I Have Watched This Before

Replacing principal at Hardy is decried
D.C. chancellor accused of trying to squeeze out minority students

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 6, 2009

Sarah Bax, an award-winning math teacher at Hardy Middle School in Georgetown, goes back many years with Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, once her trainer in the Teach for America program.

But Bax had a warning for her old mentor Friday night, after Rhee announced her decision to replace Patrick Pope, the popular longtime principal.

"This is a grave, grave error," Bax said. "This staff will not be here when Mr. Pope is not here."

Bax was part of a standing-room-only crowd of parents, teachers and students infuriated by Rhee's decision to change leadership at the school, home to a highly regarded arts and instrumental music program that draws a predominantly African American student body from all wards of the city.

Rhee said Pope would finish the academic year at Hardy and then begin planning a new magnet middle school for the performing arts. He will be replaced this summer by Dana Nerenberg, principal of nearby Hyde-Addison Elementary, who will run both as a unified pre-kindergarten through eighth grade program.

Rhee, who promised that Hardy's arts curriculum would not change and that the school would remain open to out-of-boundary enrollment, is looking for ways to retain more of the city's white middle class families, who usually leave the public school system after the fourth or fifth grade.

But in a tense and often angry two-hour session in the school cafeteria, punctuated by calls of "liar" and "no BS," Rhee was confronted by accusations that she wanted to squeeze minority students out of Hardy to make it more palatable for white families from neighborhood "feeder" schools. Some said the neighborhood wants to "take back" Hardy now that a $48 million renovation is complete.

Rhee, who has held meetings over the past year with parents at nearby elementary schools such as Key, said they have long been confused by Hardy's application process, which she said left the misimpression that it was not a neighborhood school open to all within its attendance area.

Members of the Hardy community said that was insulting and absurd and that elementary parents have heard years of presentations from Pope and his teachers about how Hardy operates. They also took issue with meetings Rhee has held with feeder school parents over the past year while failing to consult with Hardy's parent leadership.

Jeffrey Watson, who sent two sons to Hardy, said neighborhood parents stayed away because they were not comfortable with the racial composition of the school.

"Don't play games with people in here. We're not stupid," Watson said. "Rather than having private meetings with them, tell them to walk on over."

Rhee said she found the suggestion that race factored into her dealings with neighborhood parents to be "extraordinarily disconcerting."

"In none of the conversations that I have had about Hardy, with parents either at school currently or at the feeder schools, has anyone said they were said they were concerned with the racial makeup of the school," Rhee said.

But Pope's fate remained the focal point of the emotionally raw evening. Many were upset by recent public statements, one from a Rhee staff member and another from Deputy Chancellor Kaya Henderson, that there would be no leadership change. The audience repeatedly asked Rhee to reconcile her praise for Pope's record with her decision to replace him with a much younger, less experienced elementary school principal who would have to split her time between two buildings.

Asked whether she offered Pope the option to stay at Hardy rather than accept the planning job, Rhee said: "I gave him the offer. He accepted the offer." Pope attended the meeting but did not speak. Asked afterward whether he was offered a chance to remain, he declined to comment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/05/AR2009120501580.html

TVs And Energy Efficiency

By 2011, greener screens in Golden State

By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 27, 2009

Nick Canzoneri weighed several factors when he went shopping for a new flat-screen TV at the Best Buy in Gaithersburg earlier this week. He wanted the right brand ("Sony. I've had one for 20 years. I tend to stick with what I like . . .") and the right price. Size mattered, too. Canzoneri's son talked him into the enormous 52-inch model he was trying to wedge into his Toyota sedan.

Suffice to say, environmental considerations weren't at the top of Canzoneri's list.

Soon, they might be.

Those big, bright flat-panel TVs suck down far more power than the puny cathode-ray tube TVs they're rapidly replacing. Which is why regulators and environmentalists -- who usually reserve their passion for shrinking rain forests, melting glaciers and gas-guzzling SUVs -- are turning their attention to the once-humble TV set.

Last week, after two years of debate and study, California became the first state to challenge America's heretofore unquestioned love affair with its TV set. A state panel established the nation's first energy-consumption limits for TVs up to 58 inches wide. Regulations for larger sets will be phased in later. The new rules do not affect TVs for sale now, but they will require TVs sold in California to use about a third less power by 2011 and about half as much by 2013. TVs that can't meet the standards would be banned from sale in California, which accounts for 10 percent of the 35 million new TVs sold in America every year.

The prospect of the government messing with its citizens' God-given right to a super-size TV turned what might have been a mundane regulatory proceeding into a shot heard around the world. At least three other states (Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts) and two national governments (Canada and Australia) then said they, too, would consider energy limits.

Television has long been accused of being a cultural polluter, but the California Energy Commission's move touched off debate about how much our national TV habit has contributed to fouling the physical environment as well.

The energy commission estimated that TVs account for 10 percent of household electrical use in the state, once "related devices" like digital recorders and game consoles are included. But the Consumer Electronics Association, which opposed the new rules, says that figure is misleading since it covers all of a household's electronic devices, from iPods to computers. The Arlington-based trade group estimates that the TV alone accounts for no more than 3 percent of a family's monthly power bill.

Further, the group warns that the new regulations could raise prices, limit consumer choice and stifle innovation not just in California, but nationwide, as manufacturers redesign their products to comply with the state's new law. The most vulnerable may be power-hungry big-screen models, sets that use the less efficient plasma technology, and a new generation of TVs that offer 3-D picture or combine the functions of a TV and a personal computer.

"It's not this generation of TVs that you have to be concerned about, it's the multi-function TVs of tomorrow," says Jason Oxman, the Consumer Electronics Association's senior vice president of industry affairs.

What's more, the new regulations include technical requirements that could prompt a costly overhaul in TV designs, says Jon Fairhurst, a manager for Sharp Labs, the U.S.-based research arm of the Japanese set manufacturer. To save power, he says, new TVs would have to turn off automatically when attached to a DVD player that is turned off, something no TV does now.

"As far as I know, there are no TVs that pass the standard," Fairhurst says.

State officials and environmentalists say it's about time that TVs followed other appliances whose energy use is regulated, from air conditioners to hot-water heaters. Powering down the set will not only save consumers money (roughly $8 billion over 10 years, or about $31 per household annually, according to a state report), but it will eliminate tons of greenhouse gases that otherwise would be generated by power plants.

Without the regulation, the state would need to build a $3 billion power plant to keep up with demand, the state commission says.

"Whether it's refrigerators or TV sets, anytime anyone has proposed regulation, the rallying cry is always the same: 'This will stifle innovation,' " says Noah Horowitz, senior scientist of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental group. "Well, refrigerators are far bigger today, they have more features, and they use one-quarter of the power they did 25 years ago."

Hundreds of TVs already comply with the 2011 and 2013 standards, says Horowitz, and squeezing efficiencies out of noncompliant models won't be hard or expensive. Photo sensors that automatically adjust brightness and contrast based on ambient light add little to the cost of a new set, he says.

Vizio, a leading HDTV manufacturer based in Irvine, Calif., will have no trouble complying with the state standards by 2011, says Ken Lowe, a vice president and co-founder. This includes the company's largest set, a 55-inch model. "If little old Vizio can do it, I'm sure the bigger guys can do it, too," he says.

The irony of California's action is that it comes in the home state of the movie and television industries, which have their own concerns about the regulations. The Digital Entertainment Group, a nonprofit organization that represents 70 Hollywood studios and DVD manufacturers, has called them "arbitrary and inflexible limits" that could impede the introduction of new digital products.

The Hollywood group, like the manufacturers association, says that if consumers want energy-efficient TVs, they can find them now. Most manufacturers submit their products for review to the Energy Star program, which flags the most efficient appliances, including flat-screen TVs. The program, run in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, has power standards similar to California's new limits. The difference is, Energy Star's standards are voluntary.

