school reform, government ethics or personal accountability. Take care in making policy involving taxpayers' money. Thinking about budget cuts and raising taxes? Share your thoughts first, especially with those most likely to be affected. Listen, and, if necessary, adjust your plans accordingly. You want buy-in, not resentment and resistance.
Oh yes, and remember: When you lunch with Obama, no pity party. You two weren't forced to do this.
No more meddling
Editorial
Washington Post
Saturday, November 6, 2010; A12
THE MOMENTUM behind the Republican Party's rout in Tuesday's midterm elections was fueled, in part, by the belief that the federal government was becoming too intrusive. Let's hope that the GOP stays true to this sentiment as it concerns the District of Columbia. Instead of meddling - as they have done in the past - with Washington's local concerns, Republicans, once they take over the House in January, should respect the right of D.C. residents to govern themselves.
Actions taken by the D.C. government are subject to congressional approval or veto, an indignity that no other city is subject to. Despite the failure to achieve long-sought voting rights, the last four years of House Democratic rule witnessed important strides for District self-determination. Noxious limitations on what the city could do with its money were removed, so critical programs, such as those promoting needle exchanges to control the spread of AIDS, could go forward. Medical marijuana, blocked for a decade, became law. The city's same-sex marriage law was protected from congressional interference. There was progress on legislation that would give the city autonomy over its budget.
Many city officials are expecting some Republicans to use the District to score political points on controversial social issues or as a laboratory for pet programs. The concern is well-founded in history, but D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is right to warn against snap judgments. Ms. Norton has spent most of her 19 years in Congress in the minority, with a Republican president, but she's been able to advance the city's interests. At times, she was helped by Republicans sympathetic to the District's needs. The city wouldn't have come as close as it did to winning voting rights, for example, without the work of then-Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.); there probably would not be the thriving community of charter schools in the District if not for former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). An early indicator of how the District will fare will be seen in whether the Republican leadership decides to be churlish and rescind Ms. Norton's vote in the committee of the whole.
Mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray (D) is smart to reach out to Republicans and remind them of the city's record, now well entrenched, of governing itself responsibly. But it's also good he's having lunch with President Obama on Dec. 1 so that he can ask him not to hesitate to wield his veto pen to protect the rights of D.C. residents.
The latest on Team Thomas
Editorial
Washington Post
Monday, November 8, 2010; A14
WHEN D.C. Council member Harry Thomas (D-Ward 5) was asked a few weeks ago about Team Thomas, a nonprofit he created in 2000 to help the city's youth, he said it had been dormant since he joined the council in 2007. That statement was belied first by a May 2008 news release from his office touting a golf tournament to benefit the group and then by evidence brought to our attention that at least two city businesses had donated to the organization in 2008. When we told Mr. Thomas that an employee of one of those businesses recalled being solicited for Team Thomas by an aide to Mr. Thomas, he told us we were either mistaken or making it up.
Last week we received copies of e-mails in which the aide, Victoria Leonard-Chambers, asks for a contribution. Stranger still, in a Feb. 8, 2008, letter, Mr. Thomas thanks the president of a local firm for a contribution that helped Team Thomas defray the cost of his "2007 Annual Report to Ward 5 Residents." Why was Team Thomas soliciting undisclosed contributions to publish a report extolling his work on the council? Mr. Thomas, who has denied any wrongdoing, did not return our phone calls asking about this. His attorney, Frederick D. Cooke Jr., called back but did not provide an answer. The latest disclosure raises questions about the intersection between Team Thomas fundraising and campaign finance laws and reaffirms the need for Mr. Thomas to fully disclose Team Thomas's activities and finances.
In a January 2008 e-mail, Ms. Leonard-Chambers wrote to an official at Capitol Paving of D.C. Inc.: "Attached is the Annual Report I was telling you about . . . It would be great if Capitol Paving could contribute to defraying the cost of producing and mailing the report. . . . Team Thomas is about $2,600 short in pledges to pay for the cost of producing 15,000 copies and mailing the report to 10,000 Ward 5 households." Capitol Paving agreed to pay $2,600 and was advised by the aide to send a check "payable to Team Thomas" to her attention at Mr. Thomas's council office. A Capitol official has told us the company was glad to make a contribution because of the good work Mr. Thomas does in the community.
There is nothing wrong with council members updating their constituents with reports. But if public funds are used, council members legally must meet strict requirements on content and when they can mail the material. If campaign contributions or constituent service funds are used, members must regularly disclose donations and expenditures and stay within contribution limits. It's not clear how Mr. Thomas's apparent use of Team Thomas to bankroll his annual report dovetails with these requirements.
Since Team Thomas has come under scrutiny, Mr. Thomas has attacked the motives of those seeking information but also has promised to provide an accounting. The organization is now under investigation by the D.C. attorney general, and a judge has ordered Mr. Thomas to produce documents by Nov. 23.
As construction begins on convention center hotel, officials consider its future impact
By Jonathan O'Connell
Capital Business (Washington Post)
Capital Business (Washington Post)
Monday, November 8, 2010
At long last, D.C. officials are ready to break ground this week on a true convention center hotel, the planned $520 million, 1,175-room Marriott Marquis on Ninth Street in Northwest.
When it is complete 42 months from now, in the spring of 2014, the project will have spanned 19 years, three mayoral administrations and nearly a half-dozen lawsuits.
Whether it is successful could well be known before the first guest arrives, as the Washington Convention and Sports Authority sets out to lure the big events that supporters have said eluded the city in the past because the Walter E. Washington Convention Center lacked a companion hotel.
