Burglaries Increase Citywide

Northwest D.C. residents on edge after burglaries

By Erica W. Morrison, Published: September 21

The owner of a D.C. security firm, Sandra Cox felt fortunate after her alarm company alerted her of a break-in at her home in Shepherd Park on Sept. 9: Nothing was taken.

But other residents of the area surrounding Cox’s quiet Northwest neighborhood haven’t been so lucky: Police say that six homes have been broken into since mid-August in Police Service Area 401 , near the city’s northern tip. Gold jewelry and electronics have been stolen.

Now, Cox, owner of American Security Communications, says neighbors are increasingly inquiring about their options. Many, she said, have asked about systems that don’t require a land-line telephone, because there have been rumors — which police would not confirm — that telephone wires were cut during the break-ins.

“The community is really on edge about it,” Cox said, adding that “the anxiety level is still very high.”

Burglaries are up nine percent in the 4th Police District, which includes Shepherd Park, this year, according to police statistics. Citywide, they have increased by 14 percent. In 2010, property crime rose in the District while violent crime fell, according to FBI statistics.

Many of Cox’s neighbors were unaware of the recent rash of burglaries until a high-profile neighbor’s house was broken-into: Jeanne Estrada said she returned home on the afternoon of Sept. 13 to find “tons of cop cars” outside the home of Harold L. Cushenberry Jr., a D.C. Superior Court judge.

Police did not find anyone inside Cushenberry’s home, and officials said the crime appeared to be random and not targeted at the judge.

“We chose this neighborhood because it was safe and away from the city,” said Estrada, who moved to the neighborhood within the past year. “But in this world today, nothing is safe.”

Neighborhood e-mail groups have buzzed with discussion of the break-ins, and on the day after the incident, about 20 residents filled a room at the Shepherd Park library for a monthly meeting with two officers who regularly patrol the area.

Residents peppered the officers with questions and concerns. “I’m afraid to be in my own home again,” one woman said, recalling a series of break-ins last year.

The two officers urged neighbors to turn on their security systems even if they’re leaving their home for only a short time. Some recent burglary victims had not activated theirs, according to police.

Cmdr. Kimberly Chisley-Missouri of the 4th Police District said burglaries in the area are not uncommon. In response to the latest break-ins, police plan to establish a more-active presence in alleys, she said, because some of the thieves forced open rear doors and windows.

Residents, meanwhile, have been asked to be vigilant and call 911 if they see something that makes them uneasy.

“We use the neighborhood as our eyes and ears,” Chisley-Missouri said. “If you see something, say something.”

Breaking and entering

From Sept. 14, 2010, to Sept. 14, 2011, there was an increase in burglaries in all but one of the District’s seven police districts . During the same period in previous years, more districts had declines. Read related article.

Source: D.C. Police. The Washington Post. Published on September 19, 2011, 9:13 p.m.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/northwest-dc-residents-on-edge-after-burglaries/2011/09/16/gIQAfvjtlK_story.html

Park Slope Brooklyn

Similarities between Park Slope, in Brooklyn, New York, and Columbia Heights, in Washington, DC, are interesting and very real....

'Degentrifying' Park Slope

Former Sloper Luc Sante Has a New Spin on Gentrification

By Lisa Amand | Email the author | May 4, 2011


No question: Park Slope is one of the most magnificent, architecturally and historically rich neighborhoods in the city.

But whether you blame it on the realtors, the residents who shelled out millions for roomy brownstones and limestones, or simply the natural ebb and flow of city life, our neighborhood has changed dramatically in the past few decades. Some people find the neighborhood's gentrification excessive and stifling; others adore the safety and quiet beauty of tree-lined streets, lush parks and turn-of-the-century houses.

So is there any hope of turning the clock back a few decades to more fertile days when artists could afford to live and create here? That question was posed to a group of livewire writers at a PEN World Voices Festival last week titled “Degentrify New York and Give Her Back to the World”.

Luc Sante, the author of "Low Life," who lived in Park Slope from 1992 to 2000, entertained the crowd with suggestions that ranged from holding 24-hour block parties and making lawyers wear clown suits to banning mirrors and giving bed bugs the vote.

Even if Sante's ideas of “pedestrians hugging each other when they pass on the street” or "keeping your door open when home" are too much to ask, everyone agreed that getting to know the folks who live around you can change the vibe of places like Park Slope.

"Talk to your neighbors while sitting on your stoop," said slam poet and professor Tracie Morris. "Hang out in front of your building for one hour a week. If a significant portion of people would do that, the dynamics would change radically."

Among more serious ideas on Sante's list of 50 ways to de-gentrify were rezoning the city so it is more favorable to manufacturing and agriculture, and outlawing plastic bags.

One strong message hard to refute; unplug those gadgets and listen to city sounds and conversation, get out of your comfort zone. Morris, who lives in Carroll Gardens, implored New Yorkers to “stop being so scared of people who look so scary.”

She sees neighborhoods losing their identities as “Park Slope slides into Prospect Heights,” and parents hide behind a shield of trying to “make it safe for our children” instead of making their kids street smart.

When Sante moved to the Slope in the '90s, Fifth Avenue was dramatically different. “It reminded me of Columbus Avenue in the ‘70s,” he said, wistfully, recalling an unpretentious, affordable mix of businesses, from pawnshops to no-frills Chinese eateries. “Now it’s lined with restaurants I can’t even afford.”

As far as empty storefronts, increasingly more common on Seventh Avenue, the audience wondered whether landlords would perhaps let them be used as performance spaces until they find tenants.

The flip side of that, of course, as Morris explained, is how realtors exploit the presence of artists in a neighborhood as a selling point, luring well-heeled customers to places because they're cool, hip and worth every inflated cent. Another tack to take might be raising the cap on rent-stabilized apartments above $2,000, so financially strapped Slopers aren't so easily replaced by those who can pay market rates.

Sloper Antonio Romani, 63, was among the vocal crowd of bloggers, interpretors and activists attending the panel. Romani, who has lived here with his wife, author Martha Cooley, for three years, revels in the safety of the Slope and has no desire to go back in time.

“They tell me that Park Slope was a mess,” he said. “Now you can walk around every hour of the day.” A former high school teacher and bookseller in Italy, Romani compares New York to Paris and sees the future as promising. Among the Brooklyn gems he enjoys, Prospect Park and Community Bookstore.

But whether or not it is possible for Park Slope to “de-gentrify,” Sante has his doubts.

“The trouble is there are awfully nice houses there," he said. "It’s a tough call.”

http://parkslope.patch.com/articles/degentrifying-park-slope

Diplo Plates and Me in The Crosswalk (Crosshairs?)

Ambassador Maria Isabel Salvador

2535 15^th St. NW

Washington, DC 20009

Ambassador Salvador,

I write you as a neighbor – for more than 20 years I have lived a few blocks from the Embassy – as a pedestrian and as a parent.