Either way, choosing a new TV could soon come down to more than price, brand, size and picture quality. As he puzzled over how to get his humongous Sony Bravia home the other day, Nick Canzoneri acknowledged that it may be time to start paying attention to the underlying cost of vegging out in front of the set: "Electricity isn't cheap, and it isn't getting any cheaper."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/26/AR2009112602164.html



Given our TV habits, what we need is a big, flat, green screen

By Curt Suplee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Watts up, Doc? They certainly are, thanks to the increased power demands of today's supersized flat-screen TVs. And that worries energy sentinels. So a couple of weeks ago California -- continuing in its role as the national Trendinator -- issued new efficiency standards mandating that by 2011 all TV sets with a display size smaller than Mount Rushmore must use 33 percent less energy to be legal for sale. In practical terms, this new television rule probably means the entire U.S. market will shift accordingly.

That's a good thing, and it could have a significant impact. But it's no reason to demonize the technology. Never mind hysterical news reports about the new regs, which described flat-screen TVs as "energy hogs" and "major power guzzlers." Somebody needs to switch to decaf. A 25-inch "tube" TV, the sort most of us watched for years, uses about 100 watts. Today, an average 47-inch liquid crystal display (LCD) TV consumes around 200. That difference, in itself, isn't exactly going to drain the power grid. Even monster plasma screens that need 400 to 500 watts aren't profligate per se. In fact, viewed solely in terms of cost per square inch, a set that uses four times as much energy as a 25-inch tube but produces an image more than four times larger is actually more efficient. As you might expect with TV, it all depends on how you look at it. (And if you're looking at screen sizes above 58 inches, the new California rules don't apply. Size matters.)

That doesn't mean TVs shouldn't be improved. But the trouble, as they used to say, is not in your set. It's in us. Americans now spend a record 151 hours a month watching TV, and the average household has 2.6 sets on the premises -- one per person. Plus, these sets are tricked out with all sorts of gaming gadgets such as PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, each of which draws something like 200 watts -- as much power as or even more than a 47-inch LCD itself. Throw in a Wii or two, a DVR and a sound system, and pretty soon your family-room energy demand is about the same as a strip mall's. Blaming TV wattage for this state of affairs is like blaming the national fat boom on Twinkies and potato chips.

For many households, TVs and their outriggers now account for fully 10 percent of total electric consumption, up from 3 percent in the 1980s. Sure, that's still only $8 to $12 a month -- a modest sum compared with the $30 monthly national average cable bill. But the new TV standard is not about saving money. It's about avoiding the need for more power plants and thus more schmutz in the air.

From that perspective, even a small efficiency increase can make a difference, especially in watt-conscious California, where the average home consumes a mere 580 kilowatt hours per month, compared with 1,200 in Virginia, 1,100 in Maryland and 800 in the District. Fortunately, help is on the way. For LCDs, there are new methods of illumination. That's important because liquid crystals are really smart engineering, but they're not very bright. That is, they don't emit light. They only control its passage by way of a special talent: If you hit the crystals with an electric charge, they twist around and change their orientation, sort of like the slats in a Venetian blind.

In an LCD screen, the crystals are sandwiched between two glass plates along with a set of transparent electrodes -- materials that conduct electricity. Behind the whole sandwich is a light source. According to a pattern of signals sent by the set's electronics, the crystals at each pixel (short for picture element -- the individual dots on your screen) either block the outgoing light or allow it to pass to the front of the screen. That ever-shifting pattern of pixels makes the picture.

Of course, something has to provide the light, and fluorescent tubes have traditionally done the job quite nicely. But light-emitting diodes (the ubiquitous "LEDs" found in cameras, digital clocks and other electronic gear, updated traffic lights and so forth) are a lower-power alternative. Hence the recent advent of "LED TV," a phrase that really means an LCD system backlit by LEDs, which are approximately 40 percent more efficient than conventional fluorescent systems.

LEDs are simple and literally really cool: Each diode contains two kinds of semiconductor material. One type has a surplus of electrons; the other has regions where electrons are absent, known as holes. If you run voltage across the LED, electrons from one type combine with holes from the other and emit light as they do so. The process produces very little heat. And the LEDs, which are basically just big transistors, last a long time.

It may be harder to reduce power demand in plasma sets. These units get their stunning display from a completely different process: At each pixel, a current zaps a tiny quantity of trapped neon or xenon gas, giving it so much energy that it blows the electrons right off the atoms. As the electrons return to their original locations, they emit the extra energy as high-frequency (chiefly ultraviolet) radiation. The UV in turn strikes minerals that glow red, green or blue depending on their chemical composition. Each pixel is its own light source. So when one is off, it's really black -- thus providing dramatic contrast ratios.

Some plasma TV manufacturers are already making progress in cutting energy consumption, and the task can't really pose an insuperable challenge to the nation that brought you high-fiber Pop-Tarts and Chia Pets in the shape of Abraham Lincoln. Just watch that space.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/30/AR2009113003056.html

DC Underage Drinking Laws Lax

Washington Post - The Answer Sheet
By Valerie Strauss | November 30, 2009; 12:17 PM ET

Telling teens not to drink isn't enough: One story

It was a typical high school party in Montgomery County: Dozens of teenagers got together to have fun, and as always seems to happen, kids started to drink. In fact, most of them did, and a decent number got good and drunk. Some were doing shots, including one girl who who wound up on the floor, so incoherent that other kids began to worry about her condition.

A boy, one of the few teens who had not been drinking, realized the girl needed help. He and some other kids put her in the backseat of a car, and the boy, afraid to call 911 and expose his friends to possible arrest for underage drinking, called his parents for help.

They instantly gave him first aid advice, found the closest hospital and told him to drive the girl there. They also called the hospital to ask whether the girl’s friends who had been drinking could enter the emergency room without fear of being arrested. The answer was no; there was no guarantee.

So the sober boy, the kid who was responsible enough not to drink and who was smart enough to get help for this girl, took her in, and, may have saved her life. He also contacted the girl’s parents, who showed up at the hospital, grateful to the boy who had kept his wits about him.

The only reason the sober boy knew what to do is because he is responsible and actually talks to his parents. They have discussed what to do in this situation. The parents, instead of simply telling their kid not to drink, explained how to get help when necessary.

That is a lesson that bears repeating, because simply telling kids not to drink is not enough. I’ve looked at rules for parties that some schools have given to parents and that are posted on parenting Web sites, and the ones I saw did not advise parents to tell their kids to call 911 if they or someone they are with gets in trouble.

Some colleges and universities have wised up and are teaching students how to recognize the signs of alcohol poisoning and what to do. But frankly, that’s too late: This information should be taught before high school.

Another thing I wondered was this: Why should kids who want to help another in this kind of situation have to worry about legal trouble when a life may be at stake?

A few years ago in Loudoun County, some kids who were drunk left a friend in a park because they were afraid to get him help--and the boy died, according to Kurt Erickson, president of the Washington Region Alcohol Program, sponsored by Geico, Inc.

That prompted some members of the Virginia legislature to sponsor legislation for a “good Samaritan” law that would essentially let underage drinkers “right a wrong” by helping out another underage drinker without fear of serious penalty. The bill has never passed.

Erickson said that Maryland doesn’t have a “good Samaritan” law either, but the real problem in the greater Washington area is the District.

In the nation’s capital, underage drinking is not a criminal offense, per a 2004 District Superior Court ruling. Unfortunately, the Metropolitan Police Department doesn’t have the ability to pursue civil penalties, so, Erickson said, kids from all over the region come to drink in the District.

“It’s a virtual playground for underage drinking,” he said.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/telling-teens-not-to-drink-isn.html

Parking History At The National Building Museum

On the spot: Putting parking in its proper place

By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 1, 2009

Let's look at the parking data points. Last month the National Building Museum opened an exhibition devoted entirely to the subject of parking, its architecture and social history, from the highs and lows of parking structure design to historical artifacts -- a 1930s guidebook listing parking lots open to African Americans -- that prove no matter what odd thread you tug in the fabric of Americana, you often get the same, dispiriting story. The exhibition coincided with a mostly overlooked convention, the Parking Show of Shows hosted by the National Parking Association, which held its annual meeting at National Harbor a few weeks ago. Which came only a few days after The Washington Post reported on a scandalously high-priced and underutilized parking garage built with public funds in Columbia Heights.