Major conventions in D.C. today regularly put their guests up in more than 40 hotels. The biggest challenge Washington faces is "the extremely high individual demand for hotel beds whenever Congress is sitting," said Martin Sirk, chief executive of the International Congress and Convention Association, in an e-mail. "It's not always easy for international buyers to obtain large enough room-blocks at attractive prices as early as they would like."
Supporters say the new hotel, being developed by Quadrangle Development and Capstone Development, could change that. Here's a look at what to watch for in determining whether the hotel lives up to expectations:
Events
With the hotel, Gregory A. O'Dell, chief executive and president of the convention authority, has said the number of "priority one" events -- those that bring a minimum of 2,500 stays (or room-nights) in the city's hotels -- should increase from fewer than 15 per year to "the 20 to 25 range consistently." He also wants to increase international events; D.C. hosted 31 major international meetings in 2009, ranking it 51st in the world and second in the nation, according to ICCA.
Tax revenues
Natwar M. Gandhi, D.C.'s chief financial officer, has not projected how much tax revenue the project will produce, but he is confident that it will pay off $206 million in public borrowing for the project. Gandhi fought to prevent the city from building a completely publicly financed hotel, as O'Dell had proposed. "Incremental revenue -- sales taxes, property taxes -- from having the hotel there should pay for the debt services," he said.
Jobs
There are high expectations. O'Dell said the project would produce 1,500 construction jobs and another 1,000 permanent ones. Councilman Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large), who becomes council chairman in January, said a $2 million fund for training city residents would be put to good use because of the recent creation of instructional facilities such as the Hospitality High School of Washington, D.C. "These programs are just getting into place at the right time," he said.
Economic impact
D.C. can't compete for the biggest conventions -- those that only the likes of Las Vegas and Orlando can handle -- but O'Dell said he can now fight for everything else and the city will benefit as a result. "We expect some reasonable increment of economic impact for the city," he said. "I mean, right now we have 1 million visitors come through our doors and they generate about $400 million of economic impact. We would expect probably at least 50 to 100 million in incremental impact beyond that with the hotel."
Building of long-awaited convention center hotel starts this week
By: LIZ FARMER
Examiner Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Building-of-long-awaited-convention-center-hotel-starts-this-week-1466745-106797983.html
Examiner Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Building-of-long-awaited-convention-center-hotel-starts-this-week-1466745-106797983.html
November 5, 2010
The Marriott Marquis Headquarters Hotel will increase the number of hotel rooms within two blocks of the convention center to a total of more than 3,150 -- an increase of more than a third.
The 1,167-room hotel, which will be built across the street from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, will be attached to the center -- a major selling point for meeting planners and something officials believe can attract more major conventions.
The District now hosts roughly 15 citywide conventions a year and "20 in a good year," according to Greg O'Dell, CEO of the Washington Convention and Sports Authority.
"We'll be pushing for between 20 and 25 citywides for sure [with the new hotel]," he said, noting D.C. stands to steal conventions from East Coast competitors such as Atlanta, Philadelphia and Boston.
D.C.'s number of adjacent hotel rooms would also beat out the Gaylord National Harbor and Baltimore's roughly 2,000, but O'Dell said those destinations compete with D.C. for smaller conventions.
The hotel is slated to finish in 2014, but many conventions book years in advance. O'Dell said the first agreement could be booked soon after the groundbreaking.
The new business could mean as much as $100 million in additional visitor spending, boosting the annual impact of conventions to $500 million.
The hotel's opening will come more than a decade later than city officials had hoped. The city has been pursuing a convention center hotel since before the $800 million convention center opened at Mount Vernon Square in 2003.
Convention center officials have long argued an attached hotel would mean convenience and save meeting planners money by not requiring shuttle service -- the selling point D.C. needs to draw the most desirable conventions, O'Dell said.
But the originally proposed 1,400-room, $750 million mega-hotel ran into development and financing issues. Then when the proposal was scaled back, the project hit another snare: Developer JBG sued the city to reopen the bidding. The suit settled but delayed the project several months.
"It's almost taking longer to build than it did to build the convention center," said Emily Durso, president of the Hotel Association of Washington, D.C. "It was a very long, complicated deal. ... Everybody's intentions were good, it just takes a while."
And as for the hotels already within walking distance of the center, Durso said they welcome the new business.
"Managers have always been 100 percent behind this -- all boats rise," she said. "They're big-picture guys. One new convention a year is $40 million [in additional] spending. So they all benefit."
Fenty cancels developer's plan to convert historic D.C. school
By Jonathan O'Connell
Washington Post
Washington Post
Saturday, November 6, 2010; B01
After finding little neighborhood support for the idea, D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has canceled plans to turn Stevens Elementary School in the West End into an apartment building by Chicago-based developer Equity Residential.
Stevens opened in 1868 to educate the children of freed slaves, and was one of the schools closed as part of former schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's reform efforts. Last year, Fenty proposed Stevens and 10 other vacant schools for redevelopment, and nine developers - eyeing the Stevens school's location at 21st and K streets NW - proposed ideas including hotels, housing and offices.
Fenty's selection immediately prompted concerns among West End residents that the apartments would cater to college students rather than long-term residents. Rebecca Coder, an advisory neighborhood commissioner, said another Equity property nearby had the reputation of "an off-campus frat house."
Fenty (D) did not hold a news conference to announce the choice, as he has with most developer selections. A year later, he is changing course.
"Over the past year we had been unable to generate any community support for their proposal, so we wanted to try a different approach," said Jose Sousa, a spokesman for the Fenty administration. Sousa said the city formally ended negotiations with Equity on Oct. 28. Robert Grealy, Equity area vice president, declined to comment.