This morning someone who I presume works at the Embassy of Ecuador illegally drove their car in front of me as I crossed 15^th St. in the pedestrian crosswalk in front of the Embassy. I say I presume because the car, east bound on Euclid, crossed the eastbound crosswalk to enter into the driveway of the Embassy. The car then drove in the driveway to the metal gate and remotely opened the gate and drove through. The license plate was a diplomatic plate – I don’t know if it had a D or a S on it. I think the numbers were some zeros then 125. (00125, 0125).

When the car crossed into the crosswalk, I was already half way across the road. When I left the corner, the car was not at the intersection. As 15^th St is one way northbound, it is not usual to expect an eastbound car to being turning right – while it does not take a right turn to enter the Embassy’s driveway from eastbound Euclid, it does require crossing a crosswalk that would not be crossed by a car going straight (from the pedestrian’s point of view it as if it was a right turn). While the driver did not come within inches of hitting me, the car did come “closer than comfort”. Let alone that entering a crosswalk in a car when a pedestrian is in the crosswalk is illegal in Washington, DC.

I walk past the Embassy often – I was on my way home from walking with my daughter to her school. My children as well as many other parents’ children walk past the Embassy daily. Eastbound cars on Euclid crossing the crosswalk to get into the Embassy’s driveway are a safety concern to me. I hope that as part of the neighborhood, pedestrian safety around the Embassy would also be a concern of the Ambassador and staff of the Embassy of Ecuador.

DC: Lack Of Littering Consciousness

I have made littering complaints to the MPD only to be told that there is nothing they can do about it - makes no sense that littering laws are designed to be impossible to enforce. This will be somewhat of an improvement but I tend question how much - don't expect the trash on the streets to go away anytime soon.



Police step up littering enforcement

By ELIZABETH WIENER
Current Staff Writer
May 4, 2011

A pilot program to help police enforce the city’s antilitter laws took off cautiously in parts of wards 4 and 5 this week. If it works, officials say, the rest of the city will find police ticketing and fining litterbugs later this year.

The pilot, based on a 2008 law, authorizes the Metropolitan Police Department to require litterers to give proper identification so they can be issued a ticket carrying a $75 fine. Police can issue the tickets to those who toss cans, bottles, cigarette butts and other trash into public space and waterways. Previous law allowed drivers to be ticketed for littering, but the new law applies to passengers as well.

Police officers will have to witness the violation in order to write a ticket.

For the first month, police will issue only warnings; the actual fines will kick in on June 1. Offenders who do not give their correct name and address could be fined an additional $100 to $250 by the D.C. Superior Court.

At a press briefing last week, Mayor Vincent Gray noted that past city litter laws have lacked teeth because police couldn’t force offenders to identify themselves unless they were actually arrested. But, he said, littering is a serious enough problem that “we have to bring the force of law to bear. This program helps us to do that.”

A2008 report states that the District government was spending about $20 million a year picking up litter, and that littering and other quality-of-life offenses are often linked to neighborhoods in decline and more violent crime.

Police spokesperson Gwendolyn Crump said the Metropolitan Police Department’s 4th District, which covers most of Ward 4 and parts of Ward 5, was chosen for the pilot because littering is an “oft-mentioned concern” in the community. She said police need to test out new ticketing forms and a new adjudication process by the Office of Administrative Hearings for several months to see if future changes will be needed.

“We hope to implement training and launch citywide enforcement around mid to late fall, at the earliest,” Crump wrote in an email.

Meanwhile, the existing law, which allows police to cite motorists for littering, will continue to be enforced citywide. Police have always had the authority to stop cars and demand a driver’s license, and there’s already a $100 fine for drivers who litter from a vehicle.

Fourth District Cmdr. Kimberly Chisley-Missouri notified residents about the new anti-littering effort last week, winning a string of compliments and suggestions on neighborhood listservs.

“Excellent news,” wrote one resident. “I encourage 4D to be on the lookout for littering at and around the Autozone” on Georgia Avenue.

“Please give attention to the 7-Eleven Store” on 3rd Street, someone else wrote.

Others lamented the time they have spent clearing away coffee cups, carryout trays and other trash from bus shelters, and they noted the “folks who tend to clean their cars out at/near a stop sign” on Blagden Avenue. They said the police should focus their efforts on such litterers.

Litter laws are widely applauded but have been hard to enforce. In 2008, a D.C. Council committee report noted that although police already had authority to issue tickets, they first had to “ascertain the identity of the person to whom the ticket is being issued,” and that offenders were simply refusing to give their names.

Then police officials suggested they be allowed to ticket litterers the same way they ticket jaywalkers, under a law that requires offenders to provide their true name and address under penalty of a fine. Neither law requires any offender to carry official IDs.

A bill passed by the council late that year explicitly requires individuals stopped for violating litter laws to provide police with their name and address. It also gives police authority to stop a car and cite a littering passenger. The law took effect in March 2009.

But nothing in the D.C. bureaucracy is simple. Crump explained that enforcement took another two years because amendments were needed to clarify that laws protecting the confidentiality of juvenile offenders did not apply to civil violations like littering. Otherwise, the Office of Administrative Hearings, which handles adjudication, would have had to establish “extensive confidentiality procedures” for juveniles caught in the act of dropping trash, she wrote.

Crump said the new anti-litter program will not distract police from other higher-priority public safety efforts. “MPD is not going to become the ‘littering police,’” she wrote. The Department of Public Works and the Mayor’s Office of the Clean City will continue to take the lead. But “police officers, with their round-the-clock presence, can be an important part of the routine enforcement.”







http://www.currentnewspapers.com/admin/uploadfiles/NW%2005.04.11%201.pdf

Newer things in my area - BloomBars

D.C.’s BloomBars: An offbeat space where art and community combine

By Rona Marech, Published: April 15

On a recent open mic night at BloomBars, comedian Tommy Taylor Jr. joked about the District turning into Butter Pecan City and his excessively cheerful neighbor’s overuse of the word “toodle-oo.” That was before singer-songwriter Courtney Dowe sang about vampire love and a spiky-haired poet yelled into the mic. Others took turns reading poetry, rapping, testing out new comic material and singing a cappella.

“BloomBars is such a great find,” Steve Epting, a 23-year-old, bushy-bearded musician, said before playing for the assembled crowd of about 35. Afterward, he added, “I’ve been in D.C. for a year, and I’ve written so much material. I attribute that in part to coming here.”

It was all classic BloomBars, a tiny, hard-to-categorize, strange brew of a venue that opened its doors in the District’s Columbia Heights neighborhood in 2008. The space — a two-story former print shop — hosts film screenings, art exhibitions, improv theater, freestyle hip-hop sessions, singer-songwriter showcases and sundry other performances as well as classes such as belly dancing, poetry, African drumming and meditation. The extreme range tends to draw a racially mixed, hipster, hip-hop, old-timer, you-name-it crowd from both around the corner and across the District.

It gets even more unconventional: BloomBars doesn’t serve alcohol, doesn’t charge a cover fee (though donations are welcome) and is largely run by a band of volunteers. Before performances, audience members are sometimes encouraged to hug strangers. There is no sign outside, just the painted message, “You Bloom We Bloom.”