Three parking narratives, with three very different morals. The Building Museum's fascinating and comprehensive "House of Cars" exhibition takes parking for granted, and from that assumption tries to cover the subject dispassionately. It proves that parking structures needn't be ugly, that they were once more routinely beautiful and integrated into the urban fabric, and that even today they can be architecturally daring if real architects are allowed to explore the poetry of the structure. The Parking Show of Shows -- an exhibition for parking professionals that featured the cutting edge of parking technology and design -- didn't just take parking for granted as a necessity, it loved everything about parking, from the latest designs for sustainable lighting fixtures to a new age of robotic parking valets that may revolutionize the way we store our cars.

But it was the odd story of a parking structure in Columbia Heights, built by the city with $40 million of taxpayers' money, that may be the most pertinent data point in the future of parking. Here was a classic case of how good intentions can get fouled up with old-fashioned civic extortion. The retailer Target demanded the garage as a condition of moving to the city. The city built it. But something strange happened along the way: The expected hordes of drivers didn't materialize. They came by foot, by Metro, but not in cars, at least not in the numbers projected, and now the lot is losing money, costing the city some $100,000 per month.

Stories like this, popping up around the country, may portend a seismic shift in how we think about parking.

A colorful history

But first, the history. Almost every type of modern structure, from prisons to hospitals to airports, has been anatomized by someone, and parking structures are no exception. In January 2008, author and historian Shannon Sanders McDonald visited the Library of Congress to lecture about her book "The Parking Garage: Design and Evolution of a Modern Urban Form." McDonald was an adviser to the National Building Museum exhibition (which received funding from the NPA), and the spirit of her book pervades much of the current show. Parking, they both demonstrate, is far more interesting than anyone ever thought.

Early cars were remarkably sensitive little beasts, more hygienic than horses (which left manure in the streets, and sometimes their mortal carcass, too), but also more sensitive to the elements than today's cars. With leather seats, open tops and finicky engines, cars needed protection from cold and rain, and thus early parking garages tended to look like other buildings where we store things. They were often masonry structures, sometimes with windows, built to a scale in line with local neighborhoods. Look at an early garage, and it's not necessarily clear that it's a garage.

Which is to say, early garages weren't as hideously ugly as the famous Cage Garage -- built in 1933 in Boston -- which appears in McDonald's book and the National Building Museum exhibition. As cars grew up, as gasoline became an all-weather commodity and cars became comfortable cocoons with sturdy metal shells, garages no longer needed to be impervious to weather. The Cage Garage was essentially the garage we are all so sadly familiar with today: a forbidding stack of open decks, a perfect example of form following function and an even better example of why form shouldn't always follow function. It was torn down in 1985, but the damage was done. A basic tolerance for ugly parking structures, a particularly soul-killing type of architecture that would blight whole neighborhoods and rend the urban fabric of so many once-walkable downtowns, had entered the American system.

Because parking, after all, was a necessity.

Or perhaps it was a right, a fundamental freedom that came hand in hand with the freedom to drive, to be mobile, to push out from the gritty city farther and farther into the once-green hinterlands. Without parking, there could be no driving. And that sense of parking as a fundamental right expressed itself in the self-park garage, most of them just as ugly as the Cage Garage. But self-parking also meant absolute freedom to come and go, to keep one's own schedule. And avoid any of the social interaction that you might have had waiting for your car.

As self-parking became the parking ideal -- you can see how aesthetically appealing it was in historic videos which show cars ascending gentle ramps with almost voluptuous ease -- parking garages were redesigned with safer and more negotiable ramps. But self-park came at a cost: You couldn't fit as many cars in. Which meant that garages got bigger and more forbidding in their appearance.

The exhibition deals with this issue clinically, exploring the innovations in ramp systems and latter-day efforts to hide and cloak the garage with a more genial face. But there was no hiding the damage these buildings were doing. A 1967 photograph from Anchorage shows a gigantic parking structure dwarfing everything around it, as if the city itself is an afterthought.

There was an era, says Sarah Leavitt, curator of the National Building Museum show, when cities took pride in these structures. But that pride, based on the sense that a modern city couldn't progress without adequate parking, hid a darker indifference to the historical fabric of the city. The exhibition also includes before-and-after shots of a block of F Street NW, showing the loss of two historic buildings to a hideous parking garage built next to the Hotel Washington. It also includes an image of one of the most notorious parking garages in the world, the Michigan Theater in Detroit, made by slamming concrete decks into the shell of a classic and beautifully ornamented movie house. To this day, people still park there surrounded by the ghostly architectural shadow of a building once meant to please and delight.

Dealing with a nightmare

The self-park lot didn't have to be ugly. Santiago Calatrava, the Spanish architect, managed to design a not-hideous garage for the Milwaukee Art Museum; the parking structure expresses its form both honestly and with graceful and appealing repetitions of gentle, rounded-V-shape supports. But for all the beautiful images of parking done well, it's the nightmare images that haunt one in this exhibition. Some of the most fascinating material is found in a room devoted to parking as seen in contemporary art and popular culture. In film, we find a recurrent trope: the parking lot as site of social discord, violence and anomie. In the 1961 film version of "West Side Story," the boys rumble in a parking lot. In 1976's "All the President's Men," Deep Throat unfolds his unbelievably big conspiracy in a subterranean, and empty, parking lot.

The emptiness of parking lots haunts the imagination of several contemporary artists, including Carsten Meier, whose large-format photograph of a vacant top deck of a garage in Columbus, Ohio, makes the space feel post-apocalyptic. The same whistling emptiness can be felt in a video by Peter Rose, and in a sculpture by Rita McBride, which reproduces the bracingly spare lines of a standard, open-deck garage in nickel silver. But without cars. Two ideas emerge from this room: that parking has always been the dark side of the driving dream, and that the geometric ugliness of so many garages is a byproduct of architects who were, in fact, aesthetically drawn to the plain, simple planes and angles of the form. Architects often have strange ideas.

None of this metaphysical angst was on display at the Parking Show of Shows. At one booth, J.A. Uniforms was hawking handsome five-button red vests with epaulets, modern-day livery for the old-fashioned valet. Across the room, Woody Nash of Boomerang Systems was promoting the "world's only free-roaming" robot valet. It's a fascinating system that harks back to the days of the old automated garage. By retrofitting existing garages with sensors, crawling robots can slide under your vehicle, lift it and carry it to a parking spot without opening the driver's door.

"They can move laterally and spin on a dime," Nash said. "And they never take coins out of the coin holder."

But the future isn't all bright for the National Parking Association. Away from the exhibition hall, with its free-flowing red wine and mini-burgers, participants gathered to hear lawyer and lobbyist Vincent Petraro describe how he helped keep at bay a New York proposal to institute "congestion pricing" in the gridlocked south end of Manhattan. This new user fee would charge drivers entering the zone from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Proponents hope it will clear up the streets, clean up the air and generate revenue. Petraro worries that it will hurt business. He cites London, which instituted a similar plan in 2003.

"Yeah it worked, if you want to create a ghost town," Petraro says of a city that at last check was anything but a ghost town.

Congestion pricing, says Prof. Donald Shoup of UCLA, could hurt the bottom line for parking lot owners. The power of that bottom line was obvious throughout the Parking Show of Shows, where even bright signs -- environmentally sustainable lighting and other improvements to design -- were predicated on their cost savings. But Shoup, who studies the economics of parking, is interested in a different, more civic-oriented bottom line. He argues that parking is yet one more element of the basic American infrastructure that hasn't been subjected to the basic rules of the market. Cities all too often under-price their parking meters, which explains why drivers tie up traffic cruising for a cheap space. And for decades cities have required developers to include parking as part of new construction, which hides the real cost -- economic and environmental -- of parking.