Coder said ideas to turn Stevens into a hotel might now gain traction, possibly paying tribute to the former school. "Stevens obviously has a tremendous history and it's something that theneighborhood really wants to see represented and celebrated," she said.
The city has asked six of the developers that originally made proposals to submit final offers. R. Donahue Peebles, a D.C. native who built the Royal Palm Hotel in Miami, had proposed a luxury hotel operated by Morgans Hotel Group of New York. Peebles, who decided not to challenge Fenty for mayor, says he is still interested in Stevens. "We're excited now to present our ideas again to the community and to fine-tune them," he said.
Moddie Turay, an assistant to Democratic former mayor Anthony Williams, proposed a hotel by San Francisco-based Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants, as well as office space and retail. Akridge, Donohoe Development, Toll Brothers and Equity have also been invited to resubmit.
Fenty leaves office Jan. 1, so any development plan will need the support of Mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray (D) and the D.C. Council.
"The community is very interested in moving forward on this," said Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2).
Stevens School on the market again
Washington Business Journal - by Michael Neibauer
Date: Friday, November 5, 2010, 11:42am EDT - Last Modified: Friday, November 5, 2010, 1:56pm EDT
This post has been updated...
The District has cut ties with Equity Residential, the firm chosen to redevelop the historic Stevens Elementary School in the West End, and has given a slate of original bidders three weeks to provide a best and final offer.
Chicago-based Equity Residential was chosen in September 2009 to redevelop Stevens, located at 1050 21st St. NW, as a 100-plus unit apartment complex with a restaurant component -- possibly an eatery operated by Top Chef competitor and local caterer Carla Hall.
But the West End/Foggy Bottom community, which preferred a hotel for the site, never went for it.
"In those 12 months we just got to a point where we didn't see a whole lot of traction," said Sean Madigan, spokesman for Mayor Adrian Fenty. "So, we decided to continue to move the project forward but in a different direction."
The Equity selection was never backed by the community and lacked D.C. Council support, which it needed because only the legislative branch can declare a school surplus and dispose of it to the private sector. Councilman Jack Evans, D-Ward 2, asked Fenty to reconsider while At-large Councilman Kwame Brown, now the council's chairman-elect, called the selection a "slap in the face" to neighbors.
Asher Corson, Foggy Bottom Association president and an advisory neighborhood commissioner, said the community is very wary of rentals. With Equity, Corson said, Stevens may have become a "very nice expensive dorm" for George Washington University.
Equity, which also owns 2400 M St. NW in the West End, had partnered with D.C.-based Neighborhood Development Co. and Hickok Cole Architects on the Stevens proposal.
"We want to create a community of people who are going to live here and stay here and contribute to the quality of life," Corson said.
The D.C. government terminated its deal with Equity Oct. 28. On Wednesday, it formally asked rejected bidders -- Akridge, Donahoe, Toll Brothers, Moddie Turay Co. and Peebles Corp. -- for best and final offers. Those will be due in late November.
An Equity spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.
Fenty ends ROWE at D.C. Office of Chief Technology Officer
Federal News Radio
November 3, 2010 - 6:14pm
Outgoing D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty is halting the results-only work environment (ROWE) program at the city's Office of the Chief Technology Officer, according to the American Progress.
The program, pushed by CTO Brian Sivlak, would have allowed the 550 employees to work whenever and wherever they wanted, as long as they met pre-determined goals.
"We don't want to make policy decisions for the incoming administration that haven't been vetted by them," City Administrator Neil Albert told American Progress.
Incoming Mayor Vincent Gray has been briefed on the ROWE program but no decision has been made whether or not the original plans will move forward.
D.C. OCTO would have been the first government department of its size to go ROWE.
D.C. school security guards land raises
Examiner Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/D_C_-school-security-guards-land-raises-1468914-106854623.html#ixzz14gDcXOhV
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/D_C_-school-security-guards-land-raises-1468914-106854623.html#ixzz14gDcXOhV
November 7, 2010
Security guards at 13 of D.C.'s public schools received 15 percent pay raises after signing a three-year contract with the local service employees union.
The 180 guards employed by Securitas, a D.C. public schools security contractor, will enjoy increased wages and benefits from about $16.08 to $18.34 an hour. The contract also provides up to four weeks paid vacation, up to seven personal days for full-time guards, and employer-paid pension benefits.
Wallene Butler, a security officer at McKinley Tech High School, said the raise "will help me make a better life for my children."
"We work hard to keep kids safe, and now we get the respect we deserve," Butler said.
Jaime Contreras, the local director for Service Employees International Union 32BJ, said the union lobbied for a 20 percent raise, but the negotiated sum "brought everyone to agreement on what workers need."
"We're in the business of raising worker standards and making sure people have livable wages and pensions," Contreras said.
The union represents 1,500 private security officers who work in District offices and schools. Securitas officers in municipal buildings have negotiated through the union since 2008, but this is the first school-side contract.
Security guards follow on the heels of D.C. teachers, who received historic bonuses under the new contract signed in June between the Washington Teachers' Union and then-Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
The District's 4,400 teachers received an average of $10,227 in back pay totaling $45 million from their new union contract, with potential six-digit salaries for top educators on a new scale.
The average teacher's salary under the new contract is $74,400, higher than all surrounding counties but Montgomery, where teachers are paid an average $76,500. But D.C. teachers can earn up to $130,000 under the new contract, while Montgomery teachers with master's degrees and 25 years of experience max out at $103,634.