The venture is the brainchild of John Chambers, 37, a charismatic, hug-positive do-gooder who dubbed himself chief executive gardener and somehow manages to be both earnest and cool. Chambers left a lucrative public relations career, mortgaged his life — as he put it — and has spent untold (and unpaid) hours realizing his vision: “To let art be a transformative thing that connects people and inspires them to participate in their communities and to have important conversations.”

He wanted a space open to everyone regardless of age, race or income. (Hence no alcohol, a policy that some friends say is financially ill-advised but that he’s stuck to because he thinks booze turns off some people and takes focus off the art.) He wanted to build bridges in his rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. He wanted to nurture artists.

“It’s not a theater, art gallery, studio, music venue. It’s all of those things, but more than that, it’s an environment created to support people’s growth,” he said.

The child of civil rights activists, Chambers always wanted to follow his parents’ path, he said one evening at BloomBars, while a documentary about a Kenyan village screened downstairs. “But I didn’t want to be poor all my life. I didn’t want to just be marching and banging my fist.” After graduating from Howard University, he went into communications, mostly working at firms that represented nonprofit groups, political candidates and progressive causes.

At some point, though, he began imagining a different trajectory. At first he had visions of big national fundraising arts events, but after a few test runs, he reconsidered. “Wait a sec,” he recounted thinking. “All we need is space.”

For ages, he’d been eyeing a 100-year-old building on 11th Street NW, around the corner from the rowhouse he’d owned since 1999. The block was the quintessential expression of neighborhood gentrification. New, foodie-drawing restaurants such as RedRocks and Room 11 were opening next to old-style bodegas and a wholesale bakery. Relations between white newcomers and longtime black residents were sometimes uneasy. But Chambers, who is gregarious to the extreme, had come to know people across the neighborhood over many years and saw the delicate politics as a surmountable challenge.

“My background has a lot to do with that,” he said. “Coming from an interracial marriage and being biracial, I’ve been able to straddle both worlds.”

In 2008, he purchased the building for $340,000.

At first, events were sporadic. Chambers was reluctant to commit, so he kept working and fitted BloomBars in around the edges. “There was always an element of doubt, wondering if the idea is too far out,” he said. Then in summer 2009, he left his job to make BloomBars his full-time work.

Now BloomBars holds classes and performances almost every day. With assistance, Chambers built bathrooms, exposed unexposed brick and installed new lights. The building’s south side sports a colorful mural depicting life in a Brazilian favela, or slum, and a red velvet curtain frames the stage. On warm evenings, volunteers throw open the front doors, and sometimes people pull up their own chairs to watch from the sidewalk.

A signature Chambers Big Idea is the artist-in-residence program he founded to support gifted, under-the-radar performers. He can’t pay artists, but he gives them space to perform plus administrative assistance, and in return, they participate in the BloomBars program. The artists are mostly local, but Chambers managed to persuade Jabulani Tsambo, a South African hip-hop star also known as HHP or Jabba, to accept a two-week residency. He bought the plane ticket and put Jabba up in his home. After a symposium on HIV/AIDS, a workshop with teenagers and various performances and jam sessions, Jabba was so inspired, he paid for six artists he met — including four BloomBars residents — to travel to South Africa. Later, several of the D.C. musicians returned to Africa to form the house band on Jabba’s popular late-night-style television show.

“That was a trip, to become superstars overnight,” said Jabari Exum, a hip-hop artist and West African percussionist.

Such unpredictable happenings, coupled with Chambers’s contagious energy, have attracted an intensely devoted corps of volunteers. “Knowing that he’s doing so much for the community, he’s one of those guys you just can’t say no to,” said Richmond Sparks, a neighbor who is the University of Maryland’s director of bands. Sparks got roped into working on the sound booth, a miniature balcony ensconced in half a boat. Other volunteers do everything from writing the weekly newsletter to procuring popcorn makers for movie nights.

Brenda Estrella has a prototypical BloomBars story. Drained from her uninspiring corporate job, she was thinking about leaving the District for good when went to BloomBars one night during a Haiti fundraiser. “It was love at first sight,” she said. “I don’t want to be dramatic, but finding BloomBars made me think maybe this is a place where I can establish some roots.”

She started going regularly, quit her job and soul-searched her way to a position as BloomBars administration and operations director. She’s happily getting by for now on savings and a deal with Chambers — in exchange for her labor, she’s living in his house for free.

Not everything has fallen into place so easily. BloomBars almost met an untimely death this fall, when a $20,000 bill — largely for real estate taxes Chambers has been disputing — came due. The city threatened to seize the place. Chambers held fundraisers and otherwise begged and borrowed and, in a last-minute scramble, secured the money.

Chambers said he doesn’t expect another such scare, but the money part of the enterprise is still a bit sketchy. Audience donations can be paltry, and Chambers is still living off savings and rent from tenants who share his roomy rowhouse. But, ever the optimist, he has funding plans that include adding a tea bar and retail space, selling compilation albums and developing BloomTV. He is working on a deal with a cable channel to air videos of performances and other content — think “ ‘Real World’ meets a grass-roots conscience,” he said. He also imagines that the artists BloomBars cultivates will make it big and give back down the road.

It’s not that crazy: Carolyn Malachi, a former resident, enthusiastically saluted BloomBars at a performance she gave there shortly after her song “Orion” was nominated for a Grammy.

“BloomBars gave me the opportunity to do a lot. Made me believe in my own creativity,” she said in a mini-speech captured in a YouTube clip. “This is what is happening in your community,” she goes on, pointing to the little stage she’s on. “I definitely have the BloomBars family to thank for this song. . . . Spread the word.”

Marech is a freelance writer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/dcs-bloombars-an-offbeat-space-where-art-and-community-combine/2011/04/04/AFOcqijD_story.html

Walking, Biking, Driving In DC

Regardless of fault, these statistic are not good - and I suspect the statistics do not reflect many unreported incidents. DC awareness campaigns have a ways to go..... and blaming drivers won't solve it.

Campaign to protect pedestrians, cyclists as number of crashes in the District rises

By Allison Klein, Published: March 30

About three times every day in the District, someone walking on a city street gets hit by a vehicle and an ambulance races to the scene. This year, four of those people have died.

Last year, the number of walkers and cyclists hit in Washington increased by almost 25 percent compared with the previous year.

“Even at a slow speed, when you get hit by a car, it is violent and jarring,” said Neha Bhatt, a cyclist who needed months to recover after she was hit by a sport-utility vehicle last year on Benning Road NE.

Some of the region’s law enforcement and political figures gathered Tuesday outside a police station on New York Avenue NW to warn people that walkers and bikers are getting hit — and often. In fact, six pedestrians were struck that very day across the city.

As part of the kickoff of the spring Street Smart campaign, which includes new ads featuring giant feet smashing cars, officials also warned that pedestrians, bikers and drivers who don’t obey traffic laws will be targeted and ticketed by police.