Which brings us to Columbia Heights, and yet another parking boondoggle. But this may also be the future of parking: Less is more. Most of the larger discussion of parking, including the dialogue at the National Parking Association and to a somewhat disturbing extent in the National Building Museum exhibition, is predicated on the idea that parking is a necessity. That it can be improved, but not eliminated. Even the act of studying parking as an evolving architectural form all too often seems to legitimize that form. But the emptiness of that lot in Columbia Heights, and the nightmare images on display at the "House of Cars" show, suggest that we may not be nearly as addicted to parking as we once believed.

There may, in fact, be life after parking, especially if cities begin to treat it more like smoking -- a public nuisance to be pushed to the limits of the urban infrastructure -- than a public right, to be accommodated no matter what the cost. And those haunting images of empty lots and vacant parking decks? Perhaps they were fantasies, not nightmares, portents of a better, more rational, healthier and greener world.

One can dream.

House of Cars Through July 11 at the National Building Museum, 401 F St. NW. Call 202-272-2448 or visit http://www.nbm.org.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/29/AR2009102905230.html

Pleasant Plains, DC

The District's Overlooked 'Bull's-Eye'
Pleasant Plains Strives To Make a Name for Itself

By Ann Cameron Siegal
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, October 17, 2009

District residents and community groups are working to get one Northwest neighborhood some recognition -- because few people even know it exists.

E. Gail Anderson Holness said her community of Pleasant Plains is "the bull's-eye of D.C." Holness, who serves on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission for Ward 1, moved to Pleasant Plains more than two decades ago because of its proximity to Howard University. She graduated from Howard's law school in 1981. "Some neighbors have been here over 40 years," she said. "Their children grew up with each other."

Defining Pleasant Plains is not an easy task. Its boundaries shift depending on who is describing them. Real estate agents use narrower parameters than the community's civic association does, probably for marketing purposes. Nearby communities, such as Columbia Heights, have names that are better known.

Located north of Florida Avenue and east of Sherman Avenue, Pleasant Plains has brick, dormered Wardman-style rowhouses and Federal-style houses, including many with front porches set 20 steps or more above street level.

The bustle of Georgia Avenue seems to melt away on the residential side streets. Residents gather at small local hangouts, such as Sankofa Video and Books, Soul Vegetarian, and the Howard Deli -- a fixture in the community since the 1930s.

In the 1700s, Pleasant Plains was the name of a large colonial estate stretching from present-day 16th Street NW to Howard University and owned by the Holmead family. Over time, chunks were parceled out, eventually becoming the neighborhoods of Mount Pleasant, Columbia Heights and Park View. Today's Pleasant Plains is what was left over, said Sylvia Robinson, a resident and co-founder of the Pleasant Plains Neighborhood Network.

Jo Strowder and Margaret Weusi bought their home more than a decade ago. "It's brick with hardwood floors, a sunroom, a finished basement and parking in the back," Strowder said. Because of shallow bedrock, not all Pleasant Plains houses have basements.

Strowder said she appreciates the camaraderie on her street -- an atmosphere that reminds her of her childhood in the 1950s and '60s. "Residents are concerned about keeping their properties up," she said. "We holler across the street and water each other's yards."

A year ago, Ian and Sarah Pienik moved next door to Strowder and began transforming their steep hillside into a garden. Ian Pienik rattles off the name of each neighbor who donated plants for the project. Strowder, whose own yard has a plethora of thriving plants, said of the Pieniks, "These two are setting the pace as far as yards go."

The Pieniks bought a fixer-upper because they wanted to put their own thumbprint on the house, Ian Pienik said. "There's a Mount Pleasant feel to it," he said.

Efforts to revive what Holness referred to as "a community's community" are multifaceted. Residents are relying on individual initiatives to define their neighborhood. For example, since the Pieniks landscaped the tree boxes in front of their early-1900s house, others on the block followed suit.

Robinson, a former computer analyst, grew up a few blocks away in Petworth. She is now working to create ties that bind Pleasant Plains residents together -- keeping them abreast of civic issues and encouraging them to become active members of the community.

Catalysts toward that end include the Pleasant Plains Civic Association, the Emergence Community Arts Collective and Mentoring Works2, all part of the neighborhood network.

Darren Jones, president of the civic association, grew up in the neighborhood and bought his own home there in 1993. "My family has always been involved in the community," he said. He graduated from Banneker when it was a junior high school, and his niece recently graduated from Banneker High School.

The arts collective arose from Robinson's dream of creating a center where neighborhood residents could get to know and learn from one another. During the two years of work it took to get the once-dilapidated building at 733 Euclid St. NW into shape, she found a volunteer spirit she hadn't expected. What started out as a request for one weekend of assistance turned into a lot of volunteers contributing more than 650 hours of manual labor.

Robinson also discovered the house had an extensive history helping women and children through difficult times. For three decades, beginning in the 1930s, it was the Meriwether Home for Children. Today, the "Emerging Women" exhibit tells the story of those connected with the building's mission.

The arts collective opened in 2006 and hosts art classes, social activities, educational seminars and support groups.

Mentoring Works2, which also started in 2006, engages local youths in community service projects. It is devising a network for door-to-door newsletter delivery. "One of our biggest obstacles [to community networking] is communication," Jones said. "Many of our older residents aren't connected to e-mail."

The Pleasant Plains Neighborhood Network is also working on a walkable heritage trail that will highlight 18 points in the neighborhood's educational, industrial and business past. Residents are being proactive in trying to define the incoming Howard Town Center along Georgia Avenue, rather than leaving all the decisions to developers. Emerging as Pleasant Plains "want-to-haves" are small, sustainable businesses; sit-down restaurants; and a grocery store. "We don't want to see big-box stores," said Jones. Plenty of those are available in nearby Columbia Heights.

New landscaping and speed-control measures are slated for Sherman Avenue, which has become a major commuter route as drivers bypass Georgia Avenue. A planned tree-lined median strip will reduce Sherman Avenue to one lane of traffic in each direction, returning that street to a neighborhood boulevard rather than a thoroughfare. With all the changes on the horizon, Strowder said she stays in Pleasant Plains because "there's so much going on in this little microcosm of a community, including all that's available at Howard." In fact, a lot of Howard alumni live in this neighborhood, said ANC Commissioner Thomas Smith, a Howard grad himself. Pleasant Plains is "a melting pot within a melting pot," said Smith.

Jones, a reference librarian at the Library of Congress, said, "This is a great place for public transportation." Robinson, who doesn't own a car, agreed, listing the four Metro stops within walking distance. (They are Georgia Avenue-Petworth, Columbia Heights, U Street and Shaw-Howard University on the Yellow and Green lines.)

For Holness, Pleasant Plains will continue to be difficult to define "until you name something after it." There are celebrations for Columbia Heights Day and Georgia Avenue Day. "Maybe it's time to have a Pleasant Plains Day," she said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/16/AR2009101600084.html

Pleasant Plains resident Sylvia Robinson fulfilled a dream of creating a thriving community center. (By Ann Cameron Siegal For The Washington Post)

Pleasant Plains

Saturday, October 17, 2009

BOUNDARIES: Park Road NW to the north, Florida Avenue NW to the south, Warder and Sixth streets NW to the east, and Sherman Avenue NW to the west. (The civic association extends the western boundary to 14th Street.)

SCHOOLS: Harriet Tubman Elementary School, Park View Elementary School, Garnett-Patterson Middle School, Howard University Middle School of Math and Science, Banneker High School, Cardozo High School.

HOME SALES: Thirty-one houses are on the market, from $149,900 (for an as-is shell) to $519,700, according to Sheila Cross Reid, president of Avanti Real Estate. The median selling price over the past few months was $334,800.

WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE: Four Metro stations on the Green and Yellow lines, shopping, restaurants, Columbia Heights, the U Street corridor.

WITHIN 10 MINUTES BY CAR: National Zoo, Rock Creek Park, George Washington University, the White House.

Pleasant Plains residents on Fairmont Street NW share plants to landscape their steep front yards.

Fenty Frat Bros Get Happy; Oh What A Scam!

Hmmmmm... if you don't get it, you don't get it... so says the Post's ad.....