Bay cleanup could cost billions, require tax hikes
By: BEN GILES
Examiner Staff Writer
Examiner Staff Writer
November 5, 2010
The federal government's ambitious plan to clean up the Chesapeake Bay could cost Virginia, Maryland and the District billions of dollars each and add hundreds of dollars to the annual property tax bill of local homeowners, state and local officials said.
A new study on the Environmental Protection Agency's plans to reduce pollution flowing to the Bay shows that it could cost each affected city and county between $259 million and $386 million a year for the next 15 years.The study done by the Virginia Municipal Stormwater Association, a group of Virginia localities that operate storm sewer systems, represents the worst-case scenario for Virginia's cities and counties. But even states that are able to develop alternative cleanup plans of their own could still be forced to raise billions in tax dollars to pay the bill, officials said.
In Fairfax County, which is expecting to pay as much as $3.75 billion over the next 15 years to meet the EPA's new standards, property taxes would have to be increased by 14 cents per $100 of a home's assessed value, Randy Bartlett, the county's storm water director, said. For an average Fairfax home, assessed at $459,228, the new tax would add nearly $650 to its owner's annual property tax bill.
And Fairfax is hardly alone. The District will spend $3.2 billion over the next 15 years to reduce nitrogen output at the Blue Plains water treatment facility and control sewage overflows. In Maryland, Montgomery County alone will spend $86 million on storm water improvements over the next five years. The county's storm water fee rose from $45.50 to $49 in 2010, and will rise incrementally each year to offset the costs. Prince George's County already spent $28.1 million on similar projects in the last year.
It's unclear how much money the federal government can offer to offset the cost of its initiative. The EPA has announced $491 million in Bay funds for the current fiscal year, but the money still needs congressional approval, and Bay advocates say a fiscally conservative Republican majority in the House of Representatives could make it harder to find additional federal funds.
The EPA's plan for Virginia would require communities to reroute their storm water drainage systems to flow through filtration ponds rather than directly into the Bay watershed as some do now. Ponds and other filtration systems would help reduce the amount of sediment and nutrient pollution afflicting the Bay.
Virginia's one chance of avoiding the massive price tag of the EPA plan is to devise a more cost-effective plan of its own that would reduce pollution flowing to the Bay. The state has until Nov. 29 to complete that plan. The District and Maryland have already submitted their own plans and will likely avoid the burden of the EPA's expensive retrofits, but alternate cleanup efforts are still costing the states and communities millions of dollars.
For all the work the EPA and states have invested in determining how to aid the Bay, Bartlett said, "they have spent very little effort trying to figure out what the cost would be and the financial impact."
The notion of spending hundreds of millions of tax dollars a year to rebuild a storm water drainage system at a time when communities, states and the federal government are facing budget deficits could prove financially crippling, officials said.
"This cuts to the head of the line," Chris Pomeroy, an attorney for the storm water association, said of the EPA's plan. "These become must-do items in the category of a legal mandate. It's not an optional funding decision."
EPA spokesman David Sternberg said the agency has no "illusions that [its plan] is the most cost-effective way to do it." The agency would prefer that states come up with cheaper alternative plans as long as they still meet EPA's pollution reduction goals, he said.
"It's not going to be cheap, it's not going to be easy, and it's not going to be quick," Sternberg said. "But this is an opportunity to restore not only the national treasure that is the Chesapeake Bay, but also local waterways as well."
Homeless in D.C. may face added burden: Proof of residency
By Paul Schwartzman
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/07/AR2010110704746.html
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/07/AR2010110704746.html
Monday, November 8, 2010; B01
Inez Henry made enough money as a bus driver to pay for the Prince George's County apartment where she lived with her 4-year-old son - until May, when the bus company laid her off, her lease expired and she found herself bunking down at her daughter's apartment in the District.
Her daughter's patience eventually ran dry, forcing Henry and her husband to ask the D.C. government to find the family some shelter. None was available, but they procured a $99 voucher for one night at a Days Inn on New York Avenue NE.
"Comfortable," said Henry's husband, Ron Johnson, 52, an unemployed Army veteran. "Got the chance to take a hot shower."
The next day, the family again sought help from the District.
As the economy has floundered and the unemployment rate has soared, a growing number of homeless families from outside the District have migrated into the city in search of shelter, burdening an already strained social services network. Over the summer, D.C. officials say, 10 percent of the families most in need of shelter came from outside the city. Since 2008, officials say, the number of homeless families migrating into the District has tripled.
But the city is pushing back against the influx.
Citing a looming budget deficit, officials are proposing that on winter's coldest nights, the city should provide shelter first to families who can demonstrate their D.C. ties with proof of a legal address in the past two years or with a record of having received public assistance from the city. Under current law, the District must shelter anyone who is homeless and seeking a bed when the temperature falls below freezing.
For Henry, whose last residence was in Maryland but who said she has lived in the city for 42 of her 45 years, the policy change could make the District off-limits.
"We cannot be the housing alternative of last resort for the entire East Coast," said D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), the legislation's sponsor and host of a public hearing Monday on the bill. "My intention is to prioritize space for D.C. residents."
Where would that leave John Greene? A former moving company employee who said he became disabled after falling down 20 steps, Greene, 33, showed up recently at the District's intake center for homeless families in Brentwood, saying that he and his wife, Victoria, and their seven children needed shelter.
Since being evicted from a Chevy Chase apartment in May, Greene said, his family had shared a room at his brother's Southwest apartment. But they had to leave after the place was burglarized. Greene said he had sought help in Montgomery County but was told there was no space.