Across the Washington region, which includes Northern Virginia and suburban Maryland, 83 pedestrians and cyclists were killed on the road last year. That was up 9 percent from 2009.

Bhatt, 37, was almost one of them. It was actually the second time she has been hit on her commute from her home in Southeast Washington to her job downtown. Last summer’s crash happened when the SUV didn’t see her as it pulled out of a gas station.

“I was thrown from the sidewalk into oncoming traffic on Benning Road,” said Bhatt, who ended up getting 17 X-rays and a CT scan that day. “It was frighteningly obvious how lucky I was.”

But Bhatt still bikes to work. “I am unwilling to give it up,” she said.

Last year, there were 436 bike vs. vehicle crashes in the District that were serious enough for police to respond to the accident, according to city data.

Part of the reason for the increase in people being hit might be that there has been a 68 percent jump in cyclists in the city over the past three years, officials said.

The District has the highest number of pedestrians in the region, and the most hit by cars. Last year, ambulances responded to 1,299 calls for pedestrians struck, according to data from the D.C. fire department.

Also last year, 16 people — two-thirds of those who died in traffic accidents — were on a bike or on foot.

“I can’t get used to these numbers,” said D.C. Assistant Police Chief Alfred Durham. “I can’t accept them.”

Last year, about 216 pedestrians were hit per 100,000 population in the District, according to data from the Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department. In Baltimore, about 169 per 100,000 were hit, fire officials say. In Philadelphia, the rate was about 120, according to police.

In Montgomery County, the rate was about 45. In Prince George’s, it was about 90, according to data the counties provided.

People are more likely to be hit in downtown areas because so many walkers and bikers are packed into a small space. But they have more chance of dying when they are hit outside the city because cars are often moving faster.

In Washington, the crashes occur most often when vehicles are turning at an intersection while pedestrians have a “walk” signal.

“Pedestrians confidently stride in the crosswalk with the right of way and the cars don’t see them,” said Karina Ricks, an associate director at the D.C. Department of Transportation. “There’s not much reaction time for either party.”

Because the streets are so busy, and intersections often are backed up with cars, there isn’t time to allow walkers to have the right of way while cars are stopped, officials said.

But they are starting to time lights so pedestrians have a few seconds to cross while the cars are stopped, allowing them to make their way into the crosswalk and become more visible to turning cars.

Of the city’s 1,600 intersections, about 60 have such lights.

The majority of the intersections where pedestrian crashes occurred between 2008 and last year are in Northwest.

But the single intersection where the most pedestrians were hit — 13 — is Howard Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, according to a report from the D.C. Department of Transportation. One of the people struck at that intersection was killed.

The next most dangerous crossing was New York Avenue and North Capitol Street, where 12 walkers were injured, followed by the intersections at H and North Capitol streets NW, and Seventh and H streets NW, where 11 people were injured.

Next was 14th and U streets NW, where 10 people were hurt, followed by 12th Street and Massachusetts Avenue NW, which had nine injuries.

On Tuesday, police released the name of a man in a wheelchair who was killed in a hit-and-run in the 5000 block of Benning Road SE two weeks ago as he crossed in a crosswalk. Police are still looking for the car that struck Gary Green, 55, of Southeast on March 12.

Bhatt said she thinks of her two crashes every morning when she gets on her bike.

“As a survivor, I call for everyone who moves to please look out for each other,” she said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-starts-campaign-to-protect-pedestrians-cyclists-as-number-of-crashes-rises/2011/03/29/AF9GH83B_story.html

School Reform By Gentrificaton - Notes From Brooklyn

An interesting perspective from Brooklyn, NY (Brooklyn Rail):

REPORT CARD: Reform via Gentrification

by Liza Featherstone

“Stay in your own neighborhood,” the parent coordinator at a sought-after school on the southern side of Park Slope recently admonished a group of prospective parents who had come from all over Brooklyn. Her school, she said, had improved through the hard work of local parents, and we should do the same for our neighborhoods. That way our kids wouldn’t have to travel to go to school. Plus, she stressed, “the value of your property will improve.”

While few people state the economics so baldly, her comment laid bare the hidden underside of much conversation in Brooklyn about neighborhood schools, conversation that is heating up now, as many parents are making decisions about where to send their kids for kindergarten. We hear plenty about how virtuous it is to volunteer in your neighborhood school; indeed, such involvement is, for moms of today’s middle class, an almost-mandatory virtue, like mixing your man a good martini was in the 1950s.

Middle-class parents in economically diverse neighborhoods often view sending children to neighborhood schools—and getting involved in their improvement—as a kind of civic obligation, and exhort other parents of similar privileges to do the same. Several months ago, P.S. 11 parent Michael Galinsky ruffled many defensive feathers on “The Local,” the New York Times blog for Fort Greene-Clinton Hill, when he argued, in an impassioned post titled, “IMHO: Don’t Leave District 13, Stay and Help,” that parents who were unwilling to do this were contributing to racial segregation.

But although some proponents of “parent involvement”—Galinsky among them—are deeply committed to the common good, there’s a problem with depending on the middle class to fix our schools. The problem is that this strategy depends on gentrification, and thus cannot possibly result in a good education for all kids. School reform by gentrification leaves our inequitable system untouched.

Report Card has been beating up on charter schools, and on the dogma that more choice will fix everything, which is the prevailing and wrong-headed ideology of our times. So you might think this column would wholeheartedly throw down in support of those working to improve and defend neighborhood public schools. But there’s a reason that charters and other lottery schools are popular: neighborhood schools are wonderful when they are located in affluent neighborhoods like Park Slope, but most of us don’t live in such places. While Brooklyn does have some remarkable schools that serve poor children well, the majority of neighborhood schools that are recognizably excellent did not truly flourish until the neighborhoods around them gentrified.

That’s because middle-class parents are good for schools. Our children do well on tests. We have a sense of entitlement, and don’t want our kids to get the same crappy education that other people get; in Brooklyn, that means we often push school leadership for more progressive and well-rounded curriculum. We have the time to volunteer in the classrooms, making everyday life at school more orderly and civilized. We also raise money, because we have not only the time, but also the skills, and most importantly, access to funding sources—through our companies, and our friends at foundations. That means that our schools can afford music and art programs, and nice playgrounds, while many Brooklyn schools in poor neighborhoods go without those things.

Parent involvement can’t fix schools where no one has access to money and thus can’t fundraise. It can’t fix schools where no one has time because everyone is poor. Poverty is time-consuming. As a parent at P.S. 3 in Bedford-Stuyvesant told me, “the best parents here are working too hard to volunteer.” As a result, the chaos and bullying in the lunchroom at P.S. 3 is frightening, while at better-off schools, parents volunteer at lunchtime every day.

Many schools accommodate and recruit the better-off families, for all these reasons. They hold numerous information sessions. Some schools ask on their application forms whether families are also applying to private school—explaining that as a “courtesy,” such families are notified earlier (private schools send out their notifications earlier than public schools, and require families to put down hefty deposits to reserve spots). Arguably, because lottery schools are not limited to children from one neighborhood, some are more likely than neighborhood schools to offer a good education to poor kids, and thus share the resources of the city’s upper-middle-class with the rest.