So let's see - when is a fee charged by a contractor to a subcontractor a kick back? Apparently not in Fentyland. I hire you to do some work for me and I can charge you a fee? That is a kick back.

And the Council says blah blah blah - when if they didn't know about these shenanigans, they were asleep on the job. Can we spell c-o-r-r-u-p-t-i-o-n? Catania and K. Brown act shocked, surprised, etc, but they have merrily gone down many of the Fenty scam paths. There is a rat in the kitchen.

And Sinclair Skinner? Before Fenty became mayor, Skinner was running a dry cleaner on Georgia Ave. NW and carrying on with basically homo-phobic and "anti-white" public ranting and ravings. He sponsored a pamphlet (The Georgia Avenue Defender) and neighborhood posters attacking Councilmember Jim Graham as "Gramzilla" that included some pretty strange cartoon depictions of Graham. Now Skinner has a design and engineering firm and DC government contract. Oh the things that can happen when your friend becomes Mayor.



The above is one of the cartoon posters Mr. Skinner had posted throughout my community in 2006. See City Paper article: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/cover/2006/cover0811.html?navCenterTopImg


Contractor chose Fenty-linked firms
Council fired up at hearing; Catania says deals must be reviewed.

By Nikita Stewart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 31, 2009

A firm owned by a friend of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's that was selected in a controversial arrangement with the D.C. Housing Authority to oversee a dozen recreation construction projects gave work to other companies with ties to the mayor, according to testimony and documents revealed at a D.C. Council hearing Friday.

Council members, still angry at their discovery last week that at least $82 million in contracts were funneled through the Housing Authority to build the facilities -- a process that circumvented the council's authority to approve contracts worth more than $1 million -- were combative at times with members of the Fenty administration who testified at the day-long hearing.

Banneker Ventures, owned by Omar Karim, a fraternity brother of the mayor's, was chosen to oversee all the projects in partnership with Regan Associates of Herndon, whose principals are major donors to Fenty's reelection campaign.

Records show that subcontracts went to RBK Landscaping and Construction, owned by Fenty's longtime friend Keith Lomax, and to Liberty Engineering and Design, owned by fraternity brother and friend Sinclair Skinner.

Several council members, including David A. Catania (I-At Large), who has often supported the mayor's initiatives, called the contracts illegal and insisted that they go before the council for review.

"The worst thing you can do is dig in your heels," Catania told city administrator Neil O. Albert. "Your office will be well-counseled to bring them back to us as expeditiously as possible. . . . This is not a water-under-the-dam moment."

Attorney General Peter Nickles has said that the contracts are "legal and binding." Some members have said the council could turn to the courts to resolve the dispute.

Albert said he would consult the city's legal team to see what is possible. He said there are 12 to 19 projects worth between $82 million and $86 million, all overseen by Banneker, which he said won a competitive bid to be the program manager of the projects. He said no contracts, other than one with Banneker, have been signed.

Albert and others from the Office of the Chief Financial Officer who testified before the council explained how the projects were built by transferring money from the Department of Parks and Recreation to the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development to the Housing Authority to the D.C. Housing Enterprise, a subsidiary of the Housing Authority.

Albert said the process was used to get projects done faster, to save money and to utilize the Housing Authority's capacity to oversee the projects.

Rachna Butani, director of HRGM Corp., a D.C. construction firm, said the process was not transparent. She and her father testified that HRGM bid on the subcontracts that Banneker oversaw.

Butani said the firm's representatives gave her little information when she was offering her proposal to renovate Park View Community Park. She said they told her to use $250,000 to $500,000 as a guide to come up with her proposal. Her bid was rejected, and she later discovered that the project cost $1.2 million.

"There's no evidence to me that that project should be $1.2 million," she said.

Council members also were concerned to learn that Banneker collected a nine percent fee from contractors. It was unclear whether the fees were standard, but council members said they were troubled over the layers of fees that were being applied in the process. The city government also paid a management fee to the Housing Authority.

The contract between the Housing Enterprise and Banneker to manage the recreation projects gives Banneker a fixed fee of $4.2 million and bonuses ranging from $150,000 to $200,000, depending on timely completion. Banneker uses the money to pay its partner, Regan Associates, as a consultant. Banneker also has the right to charge the subcontractors that the firm selects to design and build the projects a nine percent fee.

Albert testified that Banneker also managed the $50 million construction of the Walker Jones Education Complex, which opened in August, and the $33 million project at the Deanwood Community Center, which is to be completed next year.

Albert said that those contracts were also awarded through the Housing Authority and that he believed they also did not receive council approval.

Albert praised Banneker for completing projects "on budget and on time."

The commendation irked council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large), who questioned why Banneker is also a subcontractor of Jones Lang Lasalle, a real estate management firm. As the subcontractor, Karim is a consultant to the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development on various projects.

He also questioned whether an employee in the deputy mayor's office who was working on the recreation projects is a former employee of Banneker.

During their back-and-forth, Albert giggled at one point. "It's funny. Isn't it funny?" Brown asked, clearly upset. "This is serious."

"If you don't have a small sense of humor, I apologize," Albert said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/30/AR2009103003607.html?hpid=moreheadlines

RheeFenty Appears At City Council Hearing

Ms. Rhee appears at the City Council meeting and acknowledges that yes the those fired are older than the average age of DCPS teachers and the average age of the 900 new hires is considerably younger when she has been selling her line that both groups accurately reflected DCPS' teachers' demographic. In addition to age descrimination, Ms. Rhee acknowledges illegally shifting monies from one program (regular teachers) to another program (summer school), a maneuver that requires Council approval. And she basically says - "screw you Council, I did it, I challenge you to do something about it".

Her logic that she made a decision between the interests of adults and the interests of students is ludicrous. The adults teach the students. It is not some simplistic one against the other.



Rhee ignored instructions about cuts, council says



By Bill Turque

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 30, 2009

D.C. Council members angrily accused Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee on Thursday of skirting the law by deciding unilaterally to lay off teachers and staff -- instead of trimming summer school operations -- to save $9 million in the school system's budget.

The decision, which Rhee defended on legal and policy grounds, was one of a series of disclosures during a contentious day-long oversight hearing that shed new light on the layoffs. The dismissals have sparked vociferous street protests, a union lawsuit and the most intense public debate of Rhee's 28-month tenure.

For some council members, the revelations confirmed suspicions that Rhee ignored a council directive to trim the summer school program and manipulated this year's budget process to further her goal of replacing a large portion of the city's 4,000 teachers. They vowed to press their investigation of the dismissals.

The hearing also laid bare festering tensions between Rhee and D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D), a possible mayoral candidate next year, who has for months criticized the school leader for a lack of communication and transparency. He said her decision, which he called "incredibly cavalier," violated legal requirements that she submit a "reprogramming" request to the council when shifting funds.

"I'm talking about the law," Gray said. "Why bother to have a legislative body if the people in the executive branch do whatever they choose because they don't like the decision of the legislative body?"

Others took issue with Gray's analysis, but even some of Rhee's most steadfast supporters on the council rebuked her for the bitter state of relations between the school system and elected officials.

"We cannot continue to have this kind of craziness," said Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who noted encouraging signs of progress in the schools but lamented that "we are sitting in a chamber where tensions couldn't be higher." Under Rhee, test scores have risen recently, and enrollment appears to have stabilized after a long decline.

'Change is hard'

Testifying under oath, Rhee said she was open to improving communications but added: "Change is hard. Some of the decisions we are making are going to cause some opposition and push-back. We can't shy away from those decisions because we don't want to hear the noise."

Rhee said the Oct. 2 layoffs of 266 teachers and other educators were needed to help close a $43.9 million shortfall in the 2010 budget. Union leaders have denounced the action as an illegal mass firing designed to purge older educators. They have gone to court to have the teachers reinstated.

Rhee also revealed new information about the teachers who were fired and the 934 she hired during the spring and summer. In written testimony delivered Wednesday night, she told Gray that the average age of the District's teachers is 42 and that the average age of those who were laid off is 48. The average age of the 934 new hires is 32.