"Can you get a room for us?" Greene asked a reporter while waiting for the District's help.
If the District imposes the proposed restriction, officials say they would help families from outside the city return to where they came from.
"If it's a family from the District or from Hyattsville, we're going to take the family from the District," said Fred Swann, the city's family services administrator. "And we'll get that family back to Hyattsville."
But advocates for the homeless say a residency requirement is inappropriate for the nation's capital, a symbolic home to all Americans. On a more practical level, they say that requiring proof of residency would add another burden for families and individuals who already have difficulty navigating the bureaucracy. And, they say, the policy would be difficult to implement in a region with porous boundaries, in which people - and especially those who can't afford stable housing - often migrate back and forth among the District, Maryland and Virginia.
"Our business is helping people in need," said Alicia Horton, executive director of Thrive D.C., a Columbia Heights-based program that provides services to help the homeless. "If someone strolls in from Maryland who happens to be in the District and needs a meal, I want to be able to provide that and not have it fall on whether they're a resident."
Advocates argue that the proposed policy could make it harder even for District residents to get help.
"People are going to die because they can't show they're D.C. residents and they can't get their documents together," said Andy Silver, an attorney with the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. "How can you require people who live outside to verify their residency?"
Prince George's and Montgomery counties maintain residency requirements for their services, and a similar regulation was implemented at a 75-bed shelter in Ann Arbor, Mich., this year. But no major city has instituted such a policy, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. Officials in San Francisco floated the idea a couple of a years ago only to abandon it.
"To see people on the street in need of shelter and ask, 'Hey, where are you from?' is not something San Franciscans have wanted to move forward with," said Dariush Kayhan, that city's director of homeless policy. "We're a compassionate city and have historically had an open door."
In the District, officials say the driving force behind the proposed policy is the city's projected $175 million budget deficit, which has already pushed outgoing Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) to impose a freeze on hiring and promotions. Wells, whose council committee oversees the Department of Human Services, which handles homelessness policy, said service cuts could be justified based on "the claim that we're funding a social safety net for the entire region."
"If we don't control our own spigot, there won't be enough dollars for our own residents," Wells said. "We don't want you to have any reason to get on a bus and come to D.C. because your jurisdiction won't house you."
Officials say the recent spike in homeless people coming to the city is the impetus for giving priority to District residents: Between June and September, they said, 10 percent of the 180 families in desperate need of emergency shelter came from outside the city. Since 2008, the percentage of homeless families seeking shelter who came to Washington from elsewhere has nearly tripled, from 2.7 percent to 6.2 percent of all applicants, or from 34 to 106.
The city maintains a 135-unit family shelter at the former D.C. General Hospital, which is typically filled to capacity. The number of families applying for shelter has grown from 1,263 in 2008 to 1,721 this year, according to DHS.
Wells said a mother and her six children from Prince George's County ended up in his office looking for shelter. When he asked why they sought help in the District, "she said her county services said they didn't have anything for her, but that D.C. did, and we would help."
Wells said he found city money to put the family up in a hotel for two weeks. The next day, he said, a District family came to him for similar help, and he could not find them a place in a shelter. He said he cobbled together $600 - including $100 of his own money - to help the family, who went to stay in a hotel.
Swann, the DHS administrator, said such cases are not uncommon. He described examples assembled by his staff, such as a family with three children who migrated from South Carolina, stayed with a friend in the District until they were asked to leave and then sought shelter. In another case, a military veteran came with his family from Florida. And a mother claimed to have been living in her car in Maryland with her children.
"I'm not comfortable turning anyone away," Swann said, but "I do think we need to prioritize our resources for D.C. residents."
Neil Donovan, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said the District should reexamine its priorities and seek help from Congress.
"They go there when it snows, and they get extra plows, and they go there when there's been an extra-large demonstration and they had to pay for law enforcement," he said. "This is a matter, in many peoples' cases, of life and death. You can't tell me it's less important than a snowplow."
Jason Chaffetz May Not Be Our Overlord
Loose Lips (Washington City Paper)
Here’s a bit of news from Slate‘s Dave Weigel, who wrote the City Paper cover story on Rep. Jason Chaffetz earlier this year (when Chaffetz seemed very excited at the prospect of taking over the House subcommittee that oversees the District). Since the GOP won control of the House Tuesday, Chaffetz may have his eyes on things that don’t involve trying to serve as mayor of D.C. from Capitol Hill:
Since Tuesday, however, there’s speculation that Chaffetz will get another subcommittee assignment. One reason is that Chaffetz is seen by many Republicans, including Reform and Oversight chairman Darrell Issa, as a rising star, and they might want a higher-profile job for him. Chaffetz’s office confirms that a reshuffle might give him a new assignment.
“We won’t know for at least a couple of weeks,” said Chaffetz’s spokesperson Alisia Essig.
“There is no question that Jason will be a significant leader on our Committee and will be a subcommittee chairman,” said Issa’s spokesmanKurt Bardella. “We’re definitely going to want his input on which subcommittee he would prefer to chair.”
If Chaffetz decides not to keep the D.C. gig, Rep. Brian Bilbray is next in line for the job—unless he, an Issa ally, is also reshuffled. So this is up in the air.
Bilbray, who represents San Diego, made some news earlier this year by claiming police could spot undocumented immigrants by looking at their shoes.
Where’s My Job?