But the truth is that some of these schools of choice, too, have figured out that although it’s not in keeping with their—in some cases sincere—social justice missions, school reform by gentrification does work. Charter schools have been recruiting middle-class Brooklyn children far more aggressively over the past year than ever before. In Manhattan, Eva Moskowitz, notorious charter school mogul, has been working to set up shop on the Upper West Side, and marketing her Success Academies to the middle class. It is clear that the charter schools are realizing what the best-performing neighborhood schools have known all along: that there is no magic bullet to school reform, but gentrification is an awfully easy shortcut.

This explains something about New York school politics that might otherwise remain opaque: why there is always so much more community opposition to good lottery schools than to bad ones. It might seem strange that crowds turn out to Panel for Educational Policy meetings to protest a proposed Moskowitz school opening on the Upper West Side, when her Bronx school has been serving students well, and that crowds also came to protest the expansion of Arts and Letters in Clinton Hill, an outstanding public middle school expanding into younger grades as a district-wide lottery school. Why, with so much bad education going on in the world, would these schools attract so much venom from good people who want the best for children? And why do the same people raise no objections at all when charter schools of far lower quality open in their neighborhoods?

There’s a good reason. Parents of children attending neighborhood schools on both the Upper West Side and in Clinton Hill fear that these new schools will be popular with the middle class, and thus that the neighborhood’s existing schools would lose some of that magic parent involvement and all the money that comes with it. The uproar is not always rooted in a principled objection to marketized education. After all, no one in Clinton Hill has protested the opening of hyper-disciplinary charter schools—such as Achievement First, which recently opened in the neighborhood and has been discussed in Report Card in the past—that are aimed entirely at bringing order to the ghetto and thus would hold no appeal to the better-off parents (most of whom can’t even seem to bring themselves to punish their youngsters for felonious assaults on the playground). Similarly, few on the Upper West Side have been troubled by the existence of such military-style charter schools in nearby Harlem.

Another problem with the parent involvement obsession is that it serves the status quo. At a rally to protest the appointment of the flamboyantly unqualified Cathie Black to run the city’s schools, I ran into a friend and former coworker, now a parent of two children in a West Village public school. We wondered why there were so few parents there with children, and she pointed out that public school is “in many ways politically disenfranchising to parents. We are so busy volunteering for the schools that we have no time for political activism.”

Clearly, parent involvement has done wonders for many schools in Brooklyn. It’s the reason so many of our schools are as good as they are. If middle-class parents were to stop volunteering, we’d see an even more profound collapse of—and crisis of faith in—the public sphere, and even more children growing up to be ignorant and poorly prepared for adulthood.

But when we only focus on volunteering, at the expense of any attention to social justice, all we do is make our own neighborhood schools better, and as the Park Slope parent coordinator put it so crudely but honestly, improve our own property values. Then our neighborhoods gentrify and become more exclusive—and so do our schools. That’s not, obviously, helpful to poor kids, whose families can no longer afford the neighborhood, or get slots in the new and improved schools.

What’s the answer? We need more public investment in all schools, and more jobs, income assistance, and services for the poorest communities. By definition, school reform by gentrification can’t fix everybody’s schools.

About the Author

LIZA FEATHERSTONE is a journalist who lives in Clinton Hill, a gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood. Her son will begin kindergarten this fall and she is looking forward to being a super-involved member of the PTA!

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/04/local/report-card-reform-via-gentrification

More On Graffiti

Hello Ms. Lyons,
Nothing personal but your responses to my concerns seem rather boiler plate - let alone that they do not address anything specifically except in general about Green Team.
Tourists note these improvements? I don't live where tourists go.
Resources misused? A proactive response might ask why? By whom? How is it avoided? Your sarcasm about every half hour is all you can offer?


--- On Tue, 6/29/10, Lyons, Nancee (DPW) Nancee.Lyons@dc.gov> wrote:

From: Lyons, Nancee (DPW)
Subject: RE: Graffiti and Litter chat questions

Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2010, 11:25 AM

All of your concerns are our concerns and we have made great strides in improving the sanitation of Washington, DC, which is regularly noted by tourists. Keeping a clean city takes more than just one government agency. It takes a variety of different entities, including citizens. DPW services are broad and varied. Yes, overflowing public litter cans are a concern but we would have to empty each these cans every half hour to keep them from overflowing when they are being misused. Having the Green Team or BIDs to help keep litter under control is not indicative of an agency failure, it’s an example of government, the business community and volunteers working in concert to help stretch resources. This is just how it should be. DPW doesn’t have the resources to keep constant watch to ensure there is no litter on the street. The Green Team is in place to help us achieve our goals. But citizens also are urged to join us in the fight to keep their communities clean. We encourage neighborhood clean ups and provide free tools and trash bags to achieve this.

Very few cities have a free graffiti removal service. Up until recent legislation, DPW could only remove graffiti by request by the property owner. The graffiti you see on public spaces (that do not belong to the federal government) can be removed once they are spotted and reported. Typically graffiti is removed within 10 days after a request. Gang-related graffiti is removed sooner.

Litter and graffiti is not unique to Washington, DC. It is something all cities are grappling with and there is no perfect solution. In a perfect world, citizens would pick up after themselves and have too much respect for public property to paint graffiti on structures that do not belong to them. In the absence of this we, like every other sanitation service, are doing the best we can. It will take need more than suggestions and complaints from citizens to help achieve a cleaner DC. It will take their collaboration.

Nancee Lyons

Public Affairs Specialist

DC Department of Public Works

2000 14th Street, NW, 6th Fl.

(Reeves Center)

Washington, DC 20009

(202) 671-2637, 671-0642 (fax)

www.dpw.dc.gov Visit us on Facebook!

Follow us on Twitter!

Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 5:58 AM
To: Lyons, Nancee (DPW)
Subject: Graffiti and Litter chat questions