Rhee had deflected claims of age discrimination in interviews this month, saying that the average age of the laid-off educators was consistent with the age of the school workforce.

Thursday's hearing centered on $20.7 million the council cut from the school budget July 31, part of a citywide belt-tightening because of declining tax revenue. About $9 million of the cut came in the form of a reduction in 2010 summer school operations.

Rhee said that summer school has become a critical component in helping high school students catch up academically, recover course credits and stay on a path toward graduation. Given a choice between protecting the interests of adults and students, she said, she chose to protect students. The $9 million represents a little more than 100 of the 266 teacher layoffs.

A visibly exasperated Gray was not swayed, citing what he called Rhee's violation of city regulations.

"You think that's inconsequential?" he asked. "You think that's okay?"

Rhee responded: "I think that at times you are making difficult decisions, and things don't always happen in the ideal manner," adding that Attorney General Peter Nickles and James Sandman, the school system's general counsel, advised her that she was on firm legal ground. She added that she will submit the reprogramming request next year before the beginning of summer school.

Mixed phone signals

Gray asked why the council had to wait until Thursday to learn that rerouting summer school funds was part of her strategy for meeting the shortfall. Rhee, in turn, accused Gray of being unwilling to pick up the phone.

"There have been multiple occasions in the last few months where I have tried to get on the phone to talk to you about these issues," she said, describing one particular day in which two scheduled conference calls fell through because he was not available.

Council members also denounced Rhee's chief financial deputy, Noah Wepman, who acknowledged that he was aware in mid-July that as the school system was hiring hundreds of new teachers it faced a deficit of between $12 million and 13 million in its 2009 budget. Wepman said he briefed Rhee on the deficit, which eventually grew to $20 million, and said she would need to adjust the 2010 budget to close the gap. One of the options discussed, Wepman said, was layoffs.

Wepman also acknowledged that he never shared information about the deficit with his superior, the District's chief financial officer, Natwar M. Gandhi, who certified the 2010 budget without knowing of the potential shortfall. Wepman conceded that he should have been more communicative.

Joyce E. Smithey, an employment lawyer with Rifkin, Livingston, Levitan & Silver, said in an interview that "if the evidence shows that the chancellor hired employees in bad faith, then the question is whether she did so with the goal of forcing a layoff of older employees. If that's the case, then any admission about advanced knowledge of budget troubles could be damaging."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/29/AR2009102901889_2.html?hpid=moreheadlines

DC Police Operational Orders And Directives

From themail@DCWatch, information on how the DC police are supposed to do it (by their own orders and directives):

Police Documents Released in Response to PCJF Lawsuit
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, mvh@justiceonline.org

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has just obtained a massive disclosure of previously withheld documents governing police operations. The PCJF forced the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, DC (MPD) to disclose nearly all of its General Orders and Special Orders and related directives that dictate how officers are to exercise their authority. Most of this information has been withheld by the police from the public. Those orders, released in response to a PCJF lawsuit, are being posted and made publicly available on the PCJF’s web site at http://www.justiceonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=DCMPDIndexOfDirectives or by visiting DCMPD.org.

The PCJF filed a lawsuit on February 5 to force the DC Metropolitan Police Department’s operations out of the shadows through disclosure of its orders and policies. The DC MPD was in violation of its legal obligations, as mandated by the DC Council in 2001, to make this information public and had further refused to make such information public upon written request under the DC Freedom of Information Act. The PCJF’s lawsuit followed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for these documents. The public can now review what the MPD internal policy dictates regarding police-resident contacts, stops and frisks, restrictions on MPD high speed vehicular pursuits, use of closed circuit television cameras, handling of property, obligations to release persons through the citation release program, electronic recording of interrogations, use of canines, traffic safety compliance checkpoints, and a range of other issues that span the full scope of police authority. Advocacy organizations now have access to orders pertaining to processing of deaf or hearing impaired citizens, juveniles, transgendered persons and other groups requiring special care.

The MPD has long refused efforts from civil rights and civil liberties and community based organizations for this disclosure, but the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund went to court to get the documents. The MPD is still withholding a smaller number of orders claiming they are “law enforcement sensitive” and the MPD has yet to release, as demanded, copies of its staff manuals. These matters remain pending before the Court. The PCJF has also sued to force the MPD to publish these materials on the Internet, and to maintain them as current, so that citizens and the public can access these materials on demand without even having to file a request. Internet publication is required by the DC Freedom of Information statute, but the MPD has refused to comply with the law. In response to the PCJF lawsuit, the MPD posted some “selected” Orders on its web site. However the materials obtained by the PCJF and now being made available on the PCJF web site are a vastly larger trove of records and resources.

Last month, DC Superior Court Judge Judith N. Macaluso ruled in favor of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund that it could proceed with its suit to compel the MPD to comply with those Internet publication directives. “Public disclosure of the operational policies and practices, orders and staff instructions of the police department is essential for policing in a democratic society and to establish accountability,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, cofounder and attorney with the PCJF. “Disclosure is essential to ensure that the police department does not operate above the law and does not constitute the law, but performs those functions and exercises only that authority which the citizenry has deemed appropriate,” she continued.

http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2009/09-10-28.htm

The Unresponsive Mayor

Considering the unquestioning support the Washington Post gives Mr. Fenty, the following cartoon was a little bit of a surprise to me.




http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/opinions/tomtoles/?name=Toles&date=10272009&type=c

Mr. Nickles Flip Flops On What Is Legal - Parks Contracts Now Legal He Says

Mr. Nickles knows best as he has said at a community meeting I once attended...... but even he has to backtrack sometimes - will anyone on the council besides Mr. Thomas have a spine to stand up to Fenty arrogance? Mr. Gray and Mr. K. Brown say some appropriate things but let us see their actions. For the Fenty believers all I can say is Mr. Fenty's Kool-Aide must be stronger than anything Mr. Barry (Mayor-For-Life) was ever able to brew!



D.C. parks contracts are legal, official says
Nickles had said housing group broke law in approval process

By Nikita Stewart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 27, 2009

D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles said Monday that any past and current contracts awarded without the approval of the D.C. Council are "legal and binding," three days after he had said the D.C. Housing Authority broke city law by awarding $82 million worth of such contracts, most of them to firms with personal and political ties to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D).

The apparent reversal enraged council members already angered by what they see as the Fenty administration's continued disregard for the council's role in legislating and overseeing city agencies. Council members also criticized Nickles's judgment as the city's top legal official.

"That's classic Peter Nickles. This is just bad government 101," said council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large), who said the council could be forced to sue the Fenty administration to block the contracts.

Nickles's latest opinion came in a letter to the interim executive director of the D.C. Housing Authority, the agency that recently awarded a dozen contracts for the construction of parks, recreation centers and ballfields. The Fenty administration used the housing agency as a development vehicle for the projects.

City law requires that any contract in excess of $1 million be approved by the council. Officials with the housing authority, which is independent of the city government, did not think that law applied to its procurement process. The attorney general told housing authority officials Friday that the law did apply and that they should submit the contracts to the council.

But in an interview Monday, Nickles said his opinion should apply to "future contracts." He cited legal problems with nullifying past and current agreements and said the authority had a long-standing practice of awarding contracts without council approval. "They did not understand until the law was made clear to them," he said Monday.

Council member Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5), chairman of the Committee on Libraries, Parks and Recreation, dismissed Nickles's explanation.

"What he's doing is backpedaling on his opinion Friday. They're trying to protect the people who have already received the contracts," Thomas said. "I guess we're just going to have to go to court."

Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D), who consulted the council's general counsel, said he was "perplexed" and "puzzled" by Nickles's opinion. "For the attorney general to give a carte blanche green light to these questionable contracts, even before council hearings or any legislative action, is inappropriate and not in compliance with my reading of the law. If they are required to be submitted, we make no distinction between the past and the future. We expect to receive these contracts," he said.

Nickles said his opinion Monday "clarified" his opinion Friday. "They're perfectly consistent," he said. "The mayor's not happy. The council's not happy, but I'm following the law. This is not an easy job. I call them how I see them."