Loose Lips (Washington City Paper)
Listen, Mr. Almost Mayor—or do you mind if I call you Vince? Listen, Vince, we got to talk about something. Obviously, you had a busy week; Tuesday was a big day, naturally, and then maybe you take Wednesday and Thursday to bask in some congratulations, and get some lunch, so, okay. But that brings us to Friday. And by now, frankly, as a fellow alumnus of Tau Epsilon Phi, I’m a little offended that you haven’t offered me a job yet.
That was my understanding of how things worked here in the District, after all. The guy you beat to get this gig, Adrian Fenty—he gave out jobs left and right to frat brothers. Sure, sure, you and I went to different schools, and of course, you’d graduated from GW long before I ever heard of TEP at Penn (not to mention before I was born). But still! Is our brotherhood any less binding than the one Fenty has with his fellow members of Kappa Alpha Psi?
Mind you, I’m not asking for much. Omar Karim parlayed his fraternity ties to Fenty into millions in city contracts to redevelop schools, rec centers, and Sursum-Corda; given the economic state of the journalism business these days, I’d be happy with a couple hundred bucks in freelance copy editing work. Or, maybe, I don’t know, you could create a new agency for me to run, some kind of Bureau of Publishing and Blogging, call me an assistant deputy mayor, something like that.
Of course, we’d have to spread a few jobs around to some other notable TEP types. Michael Steele, who after all grew up in Petworth, may soon be displaced as the boss at the Republican National Committee; surely you can find something for him to do. (I understand he thinks he’s good at reaching out to black voters.) George Stephanopoulos just left a nice gig at ABC, but you do need a spokesman once you become mayor—maybe you can give him a try, in the name of brotherhood? Sounds like Rick Santorum is going to be busy running around Iowa and New Hampshire, hoping for some news stories about a failed presidential run to change the order of results when you Google his last name, so he’s probably okay without your help.
A lot of TEP’s other famous alumni are dead, though, or close enough to it that they won’t ask you for work: Benny Goodman, Jonas Salk, Red Auerbach,Larry King. Ray Kurzweil has apparently figured out a way to become “transhuman,” and live forever, so he may not be interested in municipal politics. And Dwight Eisenhower is both dead and only an honorary member, and—worse in D.C.—a Republican, so you don’t even need to bother naming anything for him. Admittedly, I and most of the TEP appointees you might find would need to take off for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (and maybe also, if it’s a nice day out, Lag B’Omer), but hey, look at this—Yom Kippur is on a Saturday next year, so that’s no problem at all!
Anyway, that’s my pitch, and like I said, I’m a little hurt I had to even make it. I hope you weren’t too offended that City Paper endorsed the other guy in September; by then, everyone knew you were going to win, anyway, so I figured that wouldn’t hurt my future job prospects. Oh, and I realize it doesn’t matter that much to you, but just so you know—I don’t owe any back taxes, not even in Illinois.
Mike
Fenty gets praise on 'Real Time with Bill Maher'
Nikita Stewart
D.C. Wire (Washington Post blog)
November 5, 2010; 11:37 PM ET
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty continued his reinvention tour with a stop at HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," getting praise from Maher and his panel for charging ahead with education reform at the expense of his political career.
Fenty told Maher and guests that "maybe people weren't ready for change that fast."
Fenty blamed his loss on his school takeover and the economy, lumping his situation with the national elections that pushed Democrats out of office. "This is an election where incumbents had to be wary," Fenty said.
Maher credited him with the city's new gay marriage law, too, to which Fenty responded with a list of accomplishments or efforts that included gang prevention. The quick conversation change spurred Maher to ask how they went from gay marriage to gangs.
But D.C. Wire digresses. Fenty's appearance, which had no mentions of local concerns about parking meter rates and contracts to fraternity brothers and a missed meeting with civil rights icons, continues to place the outgoing mayor in a position to take a national platform on school reform.
CNN's Fareed Zakaria, one of the guest panelists, chimed in that Fenty has a promising future, starting with getting his rump kissed by Maher. "You do big things, you serve one term. It's not the worst thing in the world," Zakaria said.
District considers longer school day
By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/07/AR2010110704745.html
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/07/AR2010110704745.html
Monday, November 8, 2010; B01
The two Southeast Washington middle schools are less than a mile apart. The real distance that separates them is the number of hours their students spend in class each week.
At Johnson Middle School, the day is 61/2 hours, 8:45 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Students at AIM Academy, a KIPP charter school, stay for nine hours, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 71/2 hours on Friday. That doesn't count the mandatory 15 days of summer school and numerous four-hour Saturday sessions. In all, AIM kids spend 40 percent more time in class than their D.C. public school peers.
Longer school days are expensive and complicated to execute, requiring buy-in from teachers, parents, after-school programs and child-care providers. And the evidence that extended schedules actually improve academic performance is mixed at best.
But new support for a school calendar that breaks the traditional 61/2-hour, 180-day mold may force the District to give the idea more serious consideration. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have called for longer days and shorter summer breaks. And school districts across the country are experimenting with extended days, especially as a way to help low-income students. Last month, D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) introduced legislation that would add 30 minutes to the public school schedule.
The District's school day is light compared with those in other public systems in the region. Some high schools in Fairfax and Prince George's counties run for seven hours or more. Montgomery County's day is as long as six hours and 45 minutes.
KIPP officials say that the extended day is central to their academic program and that the results speak for themselves. On this year's DC-CAS standardized tests, AIM's reading proficiency scores were nearly four times higher than Johnson's. In math, the gap was almost fivefold.
Cheh's proposal would add about 90 hours a year to the District's school clock, an increase of 9 percent. She said that the measure is intended only to begin a community conversation and that her interest is not driven solely by charter-school success stories such as KIPP.