Subject: Re: [columbia_heights] Live, Graffiti and Litter Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2010, 5:57 AM As much as I am bothered about an increase in graffiti in my area, I am very concerned about what appears to me as DPW's inability (refusal?) to deal with it when graffiti is reported. Two patches of graffiti remain in my area after multiple 311 calls and service numbers. Both patches were reported to 311 and service numbers were taken. Patch 1 was partially completed and patch 2 was not touched at all, yet 311 reported the service numbers as completed. A second service number was taken for the patch that was not touched at all - again, some graffiti covered but not all. So now a third service number will be filed..... Lets see - one graffiti item, three service calls, one and a half responses but credit for three - It seems to me to have more to do with inflating numbers than doing anything. It's all documented. I have watched the graffiti truck and trailer slowly cruise through the area - when graffiti is on public space like a lamp post, why can't they just paint it? Litter - on 11th st, the Green Team guys do way more than DPW street sweepers. Any ideas on why DPW can't keep 11th between Florida and Monroe clean and it takes a third party service? Public litter cans overflowing because people put household garbage in them (next to them) - is that a DPW concern? Are these the efficiencies Fenty refers to? My area was cleaner in the early 1990s when there was a DPW person who did the street cleaning (before the mechanical sweepers). --- On Fri, 6/25/10, Twine, Kevin (DPW) wrote: From: Twine, Kevin (DPW) Subject: [columbia_heights] Live, One-Hour Chat with DC Department of Public Works: Graffiti and Litter To: Date: Friday, June 25, 2010, 5:05 PM Does nothing irk you more than seeing someone throw trash on the ground, sometimes just a few steps away from a litter can? Is your block a dumping ground for wrappers and cups due to your proximity to fast food restaurants? Are you concerned about a rise in graffiti in your neighborhood? Help discuss ways to combat litter and graffiti in your neighborhood by joining DPW’s hour-long online chat Wednesday, June 30, 2010, at 12:00 pm. DPW staff who collect litter and remove graffiti will discuss daily efforts to keep the city clean and also address concerns about litter and graffiti “hot spot” areas. We also need your feedback on future online discussion topics! Residents can join or follow the discussion at dpw.dc.gov/livechat once the chat session begins. Residents also may submit questions in advance on DPW’s Twitter account (http://twitter. com/DCDPW), Facebook page, or by email to nancee.lyons@ dc.gov. WHAT: Live, One-Hour Chat with DC Department of Public Works WHEN: Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 12:00-1:00 pm WHERE: dpw.dc.gov/livechat Kevin B. Twine Staff Assistant Department of Public Works Office of the Director 2000 14th Street, NW Washington, DC 20009 Ph: 202-671-2593 Fx: 202-671-0642 kevin.twine@ dc.gov

Disorderly Conduct

Disorderly conduct and resisting arrest have long been charges police use when nothing else is working. Both charges have definitely been overused and often used abusively by police as a harassing tactic. Not withstanding such abuses, the following case makes me wonder. What does it take to be legally disorderly?



D.C. police's search for drugs on D.C. teen is ruled illegal

By Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 4, 2010; B01

A few days before Christmas 2005 at nearly midnight, a uniformed District police officer patrolling the Sursum Corda neighborhood in Northwest heard a 16-year-old on a corner call out his name and ask, "What's up?"

That was before the yelling.

And it was the yelling -- not the $974 in cash or the 24 baggies of crack cocaine that police later found on the teenager -- that landed Officer Robert Elliott and the juvenile in a rare but important case before the D.C. Court of Appeals.

The appeals court said Thursday that the teen had been searched unreasonably after a flawed arrest for disorderly conduct. The decision angered the city's police union and overturned a lower court's decision that concluded that the youth had been disorderly and had crack that he intended to distribute.

If prosecutors wanted to retry the teenager, identified in court papers as T.L., for drug possession, they "theoretically" were free to do so, the appeals court said. But prosecutors cannot use the crack they found hidden in T.L.'s pants because they had searched him illegally.

As described in the appeals court opinion:

Elliott was driving in the 1100 block of First Place NW in the neighborhood near Union Station on Dec. 22, 2005, when he saw men on a corner "notorious" for drive-by shootings and drug dealing.

T.L. called out, "Hey, Elliott, what's up?" The group dispersed, but T.L. remained as Elliott asked him, "You got any drugs or guns on [you]?"

T.L. answered, "Yo, Officer Elliott, you know me. I ain't got no drugs or guns. . . . Go ahead and search me."

Elliott did. He found two "wads" of cash totaling $974 in the teen's coat and pants pockets. Elliott seized the cash, telling T.L. that he was taking it because they were in a high drug-trafficking area and it was "a large amount of currency to have on your person."

If T.L. could produce a pay stub, Elliott told him, he "possibly" could get the cash back after it was processed at the police station.

T.L. began calling for his mother and yelling: "They're taking my money. I work at McDonald's. I got that money working for McDonald's."

Between 10 and 15 people came out of their townhouses to see what was happening.

To the officer, the gathering crowd was a potential threat. He testified that the growing number of people could be incited and harm bystanders, officers and the teen. Elliott said he considered it "very dangerous" to draw a crowd, "especially in Sursum Corda." Elliott repeatedly told T.L. to quiet down, and when he didn't, he arrested him for disorderly conduct. A search followed, and police found the bags of crack cocaine in T.L.'s pants, according to court papers.

In explaining the reason for the arrest, the officer and prosecutors pointed to a part of the disorderly conduct statute that covers noise or shouts inside or outside a building during the night that annoy or disturb a "considerable number" of people.

The appeals court rejected that argument, saying T.L. did not urge the peaceful crowd to interfere. T.L. might have been annoying to his neighbors, but "there is no evidence they were hostile or likely to become violent," so the rationale for his arrest was wrong. Because police had no reason to arrest him, the search that followed was illegal, it said.

T.L. was adjudicated as involved -- the juvenile court equivalent of guilty -- on the disorderly conduct and drug charges.

The Public Defender Service appealed. Julie Leighton, spokeswoman for the service, said the office does not comment on appeals cases.

The appeals court's decision outraged the union representing D.C. officers.

"At some point, police have to be allowed to be the police," said Kristopher Baumann, head of the labor committee for the local Fraternal Order of Police. "The District of Columbia is never going to get a handle on crime if appellate judges keep substituting their view of what is safe or unsafe in high-drug areas."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/03/AR2010060304896.html

Takes Money To Get Money - When Welfare Is Development

D.C. gives H Street developer $5 million tax break

By: Bill Myers
Examiner Staff Writer
March 4, 2010

The D.C. Council has given a multimillion-dollar subsidy to a developer of the gentrifying H Street corridor. Without dissent, the council approved an emergency measure that grants a tax abatement to Steuart Investment Co., owner of the lot at the corner of Third and H Streets Northeast. The tax break is designed to help the Chevy Chase developer build a high-rise building with shopping, restaurants and apartments or condos. Under the law, Steuart's property taxes will be frozen at what it paid in fiscal 2010 for 10 years. The company then will pay a portion of taxes above the fiscal 2010 level through fiscal 2030. The breaks are capped at $5 million -- 7 percent of the project's expected costs.

Third & H Street project

» $67.5 million

» 42,000 square feet of retail, including a multi-story grocery store

» 210 apartments or condos

» Parking garage with up to 270 spaces

A planned grocery store gets its own 10-year tax break, but that isn't capped. In the fall, Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi warned the council against the legislation because the city -- facing nine-figure budget gaps -- can't afford it. The legislation was championed by Councilman Tommy Wells, D-Ward 6, who represents H Street. The Steuart development, he said, "is the linchpin to the revitalization of H Street." "H Street, since the riots of 40 years ago, has been a street noted by chaos, disorder, drug sales," Wells told The Examiner. "The street is really rebounding, but it takes investment and city help." Developers and city planners have been eyeing the H Street area between Third and 15th streets as a potential real estate gold mine as young professionals spill out of Capitol Hill and head north looking for nests. A series of boutiques and high-end restaurants and bars have sprouted on H Street in the past decade, and the city is planning to build a streetcar line there. In related legislation, the council also passed a bill that would allow business owners along H Street to obtain a property tax deferment this year. Wells said the deferments would help compensate owners whose businesses are being hurt by the city's reconstruction efforts on H Street. A similar law was passed last year. Two businesses inquired about the tax deferment, and one applied for it, finance office spokesman David Umansky said.

bmyers@washingtonexaminer.com

Judging Fenty On His Terms

When asked about the opportunity to unite a seemingly divided city, the mayor said he was elected to "provide high-level service to every District resident, no matter where you live" and suggested that he should be judged on that.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/28/AR2010022804185_pf.html

DC Gov Pats Itself On The Back

Storm assessment: Sidewalks were biggest problem in D.C.