Four council members, including Brown and Thomas, are holding a public meeting Friday and have requested that City Administrator Neil O. Albert, Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi and other members of the administration appear to explain how the contracts were awarded.

Banneker Ventures, owned by Omar Karim, Fenty's fraternity brother, was named construction manager on all 12 projects. His firm partnered with Regan Associates, a major contributor to the mayor's reelection campaign.

Nickles and officials at the Housing Authority said the contracts were competitively bid.

Privately, Fenty supporters questioned whether Nickles hastily issued his opinion Friday and erred in his statements about the contracts.

The city could have a major legal problem on its hands, said experts in procurement law. They said the contracts can be considered "void ab initio," meaning they are voided because they violated city law.

The city has faced the issue previously, said Keith D. Coleman, a former legal adviser in the city's Office of Contracting and Procurement. He said the city could void the contracts and pay vendors for services rendered. The vendors "didn't know the District government didn't follow procedure," Coleman said. "They're innocent bystanders, so to speak."

Coleman, a lawyer at Reed Smith, said he recommends ratification, a process in which the contracts get approval after they were already awarded.

Gray said he was aware of the practice, which he said quashes Nickles's opinion that the Housing Authority contracts do not have to go before the council.

The controversy over the contracts comes as Fenty has clashed with local lawmakers by reappointing acting parks director Ximena Hartsock, whom the council rejected in a 7 to 5 vote Oct. 6. Fenty signed an executive order Friday that will keep Hartsock in place for 180 days while he looks for a replacement. Nickles upheld the mayor's order, although some council members said it was illegal.

The council is asking Gandhi to withhold Hartsock's salary. Thomas said he will probably ask Gandhi to also withhold money from the Housing Authority to pay the awarded contracts.

In his first public appearance with Hartsock since he signed the executive order, Fenty took questions from reporters Monday after an announcement about a city program to open recreation centers to public school students who will be out of school Thursday and Friday.

"It's going to be tough to find someone who has her energy, her skill set and her ability to get things done," Fenty said in an interview, hours before Nickles issued his second opinion on the contracts.

The mayor declined to discuss the "ins and outs" of the contracts. When asked about the tension with his colleagues in the legislative branch, Fenty, a former Ward 4 council member said, "This is the best council we've ever had."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102603280.html

Water Leak In the Street - How Long Does It Take To Fix?

I am wondering a few things about a water leak in our street. The picture below shows a water leak in the middle of the street on the 1100 block of Fairmont St. NW. I took the photo on September 24, 2009. At that date, the leak had already been going for at least a few weeks.



Soon after I took this picture, emergency no parking signs went up and on one day a crew was out looking like they were doing preparation work to fix the leak. I asked them about the leak and they said it was going to be fixed. Since then the no parking signs came down and the water continues to come up out of the middle of the road.

Today I called the Water And Sewer Authority DC to see if I can find out any info about the leak. While the woman I spoke with was very nice, I was unable to get any info beyond that the leak has been reported and she would "send a message to the foreman for the area" that the leak continues (and has gotten bigger).

A variety of concerns / questions come to my mind about this leak. With freezing temperatures coming sooner than later, this is an ice patch and potential accident waiting to happen. Doe sthis result in contamination to our drinking water? I don't drink it or cook with it, but I would like to know... Historically, this area of the water pipe has had a number of breaks in the past 20 years - at least 4 times the pipe has broken within 20 feet of where the leak is now. How efficient is it to keep fixing a pipe that keeps breaking? Is there ever any consideration of a bigger problem than a one time leaking pipe? I know that if a pipe kept breaking in my house every 3 to 4 years, I would conclude that previous fixes were just band-aids.

I also wonder how WASA-DC prioritizes fixing pipe leaks. Is two months plus standard time to expect a repair?

___________________________________________________________

Update - Monday, November 2, 2009 - According to a man I spoke with in the DC-WASA Public Affairs office this morning, work on the leak is supposed to begin this week.

Fenty Intensifies The Head Butting; Renominates Rejected Nominee

Mayor Fenty doesn't get the meaning of "no". He has reappointed his rejected nominee for head of Parks and Recreation, Ximena Hartsock. She must really like Fenty to be willing to take the heat for him or she drinks a lot of Kool-Aide. I can't figure out what she thinks is in it for her.


Feud between D.C. mayor, council intensifies
Board had recently rejected woman as unqualified for job

By Tim Craig and Nikita Stewart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 25, 2009

D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has escalated a bitter feud with council members by renaming an interim head of the Department of Parks and Recreation, three weeks after the council rejected the nominee as unsuitable for the position.

Fenty's decision sets up a confrontation between the mayor and the council, and the fighting represents a major test of Home Rule as council members accuse Fenty of ignoring their role in the legislating and governing processes.

Several council members said they want Ximena Hartsock, whom they rejected 7 to 5 on Oct. 6, to leave the position immediately. One plans to ask the chief financial officer to withhold her salary. But Fenty administration officials said Hartsock will remain in charge until they find a suitable replacement.

Fenty reappointed Hartsock as interim director Friday, a day after it was revealed that $82 million in contracts to build parks, ballfields and recreation centers were awarded illegally without council approval. Most of the work went to firms with political or personal ties to Fenty.

"It's almost becoming a lawless administration," said council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3). "They seem to have no limits or restraint on what they are willing to do."

Attorney General Peter Nickles, who often speaks on behalf of the administration, said Cheh "has no idea what she's talking about."

"For her to make comments like that, it's stupid," he said. "She's an angry woman."

The controversy comes in a year in which Fenty and the council have squabbled over who gets baseball tickets, appointments to boards and commissions, and whether administration officials have to abide by council subpoenas. Fenty also regularly refuses to send representatives to council hearings.

Ed Lazere, executive director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, has watched the relationship between the administration and council. "The mayor may think he needs to use his powers as aggressively as he can, but when you alienate people who pass legislation, it may not serve you well," he said.

Fenty and Hartsock did not respond to requests to comment through their spokesmen.

Hartsock has been serving as interim director of the agency since April, but the council voted not to confirm her, saying the former principal of Ross Elementary School was not qualified to lead the agency.

Members also accused Hartsock of violating the law by following through with Fenty's plans to privatize day-care services.

According to D.C. law, a mayoral appointee to lead an agency can serve up to 180 days while awaiting confirmation. With Hartsock's interim appointment expiring next week, Fenty's order Friday appoints her for up to six more months.

Nickles said Fenty decided to keep Hartsock in her position while he searches for another nominee to present to the council. Nickles said the law allows Fenty to reappoint Hartsock for "a reasonable time period to assure government continuity."

"The mayor and his colleagues will be seeking to name a new acting director as soon as we find someone," Nickles said.

But council member Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5), chairman of the Committee on Libraries, Parks and Recreation, accused Fenty of having a "blatant disrespect for the laws of the District of Columbia."

"This is truly government at its worse," Thomas said. "What would make the mayor believe his judgment is better than a whole body that reviewed this and decided [Hartsock] is incompetent?"

'Clearly it's legal'

Thomas led the fight against Hartsock's confirmation and said he will ask the chief financial officer to withhold Hartsock's pay. Thomas is also considering emergency legislation to remove Hartsock.

In battling over the legality of Fenty's decision, Nickles and Thomas appear to be leaning on different sections of the Confirmation Act of 1978.

Aides to Thomas note that the code says, "No person shall serve in an acting capacity in a position that is required by law to be filled by Mayoral appointment without the advice and consent of the Council."

However, another section of the code cited by Hartsock supporters suggests she can remain in a "holdover position" for up to 180 days after the expiration of her term.

"Clearly it's legal," Nickels said.

Housing Authority

Adding to the controversy, Thomas said Hartsock shares the blame in the decision to direct the park projects to the Housing Authority. By law, the council must approve contracts that exceed $1 million

Clark E. Ray, who was fired by Fenty and replaced with Hartsock, said he used the Housing Authority's Construction Services Administration to complete some projects before he left his post. But he said all of the expensive jobs went through the council. "We made sure we did everything by the book," he said. "Everything that went over $1 million went before the council."