It is also a response, she said, to complaints from public school parents that the time committed to preparation for standardized reading and math tests has squeezed art, foreign language and physical education to the margins.
"What we should do is think about a longer day," Cheh said.
D.C. school officials said their after-school programs include an "academic power hour" of instruction to help reinforce classroom lessons. But spokesman Frederick Lewis said they are also aware of the potential benefits of an expanded day.
"We look forward to assessing the feasibility of council member Cheh's legislation and how it can best serve our students," Lewis said.
One unanswered question is whether a longer day leads to more learning. The most extensive ongoing experiment has yielded mixed results. Creators of the Massachusetts Expanded Learning Time Initiative, which involves 22 public schools across the state, say the additional 300 hours a year have given students a richer academic experience and provided more time for teachers to plan and collaborate. They report that the schools are in higher demand among parents.
But an independent evaluation found that, with the exception of higher science scores for fifth-graders, there were no statistically significant differences between schools on expanded schedules and those with conventional days.
"ELT seems to have had no significant effect on a whole range of student outcomes, including [standardized test] scores, attendance, participation in out-of-school activities . . . or level of engagement in school," said Elena Silva, a senior policy analyst at Education Sector, a Washington think tank.
KIPP DC Executive Director Susan Schaeffler, who said she is "passionate" about the extended day, said that a 30-minute expansion is not long enough and that extra time is meaningful only if it is accompanied by good teaching.
"Extending the day a half an hour is a step in the right direction, but it will not get you the results you need," she said.
Expense is a huge issue. Schaeffler estimated that it costs an extra $950 per student - over and above what KIPP charters receive from the District in the annual per-pupil funding formula - to underwrite their extended day, plus summer and Saturday programs. The gap is filled by private fundraising, although Schaeffler says the city should adjust the funding formula to support schools with longer days.
It means that to bring a KIPP-size school day to D.C. public schools would cost an additional $42 million a year.
An extra 30 minutes would be less costly. Cheh said that the District's existing collective bargaining agreements with teachers, custodians and office staff could allow for a seven-hour school day because the contracts require them to be at school for at least 71/2 hours.
The city's pact with the Washington Teachers' Union specifies "7.5 consecutive hours beginning no earlier than 7:30 a.m. and ending no later than 4:30 p.m."
Teachers union President George Parker is cool to the idea, saying that it would cut into time that teachers need to plan and collaborate. Most importantly, he said, the city needs to focus on more effective use of the available instructional time, which is often consumed by disciplinary issues.
"You can get 25 percent more time by being serious about discipline," Parker said, contending that administrators in many schools have failed to support teachers in removing persistently disruptive students from class.
Not all teachers agree with Parker. "An extra 10 minutes in each of my three reading classes would actually help quite a bit," said Maria Samenga, who teaches fourth grade at Harriet Tubman Elementary in Ward 1 and was honored last week with one of the District's Excellence in Teaching awards.
Steve Dingledine, a fifth-grade teacher at Stoddert Elementary in Ward 3 and one of the city's "highly effective" educators as assessed by the IMPACT evaluation system, said he'd support an extended day if it were used for more physical education and teacher planning time. "The kids have got to get more play in to balance the rigorous instruction, and teachers need more time to organize content and delivery," he said.
Marcie Bane, a parent with two children at Shepherd Elementary in Ward 4, said she welcomed the longer day.
"I would view it as a very positive thing," she said. "With all the testing pressures, an extra 30 minutes at the end of the day would be very useful."
Judiciary Square courthouse wants to grow
Washington Business Journal - by Tierney Plumb
Date: Friday, November 5, 2010, 4:10pm EDT - Last Modified: Friday, November 5, 2010, 4:22pm EDT
The Moultrie Courthouse, already the biggest courthouse in Judiciary Square, is looking to grow even more.
The D.C. Courts is proposing to add a 111,700-square-foot addition to the courthouse’s south façade and renovate 64,100 gross square feet of internal space for six new courtrooms, associated chambers, juror amenities, related operational uses and circulation.
Concept designs were presented to the National Capital Planning Commission at its monthly meeting on Thursday.
The courthouse — which houses the D.C. Superior Court, Family Court, the majority of court support functions and the United States Marshall Service — was constructed in the early 1970s at 500 Indiana Ave. NW.
The addition will include a green roof and be designed to meet the LEED Gold standard for new construction.
The submission also calls for a security barrier line and related streetscape and landscape improvements on the building’s C Street side.
An approval is still a ways off; NCPC, which commented favorably on the designs, will provide comments on additional submissions.
NCPC recommended that the Courts continue to consult with relevant agencies, including the District Department of Transportation. The Courts will submit a proposed Judiciary Square Master Plan modification to the NCPC.
The courthouse is named after H. Carl Moultrie I, who became the Superior Court of D.C.’s first African American chief judge in 1978.
D.C. Courthouse Could Get More Transparent (Literally)
Housing Complex (Washington City Paper)
The backside of the Moultrie Courthouse, on C Street NW between 4th and 6th Street, is a pretty bleak view at the moment: Limestone walls with thin slits for windows. But the 1970s-era building that houses D.C.’s Family and Superior Courts is about to get some of the glass that’s been sheeting buildings around the city, in an addition that will bring more light to the offices inside and create a friendlier facade for passersby at the same time.