By: Hristina Ninova
Special to The Examiner
February 28, 2010

City workers did a good job clearing the streets after the recent snowstorms, D.C. officials said, but residents and business owners not doing their part to clear the sidewalks was a problem.

City officials and residents dissected the city's snow cleaning performance at a meeting of the D.C. Council's Public Works and Transportation Committee.

The biggest issue, they said, was the impassable sidewalks. Residents complained that unshoveled pedestrian walkways and huge piles of snow blocking access to many of the cleaned ones was a threat to public safety, forcing Washingtonians to walk on the streets.

The heads of the District's transportation and public works departments explained that it is the responsibility of the business owners and residents to clean their own sidewalks.

"People were not ready to clear their own sidewalk three to four times," said DDOT Director Gabe Klein.

Another problem that the witnesses pointed out was that not all D.C. streets were properly plowed and some residential areas were missed.

Klein explained that in some cases, plows were not large enough to push the deep, heavy snow. In other cases, plows were too wide to make it down narrow residential streets that had cars parked on both sides.

He also said that the cleaning efforts and funds were spread fairly across the city's eight wards.

Part of the efforts to improve the snow-cleaning results for next year will include the purchase of a new truck that will suck and melt the snow, Klein said.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Storm-assessment_-Sidewalks-were-biggest-problem-in-D_C_-85584277.html

DC Property Tax Assessments

While paying taxes is a good thing - taxes can be a pain!

D.C. assessments drop, but some taxes will rise

By Nikita Stewart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 27, 2010; B03

District residents will continue to see a drop in their property assessments, but about 22,000 homeowners can expect their yearly tax bills to go up an average $345 because of a new law, tax officials said Friday.

Those property owners have benefited from tax-relief programs, including a homestead deduction and a senior citizen tax break. In some cases, the combination of programs resulted in homeowners paying little or no taxes, said Richie McKeithen, director of real property tax administration in the Office of Tax and Revenue.

The D.C. Council approved legislation last year that requires homeowners to pay on at least 40 percent of a property's assessed value. That will lead to the $345 average increase, McKeithen said.

His office released assessments for tax year 2011 and began mailing tax bills Friday. Property owners will have until April 1 to appeal the assessments.

Overall property assessments, both residential and commercial, declined by 6 percent. Commercial property dropped 10.6 percent, and residential property slumped by 3.7 percent.

Four neighborhoods, all east of the Anacostia River, had double-digit declines in residential assessments. Hillcrest, the Ward 7 neighborhood of council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) and council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large), led the decline at 15.3 percent, followed by Ward 8's Congress Heights (13.2 percent), Ward 7's Deanwood (12.6 percent) and Ward 7's Randle Heights (10.8 percent).

"They got slammed with a lot of foreclosures," McKeithen said. "It's hard to compete . . . when so many houses in foreclosure are on the market."

Council member Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 7) noted that the tax office defines the neighborhoods by their core and surrounding communities, so the decline in Hillcrest includes Penn Branch and other areas. "Unemployment is going up. People are losing their jobs. There are really a lot of social factors we need to look at," she said, adding that more education is needed to inform residents that foreclosure is not their only option.

Alexander said the new assessments could provide relief for residents whose tax bills will be lower, but they hurt residents trying to sell.

The new law that sets a 40 percent threshold is a "revenue raiser" but also tries to bring parity to the current tax system, said Ed Lazere, executive director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute. Because of the tax breaks, "owners have seen their tax bills go up not at all or at a modest rate," Lazere said. The tax bill "will come as a shock, but it is still relatively low and significantly lower than their neighbors'."

The waning property values differed from the 2010 declines that spread in double digits to wards 1, 4 and 5. Residents of those wards saw their property values slide but at a slower pace, according to the data.

Three neighborhoods, Glover Park and Berkley in Ward 3 and Central in Ward 2, showed small increases. "These are west of the [Rock Creek] park . . . not far from Georgetown. Clearly, the market, the desire to be in these neighborhoods, was strong. As the market rectifies itself, you'll see it in those areas first," McKeithen said.

Commercially, increases and decreases were scattered throughout the city from Anacostia in Ward 8 to Brookland in Ward 5 to Palisades in Ward 2, although the declines were more dramatic than the gains.

"The good news is that we aren't seeing the large decreases of other cities around the country that are at 25 percent," McKeithen said. "Washington, D.C., is still a desirable place because of the influence of the government."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/26/AR2010022605706_pf.html

DC Transportation Director - No Snow PLan

I take the following as a subtle admission that there was no plan........... ahhhh small government!! (or maybe it is small thinking government)....


District needs a major snow plan, transportation chief says

By Nikita Stewart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 27, 2010; B01

The District has a plan for a snowfall of 18 inches or more: Major roads should be cleared to bare pavement within 36 hours and residential streets within 60 hours.

The problem is there's no plan for much, much more, such as the amount dumped on the region during the back-to-back storms earlier this month, said Gabe Klein, director of the District Department of Transportation.

"What we need is a different plan," he said. "A contingency plan. A major storm plan."

Klein acknowledged the weak spot at a D.C. Council committee hearing Friday on the city's recent snow removal efforts. Residents who testified complained of inconsistent street plowing, untouched alleys and sidewalks, and random trash collection.

The snowstorms proved a test for all the region's leaders. But Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) appeared to face much of the criticism, having set high expectations with his longtime focus on constituent services and the city's praised handling of a 20-inch snowstorm in December.

The Fenty administration initially stumbled during this month's first storm with an announcement that schools would remain open, a decision that was quickly reversed. It continues to be criticized for the menacing, Blob-like mounds of snow that remain on street corners, in alleys and between parked cars. A few residents brought photographs as proof.

Their complaints were backed by council members who questioned Klein and William O. Howland Jr., director of the Department of Public Works, about why some streets were plowed and others weren't.

"This is about these pockets that weren't dealt with," council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) said. "In some cases, it was bizarre."

Klein said the record snow was too much for the city's equipment. The city has a supply of plows that were too large to squeeze through streets crammed by snow and ill-parked vehicles, he said. "There were, unfortunately, instances of plows hitting cars," Klein said.

City officials, led by Klein and Howland, realized that the District needed smaller heavy equipment. The city owns fewer than 10 small heavy-duty plows, Klein said, and contracted 56 more to help with snow removal.