On Friday, Nickles said the contracts in question must be submitted to the council. But he said the council should be wary of rejecting the contracts, which he said, were competitively bid. "If they reject them . . . they'll have to answer to the voters," said Nickles, noting that several projects have broken ground.

Fenty is up for reelection next year, and at least two council members are considering running against him. Few expect the tension to subside.

"We all need to find a way to repair this," said council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1). "The current course is not the route, but I am not sure what is. This is an ever escalating situation."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/24/AR2009102402316.html

From the comments section for this article:

concernedaboutdc wrote:

Streff, I am not a fan of the Council, or any politician for that matter.

However, I do have a healthy respect for the law. I don't know if you were around, but the reason that the city's council, elected by the people, are now required to approve contracts in excess of 1 million dollar was to put an end to corrupt sole sourcing practices and to enforce procurement integrity. Contracts were granted based on personal and political closeness to the executive, as opposed to, in the best financial interest of the taxpayer.

If early on the Mayor had taken legal steps to change a slow procurement process to make it more efficient to get these types of contracts granted in the city, I think that the majority of the the residents would have stood behind him.

This is not what he did. He underhandedly violated the legal process that he and Peter Nickles, as barred attorney’s in the District, have sworn to uphold.

The council's outrage may be, as you termed it, "fake", but mine, as a local taxpayer is not. Even if these projects are needed in these communities, and as I understand it, the communities approved the design and budget per the existing agreements. That is all irrelevant. They agreed to agreements that are not legally valid or enforceable. They were spending money that wasn’t legally on the table to be spent. The outrage should not be pointed to the District Council who have a fiscal oversight responsibility on behalf of the people, irrespective of their motives in this instance.

It was the MAYOR with the complicity of the Deputy Mayor of Planning and Development, the Chief Financial Officer, Director of the Office of Contracts and Procurement and DCHA that CHOSE to violate District law by finding illegal ways around the checks and balances that are there to protect the integrity of the use of District taxpayer dollars.

The mayor didn’t decide overnight that he wanted to engage in any of these projects. This begs the question why he didn’t utilize his political capital to change the contracts and procurement process early on to make it easier to negotiate these types of deals legally within the government? Why, rather, did he attempt to sneak around the process, avoiding transparency, to get these contracts into the hands of those with close personal or political ties who are not the most qualified in the city to do the jobs. The Council auditor has had to go to the courts to force the city go give her construction contract paperwork that allegedly involve the Mayor's wife, who has zero construction expertise.

This government has been run like a Barnum and Bailey circus since Adrien Fenty was elected. There is no moral integrity to it.

Both the Mayor and the council are expected to be ethical stewards of government affairs. Breaking the law is not ethical. There in-lies my outrage.

Another Side Swiped Car

For a time now, I have been very thankful that our parked cars have been free of random "intrusions" for a number of years of now. By intrusions I mean not only the smashed window in search of what might be found fast in the glove compartment but also the exterior being side swiped by other cars, keyed by pedestrians, damage to locks or otherwise screwed with.

This morning caught us right up to up date though! As seen in the above photo, something made contact with the blue Prius and the black Lexus. In the photos below is the striking vehicle, a Dodge Caravan, abandoned by it's driver and two occupants about three cars down from the black Lexus. The driver turned the Caravan off, took the keys and left the lights on.








This happened sometime around 7:45am. I would have saved a fair amount of aggravation had I been in bed and slower to respond - maybe even slept through it all - but instead I was up and working in the front room on the first floor when I heard the sound of metal being hit. I looked out the window immediately, thinking at first that somebody or something had done something to either the neighbor's or our metal front porch. Then I saw that a mini van was stopped in the street and it was clear there was damage to the front of the passenger's side. It was clear that the mini van had side swiped a car but I could not tell which car. I then went outside to see what was up with anyone in the mini van and see which car had been hit. As no one had jumped out the doors and started running (as I have seen before), I thought maybe there was a chance the driver was legit.

As I came up to the rear of the van, the driver, a Hispanic male about 25 with a short pony tail and blue and white sweat shirt on, was getting out. He looked fine and made no indication that he was hurt or that anyone in the van was hurt. He looked tired but not drunk; his motions were even. As I scanned the park cars, I saw that about three cars behind where the mini van was stopped, two cars had been hit; one of the cars was ours, the other one belonging to one of our longtime neighbors.

I asked the man about registration and license; he seemed to be getting something out of the mini van and talking to someone in the van. The rear side door and the passenger front door had opened and two Hispanic men, one also about 25, the other a little younger looking, were beginning to get out. One or both of them also had a short pony tail. Neither of the two men seemed to have been hurt. The driver continued to seem to be getting something from the vehicle when I realized that he was not doing anything about his license and registration and he was telling the other two that it was time to go. And away they ran, leaving the mini van in the middle of the street.

As this was all happening a few different neighbors were calling the police, who took more than 15 minutes to appear. As the police (two officers, one patrol car) did not find the mini van listed as stolen, their attitude was that nothing was suspicious about the three men running away. They found a registration and expired insurance card in the van -which they somewhat reluctantly shared. After talking to a few neighbors and getting info on the two cars hit, they basically sat in their cruiser for two and a half hours until the tow truck came to collect the mini van. After the flares burned off in about 20 minutes, the two officers made no effort to keep other cars from turning into Fairmont from 11th St. or to warn cars coming down Fairmont that the road was blocked. They only got out of the cruiser if a driver was trying to make a U turn to return up Fairmont.

When the men were running from the car, I saw one of the man throw a black leather looking case into the curb side storm drain. The officers were not interested in the least about that, refusing to even listen to the information. Basically they seemed to be on a mop up mission that allowed for a lot of sitting. Two and a half hours of sitting in the cruiser seemed to me to be a very ineffective use of the police. Is this what passes for community policing?

Washington Gas Passes Expenses To Customers

D.C. gas customers face monthly surcharge

By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
October 13, 2009

Washington Gas customers in the District face a surcharge on their monthly bills starting in 2011 to pay for a program aimed at preventing degradation of pipes and dangerous leaks. The surcharge amount has not been determined, but the District's share is expected to run more than $6 million a year divided among 151,000 Washington Gas customers -- an average of about $40 per year.

The settlement between Washington Gas and the Office of the People's Counsel, the District's utility ratepayer advocate, is nearly five years in the making. During that period, the utility was accused by experts of playing a "wait and see" game by failing to address segments of pipes vulnerable to leaks.

The deal allows Washington Gas to recover the costs of injecting hexane, an ingredient in liquefied natural gas, into its system. The utility also has agreed to spend as much as $28 million over seven years to replace aging pipes and mechanical couplings -- devices used to connect pipes -- in the District. Those costs would not be included in the surcharge. The fee would kick in each Oct. 1, starting in 2011, when the cap on gas rates expires. The agreement, which People's Counsel Elizabeth Noel said would ensure "safe and reliable service," is now before the D.C. Public Service Commission for approval. Washington Gas introduced hexane in 2004 following a spike in gas leaks, especially in Prince George's County. The utility said its liquid natural gas was losing hydrocarbons as it flowed from Dominion's terminal in Calvert County, which had a "deleterious effect on rubber seals in the mechanical couplings." Hexane stabilized its product.

The price of hexane, like gasoline, is volatile. Washington Gas uses roughly 1 million gallons a year alone at its Gardiner Road plant in Waldorf, which serves Prince George's and the District.

The Hudson River Group, a consultant hired by the Office of the People's Counsel, deemed hexane a questionable temporary fix and an ineffective permanent solution. Washington Gas should identify which couplings are failing and replace them as soon as possible, the group said.

"The safety code ... requires [Washington Gas] to recondition or phase out segments vulnerable to leaks," the group said in testimony. "It has not done so to date."

mneibauer@washingtonexaminer.com

Find this article at: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/D_C_-gas-customers-face-monthly-surcharge-8371330-64040967.html