If approved, the planned appendage will create 111,700 new square feet for courtrooms and chambers. To accommodate the protrusion, the Courts would like to narrow the underused roadway from 50 to 38 feet, adding a wider sidewalk and gardens inside a security barrier next to the building. In its staff report on the proposal, the National Capital Planning Commission comments:
“Massing diagrams and renderings of the facade indicate the intention of the District of Columbia Courts and its design team to create a symbolic and actual transparency for the courthouse and to allow light into the building through a curtain wall system that has limestone cladding on selected surfaces.”
The NCPC sounded pretty happy with the proposal at its meeting yesteday, but the Commission on Fine Arts, as is its wont, quibbled a bit more. They wrote:
The Commission members expressed concern about the monolithic scale of the addition, its weak relation to the existing building, and the lack of modulation in the proposed facades. They commented that the uniform facades of the addition need further articulation to create an intermediate scale across the 425-foot-long elevation; they suggested that the individual courtrooms and offices could inform the expression of the facades. They also suggested that the articulation of the addition could be more sympathetic with the existing building’s other elevations, possibly to appear less like a completely new building; and that to incorporate stone into the facades would not deny the possibility of a contemporary design.
The Courts will be coming back to CFA with a modified proposal, so this isn’t exactly what the building will look like, but much of the glass seems likely to remain.
Mike DeBonis: http://wapo.st/ch6y91
Loose Lips (daily column): http://bit.ly/d8pvLH
DMV Daily (P.J. Orvetti): http://bit.ly/b9boKV
Missed
In the Capital, Rethinking Old Limits on Buildings
New York Times
November 3, 2010
Its low-slung architecture is no accident. In 1910, Congress passed an act limiting the heights of buildings in the capital. The first residential skyscraper, the Cairo, had been built, and at 12 stories, it was higher than fire ladders could reach and scandalously out of sync with its smaller neighbors.
One hundred years later, most Washingtonians see the act as a good thing. Their sidewalks are shadowed by the outlines of trees, and the dome of the Capitol can be seen from most roof decks. The act, they say, preserves the unique nature of their city, whose landmarks draw millions of visitors each year.
Now, on the act’s centennial, a small tribe of developers, architects and urban experts are questioning the orthodoxy of the rule’s application. A modest change, they argue, would inject some vitality into the urban scene, would allow for greener construction, and could eventually deliver bigger tax receipts for the badly pinched city budget, currently in a hole of about $175 million.
But raising the limit is nothing short of sacrilege for preservationists here, who fear that any change, however slight, will open the door to more.
“I don’t think you get it — it’s a very special place,” said Ann Hargrove, a resident and ardent defender of the limit. “Our capital was designed in such a special way to be different. One great feature is its height.”
It is an emotional debate, largely because the limit has defined Washington’s character for generations. Its original designer and planner, Pierre L’Enfant, came from Paris, another low-built city, and Washington residents say they love its light, airy quality, contributing to the city’s “livable” feel.
For some, that is a dubious distinction, not unlike calling a woman you went out with for one date, and one date only, “nice.” Without high-rise residential buildings to sustain a vibrant shopping and restaurant scene, downtown D.C. tends to empty out at night and on weekends.
Aesthetics are also a sore point for some people. Urban spaces here are flatter and boxier, because builders take advantage of every inch allowed by the limit — approximately 130 feet, if you extrapolate from the law. (The limit relates to the width of the street on which a building stands, not, as the myth goes, to the height of any landmark.) That makes for cruel contradictions, like “lofts” with eight-foot ceilings.
“I’m sorry, but it’s boring architecture,” said Christopher Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, and a proponent of relaxing the rule.
Ms. Hargrove admitted that new buildings do get boxy, but said profit-minded developers, if left unchecked, would destroy the graceful parts of Washington’s skyline.
“If they get their foot in the door, it could ruin the whole thing,” she said. “The idea is to try to hold the bar.”
Mr. Leinberger said a past study by the city had concluded that the District could generate billions in new tax revenue over 20 years if the height limit were raised just a few stories. “If people still want the limit, great, but they should know the cost,” he said.
There have been a number of amendments to the act, said Nelson Rimensnyder, a historian and expert on the District of Columbia, including for the National Press Club, and for George Washington University Hospital, which was allowed in 1945.
The limit has brought development to parts of the city it might not otherwise have gone. Because they cannot build up, developers have pushed out, helping gentrify less affluent parts of the city.
Shalom Baranes, a Washington-based architect who wrote two articles this year promoting changes, argued that a modest relaxation in areas outside downtown would allow for a more modern city with greener construction, what developers sometimes refer to as “smart growth.”
The act, he said, “needs some modifications that will adapt to the last 100 years of building technology.”
Dorn C. McGrath Jr., professor emeritus of city and regional planning at George Washington University, and a supporter of the limit, acknowledged the need to evolve, but said that just because developers called growth smart did not mean it was.
“Nobody is in favor of dumb growth," Mr. McGrath said. “Calling everything smart growth is a mistake.”
The debate can get uncomfortably emotional. Mr. Leinberger said a man in his 70s approached him after a speech he had given on the topic and said, “I wish you would die.”
The city is doing its part, with a sweeping rewrite of the zoning laws that date to 1958, an era that celebrated the automobile and predated the city’s Metro system, said Jennifer Steingasser, deputy director of development review and historic preservation in the Office of Planning.
“We’re looking at everything,” she said.
Except, of course, the height limit, which, as a federal statute, is out of the city’s reach.
Given the objections to changing the law, there is little chance that renewed talk would morph into a concrete legal initiative, much less taller buildings.
“It has remained in the realm of speculative discussion,” said Roger K. Lewis, a local columnist and architect.
He then noted the literal and figurative hurdle it faces: “It would take an act of Congress.”
No comments:
Post a Comment