In the future, the city might want to prohibit cars from parking on both sides of a residential street, Klein said, adding that it would have to weigh limiting parking against snow removal. When the city currently declares a snow emergency, vehicles are prohibited from parking on main roads, forcing them onto residential streets.

As for the alleys, Klein warned that plowing those back streets alone would have tripled the cost of removal.

Kathy Henderson, a former Ward 5 advisory neighborhood commissioner, praised the city's overall performance but said there should have been a plan for staffing during the storm. Henderson said she hated to wake up a driver asleep in his plow to tell him to get to a certain missed block "after your catnap."

She said residents who have been certified or trained to operate such equipment, including her, should be identified for emergencies. "I'd be willing to plow some streets," she said.

Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), chairman of the Committee on Public Works and Transportation, said sidewalks that were to be maintained by property owners must be addressed. He pointed to Freedom Plaza, the open-air park across from the John A. Wilson Building and overseen by the National Park Service. The sidewalks and park were not cleared until well after the last storm. "Totally ignored," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/26/AR2010022605835_pf.html

From DC Department Transportation's Gabe Klein

Transportation chief says bikes, buses are way to go in D.C.

By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 25, 2010; B01

It was, according to AAA, the worst commute since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Traffic in and out of Washington backed up for hours Feb. 12 on snow-blocked roads that had lost a lane or more. The frustration continued well into last week.

It was a grueling test for the District's young new transportation chief. Furious drivers complained that the city wasn't doing its job. But it wasn't the first time that Gabe Klein had annoyed motorists who thought he should do his job differently.

Rather than promoting driving, as he did previously as an executive for Zipcar, the car-sharing pioneer, Klein has been working to get vehicles off the road.

"Transportation has always been a field held captive by experts and engineers," said Harriet Tregoning, the city's planning director. For 50 years, the goals have been to enhance the road network to allow the largest number of cars. "Now, people have choices, and Gabe is saying, 'How do I get them to buy the things I'm selling?' "

Klein is selling an urban lifestyle that depends less than ever on cars and more on trains, buses, bicycles and walking. He is following the credo of like-minded transportation planners in Portland, Seattle and New York that public transit can revive ailing cities.

Klein is expanding the city's red, dollar-a-ride Circulator bus system beyond tourist destinations and into more neighborhoods. He's promoting car sharing and, with Tregoning's office, said he hopes to build on a bike-sharing pilot program with 1,000 new bicycles and 100 stations.

The changes have rankled drivers.

"There's an overly antagonistic attitude toward motorists right now," said Lon Anderson, public relations director for AAA. Among his beefs with Klein are higher parking meter rates, extending meter enforcement to Saturdays and evenings and a new lane along a portion of 15th Street NW devoted to bicyclists.

Forbes Maner, a lawyer whose street in the Spring Valley neighborhood was not plowed for 10 days after the Feb. 5 blizzard, agrees. He and his neighbors plowed it themselves, leaving some to park where they could -- in the wrong direction on Quebec Street. Last Friday, they were ticketed by a parking enforcement officer.

"People were willing to give the city some slack," Maner said. "But to come out and see that? It was a middle finger in our faces."

A year ago, Klein, the risky choice of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) to lead the Department of Transportation, a high-profile city agency, had never held a government job, let alone managed a workforce of 1,000.

At 39, he is 15 years younger than some of his top deputies. But that might make the high-metabolism transportation czar a good fit in a city trying to attract people like him.

He assembled a new team devoted to "policy, planning and sustainability," a nod to transit projects he hopes will reduce pollution and cars. The most ambitious is a throwback to the days when streetcars were the city's primary mode of transportation: a 37-mile light rail line powered by overhead wires that would connect H Street, Benning Road NE and Anacostia. Full service is years away, but Klein is trying to fast-track a project he said will act as a catalyst for economic growth.

"There's a lot of things that go into making a city an attractive place to live," Klein said. "You have schools, public safety and high-quality transportation. People are realizing that what we had in our old cities is actually more sustainable than what we have now."

Klein drives his own Smart Car two or three times a week, calling the silver two-seater a "lazy asset." He prefers to walk the eight blocks to the office from his condo in Columbia Heights or ride one of his five bikes, which include a Vespa scooter. He's geek and hippie rolled into one, bag over his shoulder, BlackBerry glued to his ear, wearing rumpled shirts and less-than-perfectly tailored corduroy suits.

The laid-back sartorial style and get-things-done metabolism come from a childhood on a yoga commune in Charlottesville and an entrepreneur father who owned a bike store and sold a form of electric tape he had found in Japan.

After receiving undergraduate and business degrees from Virginia Tech, Klein served as D.C. regional vice president for Zipcar from 2002 to 2006, then co-founded a boutique company that specializes in healthy on-the-go meals sold from green carts around Washington.

Under Klein, the Transportation Department's bureaucracy communicates through Facebook, e-mail and Twitter, updating constituents on snow-clearing operations and new projects.

A new, more transparent Web site was launched Wednesday, with budgets and schedules for every road, bridge and transit project, including those that veer off schedule, along with explanations why. There's a YouTube primer on how to pay the new, high-tech parking meters on U Street, featuring Klein himself.

There was Klein during the snowstorm that had begun the morning of Feb. 5, guarding a downed traffic light on Capitol Hill at 2 a.m. until police arrived. As snow pelted the city again five days later, he took a photo of a huge tree that had crushed a parked van in Columbia Heights after narrowly missing a man shoveling. The image went up on the Transportation Department's Facebook page to warn people of the dangerous conditions.

"Gabe's a consumerist," said D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), chairman of the Public Works and Transportation Committee. "In terms of responding to residents, he's remarkably talented."

Klein acknowledged that higher parking meter rates, now $2 an hour, are designed in part to send drivers a message to change their behavior. "If everybody drives a car all the time, it's not going to be very pleasant," he said.

But he noted that the department, with the help of federal stimulus money, has three-quarters of a billion dollars in road and bridge projects underway, including a rebuilt New York Avenue and a new bridge over 11th Street.

Klein defends his agency's snow-clearing effort, shared with the Department of Public Works. "I think we did a spectacular job, give the forecasts we had to deal with," he said. He acknowledged that the Feb. 12 commute "was bad everywhere. "

"But after three feet of snow, the commute is not going to be normal," he said.

There have been some missteps. The department announced last fall that a budget shortfall would force the closure of the H Street shuttle, a popular express bus downtown, only to restore the service days after a public outcry.

A Circulator route on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown also met its demise and a quick resurrection with a mayoral news conference.

Klein said he's also learning to negotiate thorny neighborhood politics with a baptism by fire over speed bumps in Chevy Chase. He set a block-by-block standard for installing traffic-slowing devices.

The controversy had a silver lining. It led Klein to set aside up to $3 million for comprehensive studies of 24 neighborhoods to determine whether they need traffic calming, starting with Chevy Chase. He says it's part of the effort to encourage families to move back to the District. If they're worried that their children aren't safe from speeding cars, they will stay away, he said.